What is divergent witchcraft?
Who is a divergent witch?
In this talk,
I will be answering those questions.
My name is Jenny Siebel and I am the author of Divergent Witchcraft,
An inclusive approach to making magic.
And I have been a witch for over 30 years and I identify as neurodivergent.
And I tell you these things because this book very much reflects me and this term very much reflects who I am and how I see myself.
And divergent witch is a newer term to the many other types of witches that are out there,
Right?
But it's not new to people.
I feel like there's a lot of divergent witches in existence.
They just didn't have that term or name themselves that way.
And you don't have to name yourself that in order to learn about divergent witchcraft,
To embrace it,
To become part of it.
So divergent actually means differing from each other or from a standard.
And that's from the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
So it just means to be different.
And I didn't want to call it neurodivergent witchcraft because it's so narrow.
Because for me,
A divergent witch is anyone who's feeling different,
Who deviates from the standard in society.
And truth be told,
That's all witches,
Right?
Witches exist in the liminal space on the side of the,
Quote,
Norm,
Right?
We reject a lot of the standards,
The Abrahamic religions,
But not always.
Some people are Christian witches,
Right?
But we definitely live our own path,
Lead our own lives.
And witchcraft is very much a journey about healing.
It's a journey about becoming.
It's a journey about thinking for yourself.
It's a journey of deciding what works for you even within a coven.
And they're all the same.
They practice the exact same,
Quote,
Type of witchcraft,
Right?
They're all Wiccans,
Maybe.
They're going to deviate.
They're not all going to do the same thing and do it the same way.
And that's kind of the beauty of witchcraft.
And so in that way,
I think we're all divergent in our witchcraft,
Right?
We all do something different.
And so when writing this book,
And when thinking about my type of witchcraft,
Because this really is from my heart,
Right?
And talking about different,
A new type of witchcraft or basically modernizing some other things,
Right?
I was really trying to think of a name or a term that a lot of people could identify with,
That a lot of people can get on board with.
So divergent witchcraft,
To me,
Is a modern movement.
It is a witchcraft for anyone.
It is using witchcraft as a tool to heal yourself.
It is an unmasking and a deprogramming.
Divergent witches reject the norm,
Reject the gender binary,
Reject feeling separate from the earth,
And reject hiding how they really feel.
To me,
It's a revolution in radical acceptance and self-healing.
And to me,
That's what it means to be a divergent witch.
And so in this talk,
I just want to talk about some of the tools and practices that are part of divergent witchcraft.
And that is basically self-healing,
Using the tools of witchcraft,
The ritual,
Which our brains love,
Right?
If you study ritual and ceremony and,
You know,
You look at our ancestors,
Ritual and ceremony are so good for our mental health,
For our trauma,
For our healing.
It's just,
We need it.
We love it.
We love a good ritual.
It just feels good.
And it marks changes and marks celebrations.
Like,
It's so good for us.
So it's using witchcraft,
And I have a blend.
My background is I began Wiccan,
Which is really typical of witches that became witches in the 90s.
You know,
It was like,
There wasn't a whole lot of options.
You were limited to what your friends had,
What your library had,
And what your bookstore had.
And my bookstore was borders,
Was very small,
Very small section.
So I started by reading Scott Cunningham's Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner and Living Wicca.
And that became the basis of my understanding of all of witchcraft.
And since then,
I have studied shamanism and folk magic of different backgrounds,
Including Italian and Polish and Mexican.
I have studied angels.
I studied under Kyle Gray about angels.
I've studied Buddhism.
I've studied world religions in general.
I have studied A Course in Miracles.
I worked for the charity for A Course in Miracles,
The Foundation of Peace for a while.
I have studied different New Age material.
And really,
What helped me step into my power,
Step into my magic,
Was accepting me as me.
Like,
Coming to the realization that my brain works differently,
And I was made that way,
And that's okay.
And that's,
I'm not saying people who are neurodivergent don't need medication or therapy.
That's all an individual journey,
Individual choice.
But this book is an offering,
The Movement of Divergent Witchcraft,
Is an offering of getting people to understand witchcraft.
