by Witchyways | Oct 17, 2025 | Myths
When frost still bites the soil and the sun creeps low across the hedgerows, the old spirits stir beneath the plough. Long before engines and iron, farmhands and labourers walked the furrows singing for luck and life. These were the Ploughmen of the North, the keepers of winter’s first ritual, and though their hands were rough from toil, their work carried something older than they knew.
The Roots of Plough Monday
Each January, when the land still slept, rural communities marked Plough Monday—the ceremonial start of the agricultural year. Groups of young men, often farm labourers, would drag a decorated plough from door to door, collecting coins or ale, singing rhymes, and blessing the soil for fertility.
Some dressed as jesters or animals, others as the “Old Woman” or “Bessy,” a symbolic nod to the earth’s fertile body. Beneath the laughter and ale lay an ancient understanding: the plough broke the skin of the land, and through that wound, life would return.
As historian Ronald Hutton notes, these rites “bound the men of the soil to the turning of the year,” preserving fragments of pre-Christian fertility customs well into modern times.
From Ploughmen to Plough Witches
The term Plough Witch is a modern reimagining. No records describe witches performing these rites, yet the symbolism of plough, furrow, and seed speaks deeply to those who work with earth magic today.
Modern witches have reclaimed the plough as a sacred tool of transformation—a reminder that magic begins where soil meets hand. The Plough Witch honours the same cycle once kept by the ploughmen: death and renewal, darkness and thaw, effort and harvest.
The Tools of the Modern Plough Witch
- The Ploughshare: Symbol of labour and intention, representing the act of turning one’s life toward new growth.
- The Furrow Cord: A braid buried or tied around a plant pot, binding your hopes to the earth’s pulse.
- Offerings of Milk, Honey, and Ale: Gifts for the land and its unseen keepers.
Copper, blood, and ash remain sacred symbols—life, toil, and fire feeding the field’s heart.
A Ritual for the Turning Year
- Blessing the Blade (Imbolc)
At dawn, wash your working tool—spade, trowel, or knife—with milk and ash. Whisper:
“Wake, earth, wake. I turn you in light and life.” - Sowing Charms (Ostara)
Mix your seeds with crushed eggshell and salt. Speak your intentions into the soil as you plant. - Harvest Offering (Lammas)
Gather the first herbs or blooms of summer. Dry them by your altar as a sign of gratitude and return.
The Spirit of the Plough Witch
To be a Plough Witch is not to mimic the old farmhands but to carry their rhythm forward. It is to see your garden, your allotment, even a single pot of herbs, as sacred ground. It is to turn the soil with purpose and trust that the land remembers every kindness.
The old ploughmen broke the earth to bring life. The Plough Witch does the same in spirit, turning intention into growth.
A Charm for the Year’s Turning
Turn the soil and turn the year,
Bless the hands that hold it dear.
Wake the roots, the hidden flame,
Earth remember my given name.
Further Reading and Sources
- E. C. Cawte, Ritual Animal Disguise (Cambridge University Press, 1978)
- Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun (Oxford University Press, 1996)
- Christina Hole, English Traditional Customs (Batsford, 1941)
- T. F. Thiselton-Dyer, British Popular Customs, Present and Past (1876)
- Emma Restall Orr, Living Druidry (Piatkus, 2004)
- Gemma Gary, The Black Toad (Troy Books, 2013)
- Nigel G. Pearson, Treading the Mill (Capall Bann, 2004)
by Witchyways | May 26, 2025 | Personal, Witchcraft Basics
Lately, I’ve been thinking about what modern spirituality really means in a British context, not the sermons or dogma, but the older rhythms that still hum beneath our feet. Christianity reshaped these islands, yes, but it didn’t erase the bones beneath the churches. The stories, the symbols, and the quiet kindness of the land, all of it survived, woven into every hymn, harvest loaf, and ritual. This post begins an exploration of how ancient pagan traditions, Christian ethics, and modern witchcraft converge to shape a spirituality that honours the past while nurturing our present lives.
Why We Still Feel the Pull of the Old Ways in Modern Spirituality
There’s a reason so many of us are craving simplicity, ritual, and something intentional again. It isn’t just nostalgia. It’s instinct. For most of human history, our sense of self was stitched directly into the land. The fields told us when to rest, when to sow, when to celebrate. Our gods were never far away, they lived in the hedgerows, the wells, and the hearth.
