Some of the Traits and Customs of
Hedge Witches & Hedge Riders
Donald L. Engstrom-Reese
© 2007
Here is a list of some of the traits and customs that I have noticed over the years, that pertain to many Hedge Witches and Hedge Riders:
1. We actively dare to be conscious intentional co-creators (makers-with) of the multiverse.
2. We recognize that the only constant in the multiverse is change.
3. We hold no one in authority above us.
4. We are experienced based, not faith based. Our magical/spiritual life is based on personal experience. Yet, we are informed by the experience of others.
5. We work as peers with each other and with the whole of the multiverse.
6. The Mysterious Ones, Ancestors and other Spirit Peoples are our potential allies, not our masters nor our servants or slaves.
7. We hold all of nature as our allies; moon, sun and stars, green bloods, red bloods, stone, fire, water and wind.
8. We are primarily solitary practitioners yet delight in the gatherings of Witchy feres, families, clans and traditions.
9. We do our work with whatever is at hand.
10. Everything is our potential magical tool/ally.
11. We are prepared to do a bit of improvisational magic at a moment’s notice.
12. We are practitioners of first sight and second thoughts.
13. We are healers.
14. Our every intentional act is a magical act.
15. We do not hold a difference between the sacred and the mundane. We recognize that all places, things, beings are sacred within everyday and extraordinary existence.
16. We recognize that everything is in relationship to everything else.
17. We work in the magical and/or liminal spaces between two or more realms; such as, chaos and order, human and non-human, the wild, devastated and domestic, the known, suspected and unknown, the living, the dead and the unborn. These spaces often marked by hedges, gates, crossroads, borders, edges, thresholds, graveyards, orchards, gardens, genders, cultural constructs, etc.
18. We explore chaos magic; including change, fractal formation and the multiverse’s tendency to develop patterns in formless primordial space.
19. We are committed to the nurturance of the cyclic, never-ending, ever-changing nature of the multiverse.
