Being the Immigrant/Outsider Witch !

Being an Immigrant Witch also embraces being a permanent outsider while re-learning to reconnect with the land from other corners.

Like every Witching Month, I like to write a series of posts dedicated to my practice and share it. Having a blog is simply something therapeutic. I write about my practice because there is a lot of noise. Every new moon, every full moon, every solar or lunar eclipse, a hundred people are telling you what to do and what not to do. The amount of noise is overwhelming, the amount of information (and misinformation, too) is too much, and it is also the month where suddenly everyone seems to be looking for courses and books to learn IDK... 3rd Degrees of Advanced Witchcraft in six simple steps without leaving your house and without stopping watching Netflix, it is simply too much.

So changing the focus from "this is what you have to do for" to "this is what I do for..." and "here are the results of this thing I did" just feels different.

So this October - unless I come up with another post in the middle of the month - this will be the post for readers. After all, the majority of my readers, according to the blog statistics, are in North America and the United Kingdom; if you are not located in Africa, the origin of all human life on planet Earth, you are another descendant of immigrants, period. 

Your ancestors arrived wherever you are at some point, and you have all your life taken for granted that innate magical wisdom in your DNA that allows you to plug yourself with their energy in a different part of the earth; Maybe your ancestors came to America from Ecuador or Germany, maybe they came fleeing Nazi Germany or Cuban Socialism or fled Russia at any time, perhaps they simply escaped China or North Korea to give you a better future, but Unless you are and look like a Native American, and you still live in America, chances are that your ancestors came from somewhere else and that ancestral connection you have to it is something that others are looking for, and you are taking for granted.

Without mentioning magic and religion, what does being an immigrant mean?

Everything that many out there have had a lifetime to learn and now take for granted, you now have to learn in a matter of months or a few years, from the silliest things like different bills and coins to the most severe things; adapt entirely to a culture different from yours, learn from scratch a new language that everyone (who has spent a lifetime learning) expects you to pronounce perfectly (in a matter of a few years), look for a new job in which you will most likely start from very low because no one here is going to call your University or your last boss in another country to request your references, look for a new apartment, for which they ask you for personal references, which you (clearly) also do not have, and a national bank account, which you cannot have either; to open a bank account, they first ask you for a receipt in your name from where you currently live (welcome to the infinite loophole).

Being an immigrant means investing twice as much time every day to see twice as much news, and yes, in two languages, watch the local news. You also have to be aware of everything happening and watch the information from your country. Well, you need to be mindful of everything that happens there, constantly call your family, and avoid getting sick. Well, immigrants do not precisely have more facilities than the rest to have medical insurance.

Oh yes! It also means adapting and immunizing yourself from being constantly blamed in the news because "everything that happens in this country is the fault of immigrants" since before you were here. And obviously, the constant (and exaggeratedly expensive) immigration paperwork that no one mentions. Do Americans believe that living in America is costly? Try being an immigrant in America, where a monthly immigration fee can vary from $300 to $2500, and at first delay greater than ten days, you can be immediately deported.

As my boss says, in America, do like the Americans even if you are not one of them, complain as much as you want.

But now, what magically means being an immigrant?

Being an Immigrant in America, or anywhere in the world, means that - if you are any kind of energy worker, magic maker, or witch practitioner - although you feel spiritually protected and always guided, there is at the same time considerable confusion about it. Although, as a spiritual/magic worker, at first, it is not difficult to feel that you are supported and protected at every step, consulting each decision with your entire spiritual pantheon at the same time, and after a certain degree of maturity and grounding, you understand in its complexity that you are living on borrowed time, for an uncertain amount of time, in a place with other rules, other (as we say in Venezuela) spiritual cadres, other divinities reign and lead different courts of spirits, and you are in the process of evolution individual that others cannot even understand because the more time you spend away from your homeland; The more you feel that that powerful connection with the spirit of the land could be fading.

