“The crows wait for me. They’re there every morning, when I go to the bus stop. And if I don’t bring food for them, I hang my head in shame.”

Amethyst looks at me seriously over the top of thick black glasses. She is a plump lady, shrouded in a long, hooded shawl. The colours are muted, but still bright enough to stand out against the gloom. She raises her hand to make a point, and the shawl flaps around her elbow. Overall, she bears a striking resemblance to a stern, tawny owl.
Her brow is furrowed, but there is kindness in her blue eyes. When she stands, her red hair swings gently in a waist-long ponytail. Had she been born a few centuries earlier, both those physical traits would most likely have meant the death of her.

Amethyst Selmaseline is a witch. A practitioner of mystical arts. Lover of animals. A being of light, temporarily inhabiting a mortal body. She is also the owner of a small shop in Reddish, just outside Stockport. And the owner of many, many salt crystals.

Friends mill and out of the shop as we talk. She chatters to them sometimes, brief asides between my questions. Occasionally she will give a gentle instruction or a mild ribbing of her companion, Tony. During their banter, I sip my tea, and look around the shop. I’m surrounded by an awful lot of broomsticks. “They’re symbolic.” Amethyst is quick to reassure me. “Witches aren’t like people think we are.”
To many, witchcraft falls loosely under the umbrella of Paganism, though Amethyst prefers to disassociate herself from the term. In her opinion, Paganism has lost its way. She feels that it has lost its spirituality, and gained a more cynical, commercial reputation. Many new converts are only interested in learning arcane powers, rather than absorbing the philosophies and codes of the religion.

In fact, relatively little of modern witchcraft revolves around spell casting. Amethyst’s arts are more grounded – she describes herself as a healer of mind, body and soul. Occasionally, this may involve a spell or two, or the use of an object in possession of healing energies like the salt crystals. However, it can also involve more mundane practices, such as herbal remedies, or simply talking someone through their problems. Amethyst believes that balance is the key to peace, and symbols that are central to her religion reflect this.
“The sun, for example.” she smiles, waving an arm so that the feathery shawl flaps at me again. “The sun is a masculine energy. Fiery, passionate, powerful. The moon, on the other hand, is a gentler power – far more feminine. The powers are balanced between man and woman, and that’s how they should be. People should be in balance. But they’re not, and that’s why we have wars.”

The balance between the sexes is similarly reflected in the gods she chooses to honour.
“We don’t worship.” she tells me sternly. “We’re not like the mainstream religions, like Christianity or Islam. We honour, and we revere the gods and our ancestors. But to worship is to be subservient. Why should I be subservient?”
One such goddess is Hecate, a deity who is traditionally associated with the practices of witchcraft and sorcery. Another is Hermes Tristmegistus – ‘three times great’. His spheres include magic, alchemy and astronomy. He is commonly believed by witches to have authored the Hermetic Laws; the closest thing Amethyst’s faith has to any sort of rules. Most witches scorn its comparison to the Ten Commandments. The Hermetic Laws are an amalgamation of both the rules they live by, and the laws of physics as witches see them. Amethyst believes the Laws apply to everyone on Earth.
These include the Law of Correspondence, which states that all humans exist on all planes simultaneously, astral or physical. Or the Law of Cause and Effect, which states that ‘nothing happens by accident’ – everything that happens is a consequence, direct or indirect, of an action that someone has made.

“One of the key things to remember is that we are all energy.” Amethyst reminds me. “And physics dictates that energy cannot be created or destroyed.”
In this way, she explains, there can be no afterlife. If there is an afterlife, we’re already living it. This ties in with one of the major themes of the practice of witchcraft, and one of its biggest similarities with many branches of Paganism – the idea that we are all inextricably bound to the universe, and everything that happens in it. We are constant, as is the world around us. Our souls are immortal, even if our bodies will eventually wither and die. Amethyst’s strong belief in reincarnation overrides her fear of death. She freely chatters about dying in the way she might discuss milk going sour – with some distaste, but certainly no fear.
As well as reincarnation, Amethyst is a strong believer in the lunar effect. She believes that human behaviour is affected by the full moon, in spite of the fact that there is no scientific evidence to the contrary.