Witches represent both our fears and our fantasies about feminine power. Anybody that deviates from this perfect, maternal, beatific,
obedient woman can be reframed as a witch.
When a girl first achieves menstruation, they have a coming-of-age ceremony where all the women from the coven came together,
and it was called the Rite of Roses. A coven is just a group of friends who practice witchcraft together. They sit in a circle and say,
all the women in their family line back as far as you can remember. Ex: I am Amanda, daughter of Lucinda, daughter of Patricia,
daughter of Lila, daughter of Mariana. And then say, "Daughter of she," meaning going back to the beginning of time. You dip the rose in the water, and your mother brushes it on your cheeks, and then you take a walk in the moonlight and do some chanting. It's really about coming into your power, your beauty, your authority, your eroticism, and connecting with the other women of your community.
The pentacle may not be what you think. It represents harmony with the elements, a sign of magic and paganism.
Witchcraft is a form of paganism, and paganism, basically, in its very ancient origins had two particular aspects, or forms, of worship.
One is nature and the other is the divine feminine.
Paganism essentially says we all have access to divinity and that we don't need a mediator. It doesn't have one central text or one church or temple that you have to join. We can just communicate with the spirit world ourselves because the spirit world is everywhere. For most witches, we relate to the gods, the goddesses, the divine, more like forces of nature.