When you are an immigrant, you are walking for an uncertain time on a field in which other ancestors have walked and died, not yours and you are exploring mountains and cities full of spirits and different deities that you vaguely knew before. You are learning and practicing. New forms of Craft, even in a language that is little by little rewiring your entire brain, you are putting your feet on the sacred ground of other spirits and indigenous divinities that you can barely perceive and don't even know their names or how to pronounce them.

Your connection with the earth is the same: the land is there, Pachamama is there holding your feet, but all these spirits and entities in your environment perceive you as a strange creature of whom they must take care of or with whom they can ally themselves, but will cost a lot to convince them.

From one day to the next, or after several years, you are beginning to dream even in a new language. Your brain is no longer translating word by word but thinking in said language; that is where that individual crisis of not knowing comes in. If you are connecting to a different wiring system and abandoning the previous one or somehow managing to be related to both methods simultaneously and in some way that you need to learn how to explain and that others will not know how to understand.

The locals' influence is inevitable and will have enormous weight in your practice, from no longer smoking tobacco leaves to honoring the ancestors at home because all the apartments here have fire detectors in each room, not concrete and cement houses like in South America. Also, do not smoke outside because people think you are smoking pot and come to ask you. Or even not burn white sage, no matter how effective it is for us, or the fact that in countries like Venezuela and Peru, this is a common herb without much interest when you live in North America, it is another story; burning white sage is consciously burning a sacred herb of the earth, it is consciously disrespecting the local spirits and deities, those who have belonged here long before colonization, and at the same time ignoring the suffering of the thousands of Native Americans murdered and whose practices were stolen by the colonists, as if it were not enough to take their lives, somehow we also managed to take away their practices and so their descendants for the next hundreds of years can continue in a certain way feeling oppressed by seeing that not even their religious faith It's respected, right?

These are the types of conversations you are subjected to daily when you are an immigrant, and it understands that the magic is still there In each line of salt and each seed; in turn, the spirits are also still there in the environment, but now you must learn to work with other grains and to negotiate with other souls, also in another language.

Like every time someone just entirely disrespects your personal faith and dismisses your years of practice, because from their perspective in a certain way, "you are not enough of a witch." in Latin America, practically every person doing or practicing magic or any form of witchcraft They are "witches" or "sorcerers." Still, in North America, the land of names and labels, where everyone pretends not to want to be labeled, but everyone is dying to take on as many labels as possible, you are "not witch enough" if you are not part of of their clan or their group, stupid technicalities that they love to use to keep you away and make you feel like a complete outsider.

Between people trying to keep you out of the practice by simply using linguistic technicalities as an excuse for not admitting that they have a common racial prejudice; After all, you don't sound or look like them. And the loud racists who carry the #BlackLivesMatter cape every time it's trending just to sell you something, or they fill their mouths repeating over and over "how much supportive I am of the Black Community," they are loud as hell. You need (being the outsider) to remain silent about that. You don't want to go out and disturb the status quo after all, right?

Nobody wants to have a wave of racist haters jumping into your DM's day after day simply because one or more of the modern white witches of the West Coast has decided to cancel you via DM with all of his followers and supporters.

Being the Immigrant witch is being and feeling completely like an outsider whose opinion does not matter. It is learning to hold your crown high like a child of the goddess but lower your head simultaneously. After all, you don't want the arrogant to get angry because you are shining so much. Being an immigrant witch also implies listening to people with zero knowledge of your culture, constantly reading you about your practice, and not making many friends with other immigrants either, since most prefer to be silent and on the side of the racists (ironic but true ) because it is financially more convenient for them.

It is a lonely and different path where no matter what table you sit at to eat, you know who you will always be; the immigrant and the outsider, and when you are confident enough to feel different, they won't take long to remind you.

With Love, and sending hugs so warm like sweet alpacas, Elo.

Elhoim Leafar, Author of Dream Witchery.

• Pre-Order my book 'Dream Witchery: Folk Magic, Recipes & Spells from South America for Witches & Brujas', here: AMZN
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• Read my post Poppet Magick in the Caribbean here: READ