There's a version of "witch" doing the rounds online that's mostly crystals and dream catchers, see Totnes or Glastonbury. Candles, charity shop cardigan, a jar of something unlabelled on the windowsill behind them. That's not really what we're talking about today.
The more interesting story is quieter than that. A lot of what gets filed under "witchcraft" now is just herbalism, the practical knowledge of what a plant does and how to use it, that most families had access to two or three generations ago and then lost somewhere between the NHS and the supermarket. Nettle tea for iron. Elderflower when a cold's coming on. Rosehips instead of oranges, because oranges weren't getting through during the war and somebody had to find the vitamin C from somewhere else. None of it is mystical. It's closer to folk medicine than magic, and it was mostly held by women, which is probably why it got dismissed as superstition in the first place.
A word that used to end in a rope
The "reclaiming the label" part is real too. Calling yourself a witch used to be an accusation, sometimes a fatal one. Now it's closer to a statement, that you'd rather trust something you can grow and identify than something in a bottle with a marketing budget behind it. There's a line from persecuted wise-woman to wellness influencer that's a bit too neat, and worth being honest about. Not every plant tincture sold online is backed by anything more than a good aesthetic and a font choice.
The history behind the word is worth knowing too, and it's darker than the already dark aesthetic suggests. Between roughly 1450 and 1750, something like forty to sixty thousand people were executed across Europe for witchcraft, the overwhelming majority of them women. England's own trials ran into the hundreds, the Pendle witches in 1612 being the best known, twelve people accused in Lancashire, ten of them hanged on evidence that wouldn't survive five minutes in a modern courtroom. The Witchcraft Act that made it a crime to even claim magical powers stayed on the statute books in Britain until 1951, used as recently as the Second World War to prosecute a medium in Portsmouth. Worth sitting with that timeline for a moment. Within living memory, someone was convicted under a witchcraft law.
The knowledge was never the problem. Who held it was.
Who got accused was rarely random. Overwhelmingly it was women, often older, often unmarried or widowed, often the ones in a village who knew which plant stopped a fever or helped a difficult birth, the midwives and healers whose knowledge made them useful right up until it made them suspicious. Independence was frequently the actual charge, dressed up as something supernatural. A woman who owned property, who didn't need a husband, who spoke her mind in the wrong company, was a far easier target than the accusation ever let on. That's the thread a lot of modern feminist writing on witchcraft picks up, less about spells and more about what happens to women who won't be quietly managed.
"The knowledge that got someone hanged in 1612 is the same knowledge sitting in a jar on a windowsill now. The word changed meaning. The plants didn't."
Which goes some way to explaining why the word's having a moment again now. Interest in witchcraft tends to rise when institutions people would normally trust, medicine, religion, government, start losing that trust, and the last several years have given people plenty of reason on all three counts. Add a wellness industry that's already primed everyone to look for alternatives to a GP appointment, a generation raised online who never inherited the folk knowledge their great-grandmothers had and are now rediscovering it through a search bar instead of a kitchen, and a genuine feminist reclamation of a word that used to end in a rope. It's less a costume trend and more several real currents arriving at the same word at once.
A modern day witch, in her own words
We spoke to Michelle, a modern day witch, about what the word actually means to her day to day, away from all the branding.
"It's also about appreciating all the seasons and foraging all year round. Gathering the sloes and elderberries, mixing up the woodruff, using the comfrey on my recently broken bones, comfrey which used to be called knit bone.
Walking in the woods in the changing seasons, cold water plunges and wild swimming, the moonlight, the morning dew. Watching the landscape change as the wheel turns.
From a science backed perspective the chemicals in many plants are the original healing remedies, willow bark is where aspirin derived from.
The wheel of the year follows earth's journey, nobody can deny the existence of the solstices and equinoxes, or the changing seasons, or the moon cycles, as you can see them.
And it's also about walking lightly on the earth, which is why my spiritual path sits well next to my natural sciences degree."
Michelle
The moon comes up a lot in conversations like this one, and it's worth taking seriously rather than dismissing outright. Nobody's arguing the moon controls anything mystical, but tracking its phases is really just another form of the same seasonal attention Michelle's describing, noticing what's actually happening overhead rather than letting every night blur into the same one. New moon for the darkest skies and a proper look at the stars. Full moon for extra light on a late walk home, the same trick farmers once relied on for the Harvest Moon. It's less about the moon having power and more about having a reason to look up regularly enough to notice it changing at all, which most people, moon aside, have simply stopped doing.
Less about the moon having power, more about having a reason to look up.
What's worth paying attention to, underneath all of it, is the knowledge itself, which plants actually do something, which claims don't hold up, and where the real tradition sits beneath the branding. Britain has its own version of this, quieter and more local than the American "hedge witch" aesthetic that dominates search results, tied to specific plants, specific hedgerows, specific villages rather than a general vibe. Worth remembering that most of what's genuinely useful here predates the word "witch" being attached to it at all.
Three To TryWhat's actually in a modern witch's kitchen this month
None of this involves a cauldron. This is closer to what Michelle and people like her are actually doing, seasonal, plant-based, mostly inherited rather than invented. An immune syrup for the cold snap ahead, an old wartime standby, and a tea that's more folklore than pharmacology, worth trying with that caveat firmly attached.
250g honey or sugar
1 cinnamon stick
A thumb of fresh ginger, sliced
2. Mash gently, then strain through muslin, squeezing out the liquid.
3. Stir the honey or sugar into the warm liquid until dissolved. Bottle once cool.
4. Keeps a few months in the fridge, longer if frozen. Elderberries must always be cooked, never eaten raw.
500ml water
250g sugar
2. Strain through a muslin-lined sieve, slowly, don't press too hard, the fine hairs inside are an irritant and need to stay behind.
3. Return the liquid to the pan with the sugar, simmer for a few minutes until slightly syrupy. Bottle while hot.
250ml just-boiled water
2. Drink in the evening. Traditionally used to promote vivid dreaming rather than cure or treat anything, so treat that part as folklore, not medicine.
3. Avoid during pregnancy.
Worth having back
None of this needs a cackle, a pointy hat, or even the word itself. What it does need is a bit more honesty about where it came from, whose knowledge it actually is, and why it nearly got lost in the first place. Whether you call it witchcraft, herbalism, or just the sort of thing your grandmother knew without having to explain it, it's worth having back. A timeless appreciation of what natures gives us and the full circle of all things natural stemming from an origin designed help each other out.
Why not try one of the recipes above, pick up whatever's ready in the hedge this month, and see how it goes.
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