The bones of modern witchcraft - spirituality tied to earth cycles, the symbolic and enchanted use of natural resources like herbs and stones, the pursuit of meditation, trance, and altered states in an attempt to access an inner or spiritual world, an orientation towards ritual, rite, and talismanic creation in order to alter the outer world - are very old and shared in many strange, wondrous, and idiosyncratic faith traditions that span the globe and human cultures.

But it’s worth recalling that modern witchcraft as practiced today is a product of the twentieth century and romantic notions tied up with Celtic revivalism. An honest witch will acknowledge that there is much in historical accounts of witchcraft that is not present in our modern practice, and that while we choose to identify our practices with the (often wishfully reconstructed) idea of the witch, shaman, or outsider, there is also much that our practices share with a Catholic mass or a Jewish milestone tradition, and there is much that we do not share with “witches” of the past.

Your hunch that we aren’t “witches” in the old sense is exactly right. It’s a fuzzy word that we appropriate; what could be labeled witchcraft and what it entails varies enormously based on historical context.