There is deep power in these hands; echoes of eternity, infinity, of endings and beginnings, of all that is, was, and shall be, pulsating like ocean waves, like starlight, like lightning, at the tips of these fingers.

Of all the tools inherent of a witch, she will never find the presence of power more sharply than in her own hands. For all the essence that is channeled through her wand, her athame, her staff…she knows that these are tools, helpers, allies, but it is she that is the true conduit.

From the simple and mundane, to the ethereal and astronomical, her hands carry all that she is, desires and can be. When she wraps them around her tea, consciously stepping into calm. When she pets her cat, an offering of love and affection to another soul that feels both sides of the veil, as she does. When she grasps the arm of a loved one, intentionally or impulsively, in a powerful unspoken prayer of protection. When she buries them in her garden, sowing seeds of intention. When she presses them against the old tree, beckoning truth to find her.

From small moments to grand, they create her practice, her path, each step of the way. When she mixes her fingers through dried pieces and petals, humming softly, enchanting them to aid her in whatever it is she desires, the hands of the women she has been before, like ghosts, like spirits, like memories, gently lay their hands over hers, echoed in time, humming with her, revelling in the peace of the old ways.

When the circle is cast, the candles lit, the smoke alive, she holds her hands over the altar, against the earth, or spread to the skies, always open, invoking and offering in equal measure. Reaching to that which calls to her endlessly from the Unseen, knowing it will meet her, that she shall be answered, that what she gives this night will echo, ripple, and manifest through her will. The free will she was granted by the gods, when they molded her body and soul from the deep earth.

She trusts her hands, sensitive always to what they whisper to her, in tingles and vibrations across her palms, licking down her fingers. This one, that one, this way, not that way, this card, that crystal, not that person.

When she is sought for healing, it is her hands that travel along the aura, seeking stories in its waves, finding the places that burn, those that freeze, and that which flows like a gentle spring. Her fingers tangle lightly with the delicate chain of her pendulum, seeking movement, seeking circles, the cycles of wheels, the essence of energies alive, blocked or buried. Her fingers trace symbols in the air, in tandem with the words whispered on her lips, and her palms push that which is needed most into the body, seeking the healing so desired.

When she reads the cards, the stones, or the bones, and power lights her hand up, calling her, This way, this one, listen here, listen close. Her hands understand her intuition in ways her mind must learn. There is a love story there, in those hands, of body and spirit, effortlessly one. It is they who may come to teach her trust in herself as nothing else can, should she realize the wisdom they carry together.

She knows it is more than a feeling, more than a hunch, more than old wives’ tales shared over the table, in the dead of night, while the waking world sleeps and magick brushes against the windows.

She knows she carries whole worlds inside her, and that the power of times long given to dust, of oceans turned to rain, and starlight turned to reflections in her eyes, is within her grasp.

When she dances, when she feels the music in her veins, surrendering her body to the flow that moves through her, holding her spirit, carrying her essence, she knows that what is called up to the surface of her being is released through her hands, offering back to the world in gratitude that which this gift of melody has brought through her.

The magick of her hands exists in all that she does, when she directs power, strikes a match, thumps the surface of a drum, seeking the echo of the earth. When she opens them to heal, or to harm, or to release.

There is much of the Unseen in those fingers. Caressing her skin from the inside, licking through her bones, like lightning in an amethyst sky, in a warm and rainless valley.

As she gently twirls a glass of amber whiskey, somewhere between this world and the other, her eyes trained on the dancing flames, their ecstatic expression echoed softly in the tingles of her fingertips.

Wherever she is, no matter the place, the time, the circumstances, or the challenge, a witch’s power is always within reach; always coiled, like a loyal serpent, within her palms, ready to strike or caress as she calls it to. To consider a witch without her tools, without her herbs and candles, without her precious spell book, to be weakened, to be at a disadvantage, to be entirely unthreatening…is foolish to the very point of, dare I say, amusing.

For a witch who knows her truth, who stands in her power, who trusts the gift she carries with an intimacy that cannot be explained to mere mortals, she is always in control, empowered, and capable of anything.

She will guide you with loving light through the darkest shadows…or she will make you wish you had never set foot within her woods.

Do not be fooled; for her hands are never empty.
Her fingers…never asleep.

Trust thyself.

P.S. Loreena McKennitt’s “The Old Ways” and “The Mystic’s Dream” came on while I wrote this and I felt them to my very bones. xo