“Not all witches are healers. Some are shields. Some are swords.”
There is a current rising beneath our feet, a low drumbeat that calls not for peace, but for protection. Not for stillness, but for stance.
War magick is not about wrath or revenge. It is the art of drawing the line. Of standing between what you love and what would destroy it. It is sacred refusal. The spell of no more.
We live in a world where many witches are called to heal.
But some of us….
Some of us are called to hold the line.
What Is War Magick?
War magick is not a tantrum spell. It is not chaos cast from the wound. It is magick rooted in discipline, sovereignty, and sacrifice. It is strategy woven with spirit.
It is not always loud. In truth, the most dangerous war witches are often quiet. They listen. They observe. And when the time comes, they strike with precision.
War magick is:
- Shielding your home against spiritual incursion.
- Banishing malevolent forces, visible or hidden.
- Holding energetic boundaries in moments of crisis.
- Breaking patterns of abuse, manipulation, or ancestral trauma.
- Defending others who cannot yet defend themselves.
This is not destruction for power’s sake. It is protection as holy labor.
Historical and Mythic Archetypes
Throughout myth and history, we find witches who fought with fire and vision.
- The Morrigan, Irish goddess of prophecy and sovereignty, walks the battlefield whispering omens and outcomes. She is the embodiment of war’s truth.
- Nemain, often associated with The Morrigan, is the spirit-woman or Goddess of Havoc whose battle cry is so terrifying it can kill a hundred men.
- Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess of Egypt, is a war-bringer and healer in one. Her rage is both wrathful and medicinal. She teaches us: sometimes the fever must burn before the cure can take hold.
- Joan of Arc, guided by visions, led armies not as a soldier but as a vessel of divine will—her power lay in unwavering conviction and sacred command.
And in our modern magical history:
During World War II, with Britain on the brink of Nazi invasion, occultists, including those aligned with Dion Fortune’s Fraternity of the Inner Light, gathered at sacred sites such as the New Forest and possibly the cliffs of Dover. One technique involved a ritual known as the Wyvern Circle, through which a massive Cone of Power was raised to shield the British Isles from harm.
Their work was not done with bombs or blades, but with focused psychic force, ancestral calling, and spiritual alliance.
This was War Magick, ritual action taken on behalf of a land under siege.
The Witch’s Shield and Blade
Every war witch must know the tools of their craft: the shield, and the blade.
The Shield
The shield protects. It contains. It holds the line when everything else is falling apart.
Types of Shield Work:
- Warding: Sigils, salt lines, iron filings, blessed threads.
- Cloaking: Making yourself or your home “invisible” to spiritual predators.
- Ancestral Shields: Calling on bloodline, guardians, or coven spirits to defend a space.
- Circle of Sovereignty: A personalized ritual to define what is allowed in your sphere.
In a world of energy vampires, psychic parasites, abusive dynamics, and haunting echoes, a strong shield is not optional. It is your first act of war.
The Blade
The blade is not always literal, but it is always final.
Types of Blade Work:
- Banishing: Smoke, chant, bell, and will to drive out harmful forces.
- Cutting Cords: Severing energy ties that bind you to the toxic or dead.
- Breaking Patterns: Spells to unbind ancestral trauma, addiction, or domination.
- Naming and Unmasking: Calling out truth to dissolve illusions and manipulation.
The blade is not vengeance. The blade is clarity.
Battle Mages and Magical Warriors
Some witches serve at the threshold, not as seers or healers, but as guardians, tacticians, and energetic combatants. In modern fantasy, they might be called battle mages, but this archetype is far older than the term. It echoes in the witch at the edge of the circle, knife in hand. It stirs in the priest who knows when to invoke wrath. It lives in those who do not fear confrontation, but rather train for it.
The battle mage is not wild magic personified.
They are discipline. Focus. Movement under pressure. They are the spellcaster in armor, the one who holds the line when others falter. Where chaos threatens sacred working, they respond with clarity and command.
They are the witches who:
- Guard the circle when the veil thins or when the working turns volatile.
- Intervene when an entity pushes too far or an energy becomes unstable.
- Sense the shift in vibration before others do, and know how to anchor or sever.
- Use voice, will, and motion to redirect or collapse energy structures mid-ritual.
- Mediate the sacred space between magickal will and embodied danger.
