In order to understand Water Witches, you need to understand how we view magic.
If we simplistically look at how many modern paths or traditions within witchcraft look at magic, we find they define two types, magic and majic or majik. Magic being conjuring and the later variant miracles on demand.
We, like most other traditional paths do not. We would view everything possible and yet impossible as differing points along a scale. We would include with magic many areas that you might call science, physics, chemistry, psychology. astronomy, medicine, etc, we would also include conjuring in its many forms, from illusions to accountancy, we would also include philosophy, thought and legend, and the very many areas of para medical or para science from dowsing to crystals. Add natural things, man made things, probability, human writings and knowledge and we end up with something that by now encompasses everything just about. So magic to us is all skill and knowledge known and yet to be discovered.
Their is some logic to this if you were discussing magic 200 hundred years ago, just think of how much that you take for granted would have been, to them, something from science fiction or the occult. We also know that many areas of knowledge was at far earlier times far better understood than they are today.
So along the scale we see public science and understanding at one end, ceremonial magic at the other and in the center new scientific discoveries, conjuring and illusions and craft skills, with the mid point always moving as more is understood. So magic is science we cannot yet explain.
Working as we do with craft skills, discovering new knowledge, working out why these areas of magic work and matching up bits of knowledge being discovered in medical and other areas together with skills from other cultures, we are at the sharp end of scientific discoveries, and years ahead in many areas of the orthodox scientists who are more inclined to stay within a single discipline and be looking for black and white results rather than applying shades. having said this many of the new discoveries made by conventional scientists have helped us to move further ahead in many craft skill areas or to understand why some thinks work far better.
To us there is no hard dividing line between science and magic.
A recent conversation involving leading entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley USA, identified what they felt was essential for the next age, it was 'to be totally open to new ideas, to be more open to divergence between fact as we see it and magic, and more open to any suggestions.
On the other hand we need at all times to question what we are told to be fact, the theory of the big bang to create the universe we now know to be flawed beyond recovery, and on TV we were told by the leading fertility expert in the UK that all babies start out as female and depending on hormone levels develop into male or female and the following day found a baby sex choice being offered based on sorting sperm. Both views presented as scientific fact but only one could may be correct.
Most scientists don't like to say 'we dont know', or that in some cases one thing will apply another times another, or even that a mixture of situations needs to occur before something else can happen. At no point do they have room for magic.
Science will often ridicule hat it cannot explain, discounting what is beyond their current theories, while we will try to understand first how to use the skills and after that work out why it works.
Doctors on the other hand do recognize magic, but they call it by another names such as the placebo effect, these means that due to your belief or expectation you will get better. Both a GP and witchdoctor uses this far more widely then you would probably realize.
Your ancestors had abilities that you do not, although smaller they could carry far greater loads than you, bear cold much better, and understood the cycle of the year, and many other areas that our age hardly feels relevant especially for people who live in little boxes in cities. They could tell the time without a watch, dowsing was a common skill, as was a variety of forms of healing. We are told that people now live much longer, but we would question if this is true, if you take out the child deaths, and then look through your family history you will find little difference in life expectancy its just the causes of death that has changed. We hear that recently within the last generation there has been a shift and now more old people, but again perhaps some of this is that there are in fact fewer younger people with many people putting off a family to later and now having far smaller families. Clearly a very small number of people do live to old age, and this number has increased.
Knowledge also has a habit of coming around a second time, so we see cures that were used by witchdoctors, demolished by modern doctors in white coats, but later drug companies to work out that the active ingredients to cure a problem is the same as was used by the witchdoctor, so now rather than having the naturally grown herb, they get a synthetic equivalent from a a modern doctor. Unfortunately in many countries the cost of the synthetic drugs are beyond what the people or country can afford, so while the natural cures are available freely the people go untreated.
We are not saying that everything you have been told is wrong, what we are saying is that you need to develop an open minded approach, considering everything, looking at what you are told are facts, to what may appear to be extreme fiction from an equal viewpoint. You need to become aware of vested interests and pressure groups, financial grants that depend upon theories to prove and non science such as archeologists in the last century who had a trowel in one hand and bible in the other.
You will see we do not believe in hocus pocus, but cause and effect, its just that some times we have to admit that we don't understand why some things work. More and more has become understandable over the years, but unfortunately some knowledge has been lost, any there are reasons why some areas that used to work no longer do, where we understand this, we will tell you.
There are many areas that we do not understand, and many questions that we cannot explain, such as how did the universe come into being. No explanation or theory so far put forward gives an explanation that bears close examination. from the big bang, to modified big bang to the current theory of multiple dimensions causing the creation. We don't feel a need to make up a reason, or to accept others ideas just because we cannot come up with a better one. We just don't know so very much, and constantly are searching to understand more.
Miracles we can control would be a good description.
One important factor is that we don't need to be able to fully understand it to use it, so many areas of our magic perhaps can be classed as things that work, which we have either forgot why, or just not discovered the reason yet.
Before you question this, consider, most of you can make a passable cup of tea, yet few of you would recognize a tea bush, or understand the science behind the tea making process. You don't need an expert to make tea, and likewise with most areas of the craft you can master the practical parts without understanding all the theory.
Witchcraft is known as the craft of the wise. Not the source of all facts. As you progress you will discover the enormous potential to use your feelings, instincts and other non measurable skills. You will discover dowsing, the use of pendulums and crystals, and many areas that have no scientific equivalent. You will discover the role emotion, and ritual can play. Some will say that you will discover how to use your whole brain instead of the logical half.
In many cases it is common ground with other named specialties, aromatherapy, psychology, herbal cures, medicine, hypnotherapy........ and many more.
The above specialties are crafts that individual witches within a coven may specialize in. They may become even more expert and consulted by other covens or individual witches.
We cannot all learn everything there is to learn, for a start our modern lifestyle makes other demands on us and we want to live within society not go off and set up convents away from the world. We also discover the concept of the circle of knowledge, in that the more you know and understand the more you realize there is to learn. Witches therefore are not the fountain of all knowledge, but GP's of witchcraft and specialist is chosen areas, however throughout life they all go on learning.
Real magic happens when you start adding these areas together, using science, crafts, psychology. ritual and more all working towards a defined goal.
Within a coven 'the book', usually now referred to as the book of shadows records the covens rituals and all that has happened, its a scientific journal, one that you look back in to see how you achieved something before. Each and every witch also has their own book of shadows, and it is tradition when a witch dies for their book of shadows to be burnt. Some, as you may know, have been published from some traditions, however non of the Water Witches has.
You think, experiment, record and learn. Often you are offered a shortcut in books or by another witch, you try these out, perfect techniques, and learn more. All the time recording your progress in your book of shadows, or probably more accurately books of shadows. It might be a ring binder or several, a computer or if you insist you can put it on ancient style scrolls or in picture form on cave walls. The means of recording is not important, it is the fact that you know what worked and what did not.
The best time to start your book of shadows, if you don't have one yet, is today. You could even start by copying parts of the text from this web site to your word processor, and creating introduction sections for a ring binder. Move on and do the same topic by topic from www.school-of-witchcraft.com and you will soon find you can FEEL the progress you are making.
See also Types of magic, this includes some examples you can check out.