Writing with Witch Archetypes (Part 1)
What is a witch? (Creative Writing Prompt)
In the spring of 2020, a former poetry student reached out to me. I remembered her as exceptionally talented, intelligent, and engaged. What I didn’t know yet: she was a witch.
What I also didn’t know yet: I was a witch.
I took a class on creative writing and the occult with Pam Grossman and Janaka Stucky that awakened my inner witch. In this workshop, we wrote based on Tarot cards and I remembered my love for them during my college years. The way Grossman and Stucky framed art as witchcraft resonated with me.
I decided to start Witch Lit in the fall of 2020, drawing on my soul Tarot card The Magician’s tools to boldly begin a business, something I didn’t have much of a background in.
I was confident in my teaching and writing though. I’d been teaching for close to two decades, held an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a doctorate in English from UNLV, and had published an award-winning book of poetry. These are my Wheel of Fortune soul card’s greatest hits. The shadow side was that shortly after I earned the doctorate in the spring of 2013, I was rear ended in a car accident that left me with a disability of chronic migraine.
The isolation of teaching online and staying home wasn’t new to me. I actually become more connected to other people during the pandemic because of Zoom.
In my first Witch Lit class, I was afraid my students would call me out as an imposter. “Who do you think you are?” is something I’ve heard many times. Every time I had ambitions beyond my working class roots or my gender, this question was hurled at me. Every time I’ve claimed my own power, someone was there to shame me about it.
But not this time. Instead the young women gathered excitedly in class, showing only love and respect to me and to each other. Most were witch-curious, and a little unsure of whether they wanted to call themselves witches. But they were all talented writers, and since “art is magic” as the problematic but brilliant Aleister Crowley said, I’d say they were witches. Many continued on to attend prestigious MFA programs.
On our last day together, I pulled the 3 of Cups. This was the spirit of our class.
Around four years later, I still begin the first day of class with the question “What is a witch?” Outsider, independent woman or femme, shaman, rule-breaker. Sometimes the same definitions come up, and sometimes new ones poke their heads out of the dirt like scrappy, beautiful weeds. The witch defies definition. She won’t be put into a box or confined by a label.
Into this bubbling cauldron of possibilities, we pour our words into a form called anaphora. This is a poem or other written work that uses repetition to create a incantatory, embodied effect like in the “The Witch” by Elizabeth Willis.
The Witch
By: Elizabeth Willis
A witch can charm milk from an ax handle.
A witch bewitches a man's shoe.
A witch sleeps naked.
"Witch ointment" on the back will allow you to fly through the air.
A witch carries the four of clubs in her sleeve.
A witch may be sickened at the scent of roasting meat.
A witch will neither sink nor swim.
When crushed, a witch's bones will make a fine glue.
A witch will pretend not to be looking at her own image in a window.
A witch will gaze wistfully at the glitter of a clear night.
A witch may take the form of a cat in order to sneak into a good man's
chamber.
A witch's breasts will be pointed rather than round, as discovered in
the trials of the 1950s.
A powerful witch may cause a storm at sea.
With a glance, she will make rancid the fresh butter of her righteous
neighbor.
Even our fastest dogs cannot catch a witch-hare.
A witch has been known to cry out while her husband places inside her
the image of a child.
A witch may be burned for tying knots in a marriage bed.
A witch may produce no child for years at a time.
A witch may speak a foreign language to no one in particular.
She may appear to frown when she believes she is smiling.
If her husband dies unexpectedly, she may refuse to marry his brother.
A witch has been known to weep at the sight of her own child.
She may appear to be acting in a silent film whose placards are
missing
In Hollywood the sky is made of tin.
A witch makes her world of air, then fire, then the planets. Of
cardboard, then ink, then a compass.
A witch desires to walk rather than be carried or pushed in a cart.
When walking a witch will turn suddenly and pretend to look at
something very small.
The happiness of an entire house maybe ruined by witch hair
touching a metal cross.
