The Witch on Service…

The Word That Makes People Flinch

Say the word service in a room of witches, and you’ll see shoulders tense. Centuries of oppression make the idea of bowing or serving feel dangerous, humiliating, or weak. We resist it, and rightly so, because too often service has meant exploitation.

But in Witchcraft, service does not mean subjugation. Service means alignment. It means answering the call of the Craft, of the spirits, of the gods, of the ancestors, not because you are shackled, but because you are chosen.

Service to the Craft Itself

First and foremost, witches serve the Craft.

Not Instagram trends. Not what’s popular. Not what will make you look shiny to outsiders.

The Craft is a living current. It demands your practice, your study, your sweat. It demands that you keep the fire alive, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it doesn’t flatter your ego.

To be of service to the Craft is to be a caretaker of its nitty-gritty and its beauty + grace, preserving what is old, experimenting with what is new, and refusing to dilute it for the comfort of those who will never walk this path.

Service to Spirits, Gods, and Ancestors

The Witch’s allies, spirits, gods, ancestors, do not exist to serve us on demand. They are not vending machines waiting for the right incantation. They are beings with their own wills, their own currents, their own needs.

To work with them is to enter into relationship. Relationships require reciprocity. Offerings, attention, devotion, time.

Sometimes service looks like daily offerings. Sometimes it looks like a lifetime vow. Sometimes it looks like listening when they say no.

Service here is not bondage. It’s contract. It’s covenant. It’s partnership, with the understanding that your allies may test you, stretch you, and demand of you what you did not expect.

The Call You Can’t Ignore

Here’s the part no one wants to admit: sometimes service chooses you.

Maybe Hekate shoves you headlong into healing training when you had no plans to pursue it. Maybe your dead refuse to let you rest until you tend them. Maybe the land spirits won’t stop gnawing at you until you protect what’s being destroyed.

When that call comes, you have a choice: ignore it, and be tormented, or answer it, and be transformed.

This doesn’t mean you say yes to everything. Discernment matters. But when the true call arrives, you’ll know. And your answer will shape your witchery for the rest of your life.

Service and Sovereignty

Service does not strip you of sovereignty. In fact, it requires sovereignty.

To serve without choice is subjugation. To serve with choice is devotion.

When you kneel at your altar, when you pour out your wine, when you cut your palm to feed the spirits, you do so as a Witch who has chosen, not as a pawn who has been forced. That choice is what makes the service powerful.

The Test of Service

Service will test you. It will stretch you into forms you never thought you’d take. It will demand things of you that feel uncomfortable, unglamorous, sometimes terrifying.

And it will reward you.

Because in service, you find power that isn’t just yours — it is braided with the power of gods, spirits, and ancestors. You become more than one Witch alone. You become part of a current that outlives you.

So don’t flinch at the word. Don’t let centuries of misuse make you forget its truth.

To serve is not to bow your head in shame. To serve is to stand in covenant, in devotion, in chosen alignment.

Ask yourself tonight: Who — or what — do I serve?

And if the answer is nothing, no one, not even the Craft itself, ask whether you are truly walking the Witch’s path, or simply wearing the mask of it.