How to be a Hedge Witch: Herbal Magick and a Love of Nature

This is a blog post on how to be a hedge witch with herbal magick and a love of nature! Hedge witchery is an eclectic practice of witchcraft that is a combination of astral traveling, home, and hearth, and spending time in the hygge-style heart of nature. Let's begin!

How to Be a Hedge Witch: Herbal Magick and a Love of Nature covers hedge riding, hedge flying ointment, and the magical properties of plants with Plants By Laurali! While this article lightly covers the topic of hedge witchery, it’s still good to do your research and deep dive into it.

Becoming a hedgewitch is easy once you begin to feel a calling in that direction as a witch.  I subscribe to the school of thought that witchcraft labels are interchangeable.  For example, I live my life as a solitary green witch, but I'm also a hearth witch and a hedge witch, as well as a kitchen witch.  

I love witchcraft because it is very open-ended and open-minded.  There are a wide variety of witches out there, some of which are extremely eclectic and diverse like me.  

In my case, I grew up as a young Christian girl, so those roots in Christianity are still buried deep within me.  Having roots in Christianity has allowed me to branch out into new and different ways of witchcraft.  I feel very blessed to have been exposed to so many different forms of religion and philosophy, as it has only worked toward helping me define myself in the craft.  

So, that being said, what exactly is a hedgewitch?  A hedgewitch is someone who, first and foremost, works with herbs.  We are witches who like to live on the outskirts of society, beyond the hedge.  

We often practice herbalism and witchcraft in a solo setting versus a coven, where the home is at the heart of everything we do.  I can say with absolute certainty that this is the case.  My tiny house living is a big part of my practice as a hedge witch.  

I may venture out for my daily walks and adventures into the woodland, but my home is where I do the bulk of my magic.  It's where I perform the majority of my herbal spells, in my home and garden.  

It's not uncommon for a hedgewitch to stay in and around her home the majority of the time.  I keep a variety of houseplants, herbs, gemstones, and flowers in and around the house for easy access when I come up with a spell idea.  

My home is the hub of all things magical in my life!  For a hedgewitch, their home becomes a living, breathing life force and being of love and light.  It's a safe place that is warm and inviting to practice hedge witchery.

My tiny house in the tiny, seaside fishing village I live in has the cutest kitchen with a charming shelf where I keep an apothecary of magical herbs.  I often keep jar spells up on the shelf, along with unconventional herbs such as graveyard dirt in its special hiding place.

I have worshipping altars throughout my home hidden in plain sight!  I have one that is a good luck altar that I dedicated to Goddess Fortuna, also known as Lady Luck.  Then, on top of my air conditioning unit, I have a love altar in place dedicated to Goddess Aphrodite, as she is in charge of my romantic love life!

I have secret, hidden places throughout my home where I keep spells.  I have a stack of decorative boxes that hold a bevy of herbal envelope spells that I create, as well as pull-out boxes under my bed for even more spells!

Even my favorite books and literature have spells hidden within them!  I am currently working on planning a gallery wall with my favorite woodland photoshoots in Mother Nature.  In each frame, I plan to hide an herb inside to add a boost of magic to my pictures!

This is all part of what it's like to be a hedgewitch!  Green magic is more than just doing the occasional spell here and there, it's everyday mundane magic.  The magic is hidden in your home, purse, and the magic of nature!

When you become a hedgewitch, you become a magical person and you live your life by it.  Part of that means going on daily hiking adventures, taking field trips to the local cemetery for some graveyard magic, and spending time at home talking to your herbs and plants like they were old friends.

Being a hedgewitch is a lifestyle.  It's a way of life that sets you apart from other people.  People may come to you for herbal remedies or a tarot reading.  You might even be well-known as the town shaman.  

Hedgewitches may live beyond the hedge of society, but they are an integral part of the community, giving back by being different.  It's this quality that makes them shaman healers, tarot readers, and magic makers!

It's also not unheard of for a hedgewitch to begin dipping their toes in kitchen witchery.  Being a kitchen witch requires working with herbs and creating intuitive meals that are plant-based and healing.  They provide nourishment in smoothies that have been blessed and moon water made magic by the light of the full moon.

This makes sense as food, especially organic foods, carry magical notes of energy too!  There's even a particular group of fairies that live in the energy and essences of fruits and vegetables.

So, even if you can't cook for anything right now, you may eventually come around to eating more roughage, raw foods, or creating moon milk with Stephanie from My Tiny Laguna Kitchen.  Food is magic!

Beyond food alchemy and cooking magic, being a hedge witch is also about being a granola crunch nature girl!  You probably spend a lot of time hiking the trails and foraging for mushrooms and herbs.  You'll take home what you found in the forest, after leaving a plant offering, and create a magical meal with your findings.  

You communicate with the fairies and canoodle with the gnomes.  You probably have a penchant for working with nature goddesses and spending time with the Green Man is part of your everyday magic and charm.  

It's just a day in your life for you!  When you're a hedgewitch, you also have a home when you're flying the hedge.  This means doing a little astral traveling and making a home in the faerie realm.

In the faerie realm, my home is a thick, oak tree where I spend a lot of time with the hermit.  I do a lot of spellwork there.  I also have a second home that I visit on my astral travels, in a castle overlooking the sea in Ireland.  I spent a lot of time with Morgan Le Fay there.

If any of this sounds normal to you, you might just be a hedgewitch!  Hedgewitches pride themselves on their ability to be different and unique.  We are an eclectic and diverse group of magical men and women.

Being a hedgewitch is something sacred and private, these are witches who choose to live on the outskirts of their communities.  Their magic is their life.  Is it yours?