The battle mage works with more than tools and techniques; they move in harmony with cosmic tides. Saturn, the great protector, lends its weight to shields, boundaries, and banishings. Its energy is the fortified wall, the circle drawn in ash, the no that does not bend. Mars, by contrast, fuels the blade, the righteous strike, the spell of severing, the clarity of direct action. When tempered by wisdom, Mars becomes the sacred flame in the warrior’s heart. Together, Saturn and Mars shape the rhythm of magical warfare: hold, then strike. Watch, then move. Protect, then cleanse.
In covens or magical communities, battle mages are often misidentified: seen as “too intense,” “too direct,” or “too forceful.” In truth, they are protectors, kin to temple guards, ritual sentinels, and martial priesthoods of old.
They are the Blackthorn in the hedge, the edge that cuts, not because it is cruel, but because it must not yield.
Some traditions may formalize this path. In Wild Blackthorn, this current aligns with what we may someday name the Thane Path, the spiritual warrior who stands for the circle physically and magically alike. But even without title, this role exists. The land remembers them. The old gods recognize them.
And when battle comes, spiritual, energetic, psychic, or political, they are the first to rise.
Spellcraft, Tools, and Allies of the War Witch
Tools
- Iron – Binds and banishes. Use in nails, keys, or chains.
- Knife or Athame – Not just for circle casting, but for energy cutting.
- Smoke – Cleansing herbs like mugwort, rosemary, sulfur-rich plants.
- Black thread – For binding harmful actions or baneful intent.
- Ash – From sacred fire, carried as a reminder of past battles.
Spirits and Allies
- The Ancestors Who Fought – Soldiers, rebels, guardians. Call them.
- The Crone – Not just wise, but wrathful. She does not suffer fools.
- Land Spirits – Especially in threatened or poisoned places.
- Wards, Guardians, and Egregores – Create or feed protectors for your space.
Example Working: The Circle of No
Purpose: Create a protective boundary spell to say “No” to spiritual intrusion or emotional manipulation.
- Draw a circle with iron filings or crushed eggshell.
- Place black candles at cardinal points.
- Call your ancestors or guides to stand watch.
- Speak aloud: I do not welcome harm into this house.
I do not host fear in this heart.
I name this space sovereign.
And what is not aligned leaves now. - Burn a pinch of sulfur-rich herb or protective resin to seal it.
When the War Is Not a Metaphor
There are times when witches speak of battle as myth, when we cloak our words in symbol and let the blade remain unseen. But this is not one of those times.
The world burns in truth.
It burns in airstrikes, displacement, and genocide.
In book bans and gerrymandering.
In surveillance wrapped in patriotism and hatred cloaked in law.
In bodies stripped of rights. In spirits driven into silence.
And so war magick becomes more than philosophy.
It becomes necessity.
It becomes resistance.
It becomes the unseen rite behind every act of courage, clarity, and sacred defiance.
It is not cast for vanity, nor for spectacle.
It is cast for those who cannot speak.
It is cast for the land that groans beneath poisoned waters.
It is cast for the dead who still echo, unnamed and unburied.
To work war magick in times like these is not to curse wildly.
Real war magick is precise. Strategic. Rooted.
You can raise a cone of power not only to heal, but to hold.
You can enchant a sigil not only to bless, but to banish.
You can anoint not only for peace, but for protection, fierce and final.
There is a reason witches were feared by empire.
We remember.
We name the dead.
We walk the old roads and call upon the powers that do not answer to kings.
And when the gates fall open, when the innocent are hunted and truth is drowned in noise, we do not run.
We shield.
We strike.
We speak names that echo beyond the veil.
We become the weapon and the ward, the line that does not break.
We Stand
Witches have always been dangerous to empire, not because we wield swords, but because we remember what empire tries to erase.
Because we speak with the voices they tried to silence.
Because we hold power that answers to no earthly throne.
War magick is the whispered prayer beneath the siren’s wail.
It is the spell sewn into the lining of your coat as you walk into the courthouse, the school board meeting, the protest line.
It is the breath you hold while lighting a candle for someone you’ve never met, but who you know must be protected.
We are not always called to heal.
Some of us are called to guard.
Some of us are called to fight.
Some of us were born to remember the old rites, and wield them like a blade when the world begins to forget.
If you are one of those, this is your summons.
Not every battle is visible.
Not every warrior wears armor.
But in the shadowed places of this world, the war witches rise.
They are watching.
Waiting.
Warding.
And when the time comes,
they stand.
Where the Blackthorn Grows Wild 