- With your spells.
Do you have like, people drink like pigs blood or something?
- Oh God, no.
- Okay.
- I don't know,
I never met witch before, I have no idea.
- Today, obviously I'm gonna talk about witchcraft.
- [Narrator] Some topics are hard to approach.
Either the subjects are inaccessible
or people are uncomfortable discussing them.
So we found those subjects in person, rented a space
in Los Angeles and invited our audience
and strangers to come in.
Ask them anything.
- Hi, my name's Griffin.
I am a professional witch
and I'm here today to answer questions on the topic.
Anything anybody would like to ask.
- Hi Griffin, I'm Aaron.
- Hey Aaron.
- With two A's.
- Oh, biblical name, right?
- Kind of a Christian name.
- You didn't bring a pitch folk today, did you?
- A what?
- Which thing like, I always would perceive it just
'cause you know, from movies, like female thing.
- There's a lot of people think that.
There is a higher percentage of women,
but not exclusive at all.
A lot of the people responsible
for the revival of witchcraft have been men.
- Is being a witch like your job?
- It's what I do for a living.
I teach witchcraft and I run a witchcraft store,
and I center big rituals, and do all kinds of things.
- Are you a good witch or a bad witch?
- Oh.
I'm not a nice witch, but I'm a good witch.
I don't go outta my way to be nice to people
but I hold my ethics very close to my heart.
I would not do magic that would usurp
the liberty of freedom of others.
- How do you feel the way witches are being portrayed
through like social media or like in movies?
- Well, I think we're being portrayed actually in a fun way.
It's it's not very realistic.
I don't fly on brooms and people really don't
understand witchcraft.
They see witchcraft from Hollywood, they see witchcraft
through the filter of history, but they don't
it's very difficult to understand what we're about
from the outside.
I've come to accept that I can't really explain
it to people and that's okay.
- If you're like Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist
could you practice kind of the witch style, even
though you're not maybe like a Wiccan
like how does that work out religious-wise?
- You can be a witch and you can be a Christian.
You can be a witch and you can be an Atheist.
- Oh.
- But people who practice old time witchcraft very often
have the ability to perceive energy and spirits
and manipulate change.
So that's helpful for when communicating with nature,
different kinds of spirits in the land,
or doing healing work,
being able to work with crystals and stones.
- How did you fall into being a witch?
Like did you feel like you had a gift or something
or did you just.
- My grandmother, her mother
before her had what they call the gifts, she was
in her 70's and decided that it was time to cross over.
So she drowned herself in a bucket of water.
- Oh God..
- Which is not an easy thing to do but she was ready.
It was because she was aware of the spirit realm.
And she said, you know
I've had a really long life and I'm done,
I'm ready to cross over.
A year after she crossed I was born
and my grandmother looked at me and basically said, oh
you've received the gifts from her mother.
- Have you ever casted a spell on yourself before?
And would you recommend it?
- Yeah, actually I know it sounds kind of weird.
People come in wanting you to cast spells on other people.
I want that boyfriend or I want that girlfriend
and I want you to make them love me.
And it's like, no, I'm not gonna do that.
If you want to be loved
then you need to start finding a way to love yourself.
People see you differently
when you see yourself differently.
So a lot of spell crafting is actually done
on one self strangely enough.
- Wow. Love yourself.
- Love yourself.
- It's gonna be like a dumb question
but like have you ever like experienced like sort of
like a witch fight?
- Avada Kedavra
- Oh my God, you're going there.
All right.
- Yeah. You know, I'd love to say that that witches
are all wonderfully enlightened, and tolerant, and loving
but actually there's a hell of a lot of witch wars go
on where, oh, so, and so said this about you.
And so, and so said that, and that's just normal
like high school drama, but with witches,
it gets also into where they start throwing spells
and trying to mess with your life.
So the silly thing is, is if you do witchcraft
against another person, then whatever you do
against them opens a door that they can do the same thing
back at you or other people
can do that kind of magic on you.
Because once a door is opened in what you endorse
in your reality, then that becomes something
that is always gonna be a power in your world.
- Does magic exist in the sense
of like what we see in movies or anything
or is there more a spirituality type thing?
- You know, both, maybe 90% of my practice, it is
about how to see a bigger universe and to live
in a bigger spiritual based world.
But then there's 10% of the practice where magic
becomes very real.
When you see things happen that physically
shouldn't be possible, but it's not something that you
are able to conjure up on a daily basis.
It's not like Bewitched where you wiggle your nose
and the housework's done,
or the dishes take care of themselves.
- What do you think of Christianity?
- I like Christianity in terms of Christ
and in terms of the scripture.
What I'm not a big fan of is churchiality.
I don't like the way in which priesthood in all religions,
in all mainstream religions to mediate the scriptures
because it seems to be geared
towards fundamentalism, bigotry, closed mindedness.
- Have you faced any like negativity
to you being so open about what you do?
- Well, yeah, I mean, when I first started
I wouldn't admit it to anybody.
I mean, people would think I was nuts and in America
even where there's still a degree of persecution
so we keep kind of quiet
about who we are and what we're doing.
- Hmm.
- What's something about like being a witch
that most people don't really know?
- They're just like regular people.
I know witches who are doctors, and surgeons,
and lawyers, and in every area of the world
there are people who you don't know or witches.
So the fact that, you know
we come in all in all colors in all flavors
the fact that we actually are decent people,
I want people to realize that we hold value in the world
that we have a place, and that we aren't scary people.
We're actually kind of cool.
We're fun.
- If you could recollect
what is your greatest or fondest journey?
- Well, there's a number
of workings that I've done over the years
with other people where we have been out in nature.
And we have seen things that have basically
taken our understanding of reality and shredded it.
Where we have seen spirits of people become manifest.
Where we have watched fire take form
and reach out like a hand and touch people.
The thing that's the most important to me
and the thing that I get the biggest reward
from actually is working with people today
and seeing the light go on in their eyes when
they start to realize that that there's more
to the world and that it can be an adventure.
Then I feel like I've made a difference
and that really makes me feel good.
Well, thanks guys for watching.
Hopefully you learned a thing or two
about witchcraft and continue to seek.
If you have interest, seek out your metaphysical stores.
- And please remember to comment below what you thought
of the episode, consider liking, subscribing as well.
And we will see you next time.
- Bye.