The Word “Woo Woo” & Other Things That Piss Me Off as a Witch

1. The Slang Word "Woo Woo"

Am I the only one who can't stand the phrase “woo woo”?

Language matters and labels hold power. Verbiage can create connection or it can create disrespect and dismissal. The problem with “woo woo” is that it takes ideas that are complex, nuanced, and deeply human and reduces them to a slang word that means something silly, irrational, or not worth taking seriously. And somewhere along the way, the slang “woo woo” became a catch-all for anything remotely "witch".

Working with plants, seasons, symbols, ritual, and the cosmos is not a new trend. Humans have been doing this for tens of thousands of years. We have always looked to nature to understand ourselves. Wonder, the willingness to remain curious about what we do not yet understand, is what keeps science moving forward. We have watched the cycles of the moon, tracked the seasons, studied plants, created rituals around life and death, and searched for meaning in the parts of existence we cannot always explain. That does not mean every magical claim should be accepted without question. Discernment, science, and critical thinking matter.

But dismissing an entire category of human experience by calling it “woo” is lazy and, frankly, offensive. Especially when the practices being dismissed have been honored, studied, practiced, and taken seriously by entire cultures and communities for generations.

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2. Haphazard Spellcasting

A Tupperware bowl full of random herbs, a tea light, dried flowers, and a generous sprinkle of everything bagel seasoning is typically not a spell. Even with “intention.”

There is beautiful magic in the mundane. Slowly stirring your morning coffee, tending a garden, picking up a stone, lighting a candle, making a wish on a dandelion, drawing a bath, or preparing a meal can all be deeply magical practices. The difference between this and the haphazard spell is relationship.

Traditional plant practices

were never simply about asking,

“What can I use to GET the outcome I want?”

Working with materials goes so much deeper. For example a plant Materia: Where does it grow? When does it bloom and when is it harvested? What part is used, and why? Is it bitter, pungent, aromatic, cooling, warming, drying, or moistening? What does its biology teach us, and what does it physically do to the body? What season does it belong to? What are its planetary, elemental, and energetic correspondences? What stories, symbols, and meanings have humans connected to it?

Whatever material you look to use, understand the full energies. Vague magic yields vague results. Nuanced Magic (click to read more)

Motherwort, Basil, Mugwort examples, (click link to see full Materia Medica).

3. The Full Toolkit

One of the most repeated ideas in modern witchcraft is that everything you do comes back to you threefold. But like many things, it is often presented without context and reduced to a simple cosmic reward system. I prefer to think of any transaction as a ripple of interconnectedness.

Another repeated idea is that anything associated with the “left hand” or chaos magic is negative. Different traditions have different relationships with power, shadow work, transformation, and sovereignty. Reducing everything into good or bad removes the very discernment that spiritual practice requires. Darkness is not automatically bad and the unknown is not automatically dangerous. A forest needs sunlight, but it also needs decomposition. If we have the ability to protect, defend, or hold a boundary on another level, why wouldn’t we?

There are times when the most powerful magic is having the courage to cut away what no longer belongs.

Yes, we should absolutely have access to our full toolkit.

4. Toxic Positivity & Spiritual Bypassing

There is a beautiful place for compassion, kindness, and love. But healing is not only about staying comfortable, and neither is witchcraft.

Life is not all butterflies, rainbows, love & light. Sometimes transformation asks us to look honestly at grief, anger, fear, endings, and the parts of ourselves we would rather avoid. Sometimes the healthiuest act is expressing that we are angry instead of immediately turning that anger into a lesson, a blessing, or forgiveness.

Anger, grief, fear, are all information and they are part of being human. Everything has a season (LINK)

Michael A. Singer often talks about how life is not designed to be comfortable all the time. Joy and grief, gain and loss, beginnings and endings are all part of the human experience. The work is not creating a life without discomfort; it is learning to meet life as it comes without requiring reality to be different before we can be okay. And yes, I am a Scorpio rising, so perhaps I am naturally inclined to defend the importance of sitting with the shadows.

5. The Death of the Ego

The phrase “death of the ego” is especially interesting when we look at it through the lens of women. We live in a physical world with bodies, identities, relationships, responsibilities, and individual experiences. The ego is part of being human. A healthy ego helps us know who we are, what we value, and what we will and will not accept. Men? Sure, most men could stand to kill their ego. Let’s rid of the patriarchy while we’re at it.

But women?

Women need a healthy ego because, for women, “transcending the ego” can very easily become another name for disappearing ourselves. It can hide inside perfectionism, people-pleasing, never asking for help, swallowing rage, abandoning our needs, and believing that being endlessly available makes us worthy.

This is where “killing the ego” can become spiritual bypassing: we skip anger and rage because we want to be loving, we skip grief because we want to stay positive, and we avoid boundaries because we want to be compassionate. As if enlightenment requires us to become endlessly agreeable and emotionally convenient. But anger can tell us something has been violated, grief can tell us something mattered, and a boundary can be an act of profound self-respect.

Spirituality that requires us to disappear in order to be “good” is not liberation; it is another form of conditioning wearing a sacred costume.

The goal is not to become less human. It is to become more fully ourselves.

P.S. Hex the Patriarchy.