Writing as Witchcraft

When I turned 18, my mom took me to see a psychic. We made a whole weekend out of it, drove two hours to the nearest city, stayed in an artsy air bnb, brought my brother and our dog. My mom heard about this psychic from her friend who used to do her hair for a t.v. show where she gave live readings.

Most people are either firm believers or die-hard skeptics of psychics. I try to strike a healthy balance between the two. There is a right amount of skepticism to have for those who claim to know the future and what lies beyond the human realm. There are scammers out there, people who prey on your grief and trauma and charge hundreds of dollars to appeal to your cognitive biases. But also there are people who try therapy and support groups and the charcuterie of spirituality humanity has to offer, and nothing resonates except a psychic reading. Still, I always leave the door open in case I meet a real-life Oda Mae Brown.

Regardless of if the psychic-in-question is “legit”–meaning they can see the future, read auras, talk to spirits, or whatever powers they claim to have–does it matter as long as it works? Does it really matter as long as the client is satisfied? If someone finds closure, feels relief, answers the previously unanswerable, then they got what they came for. Is that so wrong?

The psychic I saw when I turned 18 didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. She gave me some hard truths, some false truths, and some Great Unknown truths.

A few weeks prior to the session, I bought a matching necklace and earrings from the local thrift store. They were locked up in a glass case that doubled as a counter separating the volunteers from the shoppers. The necklace had raw turquoise patterned with purple glass and blue pearl beads across a flimsy wire. A toggle clasp shaped like a silver rose marked the ends. The dangling earrings matched. I imagined someone had these tucked away in their jewelry box, like a dragon sits on its treasure. The woman who owned it made it herself and would wear them to special occasions in her youth. But as the years went on, those occasions became few and far between. When she died, there was no family or next of kin to inherit her precious gems. They went ignored at an estate sale until a group of volunteers came and brought them to the thrift store where they laid still under this glass case.

Obviously, the volunteers didn’t know what they had, otherwise they wouldn’t have priced the set at $12. I bought them and it was the fanciest thing I wore every day. It stood out against my casual high school attire of red Converse and band t-shirts.

I hadn’t taken the necklace off since buying it, so it came with me to the psychic reading by default. The first thing the psychic did was ask for a personal item to connect with me. I unclasped my necklace and handed it to her. She stroked it with eyes closed the way one would pet a cat from head to tail. The beads clinked against the rings on each of her fingers. She described to me a vision of stained glass windows, maybe a church, but an ancient church full of real holiness. Not any of the manufactured cookie-cutter religion I was accustomed to. But I hadn’t stepped foot in a church for at least a month, and that was the first time I went to church in years.

I went for my friend’s funeral, and it was not a beautiful or ancient church. It was modern and it was dull and dark. There were no windows, but high ceilings with mud-brown walls and harsh fluorescent lights that lit the pews of people in attendance for a 17-year-old’s funeral whose body had only laid lifeless for a week. Funerals are rarely a happy occasion, but this one was infuriating because it was so preventable. She should not have died the way she did. But I guess that’s why they call it an accident. An accident with fatal, irreversible consequences. And if my friend had written a will, I can almost guarantee you she wouldn’t have wanted her funeral in this church. The church that ignored her cries for help her whole life. The church that excused pedophiles and abusers with a regular tithes. The church of hypocrisy, the church of scandals, the church with no windows and false gods. This could not be the church the psychic was channeling through my necklace.

No, the church she channeled through my necklace must have been somewhere in Italy. An ancient cathedral marked by polished wooden pews, columns and archways holding the building together like bones in a body. Stained glass that filtered the morning sun through every color and cast beams of light around intricate mosaics spiraling out of the center of the floor. Giant candles standing with pride at the sides of a golden throne with dripping wax dried along the stairs. The musky smell of incense wafting through the air. Marble statues of the saints and prophets carved by hand, welcoming worshipers into their house. Ornate bells in the highest tower attached by a rope so old you’re afraid it will crack in your hand just by grasping it. Ancient churches built in the name of the spirit that connects us all, that brings communities together not out of fear but out of true love for our fellow humans and all inhabitants of earth and beyond. This must have been the place she meant.