When Christianity spread through Britain, it didn’t completely silence that heartbeat, it just changed the tune. The same festivals continued under new names, the same herbs were gathered under the blessing of new saints. For centuries the old ways survived quietly in kitchen gardens and folk songs, carried mostly by women who were called healers, midwives, or sometimes witches.
Now, centuries later, that pulse is rising again. We’re burnt out from concrete, algorithms, and the churn of production. We long for something slower and more sacred. It’s not about rejecting Christianity or idealising a past that wasn’t perfect, it’s about balance. Spirituality once grew out of relationship, not rules. The divine was something you met in the wind, the soil, and in your own hands, not a sermon.
Maybe the pull we feel isn’t regression at all. Maybe it’s evolution, the soul trying to find its way home after a long detour through industry and empire.
How Christianity Absorbed Pagan Wisdom: Lessons for Modern Spirituality
It’s easy to imagine Christianity arriving in Britain like a conqueror, but the truth was quieter, more intricate. Conversion took centuries, and along the way the Church learned something essential, people would not surrender their seasons. So instead of destroying the old ways, it folded them in.
The winter solstice became Christmas. Beltane’s fires turned into May Day celebrations. The goddess Eostre lent her name and symbols, hares, eggs, rebirth, to Easter. Even the saints began to resemble the spirits they replaced. St. Brigid was once Brigid the goddess of the forge and poetry. St. Michael took up the dragon’s role from older myths of sun gods conquering chaos.
In the process, Christianity inherited more than rituals, it inherited the moral backbone of the old world, reverence for life, reciprocity, compassion, and the understanding that what you take must one day be given back. The Sermon on the Mount and the laws of hospitality found their roots in older soil than scripture admits.
That syncretism, pagan breath inside Christian lungs, is why these islands never fully lost their enchantment. You can feel it in hymns that still mention the harvest, in cathedrals built where stone circles once stood, and in the way we still hang holly in winter and weave flowers in spring. The stories changed their language, not their purpose.
What Humanitarian Spirituality Looks Like Today
If the old ways rooted us in nature and Christianity taught us empathy, perhaps the next chapter of faith is about integration rather than opposition. We don’t need new gods so much as new metaphors, ones that honour both the sacredness of the earth and the dignity of the human spirit.
A humanitarian spirituality begins not in temples or doctrines but in relationship, to one another, to the planet that holds us, and to the quiet inner compass that knows kindness isn’t weakness. It’s the understanding that the divine isn’t above us but within us, and that moral courage grows best in ordinary acts of care.
We see fragments of it already. In the rise of community gardens and herbal collectives. In people choosing to make their food, medicines, and charms with intention. In modern witchcraft practices such as spell work, home rituals, and herbalism. Spirituality through practice rather than preaching, a return to the idea that work done with love is devotion.
The commandments of such a faith are simple and human, make more than you consume, heal more than you harm, listen more than you speak. It is not anti-Christian, nor strictly pagan. It is the continuation of both, evolved for an age that needs connection more than conquest.
How Modern Witchcraft Keeps Spirituality Alive
Every age leaves its wisdom in the practices we perform. Long before scripture, people gathered herbs, brewed potions, and prepared food with intention. Symbols and charms were placed in homes, worn, or carried for protection, love, and memory. Each act was a conversation with the world, a devotion that connected the maker to nature and spirit.
That is why modern witchcraft still matters. In a world obsessed with speed and efficiency, preparing herbal remedies, crafting charms, cooking with care, and performing simple spells is a gentle rebellion. Each ritual or creation declares that meaning cannot be mass-produced. Beauty, intention, and purpose are not luxuries, they are how we stay grounded, present, and human.
When I work with herbs or set up a home altar, I feel that lineage. Pagan healers, Christian mystics, mothers weaving charms into children’s lives, all spoke the same language of care. Modern witchcraft is the bridge between ages. It keeps the sacred visible, tangible, and alive.
Perhaps that is our quiet task now, to act with intention, to live with awareness, and to honour the past without becoming its prisoner. The thread has never broken, it only waits for willing hands to pick it up again. In doing so, we are not returning to the old ways, we are letting them evolve, just as we do.
Reflection
The thread of humanity’s meaning has never truly broken, it waits in our rituals, in the herbs we gather, in the meals we prepare, and in the spells we craft with intention. What practices, charms, or rituals speak to you? How might you weave them into your daily life to honour the past while shaping your own modern witchcraft? Share your reflections below. The conversation between old wisdom and present practice is alive, and it only continues when we pick up the thread and work with it ourselves.
