Grace The Witch

 I am Grace, a Ghanaian Italian Witch,  consulting astrologer and forever student of the craft, podcaster, sometimes writer and anti-academic researcher. Formerly a very successful hospitality manager, I’m your classic 21st century working class, immigrant first generation story of overwork-underpay dynamics, to support a family back home and my academic studies here in the UK (foolery).  In my academic life I’m exploring the spectrum and construction of identity, belonging and spirituality while engaging with the socio-economic intersections of mythology, capitalism and the psyche. 

You will usually find me holding space with London’s community collectives Misery Party, Sex&Rage, Fertile Souls and Shadow Sistxrs Fight Club. When I’m not holding Community Space you can find me over at The Community Witch Podcast, a place where Activism is led by Spirit and Astrology is centred around the Black and Brown experience.  

I was born from of a past disrupted, displaced and taken away from its own power. One day I will tell my story, for now I help others discovering how they tell theirs.  

Despite a lot of the life I lived – and trust me it’s a lot of life, I consider myself incredibly lucky as my Ancestors stand by my side. I was raised with the language and knowledge to hear their voices and meet their stories and their traditions. Roman Secrets and Venetian Alchemy with a touch of Celtic herbalism, West African divination, restorative community practices and the path of the Orishas. I belong to a long lineage of souls and individuals that tried their best to support their communities.  

I started my esoteric and occult training at age 10: I absolutely hated it because it was boring and nobody else was doing it. Nonetheless, by age 13 I was already fluently reading tarot, barraca cards, simple astrology charts and some alchemical formulas. I would spend summer evenings showing the planetary transits to the naked eye of my friends. We would spend days in archives and bookstores finding spells of forgotten Venetian Prostitutes and Streghe. At school you could find me at the back of the class reading apocryphal gospels and occult diaries. I was born a miracle, with the Tools of The Craft and the Voice of the Ancestors. It’s been 28 years of experience already.   

My Astrology is a work of displacement. My training has been mostly within the traditional Greek-Roman framework of mythology, thaumaturgy, alchemy and correspondence, especially as I was lucky enough to have access to Latin and Italian Renaissance Astrology. Nonetheless I was raised in the ‘90s so the modern psychological (Jungian methodology) is the system I’m currently working to dismantle and re-appropriate. In my Shadow Work section, you can read more about Jung’s antiblackness, and I do invite you to engage with my podcast to discover my research around displaced cosmologies and misplaced realities. Quoting W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk:  

“[…] Instead of saying directly, how does it feel to be a problem? They say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; At these I smile or reduce the boiling to a simmer as the occasion May Require. To the real question, how does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word”  

This is where I place my work: Astrology becomes a language useful to Black and Brown people to navigate Euro-American society. Capitalism is the chart with its own archetypes, genealogies and complexes; how do we deconstruct our imposed identity while we explore our history, the myths and legends we imagine about ourselves within and without this world? How do we recognise the powers we learn to use to “mask” or “armour” in a society that is formed on our social, cultural, economic and psychological subjugation as Other?  How do we displace white-centric archetypes, rediscovering an history and tradition for all?  My work is deeply influenced by my social and spiritual activism and resistance as well as my academic studies. I’m currently researching around construction of self and the Angular houses through the writings of Du Bois, Fanon and Morrison, Chiron, Blackness as cultural capital and the bestialization of archetypal wisdom, traditional Mars and the gender fluidity of Italic Marte. 

Thank you for trusting me.