So it's like a beginner's book,
It's very beginner friendly.
And then to use those tools to feel empowered,
To feel whole,
To radically accept themselves.
And the tools I use,
You know,
The very beginning of the book,
I talk about the importance of meditation.
And how,
You know,
Even if you're neurodivergent,
And you have a hard time sitting still,
Or you have a hard time focusing,
And all of those things,
I give different tools to help with that.
But meditation is truly life changing,
Because to me,
It's the listening.
When we say prayers,
And we do spells,
We're telling the creator,
Or whoever you want to call the thing that's bigger than us,
What we want,
We're putting in our order.
But when we meditate,
We're listening.
And then I talk about the importance of journaling.
Yes,
I was,
I'm a literature major.
Yes,
I was an English teacher.
Yes,
My students journaled every day.
But journaling is another form of listening.
It's now we're listening to ourselves.
Meditation,
We're listening to things outside of ourselves,
The collective,
The creator,
Our guides.
Journaling,
We're listening to ourselves,
Our innermost self,
Our innermost workings,
We're really listening,
We're tuning in.
And then I talk about the importance of creating an altar.
And an altar becomes like the heart of the home,
The visual of your practice.
And I talk about how playful creating an altar is.
And then we get into actually,
Witchcraft,
Right,
Which is working with the moons.
And I something I did in the book is I rejected the gendered moon phases,
Because we always had like Maiden Mother Crone.
And so I have given them,
There's four phases,
I've given them different names that are gender neutral.
And we go through that journey through the moon.
And we also go through the elements.
Because not every witch wants to work with a goddess,
A god,
A saint,
Whatever,
They don't feel comfortable.
I noticed a lot of witches coming to witchcraft later in life have come from religious trauma,
And they don't want to call anything a god or a goddess,
They just don't want to.
And so working with the elements is such a healing,
Secular way to practice.
So we work with the elements.
And then I have a whole section on choosing allies,
Like,
How do you work,
Do you work with plants?
Are you going to work with stones?
Like,
And again,
That's very,
Like,
Accessible to anybody,
Whatever their background is.
And then I have a whole section on spells.
And,
You know,
I go through,
I work with beginner witches in my private community called Our Coven.
And I have heard all the questions.
And so I actually have a whole Q&A section for beginning witches,
And I have a whole section formatting how to create your own spell.
Because something I see time and time again is people just using other people's spells,
Which is totally fine,
Because they don't feel confident in creating their own spells.
So want to give the confidence.
The last chapter is about addressing overwhelm.
People get overwhelmed all the time.
Neurodivergent people,
In my opinion,
Tend to get easily overwhelmed,
More overwhelmed,
More typically overwhelmed than other people.
The overwhelm is real,
The overwhelm can be debilitating,
It can put us into a freeze,
Fight,
Flight,
And oftentimes freeze and feel like so overwhelmed,
I can't even do anything.
And so I address that.
Because that's another thing I saw.
I saw so many neurodivergent people coming to witchcraft.
I saw so many people later in life coming to witchcraft.
I saw a lot of people,
A lot of women coming to witchcraft.
I saw a lot of people with religious trauma coming to witchcraft.
And something they all expressed was this is overwhelming because there's a lot of choice.
Because choice is overwhelming.
And so I address that there.
And so this book is an offering to,
For the modern era.
I want to bring witchcraft to the forefront.
I want to bring witchcraft to the modern world.
I want to bring witchcraft to anyone and anything.
I want people to be able to use it whether they identify as a witch or not.
Like they just can say they're witchy and they're using these tools to help themselves and stay within the religion they want or stay atheist or stay,
You know,
Agnostic or whatever path they choose.
I just want people to find the healing and empowerment that I found.
So to be a divergent witch to me is to become empowered.
To use witchcraft as a tool on your journey to become empowered.
And so if you're interested,
My book is available wherever you buy books,
Divergent Witchcraft,
An Inclusive Approach to Making Magic.
And my name is Jenny Siebel.
Thanks for listening.
