The 21st Century Witch In The Hut
It started with a meme. This meme, which reads “I don’t want a career, I want to wear a fancy robe covered in stars and dispense confusing and ambiguous advice to passing travellers from a large stone cottage on the edge of the woods where I live with a parliament of owls”. You know, the kind of thing you see on a scroll and chuckle and think “if only!” and then carry on by. But for some reason, this time, instead of if only my brain said: “ok, how?”.
Once you think something like that, it’s too late to go back.
The meme encapsulated an essence of something I’ve longed for for years, but could never really put into words let alone entertain as a possibility. What I wanted, what I truly wanted, was a backing away. To not have to help so explicitly, to be able to create, to be present on my own terms, to be free of commitments, to be leaned way, way back from the usual model of “online entrepreneurship”. I suppose, when you boil it all the way down, I wanted to do what I wanted all day.
Which presents the thorny issue of monetisation. It is a combination, I think, of being socialised female and of online business advice, that means I have a deep belief that you get money for providing value, and value = service = help. So I was in a bind, not wanting to be a “service provider” anymore, but having no way of conceptualising earning without helping. Taking this to my mastermind group, describing my meme-inspired work desire someone in the chat said (yes, in caps) “SHE’S THE WITCH IN THE HUT”.
And that night I couldn’t sleep.
Having a name, a role, a character, unlocked a way to not only define the undefinable, but turn it into something real. With a piece of A3 paper and a biro in the lamplight, I began to define The 21st Century Witch In The Hut.
The Witch In The Hut
I began by thinking about who the witch in the hut was, to me. Much like the meme that got the ball rolling, I imagined a 15th century crone, living by the woods off-grid and self-sustaining in most ways. She was inaccessible and mysterious; people knew where she was, would see her come to town or on the hillside, but they didn’t really know what she did all day. There were herbs and spells and poems and scrolls scratched with wisdom and great cosmic knowledge, her hut and herself in fact adorned in a fashion, with candles and fabrics and plants. She was aloof, fiercely independent, on the outside of the community but a necessary part of it where she could dip in and out as she pleased.
Her role was that of the medicine woman, a giver of advice, solutions, healing (and maybe some cursing). She was most in touch with nature and seemed to help maintain the balance between the human community and the flora and fauna they lived among. She would prophesise, if you asked her; show the way through the woods with protective spells and markers, and make the un-knowable somehow knowable.
What seemed clear, as I scribbled, was that the essence of the witch in the hut was to be a conduit between things, to bring knowledge from one realm to another. Between the village and the woods she is not fully a part of either, and whether it is from the natural, spiritual or cosmic realm, she somehow translates deep knowing into things that can be used. It is not hers to do the doing, only the translating – it is very much “take what you need and go”.
The 21st Century Witch In The Hut
It is possible to live as the original Witch In The Hut now, even in the West if you are skilled enough to subsist on the land. But I didn’t want to be the original Witch In The Hut – I wanted her essence, here in the digital, capitalist now.
Therefore, the 21st Century Witch In The Hut is sporadically online and not always available; she doesn’t have a posting schedule and every now and then you’ll see a photo of her in the village or on the hillside but you’re never really sure what’s she’s doing all day. The spells are now poems, writings and photos and creative expressions of truths, reflections, realisations – often metaphorical and never a pronouncement of exactly what you should do. Like her ancestor she and her little home are adorned with what makes her feel lovely, and she retains independence; she is not giving of herself (what we might call well-boundaried) and she does not live in the centre of online community but accesses it when the time is right.
What is the role of this witch in the hut for modern times? Still she is a conduit between realms, although now perhaps it is bringing the internal external. She is access to truth, to conscience, to forgotten parts and connections, with words and remedies for the internal problems from which you can “take what you need and go”. Still she makes to un-knowable knowable.
Becoming The 21st Century Witch In The Hut
I have found it transformative, frankly, to reconsider who I am and what I do through the lens of the witch in the hut. It doesn’t feel like something I am applying to myself from the outside, but like finally I am defining externally what has been inside all along. This doesn’t change the topics I talk about or my interest, but rather gives me a new framework for my approach – and if anything, feels like a deepening of the way I live what I talk about, another onion skin layer closer to the core of what fulfilment means.
For example, the guilt I’ve held around my inactivity and un-sociability on Instagram for honestly four years has evaporated because of course that’s not how the witch in the hut interacts online. She’s not there all the time and barely ever replies because her real work is in creating the remedies and writings. And as I am now fleshing out Mapping, my new program for next year, I find myself awash with options and maybe I should add a group and maybe I should add calls – but then the question “how does the witch in the hut deliver this offering?” brings peace and clarity.
For this 21st Century Witch In The Hut, embodying the character has created permission to let go and bring in – a withdrawal from traditional service and helping and an immersion into truth and embodiment. As I look at my notes from that evening with the biro,I see that I wrote “whatever I’m supposed to do is what I won’t do” – so apparently the witch in the hut is sassy, but also there is a holding of a line that the self comes first, and the rest of merely the effect. For now, I am right at the beginning of what it means to live in the essence of the witch in the hut. And although I don’t know exactly what to do, I now know exactly how to be.
