Hello witches and seekers, my name is Erika. I’ve thought long and hard about how much I want to share of myself to the world. I don’t share much about myself to social media and I’ve certainly never blogged about myself. While I don’t intend for Hedge and Home to be the platform for me to share my every move and most intimate feelings, I do want it to be a place where I can share my practice and knowledge with others. My life is magical and enchanting through and through, from my real-world job to my altars to my garden and I feel called to share a slice of this with the broader witchcraft community. So I’ve decided on one planned introduction post about my background and witch story. Here goes everything.
I know as a community we like to label our flavor of witchcraft so I guess you could say I’m a plant witch and hedge witch. But I don’t feel like that comes close to describing what I do in my practice and the forces I work with. I grow plants in the garden and in the home but also like talking to the weeds growing out of the sidewalk. I love working with the spirits of my crystals and also pick up rocks that call to me. I read tarot for myself and others and use it as a means of spirit communication. I follow astrology to the best of my ability (it’s not my strong suit). I honor and commune with my ancestors. I journey across the hedge to interact with the otherworlds. I get excited about a new thought, object, plant, or spirit every day. The witchy social media wants us to come up with a single word that describes our practices, but the truth is that I follow the voices of the spirits around me as well as my inner voice and my practice is guided in different directions all the time.
Born into a part of the New Age movement, my family raised me to believe in energy, the power of energy to heal and manifest, and magic itself. We were taught how to meditate deeply. We were taught that every living thing had a spirit that must be respected. My parents talked to their dead parents. They took us camping in Arkansas to mine our own quartz crystals which still live all over their house. I remember standing at the edge of the world at Beartooth Pass in Wyoming at 10 years old and my mother called me a faerie of the mountains. We blessed the trees and thanked the land. My upbringing was truly magical and animist, yet the word “witch” was unknown.
Fast forward a decade to my college experience. Although I was surrounded by modern age hippies and alternative folk who loved to talk philosophy and religion, I felt a lacking of deep spirituality in that community. I felt a spiritual void growing inside of me for many years as my connection to my childhood years grew more distant. I was angry and sad and I didn’t know why. Then I discovered the word witchcraft and everything changed. I immersed myself in the diverse worlds of the online witchcraft and pagan communities, and quickly realized that this is what I had been doing my whole life, as well as the spiritual connection I had drifted away from. I returned to my roots of working with plants, kitchen witchery, connecting with the land, the moon, the sun, reconnecting with my ancestors and spirit team, and any information on the occult and esotericism I could find and immediately started up a daily practice.
When one discovers the world of witchcraft on the internet, it can become disorienting and overwhelming with good and bad information, products, and all kinds of witchy aesthetics. And it can be incredibly difficult to sort through all of this to figure out what is “real and true”. That begs a totally different post about what is real and true in witchcraft. While I respect all the different traditions of the Craft, I couldn’t find a community that I resonated with enough to join. I was turned off by the rigid formalities and correspondences of Wiccan based traditions. Not that there’s anything at all wrong with that, but I couldn’t feel the magic in it the way that I could forging my own path. As my partner and I found trusted sources from all across the pagan community, we began practicing in a way that felt right and magical to us.
Several years in, we have found ourselves with home made and divined incense, oils, candles, and body products that we use on a daily basis for our own practice. Do I have decades of traditional witchcraft experience? No. But I am a lifelong witch, and I feel a powerful calling to share my knowledge, resources, process, magical goods, and journey with the witchcraft and pagan community. Our practice grows and changes all the time, and we are certain that will be the case for the rest of our lives. Our deepest hope and intention is that all who find Hedge and Home may be inspired to forge their own magical path forward, just as we have. I believe that if we can integrate enchantment into all aspects of our lives, the more whole we become as individuals, communities, and a global ecosystem.