A green witch is someone who works closely with nature and her gifts. It is a nature-based expression of spirituality that focuses on the individual’s interaction with their environment. This witch is usually a wildcrafter, a herbalist, or an amazing gardener. The folklore on the spiritual and medicinal uses of plants is incredibly extensive and global, and it is this along with personal experience from which the green witch draws their knowledge and practices from. If the kitchen witch’s focus is the hearth, then the green witch’s focus is the woods and/or agriculture.
The green path is a highly individual practice, usually solitary, free-form,and for the most part it is secular. It consists of both witchcraft and shamanic practices, but is neither. It is an intensely personal path that integrates ability, like and dislikes, the climate of your particular geographic location, and your interaction with the energy of your environment. It isn’t a tradition so much as a personal adaption of an ideal. There isn’t really any history with green witchcraft because it is such an individual-specific tradition. The green witch mold their path to suit their own needs & environment s/he is working with/in. Though there are echos of our ancestors’ agricultural traditions and practices which are steeped with folk-magic and pagan belief. Today a green witch may use some of the beliefs of our ancestors in their practices. Perhaps in methods of plant or herb collection,blessing, prayers & chants, as well as the way they celebrate festivals. Most of the magic practiced by a green witch will involve herbs and plants in some way. They may also work with nature itself instead of just parts taken from it.
Some green witches become guardians of a piece of land – protecting it, cleaning litter, healing wounds of the past, and working with the spirits and creatures that live on it. This is more likely the practice of a wildcrafter than a gardener. A wildcrafter harvests foods, herbs, and medicines from the wild, while also taking into account ecological ethics and responsibility. A green witch, then, is someone who lives the green path and is aware of how the energy of nature flows through their life and environment, even if that environment is not a traditional garden or forest setting.
Because the path of the green witch is an individualized solo practice, any modern book on green witchcraft is simply a single author’s way of interpreting the practice (not anything by Ann Moura, her books are better classified as “Green Wicca”) Initiation into green witchcraft is technically impossible. There exists no body if formal knowledge passed on through careful training, no establish group mind to which you are connected by sacred ceremonies performed by elders. A practitioner of green witchcraft may pass on their personal knowledge, including his/her personal notes and writings, to another, but that’s not an initiatory process. Reading a specific author’s ideas and views concerning the path of the green witch is a form of apprenticeship in which you learn a new way of looking at your world and discover new exercises and techniques that will help you refine and deepen your connection to the natural world around you. This process cannot be as intensely personal as a traditional apprenticeship, where the apprentice worked beside the master, but it is a modern form of acquiring the knowledge and skills of one particular practitioner.
Green witches seek to establish an intimate connection with nature, especially the plants that feed, shelter, warm, and provide for human beings in countless ways. An appreciation of nature and the wonders of creation are part of the green witch’s philosophy of life. S/he strives to work in partnership with his/her plants and Mother Earth. A green witch with a focus on herbalism will learn the spiritual, magical, and medicinal uses of various herbs and plants and incorporate them into their magical and healing practices. It is recommended to take a legitimate herbalist’s course if this is your desire – without the correct knowledge about preparation and dosage, one can do more harm than good with herbal medicines.
To practice green magick you must first reconnect with nature. You can’t honour something you don’t feel an intimate connection with, and you certainly can’t call on the energies of plant spirits without spending time with plants. For witches who live in the concrete jungle, this may present some challenges. But even in the heart of the city, you can find parks, botanical gardens, greenhouses, garden centers or a potted plant in your home where you can commune with plants.
If you choose to become a green witch, plants will play an important role in your life and have many applications. Here are some ways you might choose to work with the magical properties of plants:
Watching plant behavior for omens and signs
Gathering loosened leaves and petals for magic
Using plant matter in amulets and talismans
Adding plant matter to incense and candles
Collecting and drying plants for decorative touches in your magical journal or to keep a physical record of a plant along side it’s magical & medicine properties
Placing live plants in various parts of your home to encourage personal growth and well-being
To save this from being a uber long post, I highly recommend that you get yourself The Way of the Green Witch by Arin Murphy-Hisock
It is a wonderful book for those seeking to practice green witchcraft, it straight forward, thorough & easy to use
Green Witchcraft: Walking the Green Path
Published
As small as the world 