The devil does not speak to a witch. He only moves his tongue.
An executioner may find the body of a witch insensitive to an iron spike.
An unrepentant witch may be converted with a little lead in the eye.
Enchanting witchpowder may be hidden in a girl's hair.
When a witch is hungry, she can make a soup by stirring water with
her hand.
I have heard of a poor woman changing herself into a pigeon.
At times a witch will seem to struggle against an unknown force
stronger than herself.
She will know things she has not seen with her eyes. She will have
opinions about distant cities.
A witch may cry out sharply at the sight of a known criminal dying of
thirst.
She finds it difficult to overcome the sadness of the last war.
A nightmare is witchwork.
The witch elm is sometimes referred to as "all heart." As in, "she was
thrown into a common chest of witch elm."
When a witch desires something that is not hers, she will slip it into her glove.
An overwhelming power compels her to take something from a rich
man's shelf.
I have personally known a nervous young woman who often walked in
her sleep.
Isn't there something witchlike about a sleepwalker who wanders
through the house with matches?
The skin of a real witch makes a delicate binding for a book of common prayer.
When all the witches in your town have been set on fire, their smoke
will fill your mouth. It will teach you new words. It will tell you what
you've done.
I invite students to write their own poems that begin with “A witch is…” At the end of this exercise, everyone puts a line or two from their poem into the chat. What results is a group poem and spell I read aloud to kick off a fantastic class.
And my student the OG Witch Lit witch? The poem she wrote in response to the prompt was published in the literary magazine Black Moon. There’s The Magician again manifesting their will in the world through the use of their tools like writing.
A Witch
By: Kerri Vasilakos
A witch carries a cauldron
in her Michael Kors purse,
calls her husband on the way home
to pick up bay leaves for tomorrow’s
new moon.
A witch sifts her fingers through her tarot
cards, and reshuffles for an answer
she likes better. She curses through
sage smoke that forms a halo
around her head, and has to smudge
herself again.
A witch’s inner child sits in the corner
and plays with the iridescent black
feathers of a crow.
She stretches the spiderwebs
across her ceiling and searches
for signs.
A witch wears a pentacle on her middle
finger while making the sign of the crucifix,
burns herself with the wax of her black
grounding candle, and fasts
on Fridays.
A witch meditates in the morning
and tries to fall in love with the knots
in her stomach. She untangles the same
knots with a shot of vodka before bed.
I am a witch. Caterpillar. Inhaler.
Xanax. Panic. Meditate. Panic. Pigeon Pose.
Wine. Prayer. Sunset.
Butterfly.
I admire how Kerri took this prompt and made it her own, and you can too!
Creative Writing Prompt:
Write a poem in which most lines begin with “a witch.” Don’t worry about making sense while writing! Later you can edit and craft. Bonus if you can make it embodied by using the 5 senses: sight, smell, taste, sound, and touch. Feel free to share all or just a few lines of your poem here.
Word Limit:
500
A witch is the kelpy garden growing deep inside. The salty roots of watery forests; the fronds of core and mantle, the dinosaur teeth of my father’s mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s grandmother’s sister. Deep and penetrating to touch.
I rarely write and instead move my body through generations of discomfort. We are not seperate and the stars birth from my bones.
I share my soul and heal with plants, sealing with the frequencies of restoring energetic fields. This vibration is a scent under my pillow and my fingers trace its edges. Raspberries and rum. A witch is otherworldly and divine. A witch is wild and and part of the soil. A witch is spreading mycelium and centuries of old fruiting bodies. Aniseed and vanilla wetted onto my face. A witch is not a list. There is no summit to psychic ability. Nor empathy. Nor camouflage. I will not blindfold you.
A witch is me acknowledged. I am not seperate from the air around us.
thank you for the encouragement! I had fun writing this. and I think this approach of not really thinking too much, just letting the words and associations lead themselves is a great one.