Experiencer

Growing up, playing witches was our default. It was just the way my friends and I played, using our imaginations, delighting in the idea of having special powers, or perhaps touching past life memories. Who know, but it was certainly fun and provocative.

We were conjuring our own magic, making up spells, and pretending we could shape the world around us. Perhaps all girls are a little witchy, carrying a spark from ancestors long gone. We dreamed of having real power in a world where we had very little, feeling it vividly as we imagined it. It was pure play, and yet somehow, in that imaginal space, the magic felt real.

I remember sleepover parties in the 80s, our favorite games were putting each other into trances and playing light as a feather, stiff as a board. Who taught us this? How did we know to do these things? I really don’t know.

We would cradle a friend’s head in our laps, rub their temples, and soothingly guide them back into past lives. We would ask them questions in this state like we were trained hypnotists. I don’t know if other kids did this, but in my circle, it was ordinary magic.

Light as a feather, stiff as a board was flabbergasting. Skeptics might scoff that seven ten-year-old girls could lift another girl with just two fingers on each hand. But when a body rose as if weightless, hovering toward the ceiling, you could feel the power and impossibility in your bones. I felt it, I held it, I lived it. I posted something on Reddit on the Gen X women’s page and the response was awesome. We all did it and felt it.

Thanks to my mom, I was also deep into tarot and astrology, as many teenyboppers were, chasing patterns, reading signs, feeling the invisible pull of unseen forces.

One day at the mall, an older teenage girl called us over to teach us all a mantra. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. It became our sacred chant for every ritual, every playful experiment with energy. I didn’t know then that it was an ancient Buddhist invocation of cause and effect. Back then, it was just ridiculous enough to feel ceremonious and serious. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. We loved this chant and used it like a magical charm. Little did I know then that I would find a deep resonance with Buddhist teachings later in life.

And then there’s the memory that still sings through me: my group of witchy girlfriends, circling an eggplant in a field on Halloween, chanting a silly mantra for something we could not name. We were teenagers, laughing and imagining, caught between play and a sense of real magic. For a moment, it felt like the world had tilted just enough for our voices and intentions to matter. We were silly but earnest. Playing but experimenting. Open to magic but not with demands.

We never learned about Salem. We didn’t study witches or spells. We just felt the tug of something bigger than ourselves, a connection to the unseen, the past, and the pulse of life flowing through everything.

And we danced. Dance has always been my way of working with energy, my own, other people’s, even the kind that feels otherworldly. Moving my body with intention turns something invisible into something I can feel. When we moved together, it felt like we were shaping the air itself, bending it with our rhythm. We always danced. I still do. I always will.

Looking back, it wasn’t about proving magic or performing rituals correctly. Quite the opposite. It was play. It was about feeling it all: the pulse of life, the energy that connected us to each other, to the past, and to something larger than ourselves. That sense of possibility, of unseen worlds waiting to be touched, is still my favorite playmate.