‘I’m a real-life witch, I celebrate Halloween every year with spells and spirits'
A self-proclaimed witch has described exactly how she celebrates Halloween - including casting spells and inviting spirits into her home.
Inbaal Honigman, 49, says she never looked to become a witch, but that it came to her almost like a calling.
"I didn't look to become a witch. I don't come from a spooky or spiritual background at all," she explains.
"I was taking the Tube to my regular day job, and the newspaper left on the seat by the person before me was open to an invitation to a witchcraft magic course at a big London store. I rang up to see if they were still taking any people. It was a very small intake, but I got on that course. I learned a lot about spellwork there."
Honigman adds that the first-ever successful spell she cast was a love spell, and that it taught her a very important lesson about being specific with magic.
"The most important thing in magic is stating everything you ask for. I had a whole list - someone with an accent, fair hair, cute, but the list wasn't sufficient," she explains.
"I lit a pink candle on a Friday, read out my list, and literally went right out in search of the guy. I did meet a guy that night! He was cute, blonde, and had a New Zealand accent. He was also leaving the country the following day.
"This taught me to add the important things to my list - lives in the same country, emotionally available, and unattached. When I did magic to meet my husband, I was super specific about the details and got exactly what I wanted in him."
How a real-life witch spends her Halloween
Honigman, who lives in Holmfirth, West Yorkshire, says that while she didn’t celebrate Halloween as a child, she has always been ‘fascinated’ by the spooky day.
"Halloween is a very important day in the witches' calendar. It is the witchy New Year," she adds. "It's a great time for us to have fun, dress our witchy best, and go trick or treating or meet up for rituals for those of us fortunate enough to have a community around us.
"For me personally as a witch, I'll go trick or treating with my children. I'll come back to the house, give the children a spooky dinner and make sure that they know that this is a really special festival. When they go to sleep, I celebrate my witchy Halloween, which is when the magic literally starts."
Honigman says the first step in her magical celebrations is creating a circle and looking to the year ahead, before ‘cleansing’ it with the four elements.
"I use salt to represent Earth, water to represent water, incense to represent air, and a candle to represent fire," she explains.
"I then call to the Goddess and the God. I invite my ancestors to the circle too. I use a little bell to make it easier for the spirits to find me in the dark. I then reflect on the previous year and cast spells for the year ahead. Halloween is a powerful time of the year because it's when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest."
In the past, Honigman says that her spell work has resulted in candle flames “literally dancing and rising” while she’s casting.
"If I do my Halloween ritual and I hear a knocking behind me, I would count it as a positive sign to say my wishes have been accepted," she says.
"I get a lot of strange activity around candle flame. As well as rising up, every once in a while, there will be one candle that is not happy to light no matter what - that will be a wish that's not accepted."
The witch warns that there are a 'lot' of things that can go wrong with magic, which is why the most important thing to remember when spellcasting is to be clear with your intentions.
"I would advise against doing any magic that can impact anybody at all in a negative way - whether that's to lose their job, their partner, or to feel any kind of unhappiness or misfortune," she says.
"In witchcraft, we believe in the law of the threefold return. Anything you put out, good or bad, you'll get back three times as much."
This Halloween, Honigman wants to cast spells for luck - but past Halloweens have seen her practice magic to help her conceive and even to get her children into their desired schools.
She adds: "Halloween is a great time to do magic. Once you realise that magic is real, there is no turning back."
Witchcraft in the UK dates back centuries. According to the latest census data from the Office for National Statistics, around 74,000 Brits listed their religion as Pagan, while 13,000 identified as Wicca.
Both the Pagan and Wicca religions can be linked to witchcraft, meaning there could be just shy of 90,000 witches or wizards roaming among us. Happy Halloween indeed!
More on Halloween:
Why do we celebrate Halloween? From its origins to trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving (Yahoo Life UK, 4-min read)
Dry ice: The dangerous TikTok trend you should avoid this Halloween (Yahoo Life UK, 4-min read)
Should parents take their kids trick or treating at Halloween? (Yahoo Life UK, 6-min read)
Watch: Gen Z takes Halloween parties more seriously than millennials
