I have witchblood in my veins and that's awesome

I recently discovered that I’m related to George Pickingill, a 19th-century English “cunning man” who has been called the Father of Modern Witchcraft. Pickingill lived in Canewdon, Essex, and became something of a legend in his lifetime.

Weird stories surrounded dogged him through his life: that he could command spirits, that he kept covens of witches to do his bidding, that he passed down his knowledge through bloodlines. Some folklorists later credited him with shaping ideas that fed into Wicca and modern pagan practice, especially the notion of hereditary witchcraft—that magic and ritual can be carried through families like an heirloom, written in their witchy DNA.

I find the idea of inherited tradition both fun and inspiring, even if the history is tangled with myth. When I smudge sage or set intentions, I sometimes think about him and how he worked his craft in rural England, and how those echoes might ripple forward in ways he could never have imagined.

Witchcraft, after all, is as much about storytelling and continuity as it is about ritual. Whether George Pickingill was truly the figure folklore made him out to be doesn’t matter as much as the fact that people believed, and that those beliefs seeded the practices that continue today. For me, the connection feels like an invisible thread: a reminder that our daily rituals tie us into something older, stranger, and beautifully human.