snake-scale:

“so what do death witches do?”

good question!

before i jump in, i wanna emphasize that there’s no right or wrong way to do death work. i know i’ve struggled for a long time with the idea that i’m not “witchy enough” or don’t spend enough time with the craft, so don’t take this as any sort of shaming of your practice or the time you spend with it! this is just what works for me.

that said…

we do a lot of things!

• ancestor work
• spirit communication
• divination
• comforting the living left behind
• attending to the dead, emotionally or physically (as in mortuary workers)
• work with cycles of change
• healing
• shadow work
• lots more!!!

if you’re interested in anything specific that i listed, let me know and i’ll work on a separate post about it!

here’s a rundown of how i incorporate these things into my life:

ancestor work is my primary practice. i honor long-gone ancestors, but also close relatives who have died. “honor” can look very different for many people, as can “work,” but i do things like tend to my grandparents’ grave, talk to my ancestors about what’s going on in the world they’ve left behind, and petition them for favors.

to attend to the dead, i tend other graves in the cemetery. 

this story is of those moments where i’m like “wow, willow, how did you not know you were a witch” – when i was first driving and spent a lot of time with my grandparents’ grave (moment 1), i had a strong affection for another grave of someone unrelated to me and would regularly tend to it and place flowers on it, despite not knowing them, because it was regularly unattended and i felt that he deserved the comfort of being cared for (moment 2).

other death witches attend to the dead by working in mortuary sciences!! a great book on this topic is Smoke Gets In Your Eyes, by Caitlin Doughty, about facing her fear of death by working in a crematorium.

now, shadow work is one of my favorite topics. essentially, you work with the darkest parts of yourself to integrate yourself as a whole person by facing what you fear about yourself. this can be done through divination but also with self-reflection, journaling, and mindfulness.

divination itself is one of the oldest ways i’ve practiced witchcraft. i’ve been reading the tarot cards for 10 years now and also dabble in pendulums, oracles, shufflemancy, osteomancy, curio casting, and tons of other forms. in death work, divination can be a form of spirit communication, where you speak to spirits of the dead or other types of spirits, or it can be fortune-telling, self-reflection, and many other things.

some people think healing is strictly the place of green witches or light workers, but you can’t have light without shadow. for example, many witches think of Hades as just a “death deity,” without recognizing how He can be a healing force by helping us reckon with our fear of death and knowing when it’s our time. it’s also working with the cycles of change.

other cycles of change include observing the wheel of the year, or my personal take, observing the local changes of season. i have my own associations and my own calendar related to the midwest climate, but practicing the wheel of the year is an excellent way to tap into general seasonal shifts and have a community to help!

finally, comforting the living left behind is one that many people practice without realizing it’s a form of death magic. not only are you honoring the deceased by helping their loved ones, but you’re helping create change, or death of the old, within the living.

i hope this helps any budding death witches! ✿◕ ‿ ◕✿