Witches walk among us — but they're not like the fictional ones you grew up with

Alvin Green, a magician living in Northern Ireland, has been practicing magic since he was a child. He now shares his talents with thousands of people on TikTok.

Alvin Green's morning routine is fairly typical. He wakes up with his wife, wakes up their three daughters, makes them breakfast and prepares their lunch. After dropping them off at school and a short meditation, he takes a short walk near his home on the rugged coast of Northern Ireland.

During the walk, he usually talks to the wind. He may feel that the air is swirling around him or that there is a force pushing the dark clouds skyward and covering the blue sky. He hears the wind, so he may feel the need to ask it a question. Sometimes, the wind responds. He feels the same way when he hears the trees whispering together or the waves crashing on the shore.

"For most people in everyday life, it's a sign of insanity," he says.

Emma Green is a wizard, and connecting with the world around her is the core of her wizardry. He asks questions of wind and trees, ancestors and spirits. Sometimes the answers never come. But witchcraft, for Greene, isn't about finding big life (or death) answers. It's about finding beauty in the midst of chaos.

"Sometimes it's not about knowing," says Green. Knowing is exaggerated.”

Green's way of doing magic defies the stereotypes of wizards with broomsticks, boiling cauldrons and pointy hats. He does not belong to a cult. He is not a Wiccan or Pagan, religions rooted in witchcraft. She has a few cats, but they are more petting than useful servants.

He says there is no single way to be a witch. The principles and rituals are unique to all who practice. Greene says that traits that others may find odd only enhance a person's magic.

"We've never belonged," he told CNN of the Wizards. If we belonged, we would not be witches. So my advice to people is to generally get used to not belonging. It's a good place to start."

Wizards can be born and made

Greene is a "fence wizard" who exists in a virtual "fence", the space between our world and the spiritual realm with which it interacts. His witchcraft is heavily influenced by animism, or the belief that everything has a soul. For Greene, there is magic in everything—the air we breathe, the water in the ocean, the animals and plants we share our planet with.

Witchcraft runs in the Green family. He was raised by his two aunts, both of whom were witches, who lived with ghosts in their house and encouraged Green to find his magic. Green says one of her aunts sometimes "drops in" to chat.

Andrea Samaeva, meanwhile, did not grow up as a witch. He came to this profession innocently as a child, when he and his friends would make "medicine" using leftover food from neighbors' parties. Playing pretend witches, they cast "spells" for rain and dancing under the moon.

"We didn't know what we were doing at the time," said the Florida magician.

This practice became more important to him when Catholicism, the religion he was raised in, began to feel restrictive. Samaiva says he opposes strict rules, which is part of the reason he doesn't belong to a cult.

Even in his early 30s, Samaiva takes a nonchalant approach to witchcraft. His "hybrid" interpretation, inspired by several witchcraft traditions, has very few, if any, rules. She even published a book of spells, "Lazy Witchcraft for Crazy, Silly Days," inspired by the impact of chronic illness on her witchcraft practice.

Witchcraft is growing in popularity

Greene and Samaiva are both full-time witches and are skilled in typical witchcraft rituals and spells – Greene performs an exorcism every morning to cleanse her environment of negative influences, and Samaiva a curse-removing ablution with herbs, citrus, witch hazel And quartz builds to ward off damage.

While they practice magic alone, they perform it for an audience. Both Green and Samaiva are popular figures on WitchTok, a popular TikTok community where members share tips for improving their skills with experienced witches of all levels.

On TikTok, Green, who also has a podcast and a Patreon, uses bones and tarot cards to cast fortune-telling for commenters who ask her tough questions about their love lives, careers and family safety. It's heavy duty, so Green chooses his words carefully.

Samaiva often shares silent rituals in profanity-filled videos that require nothing more than an open mind. (He also sells talisman kits.) Earlier this month, he taught his followers how to create a simple pen-and-paper protective sign that protected his Tampa home from Hurricane Milone. It worked, he said: His house was not damaged in the storm, although a few pieces of his fence were ripped off.

WitchTok experienced a surge in popularity in 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic imposed extreme stress and uncertainty on the world. Even in the months before the pandemic disrupted life as we knew it, witchcraft was making a comeback, partly as a response to social unrest following the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement, as