Why ‘White Rose’? The Story Behind The Name

I want to explain the story behind the name ‘White Rose Witching’. For a long time I’ve wanted to be more open about my spirituality and at the beginning of 2020 I decided to create a website where I could work out some of my thoughts on witchcraft and spiritual practice, share some of the things that I do, and hopefully find a way to connect with my local community and give back. At worst, this is a creative outlet and at best, some folks out there might connect with some of the things I do or ways I think about witchcraft.

While this project represents a step in me being more public about being a witch I still wanted to keep distance between my day job and some of the spaces I’m not necessarily “out of the broom closet”. This meant I needed to find a name to operate under other than my real name. I spent a long while thinking about this until one afternoon I had a sudden flash of inspiration - or an ancestor whisper in my ear - and knew I had to incorporate the idea of ‘White Rose’ into my practice.

The White Rose was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group developed and lead by students from the University of Munich towards the end of World War II. It was a short-lived effort, beginning in June of 1942 and ending with the arrest by the Gestapo of many of the core leaders in February 1943. During this short time they used leaflets and graffiti to spread an anti-Nazi message encouraging their fellow Germans to actively oppose Hitler. They used Biblical references and the works of noted German poets and scholars as a way to highlight that Nazism was inherently at odds with what it meant to be German. They printed six leaflets which were initially spread around Munich - tucked into phone books in telephone booths, placed around the University campus - before an expanding network began distributing the leaflets to other students and professors in other cities. Despite the arrest and execution of the core members, and subsequent dissolution of the group, their final leaflet was smuggled to the United Kingdom whereupon copies were dropped over German cities by Allied planes.

I learned about the White Rose when I was undergraduate student and their story has always stuck with me. At first, I was amazed by the thought of students rallying together to try to take one what must have seemed like a gargantuan foe. As I grew older and repeatedly circled back to reading and reconnecting with their legacy I developed an even greater respect for their courage and an appreciation for how even small acts of resistance can ripple out in unexpected ways.

At the tail end of 2019 I was a much different person than I was the last time I had explored online resources documenting the White Rose. I was in a country that was three years into the Trump regime with all its attendant horrors. I was three years past the Pulse massacre, my own jarring awakening into political activism. I was in a country that was governed by a political party that had only grown more openly tolerant of white supremacy only two years after the neo-Nazi and white nationalist occupation of Charlottesville.

When the name ‘White Rose’ sprang to mind everything suddenly clicked. Since 2016 I had been finding my voice as an activist and advocate and so the history of this short-lived resistance group spoke to me in a new way. I saw the history of this group in a new light as the media and some folks around me attempted to provide space for an emboldened white nationalist movement under the premise of “free speech”. I thought about my own fears and anxieties in speaking out and how that paled in comparison the risks these students took to combat a fully entrenched authoritarian regime. I had also embraced the intersection of my queerness with my spirituality, embarking on a path in which they supported one another’s growth, and this lead to really understand witchcraft as a political tool. I was late to the game on things like Aradia but shortly after the 2016 election I found myself devouring books, blog posts, and articles about activism-informed-witchcraft and witchcraft-informed-activism.

The name ‘White Rose Witching’ coalesced around the ideas that:

A small group can make an impact beyond anything they might expect.

Direct engagement with local community through education and empowerment is a powerful tool and weapon against oppression and injustice.

Sharing knowledge is a powerful act of resistance.

Witchcraft is, and has always been, a tool and weapon of the oppressed.

Those who risked their lives to stand up against injustice can inspire and guide us as we continue their work.

If you are interested in learning more about the White Rose I highly recommend this lecture by Dr. Alexandra Lloyd as part of Oxford University’s Bodleian Library BODcast. You can also read copies of the leaflets created by this resistance group on the Center for White Rose Studies website.