an Occult Wander & Narrative
by Tess Woods, Paul Moran,
Freya Weil, Esten Hurtle, & friends
with music by
Witch Paths is a street game playable on location in San Francisco.
It is played by wandering short (~0.5 mi.) to long (~3 mi.) distances in SF, reading prose, and sharing insights inspired by these themed routes.
If you are unable to attend in person, astral projection or sending a familiar in your stead is allowed & encouraged.
The first paths open X/X, subsequent releases follow fortnightly.
Please contact witch@occultweather.com if you encounter any difficulties accessing the stories or the spaces.
A valid email address is required to grant you a Hidden Name, your key to game progression through Witch Paths and other Occult Weather projects.
After you've received your login info, select your archetype, arrive at their starting location, and follow your path.
Your information has been submitted, please await an email for a Hidden Name
The modern witch plots many paths through the city.
She sets out pursuing secret self-contemplation or open dialogue with the world, alone or with comrades, in high hopes or low moods, running toward dreams or away from nightmares. Every subtle shift in the city's desires shapes the journey a magician takes through her day.
Left- & right-hand paths converge at every crossroads. Spirits of place call those of sworn allegiance to cleave to their codes, and ask those of liminal or chaotic mind to turn whichever way works their will.
Ways can be wound through the buried past or into half-sighted futures, with spirits raised and charms worked across weeks of daily pilgrimage.
The landscape sustains every mode of seeing & being, across history & species. A map is an inexhaustible substrate for meaning, its power in magic cannot be underestimated.
 The ley figures that course invisibly through San Francisco have been recorded by those who channel its geography.
A brief sample of their journeys is made available to you here, by means of haunted glass & quickened stone.
We invite you to divine the Paths that call to you, to trace the steps of witches who built their particular practices on this shore. Read their lives and draw inspiration into your own.
Anyone among the sorcerous sort, from acolyte to adept, can pull from this footfall archive to wander the hidden realms of sign & story.
Trust in your Path, trust in your wandering, trust in your fellow witches.
The Oracle navigates the currents of the way things are to be.
She scrys along the stormfront of possible futures, marking bearings of chronal winds as she scopes potent signs on the horizon.
Path Opens Soon.
The Visionary unfolds his psyche into a technicolor chart of the universe, trusting set and setting to provide him with eternal icons of artistic expression and recursive truth.
She is keen to interpret for others the fractal meaning encountered on shared shamanic journeys.
Path Opens Soon.
The Mechanist scours streets for wasted items and forgotten artifacts, seeking to reverse engineer the universe’s machine from its cast-off cogs.
He builds new contexts for ephemera, refusing to let refuse fade from personal significance.
Path Opens Soon.
The Herbalist plants their desires in loam, so that their intentions may bloom into communal care.
They revive traditions passed down from ancestors who saw the city at its roots, long ago.
Path Opens Soon.
The Animist sings the songs of non-human people, giving voice to life all around them.
They make friends across all scales of being, from worm to whale, tulpa to egregore; every animal is familiar to them, no matter the creature’s distance from the human domain.
Path Opens Soon.
The Devotee faithfully observes the rituals and laws of zir deity, preaching the true word
in divine tongues to any who might care to try on the tradition-forged armor of belief.
Ze holds in zir mind the unspeakable splendor of zir god’s many names so that ze may bless those in need of righteous uplift.
Path Opens Soon.
