Kyla's Witchy Blog

  Witches in school?! As I was browsing the internet and looking through dozens of witchy children’s books, Little Witch Goes To School caught my attention. This book was written by Deborah Hautzig in 1998 and released through Random House Publishing’s “Step Into Reading” series. I felt waves of nostalgia reading this book since I grew up reading many stories from the “Step into Reading” series– how special. This particular book is a level 3, meaning that it is for children ages 4-7 with about a kindergarten reading level. While I have included a few pages from the book in my post below, here is a link to a read-along of the book, if you feel so inclined to check it out.   A brief summary: Little Witch wants to go to school just like her friends, but her mother thinks she should stay home and learn from her nasty witchy aunts. Mother Witch finally agrees to let Little Witch go, but only if she promises to be very, very bad. Little Witch’s time at school proves to be qui...

Every time I encounter a tarot card reading video on my TikTok, I immediately scroll past it. This is partly due to my skepticism that the content creator is being serious, and partly due to my genuine fear of TikTok’s algorithm. The other day, I was going through a rough patch with a close friend and I was frustrated with them. As I was scrolling on my TikTok later that night, I was presented with a video of a tarot card reader explaining that “there is an apology coming your way soon from someone who cares.” While I am not sure if the spiritual world was communicating with me or if my phone was just listening to my conversations, it is safe to say that I was taken aback.  What is this world of witch tok? Who are these content creators that can read my mind, and where did they come from? There is clearly interest and demand for these types of videos, as #witchtok has amassed more than 52 billion views on TikTok. So, this afternoon, I decided to take a deep dive into all things wi...

It is 11:00 p.m. on a summer night in 2018. Bored with nothing better to do, my friends and I gathered around an Ouija board in the basement. While I cannot remember what questions we asked the board, I can only imagine they were something along the lines of “Who will ask me to the homecoming dance” or “Which one of us will be rich one day.” Only asking the important things, of course. Though I have not encountered an Ouija board since that night, I remain skeptical of this commercialized practice and doubt that it holds much validity. However, despite my skepticism, I do believe that it is possible, in one way or another, to communicate with spirits and the souls of lost ones. Perhaps I was just using the Ouija board wrong.  Learning about spiritualism in this week’s reading of A History Of Magic, Witchcraft, And The Occult has sparked my curiosity and prompted me to take a deep dive into the origins and psychology behind Ouija. Where did this come from? How does it work? Let’s di...

After completing our palm reading activity in class, I have come to the following conclusions. First, I have a very high heart line. Second, my palm lines are precisely symmetrical on both of my hands– I am not sure what this means, but it seems cool to me. Third, I do not think that my palm’s predictions have much validity. The characteristics and predictions from the chart did not accurately align with who I am. At first thought, the practice of palmistry seemed silly and outlandish to me. How can we possibly predict our futures by analyzing the lines and wrinkles on our hands? Aren’t our palm imprints merely a result of the way we fold our hands?  As I learned in this week’s reading of A History Of Magic, Witchcraft, And The Occult, there is an array of divination methods that have been widely used in both the past and present. Beyond palmistry, practices such as tarot cards, rune casting, and horoscopes are used to examine one’s characteristics and predict past, present, and fu...