Illustration by eli jones / @tetrisattack

The first spell I cast was at my 16th birthday party. It was a trick my friends and I learned watching the cult-classic 90s teen movie I love to this day: The Craft. We gathered around my bedroom floor and chanted,“Light as a feather, stiff as a board, light as a feather stiff as a board…”

Seven of us lifted my friend Mollie an inch off the floor using just two fingers each. We freaked ourselves out and screamed in laughter. Even at the time, I knew it was an illusion of physics — mass divided by our combined effort of lifting her up made it seem like none of us were pulling any weight, when in fact we were all pulling just enough.

Still, something about that moment in my bedroom felt just like that scene in The Craft where Nancy, Sarah, Bonnie, and Rochelle took turns casting prestidigitations, telling jokes, and laughing the night away at a sleepover like my own.

I was a sad, depressed queer kid with an abusive father and a pointed lack of any family money. When I saw Nancy, Rochelle, and Bonnie — girls who were marginalized and disempowered in nearly every aspect of their life — suddenly able to bend reality to their whim, I knew I wanted that power for myself (and those immaculately punk-ified school uniforms). I wanted to be a witch too, moving through the world on my own terms.

My friends played into the fun archetype of teen witch with me. Back then, it was more about chanting in unison at annoying boys to get them to leave us alone or pounding our firsts against the lunch table until someone’s open soda can erupted into a sticky fountain of sugar water. For a month or two, we even had a ghost hunting phase. I’m not sure if I ever said out loud, “I’m a witch,” but after watching The Craft I told myself I was one. And in a way, it did help me feel brave enough to live life the way I wanted to — even if it all felt like make-believe.

I went to an arts magnet high school, an extremely intense and competitive environment that asked a lot from its students. Many of us had to travel an hour and a half on a bus to get to school at 7am and spent hours after school practicing instruments, rehearsing, or painting. And then did hours more of homework for equally rigorous academic classes. Despite all that work and the time we invested into school, to a lot of us, it all felt pretty pointless. Climate change and police brutality weighed as heavily on our minds as it does now. My friends and I turned to witchiness as a way to invert the power structure, to escape the treadmill of homework, after-school jobs, and shout-filled homes.

Playing around with rebellious teen shenanigans like spells, ghost hunting, and thievery broke all the rules that we were supposed to play by. It was as much about trying to have fun as it was about survival. Through this magic, we were taking back the power over our lives.

After graduating high school, some of my friends’ magic practices got a bit more serious. My friends and I formed an official coven. We had “meetings,” which were really just lunch dates where we’d talk about our goals together and give each other verbal support. I began studying astrology, learning about all the archetypal traits of each sign, then eventually learning about what it meant when someone asked you your moon and rising signs.

But, I really always felt more like an aspirational witch rather than a legit person of magic. My friends had the entire astrological wheel memorized down to the 12th house, they kept spellbooks and dream journals, ritual candles, and bundles of smudge sticks. I was always too busy or too broke to feel like I could get into all of it.

My lack of knowledge or a clear practice made me feel fraudulent for claiming any sort of witchdom.

Eventually, I came to work at Your Magic. When I joined, I was pretty uninitiated. I knew my 12 astrological signs, I owned a rose quartz necklace, and I believed that beauty and glamour was on some level mystical and sublime. That was pretty much the extent of my esoteric knowledge.

While I’ve learned that there really is a lot I don’t know about witchcraft, magical practices, and spirituality, I’ve also realized that I was never a fraud. My friends and I did re-enact the dynamics of the characters in The Craft in a real witchy sort of way. Sure, no one ever manifested the power of Manon or made an evil racist go bald, but we were all misfits creating a safety net around each other where we didn’t have one. Whether it was our family dynamics failing us or institutions like grade school, college, or the government not being able to provide what we needed, my friends and I always leaned on each other.

Yes, for much of that time, it did feel like we were playing make-believe, half-joking about being witches — at least to me. But in hindsight, I believe that we were always doing a sort of group magic together.

We shared our dreams and intentions, we learned together, and we chased after goals together. We laughed together and we expelled boys together. We even pooled resources in material ways: We shared meals and split the price so that we wouldn’t have to sustain ourselves on ramen and peanut butter sandwiches and we sometimes stole makeup and clothes for each other before important interviews or sexy dates. What is a spell if not the setting of an intention and the manifestation of that need?

The Craft planted a seed in me, it made me believe that I could make anything happen with a bit of glamour, the support of friendship, and a heaping helping of not giving a shit what other people think of me. I’m still on my way to feeling like a “real” witch. But through the bonds of my coven and my own personal power, I know can I survive anything.