What
People Ask Me
Two sides of the same practice. Open a question on either side to read what I have to say.
On being gay
Some Truths, Plainly Told
A tidy answer to the questions people actually ask, backed by sources you can check yourself.
It is who you are drawn to. Romantically, sexually, emotionally. Orientation is separate from gender identity, who you are, and from sex assigned at birth, what a doctor wrote on a form once.
No. For almost everyone, orientation shows up early, often before any sexual experience at all, and it does not bend to willpower. People have tried for years, under real pressure, to change it. It did not work.
No, and it has not been listed as a mental illness on the books since 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of disorders, after research showed the earlier illness framing came from studying only gay people already in therapy, not gay people living ordinary lives. This is settled science.
No, and it causes real harm trying. Every major medical and mental health body in North America has condemned it. In Canada, conversion therapy has been a criminal offense nationwide since Bill C-4 took effect in January 2022. In the United States, the legal landscape is messier and actively changing, so check where your state currently stands rather than trusting a number that might already be outdated.
Yes. Every serious comparison between kids raised by queer parents and kids raised by straight parents finds no meaningful difference in adjustment, intelligence, or wellbeing. The old fear that gay men are more likely to harm children has no evidentiary support and never did.
Because hiding costs something. The research consistently links a positive, integrated queer identity to better mental health and higher self-esteem. Coming out is not a single door you walk through once. It is a practice, sometimes a lifelong one, and it tends to serve people better than the alternative.
Because prejudice is still real. People still fear losing family, faith communities, jobs, and their safety.
In Canada, sexual orientation has been a protected ground under the Canadian Human Rights Act for years, and gender identity and expression were explicitly added in 2017. Most provinces, Alberta included, list both in their own human rights codes. In the United States, since Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020, federal law protects against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in employment. Beyond that floor, roughly two dozen states have their own explicit nondiscrimination laws, and the map keeps moving in both directions, so check it before you cite a number as fixed.
Proximity, still. The research keeps finding the same thing it found decades ago: that people with the least prejudice toward queer people are the ones who know queer people as full human beings, not as an abstraction. Visibility does the work that argument alone cannot.
I am one witch with a website, not a helpline. If you need support beyond what you find here, the Trevor Project, PFLAG, and the National LGBTQ Task Force are all current and active and worth knowing about. Send a raven if you would rather ask me directly.
On being witch
Ask, and the Grimoire Answers
What witchcraft actually is, in my own words, for anyone who wonders.
As a witch, over the years I’ve heard this one come up lots. A witch is any person, regardless of pronouns, who practices witchcraft. Simply put, witchcraft is an assemblage of methods for altering consciousness, commonly for the purpose of manifesting change, in either the planet or in the self.
While any practitioner can call themselves a witch, some spell-casters have chosen to adopt other “labels”. Warlock, for example, a controversial word and subject, is one such label that men who practice witchcraft sometimes subscribe to. For a detailed warlock walk-through, you may find this link enlightening.
Aleister Crowley revived the archaic spelling of ‘magick’ used during the Renaissance to differentiate occult magic from stage magic. He defined it as “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will”. Many, but not all, witches use the archaic spelling. Personally, I switch between the two. As far as spellcasting, I have been actively working and writing spells since the age of fourteen. People often ask if magic really works. In my experience, it changes lives. More than a system used to alter the self and our surroundings, magic can be found by simply living in the world.
I would be honored to create space for you on my altar. Choose from three tiers, Petition, Working, or Vigil, depending on the weight of what you need, then head to my request form to get started.
If one is going by the dictionary definition of the word, to pray is to speak to a god or deity, either in silence or out loud, to give thanks, show love, or ask for help. It can also mean to hope very much for something to happen, or serve as a polite, old-fashioned way to say “please,” then yes. I do pray. Often, though not only, I pray to the fates.
Neither. While I have known those who were and I have read some of Anton LaVey’s books on Satanism, different fish, different pond. These practices do not belong to me, nor do I to them. I will say that there is loads of misinformation on these subjects, though. You can learn more about Satanism on churchofsatan.com.
It matters, and it is worth thinking about seriously rather than defensively. Some practices are open, built to be shared and adapted. Others are closed, tied to a specific culture, lineage, or initiation, and taking pieces out of context without permission causes real harm to the communities they belong to. Knowing the difference and asking before assuming are part of doing this work responsibly.
Paganism is any religion other than Christianity, Islam, or Judaism, generally categorized as an earth-based practice. Many Pagans are polytheistic, some are monotheistic, and some worship only the earth. The word literally means country dweller. Like Christianity, Paganism has many sects with different beliefs, and not all Pagans are witches, nor are all witches Pagan. Wicca is a Neo-Pagan reconstruction of witchcraft whose main law is harm none.
Not on its own. Astrology is a system for reading the sky; witchcraft is a practice of directing energy toward an end. Plenty of witches use astrology as one tool among many, myself included, but knowing your rising sign does not make you a witch any more than knowing tarot does.
Mixed feelings, honestly. It has brought many genuinely curious people into this space who might never have found it otherwise, and that is good. It has also flattened a lot of serious practice into fifteen-second aesthetics, which worries me less than people think, since curiosity that starts shallow can still deepen with time.
Not at all. Witchcraft by itself is not a religion. However, I do feel that some combinations sit a little sour on the tongue. If you feel called to the craft and have other spiritual obligations, at the end of the day, your relationship with Divinity is yours alone.
Still have questions?
Question still unanswered, on either side? Send a raven and I will find you.
Send a Raven