Recently I received two different questions through Ask A Witch and they both deal with a similar issue and I thought I would address them together.  Both individuals wrote in with questions about being a Witch; how do you know you’re a Witch and does a Witch have to be born or can a Witch be made.  Here we’re going to look at both of these questions and see what information I can give to help sort out these questions for these two readers.

I have always wondered if you had to be born into witchcraft and all other or can you tap into it and learn? I have always wanted to learn and have always been very fascinated by it.

~ Maria

I do witchcraft as hobby but i would like to know if i am a witch. I am very sensitive when i watch scary movies.

~ Jessica

Thank you for your questions Maria and Jessica.

I think the best way to start out with looking at this is to address the issue of whether or not someone can be a Witch whether they were born into it or have come to the Craft our of personal interest.  There are different schools of thought on this and it differs a great deal based on the tradition of Witchcraft that someone is talking about.  So let’s break this down into some small and simple bits to try and make sense of.

Do you have to be born into Witchcraft to be considered a Witch?  I don’t believe so and most people today don’t believe so either.  That isn’t to say that there aren’t people that do feel this way, but by and large in the Craft today it is believed that people can become Witches by learning, studying and practicing.  Here is why I believe this completely.

First of all, let’s consider being born into another religion or spiritual path.  Many people, myself included, seem to come to Wicca or Witchcraft after having had a Catholic or Christian upbringing or being born into a family of one of these religions.  Let’s say you’re born into a family of Roman Catholics; does the fact that your parents believe and practice the Roman Catholic faith automatically make you a better Catholic than someone that came to that religion on their own?  Not in my opinion, no.  Second, let’s consider whether or not you yourself subscribe to the beliefs and practices of your parents.  Your parents may be Catholic but do you yourself fully believe and practice the Catholic faith?  If you don’t, being born into a Catholic family doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact on your spiritual life.  Now, I do think that by being born into a certain faith we are given a little bit more advantage within that faith because, just by the very circumstance, we are set up with a support system of people that thinking like we do, believe like we do and so on, making it easier for us to explore our spiritual side.  But if we find that this particular faith doesn’t suit us and we begin to seek outside the family, we can find it to be a difficult search as well as a long search because we may not have the same amount of support in this exploration that we would have if we just stayed within the family faith, so to speak.

Many, many people come to Witchcraft and the Pagan religions after living by a “book religion” for a good part of their life and finding that the ideas, beliefs and principles do not match what they personally feel in their heart.  There are people that may find certain talents that they naturally possess, like being psychic or having the ability to connect withe spirit world, is something that is shunned or seen as evil or sinful in their “faith of birth”.  This may very well lead them to explore something like Witchcraft or Wicca in an effort to find answers and find other people that they feel they share something deeper with and whom they can connect to on a spiritual level.  There’s nothing wrong with this and a Witch who comes to the Craft because of a spiritual calling belongs here just as much as someone who is born into it.  In fact, I sometimes feel that those who had to really work their way into the Craft may deserve it more because of what they may have had to sacrifice to get there.  But being born into a family that practices Witchcraft, just like being born into a family of practicing Catholics, doesn’t make you any more of a Witch, or a better Witch, than someone that came to the path on their own later in life.  Just like there are many Catholics born into Catholic families who never fully embrace their faith, there are those born into Pagan or Witch families that never really embrace that path either.  Everyone has to follow the path they were meant to follow, wherever that leads, even if that means moving away from the family spiritual lineage.

So, yes, a Witch can be made just as well a one can be born.  It all comes down to a choice and decision by that individual as to whether or not the path of the Witch is the one they wish to walk.  If you feel you are drawn to this path and you want to explore it, do so, but do so with an understanding that it’s a path that takes seriousness and dedication.  It’s not the sort of thing that you can really develop when you treat it like a hobby or something that you can just pick up and put down and will and expect it to always work for you.  Taking the time to study and develop your skills with an attitude of serious intention and gratitude for being given the chance to do this is going to give you far better results than just picking up a candle, following a spell from a book word for word, and not really knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing or saying what you’re saying because you don’t feel you have the time to put into really studying the path of Witchcraft.  When you’re working Witchcraft like that it’s a crap-shoot.  Things might work for a while and then they stop but since you haven’t really by studying along the way you wont be able to really discern why things went off track and how to get it back on again.

Everyone is born with some level of psychic ability but not everyone grows and explores that ability.  When you decide that you want to be a Witch this is one aspect of your natural talents that will grow and change.  Many people tend to see someone as having a natural affinity for psychic ability as being someone that is naturally a Witch, but natural intuitive ability and being a Witch are not the same thing.  Being sensitive to energies around you is a good sign of having a strong connection to the psychic realm, but the real skill of it still needs to be developed.  The same goes for Witchcraft as a whole; you need to work at it and study it to really know what you’re doing.  And as for being sensitive to scary movies, lots of people have problems with watching certain kind of films and that doesn’t dictate their spiritual path.  Take the time to really do some soul searching and some studying about the Craft to decide if it’s right for you.  If it is, great!  But if it isn’t, that’s fine too!  Follow whatever path truly calls to your heart and then follow it with your whole heart.