General/Non-Specific: 11:11

[wisteria27]

So today I was having tea at my local "Craft store" and I got a sudden urge to check the time. I jumped up and looked at the clock on the register and started laughing. The clerk gave me a funny look and I said, "11:11 again, happens almost everyday." She got this huge grin and told me it means I'm a "natural witch"

What do you think she means? Why is 11:11 significant? I'm curious, because it is literally almost every day. Especially at night, I'll go sit on my roof to look at the Moon and notice it's 11:11.

[SunflowerP]

She got this huge grin and told me it means I'm a "natural witch"

What do you think she means? Why is 11:11 significant? I'm curious, because it is literally almost every day. Especially at night, I'll go sit on my roof to look at the Moon and notice it's 11:11.

I don't think 11:11 in itself has wider significance, aside from the obvious 'oh, look, the numbers match!' (There's a urban legend about lulls in conversation happening at twenty past the hour, without specifying the hour, that I've also encountered in a version that has it at twenty to; this might or might not be related to an older bit of folklore about twenty past or twenty to, that I've seen oblique references to but know little about; it could be that either or both of these has further morphed, and come to be attached to other times or to matching digits, but that's speculative.) At any rate, I certainly haven't run across any widespread idea of that particular time being meaningful; you'd have to ask the shop clerk about it.

The main things, I think, are a) that you have a time that's like that for you, and b) that having such a time has to do with being a 'natural witch'.

There seem to be two main camps in Pagandom about this 'natural witch' thing (and almost certainly a third camp, even larger but less noticeable because it's not making as much noise, of people who don't give a damn): those who make a Big Deal about the concept, and those who reject it altogether and snort loudly at the first group.

The first group is frequently snort-worthy; they generally place far too much significance on innate aptitude, and often assume that having innate aptitude means one doesn't need to learn the skills. The second group, though, generally goes beyond snorting at the faulty and overblown assumptions about innate aptitude, and claims that 'there is no such thing' as a 'natural witch'.

There is no such thing as someone whose innate aptitude (whether for witchcraft, or baseball, or music, or whatever) is such that learning and developing skills is unnecessary. But just as with baseball players and musicians, there certainly are people with an innate aptitude for magic - it was in this sense that the term 'natural witch' was used for many years in the neoPagan movement.

I don't know, but I'm guessing that one or another of the authors in the Pop Pagan Book Boom of the '90s used the term, either in a way that was unclear enough on the meaning to be open to silly misinterpretation, or in a way that was actively closer to the 'don't need skills' definition (some of those authors had some, erm, idiosyncratic interpretations of concepts).

So does the fact that you have a particular time of day that often seems to be when you check a timepiece have anything to do with innate aptitude for witchcraft? I'd say likely not; if it reflects an aptitude at all, it's a fairly-accurate internal clock. (And of course it might not even be that, but just that it's occurred by chance enough times that you now strongly notice when it does happen, but don't notice nearly so strongly when you check a timepiece and it's not 11:11, so you overestimate the frequency. Human brains are weird that way.)

Sunflower