> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.missingwitches.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What is a Coven in the Age of Polycrisis? - URL: https://www.missingwitches.com/what-is-a-coven-in-the-age-of-polycrisis/ - Published: 2026-11-11T19:55:10.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-11T19:55:10.000Z - Description: To be truly seen and held for all we are. - Author: Jasmin Stoffer ### **To be a witch is to act against the systems of oppression that have motivated us to use the term witch in the first place.** A coven is a sacred space of community where witches come together to revel in magic, perform ritual, cling to each other in times of persecution, and worship nature. The coven is the safe place, the base to return to when our batteries are low, our identities questioned, and our fear overwhelming. The coven is our mother space. **Read*:* [*What is a Coven? What is a Witch?*](https://www.missingwitches.com/what-is-a-coven-what-is-a-witch/) ### **A coven is for collective meaning-making**. When systems fail, and dominant narratives collapse, covens offer spaces to construct alternative frameworks for understanding what is happening. They create room for non-linear, embodied, and relational ways of knowing what these crumbling institutional structures often miss. Deep care. Creativity. Questioning authority. Respect (from which the root means “to see”) for identity and acceptance without judgement. ### **A coven is where we cultivate mutual-aid and interdependence.** Covens model small-scale, trust-based networks of care and resource sharing. Just look at the [Missing Witches Reparations fundraiser](https://www.missingwitches.com/mwrf2026/). Where the coven motivates each member to send financial reparations to their local Indigenous organizations. Where we know that our donations are, instead, reparations, it is what witches owe existing on stolen land. In polycrisis, when formal support systems become unreliable and unsafe, these intimate circles practice interdependence that other movements like Disability Justice ([Sins Invalid's 10 principles of Disability Justice](https://sinsinvalid.org/10-principles-of-disability-justice/?ref=missingwitches.com)) recognize is how we keep each other alive. [10 Principles of Disability Justice | Sins Invalid![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b0/b2/b0b2b0c5-0324-4ded-8c78-fb468356e3e1/content/images/icon/cropped-Untitled-design-270x270-16d18362-8b06-4ea1-9abc-4d6df4e06042.png)Sins Invalid![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b0/b2/b0b2b0c5-0324-4ded-8c78-fb468356e3e1/content/images/thumbnail/bannerfinalfinalfinal-1238a833-1fdb-492f-ae10-0ad3ef95d487.jpg)](https://sinsinvalid.org/10-principles-of-disability-justice/?ref=missingwitches.com) ### **Coven is where belonging becomes body alchemy in service of community.** To be truly seen and held for all we are, hurt and desire and the masks we must wear to protect both, saturates the body with oxytocin. Every time we are held in this way, our cells are transformed, building pathways to seek out more. In Coven, bodies nourished in belonging don't hide or fight in self-defence; they seek out others. Our primal instincts become “Who needs help? Who can help?” in Coven and out. Liberation cannot wait for safety. But it can be carried by bodies that have learned, again and again, how to transmute connection into more connection. ### **A coven is where ritual acts as resistance and processing.** Ritual provides structure for processing grief, rage, and overwhelm. These are emotions that polycrisis generates almost constantly. Our collective ritual magic transforms passive despair into embodied practice, creating space to metabolize what feels unmetabolizable. Where we share the burden of our reactions and channel that rage, that love, that hope, and whatever else we feel, into collective happenings. ### **Covens can model the world we are trying to build**. Non-hierarchical, consent-based, honouring multiple forms of knowledge and leadership. They are laboratories for practicing collective governance, collective access and work towards collective liberation outside capitalist and ableist logics. ### **Covens reclaim marginalized knowledge**. Historically, “witch” has been a label for those who threatened power. Healers, midwives, enslaved peoples, disabled people, queer folks, those who held knowledge outside the sanctioned institutions. Covens reclaim these epistemologies precisely when we need them most. ## Isolation is a feature of polycrisis. The system wants us siloed, separated and segregated. It doesn’t want class solidarity through mutual understanding based not only on accepting differences, but realizing our deep similarities as we all exist here on Mother Earth. **Covens counter this by creating intentional, committed relationships that hold us through despair and remind us that we are not facing any of this alone.** Covens are a space where [crip wisdom](https://www.autostraddle.com/sins-invalids-birthing-dying-becoming-crip-wisdom-features-crip-art-activism-love-and-liberation-354749/?ref=missingwitches.com), interdependence, and non-normative ways of being are not only accommodated, but are foundational. Where our diverse and ever-changing access needs shape our ritual, not the other way around. ### **Covens are the place where magic is real.** The coven magic of interdependence, mutual aid, collective care and meaning-making demonstrates what comes after the end of empires, when the polycrisis we experience finally ends, and we all ask ourselves, ‘now what?’ Covens are there to show what can happen after. When it all burns down, the coven space, like our pyrophyte kin, will grow and create that wondrous future where we are all free, whether we are witch or not. ## The coven magic of interdependence, mutual aid, collective care and meaning-making demonstrates what comes after the end of empires. That wondrous future where we are all free. --- ⚡ We went looking for the witches we were missing, and we found them. The Missing Witches Coven is home to solitary practitioners, community leaders, techno pagans, crones, baby witches, neuroqueers, and folks who just hug trees and have been looking for their people. We'd love for you to join us. [Find out More. ](https://coven.missingwitches.com/membership/?ref=missingwitches.com)