I’m settling back into life after an adventure weaving lunar magic in Italy and reflecting back on some of the powerful experiences and beautiful magic that was shared. One piece was on shapeshifting, a skill that has fascinated me since I first discovered, aged 11, that there were adults who also believed in magic and I wondered;

“If witches are real, are shapeshifters real too?”

I soon discovered that shapeshifting is one of the skills of the witch.

(Curious? Join The Enchanted Academy here for a free Masterclass on shapeshifting!)

Shapeshifting shows up throughout history, myth, legend, and even into modern practices today. The skill to shift ones shape, to take on a new perspective, new abilities, new understanding.

Today we think of it as an imaginative or energetic practice, and it is. But it is worth remembering that the world is more nuanced than we think, and the physical is not so far away from the spirit.

Historically shapeshifting was often described as being literal, and there are accounts of people flying to safety (1), or becoming bears, wolves, and hares.

Terry Pratchett (2) illustrates the traditional witchcraft practice of faring forth in animal form well, when Granny Weatherwax hangs a sign up saying “I ate’nt dead” and sends her spirit out to “borrow” an animal’s senses, but it was common in this practice that the spirit was sent out in animal form, as a physical presence itself . The witch-spirit-as-animal, running as a hare, could even be injured and that injury would appear on their body the next day. Scottish witch Isobel Gowdie describes a famous example of this. (3)

The line between physical and spiritual is more porous than we might believe.

I first experienced this practice in a group with the story of Ceridwen and Taliesin (4), where they shapeshift during a chase, travelling through the realms, but I’d spent years exploring it beforehand – in dreams, in meditations and journey, out walking, and even playing hide and seek!

Some of the ways you can work with shapeshifting include:

• Shifting your energy body to be more inviting or to discourage advances
• Changing colours to project different impressions or hide!
• Borrowing the heightened sight of the red kite, or hearing of the hare
• Exploring different perspectives and landscapes through journeys to learn, and to gain insight
• Remembering your relationship to the other beings in the web of life
• To be inspired
• For fun!

So much in life shifts and changes that exploring deliberate shapeshifting is also a wonderful magical tool for reflecting on what stays the same. What is consistent in you when you become a hare? A cat? A bird? What is, deep down, the core of you?

And what is eternal when everything else changes too? If you feel unsettled and overwhelmed by the fast paced chaos of modern life, finding that thread can be a powerful way of anchoring yourself.

Shapeshifting is, then, perfect for exploring different perspectives and finding the deep truths, for knowing yourself as well as the other.

So I’m really excited to share that I’m offering a FREE “masterclass” on shapeshifting as a witches skill, on Monday 22nd July! You can come and find out more about Shapeshifting, and experience it for yourself, in The Enchanted Academy, which has itself shifted shape and has a new home!

Come deepen your magic and explore the witches skill of shapeshifting in The Enchanted Academy, and gain access to our free community of gorgeous magical folks.

Notes for the curious:

1. I heard a tale from Peter Stevenson about enslaved people in the Americas growing wings and flying across the sea to home, which he learned from their descendants. There are other examples of this but this was in the last 200 years, so really recent.
2. This is in “Lords and Ladies” but the whole “Wyrd Sisters” arc in Terry Pratchett’s work has brilliant illustrations of witchcraft.
3. Isobel Gowdie was a witch executed in Scotland in the 1600s who gave a huge amount of information in her testimony including a famous charm for becoming a hare. Emma Wilby has written extensively on this in her book “Visions of Isobel Gowdie”.
4. You can read a version of this story in my book, “Gods and Goddesses of Wales”

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