When I shifted away from calling my practice "chaos magick", because it had shifted away from being that, I was wary of ever adopting the term "witch", despite the fact that the textbook definition was semi-accurate and that it's a common descriptor. But quite honestly, the way that I used to describe my practice most recently, as ancestral cultural practices, wasn't accurate either.
There are aspects of our practice that are very loosely and tangentially related to pre-Catholic Mexican practices (and for me more personally, Sicilian beliefs or practices, although my scholarship is lacking here and it's kind of hard to explain why I even say this, but I'll try later), but to say that our practice is ultimately based on these is inaccurate.
I think that what I've been trying to convey, or to honor, is that I've been following a complex set of experiences which have left me with impressions of these practices, but not necessarily the practices themselves. That the embeddings I've had into various kinds of spirituality amongst groups or people I've been involved with have opened the door to a kind of connection and a kind of openness to the wisdom kept closely within their practices. However, I think that I've miscommunicated and inadvertently conflated this impression with the real thing.
Meanwhile, my practice has developed along a different trajectory as experiences with guides and teachers continue to occur. Based on the actual, tangible actions within this practice, there is more than just worship occurring. The practice of magick itself has been a central part of my practice for years now, and for this reason I plan on re-introducing my practice and using the term "witch" as a descriptor.
That still feels strange, and I can't quite put my finger on why. By definition, it is accurate: a practitioner of magick, the tangible practice of which is usually rooted in pagan or neo-pagan systems.
But it's complicated, because much of the education, especially in the last year and a half, on these systems has come from guides and not books, from intuitive action and not grimoires.
This path has been complicated, but perhaps that's normal. Perhaps many of us here have found that once we open the door to wisdom, to spirits, to gods, to guides ancestral and not, that we find ourselves exploring a little, feeling out our own intuition and learning little by little what the right direction is, like someone groping about in the dark with the tiniest candle flame to guide them.