Witchwalking
Shaman Shapeshifter by Stephanie Lostimolo 2012
Remember the days before The Great Uncertainty, when the change of season was an optional quarterly opportunity to transform? In the heady far less complicated years before changes of state became the everloving imperative that none can ignore, its secret task lying tucked in wait inside all of us for precisely this time in our lives.
And so it stirs again.
We are at beyond the midpoint between eclipses and freshly reoriented into the new season. Deep in the churning swirl that will eventually lead to solstice, its spiralling scribbling codes and keys on our skin from inside the portal. All the planets have moved in formation. The veils have dropped and blown away towards the shining coast. Shadows whip about above ground uncertain in the sun. Still there is even more playing out, being revealed and too being obscured. Nothing will ever be as it used to seem, a befuddling veil that encourages us all to turn away or within. Intuition is a better mother tongue.
We are all so scared of change and yet most can reel off a long list of things they would like to be different in their lives. Knowing it is quite the citadel and a stunning first turning point. Changing it is the second, the committed devotion to its doing that takes longer and works you harder and makes you wonder why. Twin pillars that hold up the bridge over the river you must cross. Weave what you learned under the last blue moon into your passage to the solstice gate. And know that times like this particular fulcrum are a slipstream to which you can align, aiding your passage. In so doing - and simply because you really really want to - you can change your shape and that of your life.
Shapeshifting is a vastly underestimated magic considering how common it is. You have already done it so many times in your life. Utterly and completely changed your shape, I mean. Grew a limb back when your life had cut it off, sometimes a whole organ. Sprouted wings when you needed to fly. A mermaid’s tale when freediving in the deeper currents of your life. Inhabited the guise or form of another creature outside your own, to charm or to menace. Shapeshifting comes naturally to witches and to women who don’t look away from this constant ability. You cannot hold too fast to someone else’s fixed idea of yourself if you want to shift regularly, and it’s best you do. Shapeshifting holds great power to transform, which is why it has been degraded to a cheap fairytale or a wanton inconsistency. It is neither and far greater still.
Though mythology, Michael J Fox movies and occasional premenstrual lucid dreaming would have us believe we explode into the form of an animal, shapeshifting takes many subtle forms. I have been hunting it in stories since I was very young, enchanted by the ability to see through an eagle’s eyes or run through the forest like a fox. Native American stories name those who can change their form into animals as skinwalkers. In Japanese culture, the magics are known as henge. Witches employ glamours to shift their appearance, for secret reasons known only known to them at the time. Shamans and mages regularly transform themselves to suit their purpose and imaginal environs. The thread of transformation that runs through all cultures and their mythologies employs shapeshifting as its highest magic. Combined with an intentional journey beyond regular consciousness, the practice can be known as witchwalking.
As we make our way around the wheel.
As moons and sabbats and solstices gently deliver their methodical wisdom and guidance.
As we whirl through eclipse season and the planets glitching.
As we are transformed by the sequences and seasons of our lives.
As we put our minds and our magic to it all.
We are witchwalking.
Witches, women, wanderers. Walking and weaving and midwifing the new. This ancient codex is written on your bones. Its secret gnosis lies languishing somewhere towards the back of your skull and when you sleep on it at night you are transported. Like any magical skill, its conscious utilisation takes focus and practice and devotion to the task, paired with a good understanding of its power and purpose.
This, from Circle Stories by David Halpin;
There is also a necessity at the roots of this practice. In many of the archaic, matriarchal cultures, from Catal Huyuk to the Hathor cult of ancient Egypt, there are embedded midwifery skills within the Witchwalking practices. The Moura Encantada, the female shape-shifters of Southern Europe, for example, were said to travel between megalithic sites, creating new life and spinning the sun. These motifs of ‘spinning’ and ‘new life’ epitomise the coded and almost forgotten wise-women who assisted with childbirth and who were believed to draw souls from the spiritual realm and into new bodies. These were the same women who were almost erased from history by the later patriarchal religions.
Almost but not at all, as it turns out. Thank you David for keeping the torch well lit.
It is movement and motion - of any kind - that is at the basis of the practice of witchwalking. A methodical mindless physical activity that lets your mind wend and wander. If you have ever walked a labyrinth or a well trodden familiar path, you will recall its soporific quality. Drumming is another method to transport yourself this way, as is free dancing or whirling like a dervish. Witchwalking is a journey made through the portal of your mind, activated by the movement of your body, into an altered state. One that allows you to peer into your consciousness, peek beyond your life and its perceived limits and leap into the imaginal realm. That is where all the magic happens. Anything is possible. Limits don’t exist. Solution and inspiration dance within.
It pains me to have to write it, but you cannot go a-witchwalking with a phone on you or headphones in your ears. Clear body, clear mind, sweeping repetitive movement, wind in your hair, the sounds of nature whispering in secret tongues. You have to let your mind go free, beyond the everyday mundane urgencies, most of which aren’t really yours to hold to your breast. Perhaps dragging an intention or question softly behind you as you wend.
When transforming during a waning moon, it is more important to be clear about what you want to change things from, than what you think you can shift them to. Leave that in the hands and feet of the ancient witchwalkers that weave from beyond the veil and the next new moon.
May our witchwalks be fruitful and lead us well to solstice.
This piece taken from my Support Salon on Patreon.
Resources for the revolution as much as support for tough times. This selection of musing, meditation and ritual architecture to hold you through the fray is plucked from our Covens, Channel and community library and is free to dive into whenever you need it.
Words c. Kerrie Basha 2026