7 CLUES THE MAN YOU LOVE IS A BAD-ASS WIZARD

Here at WITCH, we think that anyone of any gender identification can be a witch, and we also sometimes like to call male witches “wizards” just to be specific.

Unsurprisingly, powerful bad witch ladies of the heterosexual persuasion tend to attract powerful bad wizard gentlemen. If there’s a wizard in your life, you very likely already know he is one.

He may have just told you straight-up. “Baby, I’m a wizard.”

And if he neglected to speak up about it, then the altar laden with sigils and the ever-burning incense in the corner of his room plus all those NLP tricks he pulled on your first date (hey, they worked! he got himself into your bed, didn’t he?) and also the piles of books by Castaneda and Crowley on his shelves were probably some damn easy wizardly tip-offs.

Still, there’s plenty of boring guys who are interested in magical stuff but who don’t got the actual electrical power to make their magic work.

So we think it’s fun to spend some time reflecting on and celebrating the unique tell-tale qualities of a truly bad-ass wizard.

1. He pays really, really close attention.

This pretty much sums it up. I just didn’t want to title this essay “1 Clue the Man You Love is a Bad-Ass Wizard.”

Wizard attention is amazing.

There’s a stereotype in our society of men as clueless creatures who are vaguely aware of the women around them and mostly concerned with football scores and stock quotes.

Maybe this stereotype adequately describes most muggle dudes, but it’s a long, long way from nailing the wizards of this world.

Wizards, above and beyond anything else, are distinguished by the quality of their attention.

Wizards are born with a larger-than-usual quantity of attention, and they usually spend years of their life cultivating it through meditation and deep focus on an arcane craft – whether that arcane craft is plant alchemy or computer programming.

If you’ve ever experienced wizard attention after a long drought of being surrounded by dull muggles, you know that it’s an extraordinary phenomenon worth celebrating.

There you are, minding your own business at a party, chatting with some friends, and then out of the blue you find yourself locking eyes with a man who zeroes in on you and then proceeds to boldly peer into the seldom-penetrated groves of your soul’s dark forest.

You can tell that he’s perceiving subtle details of your being that may be unknown even to you.  The effect is unnerving and highly erotic.

So your average bro may have absolutely no idea what makes your confusing, contradictory feminine self tick.

But if your man’s a wizard, he’s not so easily baffled. He has some clear insights into the thorny thickets of your heart and when you’re in his presence you rarely feel “unseen” or “unheard.”

In fact, you may sometimes wish that he would just for one day pay a little less close attention to you because all that pure awareness that he gives you – loving though it is – can make you feel quiveringly vulnerable.

And who the fuck wants to feel vulnerable all the time? Probably just Brené Brown, that’s who. The rest of us would prefer to be stealth and invulnerable for at least 23 hours of the day, thanks.

2. He won’t put up with your bullshit.

All the tricksy ego games and the “I’m a frail, broken bird!” flailing around that you perhaps previously used to get muggle men to do your bidding just don’t work on your wizard.

Thanks to that exceptional attention he’s cultivated, he’s able to see right through your smokescreens and deflections.

He doesn’t buy your incapable act, even when you’re really giving it an Oscar-worthy performance.

He looks at you and sees an astoundingly powerful woman, period. As affirming and fun as that sounds, it can be damn annoying.

It’s less than comfortable to be fully seen as the amazing being that you are and then have your lover consistently suggest that you go around embodying all that amazingness in your daily life all the time.

The worst is when he actually dares to get angry with you because he sees that you’re lying to yourself about how awesome you are.

3. He loves to work.

Poser wizards, like basic witches, do not love to work.

They like to smoke pot and play video games and post on Reddit all day.

Actual bad wizards, on the other hand, are deeply in touch with the magical value of hard labor.

They chop wood, carry water, and are happy to be of service.

4. He’s got skeletons in his closet. Literally and figuratively.

A man doesn’t get to be a wizard by following all the rules his Sunday school teacher laid out for him.

Pretty much all the wizards I know who are now upstanding pillars of our local magical community have scandalous pasts: drug addictions, visits to prostitutes, arrests for vandalizing and rioting.

Of course from a magical point of view those experiments aren’t really scandalous, they’re just, well, experiments.

In addition to these metaphorical skeletons-in-the-closet, it’s also very likely that your wizard collects actual bones, crystal skulls, and other precious momento mori.

Because you can’t do magic if you don’t have a deep and conscious relationship with your own inevitable death.

5. He picks up on weirdly secret things about people.

Again, this trait is most unnerving when he’s picking up on weirdly secret things about you.

But you notice that he does it elsewhere in the world.

He’s got a Sherlock Holmes-like way of accurately deducing intimate details of people’s lives from just a brief introduction.

6. He’s volatile.

Wizards tend to be both highly sensitive and highly in touch with their emotions.

You don’t have to wonder what he’s feeling. It’s very evident. He weeps and yells and then a few minutes later he’s radiating love and joy.

His emotional life is potent, high-voltage, and unambiguous.

Though our culture often associates masculinity with stoic unfeelingness, it’s important to remember that the heat and volatility of your wizard isn’t a sign of his weakness but rather a sign of one of his great strengths.

The volatility of wizards isn’t just average moodiness.

The volatile phase is actually part of the alchemical process from which wizards draw their power.

Emotional alchemy is an ongoing process of dissolving the baser elements in himself, integrating the feminine part of his soul into his person, and drawing to the forefront the pure gold of his being.

In other words, wizards are emotional because they’re not numb or shut off to the muck of their souls, they’re treading knee-high in it and working through it.

7. He gives you things before you know you need them…. because he knows, somehow. In advance.

Remember when I said that wizards are able to see you even better than you see yourself? That talent gets downright eerie when they start to anticipate your wants and needs.

Case in point: I told my wizard that I wanted to make LUSH-style bath melts out of essential oils and soap and salt to give as gifts to friends for Christmas.

My wizard spontaneously then went out and bought bath melt making supplies for me.

Now friends, it’s been a long hard road for me to overcome my havingness issues and I still struggle sometimes to accept good things when they come to me.

So in this case, I just didn’t accept what my wizard brought at all!

Instead, I told him I didn’t like the supplies he chose and that I would prefer to order my own, thank you.

He was sad. He said he noticed that I was busy and he thought I might not get around to ordering the bath melt making supplies, so he had done the best he could to get them for me, but since I didn’t like them he would just hold on to them and use them for something. I said “Harrumph.”

Then it turned out that I was very busy in December.

I completely and one hundred percent forgot to order the supplies that I thought I wanted.

Suddenly there I was, scratching my head a few days before Christmas about what I was going to do for gifts.

And then I remembered: the stuff my wizard got! The same stuff that I insulted and rejected! I could use it to make bath melts!

And thus, Christmas was saved. By my wizard. Who knew. In advance. Mysteriously.

And who anticipated and fulfilled my need accordingly.

Thank god for wizards.

If you’ve found a genuine bad-ass wizard to have and to hold you can count yourself lucky.

They’re relatively rare creatures.

So if you’ve got a wizard within kissing distance reach over and give him a squeeze.

As amazing as we magical people are, navigating a relationship with a witch or wizard can be tricky business that totally blows your havingness levels all the livelong day.

 

IN CONCLUSION

If this essay resonates with you, please join our WITCH email list by using the forms on this website so we can stay in touch.

 

cover image: The Witch’s Son by Lauren Nichols

 

Merken