I recently saw a post that had little pictures to symbolize a variety of types of witchcraft. Excited, I looked to see if my type, hedge witchery, was included. It was, but it was just a drawing of a hedge, which made me ask out loud – does anybody even know what hedge witches do?! My coven mates thought it was funny, and asked me to define what a hedge witch is. Well, I responded, that’s a complicated question that starts off with defining a lot of terms that mean different things to different people. As always, take what resonates and leave the rest behind, as this is just my personal experience and not meant to be applied broadly to other folks. So let’s dig into this question…
What is a hedge witch?
Personally, I define a hedge witch as a magical practitioner that hedge rides or otherwise engages in liminal work.
Hedge ride? What’s that?
I’ve seen interesting discussions of the derivation of the word “hedge” from Old English and Germanic roots. Please seek out these more linguistic and historical texts to complement my understanding. For me, the “hedge” is a metaphor and a place. It’s the boundary between the civilized and the wild, or in the case of hedge witchery, the boundary between our world and the Otherworld. I mean this more than strictly metaphorically, as it is a place that I actually cross over on the way to the Otherworld. So hedge riding or “crossing the hedge” denotes when a practitioner crosses the separation between our normal world and the Otherworld via a state of altered consciousness.
I call this other plane the Otherworld because of my training but also because it is an inclusive word for a place that I have found to be very expansive in scope. It can be very hard for me to define for practitioners that don’t work with the Otherworld, but sometimes it helps to discuss what I don’t mean. I don’t mean my subconscious, the astral plane, or the Underworld. I mean the entirety of the world that is Spiritual and connected to our physical reality. The Otherworld is bigger than all of these things and includes all of these things in a way that I frankly can’t quite explain with my current language. It is the Universe in the Spiritual realm.
So, a hedge witch is a magical practitioner that can cross between our physical reality and the realm of spirit. We dance along… or ride the liminal space between worlds. In the end, a picture of a hedge isn’t the worst representation of our somewhat liminal practice.
What do you actually do though?
Another way of understanding hedge riding is fundamental to the way that practitioners often enter into the practice. Hedge riding requires a focused mind, so many practitioners learn important skills from meditation before going on their first hedge ride. Personally, I worked up to being able to sit in meditation for almost an hour before I went on any hedge rides. Meditation is a large practice. Within it guided meditations can lead into guided journeys and pathworkings. Most of us will practice guided meditations and pathworkings before we’re ready to try to actually cross the hedge. Everybody will draw the lines of what counts as each of these practices slightly differently.
I see it as a spectrum from meditation to guided journey to pathworking to hedge riding. With each progressive step the control the practitioner has over the journey shifts towards openness and exploration.
I hope this helps clarify what I mean when I say that I’m a hedge witch and didn’t leave you with too many more questions than when we started. Feel free to drop the questions that did come up below, and I’ll be happy to discuss more!