But I have never been to this church. I am not so sure it even exists outside my imagination. I told the psychic about the last time I went into a church, about my friend and her funeral. She asked how she died, and I explained the story the same way my friend’s obituary was written: cold and matter-of-fact. She drowned in the cab of a truck that sank into the river after accepting a ride from her drunk friend. I couldn’t think about it too hard, because if I did all my sadness and all my anger and all my grief would have overcome me. It would have blinded me from any other feeling, and I was afraid I would drown in it if I fully let it in. The psychic just nodded, continued stroking my necklace, and warned me never to get in a truck.

I had come out of two car accidents luckily unscathed prior to my friend’s accident. I already had some fear around driving, but the psychic’s words just solidified it. I tried to avoid accepting any rides in a truck, but it was almost impossible and often rude of me to do so. Shakily, I stepped into trucks time and time again, pushed the worry out of my mind that something bad was about to happen. And you know what? I was okay. Every. Single. Time. But that psychic’s words had power. Even though she was wrong, and my logical brain knew to take it with a grain of salt, every time I stepped into a truck I thought about how I was not heeding her warning. The fear and anxiety ate at me.

The second thing she asked me was what I was doing after high school. At this point, I thought I had a pretty solid, well-laid-out plan. You know, the way most teenagers know exactly what they’re doing with their life and how it’s going to turn out. With pride, I recited my plan to attend my state university where I’d already been accepted and live close to my boyfriend who was already a sophomore there.

“No you’re not,” the psychic said bluntly. She didn’t miss a beat. She couldn’t have spoken the words faster than I could get them out of my mouth. I exhaled a nervous laugh. Quiet. I didn’t know what to say. Most people responded with congratulations, that they were happy for me, that I had their full support and they were excited for this next leg of my journey. Now I think those people were just being polite. What this psychic did was give me the truth, and I thank her for that. I don’t know if her psychic abilities had anything to do with it at all. She could just read my body language, my tone of voice. She saw right through me in a way even my brother and mother didn’t see. Or if they did, they never told me. I felt like she ripped the sheet off my head and exposed my real identity.

The truth was, I didn’t want to go to my state university, even though I got accepted. I wanted to go away. Far away. Far away from my peers, the small-town culture with small-minded people, the same music on the radio, the same mindless chatter, the same life plan that everyone had laid out before them. I didn’t want to live close to my high school boyfriend. I was just afraid to live far away from him. I didn’t want to be with him forever, I was just afraid to break up with him. Fear, fear, and more fear kept me making choice smack-dab in the middle of my comfort zone. Because that was safe.

But what this psychic did was show me what I already knew. That my comfort zone was not comfortable, it was suffocating. That I would never grow into my full potential, be the person I wanted to be, unless I took risks and leaps and bounds and made mistakes and kept trying over and over again. I don’t think she had to be psychic to tell me that. She was just something no one else in my life was: honest.

She told me I would go far away, and that was true. I didn’t go across the world or even across the country, but I went farther than most of my peers did. I moved to a new city where I didn’t know anybody and all my family was 500-1,000 miles away. She told me I would go on a road trip with my brother, which hasn’t happened yet, but I’m still holding out.

She told me I would break up with my boyfriend, which was also true. I didn’t want to hear it, I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t even break up with him right away. I peeled that band-aid off so slowly and painfully because I didn’t want her to be right. But her words had already infiltrated my subconscious. No matter how hard I tried to ignore or deny it, she had already spoken it into existence.

The last thing she told me was that words have power. Magic is real, though it does not show up in the same fantastical way we hear about it in storybooks. She said that when we use language, we are casting spells. Literally spelling things into existence. Manifesting them into reality. In big and small ways. But since our thoughts create our reality, and our thoughts are largely made up of words (at least mine are), then what we think and what we say becomes who we are and the world we live in.

This was certainly true in her line of work. She used her words to predict some things in my life, but really she was just persuading and affirming me to make choices I already knew to be true in my heart. Her words helped me speak it into existence.

But it was my words that broke up with my boyfriend. My essays that got me into the college that I actually wanted to go to. My emails that granted me scholarships to attend an out-of-state school. My phone calls that got me a place to live. My words that made me friends and connections, brought me new places, showed me new things. My words had power. And they still do.

This is why writing is my favorite form of witchcraft.