Do You Hear The Trans-Witch Rage?

Make it stand out

I have never met two people with the same definition of witch, and that’s perfect.

To me, being a witch means seeing that our words, our rituals, have an effect. It’s about owning that effect; whittling it and working with it. It’s about how many things we can consider as conscious, and as family. We are not all one, we are a connected multiplicity of gorgeous difference. It’s about where we feel empowered. For me, I have always found power in the oceans of my emotions and in the corners of my queer/trans identity(s). Queer power, queer rituals, queer family…

What opportunities for magical thinking come from walking the way of a marginalised creature.

For me, my witchcraft and weirdnesses have always been sisters.

I’m not bent.

When I went to the doctors, it was bent,

his vocabulary was incomplete,

it evoked a twitch, he bent his knees

across one another on the seat,

stifling a ‘he’. Bending. 

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

The first time I had sex was definitely bent,

lost for words; unkind fabric floor of a tent.

Bent like your unzipped fly,

Do I-? Do you-? Did we…?

Even my first kiss was bent,

the strangers ogled from a bus stop that was bent,

and I think it bent the city for us too.

The path to freedom is bent,

but don’t worry,

the path out is probably bent too.

I’m angry

and I know the bends well,

but I’m not bent,

and at least I’m not straight.

Anger is a language of magic. You can tell rage is powerful, because it can do so much. I have a lot of trans anger and people often assume it comes from my frustration at my trans body, my supposedly tragic past that led me to transition. But my past was not tragic, neither is my body, nor I. My anger is at the bent system we navigate and how it edits my trans experiences. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and magic lies in acknowledgement of interdependence.

CONTEXT IS VITAL AND INEVITABLE.

I own my anger, and I empower myself with my unique understanding of its place in a wider framework. It has answers.

Witchcraft is one way to fuel change across a systemic framework. There are many, but all of them must exist outside the individual in order to actually have an effect. Witchcraft, for me, is not just about a quiet ritual alone without telling anyone. It’s deep connection to my environment.

The emotional realities of marginalised folks are strong. I like to use witchcraft to channel mine into the right places for me and for my queer family.

I did a ritual the day my bank card arrived in my new name. It was the first letter I received under this name. With my partners, we ceremonially marked the occasion with candles and a cutting up of the previous bank card. A ritual to welcome in a new part of my reality, and to give fuel to the changes still to come. There was anger to spit, commitments to make to myself and others, there was grief. The ritual was about my transition, and my emotional responses to its context. A legal web, a medical web, a social web. That day I reaffirmed my place in the webs, and validated my own bottled trans rage at repeated systemic injustices.

I do not just receive. I create, and I will create more.

I am allowed to feel,

and I will use my screaming, loving heart in everything I do.

A barrier I often find to my magic, and have done throughout my life, is shame. A text on trans feminine rage and magic would feel inadequate without mentioning how this aspect funnels the path…

There was a smooth stone embedded in the earth, at the corner of the playground where the grass met the concrete. It was an ashen eye that became licorice-black in the rain.

I’d go to it, my portal, to enjoy the bumps on sharp days.

What a solace at the corner of that playground.

Four-years-old. I was a little witch licking dandelions,

talking with the ground when I felt shame from

all the boys

and the girls

and their rules.

Genderweirdo — magicianfreak.

I’m proud now to come from a childhood of oddness.

My gender/witchcraft was built under the eye of shame. Sometimes, I still get a defensive flinch when someone laughs. I tell myself it’s okay that I still feel that, because I can also see how far I’ve come in not giving a shit what others think, and how strong I’ve been to develop my magic in spite of judgement.

If you’re practicing magic, you’re probably working on shame at the same time.

And funnily enough, it’s often the same with gender.

This is where rage becomes a more explicit tool of healing magic. When you are shamed for who you are, your emotional responses to that shame are often dismissed, neglected, damaged. By reclaiming our right to emotionally respond to shame, we empower ourselves and reassert our right to exist. We also allow the possibility to move past anger and pain. It is a fire we can use in many forms, and we should be allowed to choose how. Shame should define no one.

In the end, magic for me is a tool to unpack my gender, my queerness, and my most rabid emotions; and to see them fly.

By ‘witch’,

I mean I am angry and own the power of that anger.

I mean I am a freak and own the power of my freakishness.

I mean I am full of shame and own my right to be free of it.

I mean I am gifted with the instruments of queerness and choose

to wield them fully.

By ‘witch’, I mean I am deviant, imperfect and proactive.

Words and Art: Sal Harris