Witches And Witchcraft In Central New York? Is Magic Real?

Are witches and witchcraft real here in Central New York? We decided to investigate.

We interviewed Julie of Julie's Cauldron. Julie's Cauldron is a witchcraft supply store that specializes in authentic witch tools. Juelz Cullen, owner/creator took time out of her day to talk to us. She has been practicing spirituality for as long as she can remember.

I remember being three years old ghost hunting, you know, like, my whole family is into this kind of stuff. So we've been doing this for a very long time. I have a shop now called Julie's Cauldron. And my whole family they each have a shop of their own as well, which is pretty crazy. But we all do we all kind of have, you know, a decent variety of things is great having a family that have shops, because we don't need to get anything from anyone because we can all make it there you go perfect. It's like a good little like, if I need crystals, I go to this person if I need that person.

So what would you describe spirituality in witchcraft today?

To me, it's all about using your energy to manifest the life that you want. You can think of it as sort of, like the law of attraction that we use. Our family taps into Gods and Goddesses. Not everybody does. Sometimes people just call upon the universe because we're all pulling from the same source which is the cosmos. Whatever you like to call it, it's all about manifesting the life that you want.

Do you see yourself doing psychic work with that? Or is it similar to that kind of work?

Now see, when it comes to psychic abilities, that's more of like divination forms so there's a lot of different categories under the witchcraft name. The psychic abilities not everybody has fine tuned stuff like that. So stuff like your intuition and your higher faculties people haven't really you know, been taught how to work with those but you know, we definitely try to work with as many non physical attributes that we can for sure.

So you mentioned you know, you specifically in like your family, you channel into like gods and goddesses like what gods or goddesses do you channel into? And how can you read more about some of these?

Well, we tap into a lot of the Greek, the Greco Roman, gods and goddesses. So our main Goddess is Hecates. She's the queen of the witches. You have heard her name in witchy movies, even like Sabrina. She's the goddess of the crossroads. She's witchcraft herself. So there's her and then we also follow Pan. So he's essentially like the King of the witches. He's her consort. He is the god of nature, and lust and passion, which is the driving force for manifesting your desires. So we do work with them a lot, but depending on what we need, we can work with others. So I've worked with Aphrodite, we've worked with Louis. When it comes to talking to other people about what they believe in, I always just say, dive does if something interests you, if a god or goddess interests you and sparked, you know, creativity in your mind, just start Googling it. Start finding out some information, see what books you can find on whichever one you're looking into."

 

Do you do like meditations to connect to these gods? Or like, how do you get messages received from them?

You can definitely do meditating. That's a huge help when it comes to receiving messages. Also, you can get messages through dreams. You can even just like, there couldn't be something. You know, like, if you see snakes all the time. You could you could if you'd like Medusa, you can start working with Medusa head, Snakes are another symbol for her. You can also use snake for Lilith. So like, it just depends on really what what sparks your interest."

How active is the Central New York scene when it comes to witches and this type of lifestyle?

This is crazy to me, but we have quite a few witches. So our organization, I actually run a nonprofit organization. I am the president and I founded it in 2018. So it's all about teaching witchcraft. But there's 2500 members alone just in the Facebook group. And that's I have not reached everybody yet. So it was started because of Pagan Pride Day. So just to see all of the the spiritual people come through, it made me realize we do have this community and why do we only have one day to see each other. So that's really why the organization was created was to bring people together and start learning from each other no matter what path you're on. You know, we have Christian witches. We have Jewish witches, we have all sorts of different types of people.

 

And what's the name of the Facebook group again, so people can find it.

It is Witches and Heathens of CNY."

 

Do you make potions? Is that a thing?

Potions are definitely a thing. My brother is actually our family expert and potions anytime we're like, need any kind of concoction made. He's the one we go to. I actually just did a Class A workshop this past summer about actually using some of Harry Potter spells and applying it to real witchcraft. So there is some underlying things that you can take from stuff like the movies, it's just in a different way. It's not as glamorous instant, you know, like you wave a wand and boom, it's there. It takes a lot more work than that. It's not just saying these things and doing these things, if you actually have to do the work in order to get what you want, you know, you can't be like, I want a job. And then like not fill out applications, you know, like, there's steps involved.

 

You mentioned how you have workshops and stuff. What are some upcoming things you have, whether it's you know, the end of 2023 are looking ahead to next year?

Well, I usually do a monthly wicked high tea, which is where we actually decorate with hats. And then we do a Tassilo Mansi class which is tea leaf reading. And that is all about divination and in diving into looking into your future and getting signs from your tea leaves. So that's something I typically do every month I do take the winter time off because it's out on my screened in porch so that I will probably pick that back up in March. But you would definitely have to keep up to date my page but we do try and do like the solstice is celebration and all the witchy holidays so you know as long as you're following you can definitely stay up to date with that.

 

What final thoughts do you have for our audience to take away about witchcraft?

Well, I would just like people to know that we are not bad people. We are people like everybody else. I have been told throughout my life that I don't belong on this planet because of what I practice because of my spirituality. And I think that is bogus. So like, don't judge people based on the spirituality I judge people based on what their character is about."

You can learn more about Julie online here.