How to Become a Witch (36 page)

Authors: Amber K.

Tags: #amber k, #azrael arynn k, #witchcraft, #beginning witch, #witch, #paganism, #wicca, #spells, #rituals, #wiccan, #religion, #solitary witch, #craft

In cases like these, do what it takes now to keep yourself and your family safe, then discuss the situation with friends, elders, and legal counsel before you choose your next step. Use your divination and your magick. Do not take on a whole town, school system, or mob unless wisdom and honor demand it. If there is no other choice and you must confront injustice, then do it intelligently and find all the allies you can. The Craft has had enough martyrs.

Becoming a Witch isn’t a game. It’s about your whole life and how you will live for all the years ahead. It’s about your heart and mind and spirit, and even about your safety and survival. But it’s not just about you. It’s about the well-being of the people you love, and the community where you live, and the ancestors who lived and died so that you could be here and make these choices.

Choose wisely. In fact, we would ask a favor of you. If you decide you are a Witch and that you will be open about it, don’t tell the world for a year and a day. Learn everything you can about the Craft so that you may speak from knowledge. Cultivate your serenity and inner strength. Judge your words and actions before you speak or act, and then act and speak from love and kindness. Learn to see the magick all around you, so that curiosity and wonder are alive within you. Remember that you are holy and all people around you are sacred, and light the world with the radiance of the Goddess and God within you.

After that, if it seems wise, let the world know that you are a Witch. Then you will do honor to the Craft, the ancestors, and yourself.

Conclusion

The Path from This Place
Ever Learning, Ever Changing

M
any seek, a few may find,

Touching magick, wielding power,

That Witchcraft feeds the heart and mind,

I am a Witch at every hour.

Witchcraft: not what the movies and fantasy novels told us. Obviously no green skin, pointy hats, or soaring across the full moon on your broomstick. No miraculous magickal powers, no constant drama, certainly no evil-sorceress stuff and neither the shriveled, cackling hag nor the voluptuous, eternally sexy dark queen.

Just a lot of real people, walking a different path to Spirit that involves a lot of hard work. It’s not the One True Path, a title which has been claimed by a hundred other religions around the world. There is no one-size-fits-all spiritual truth, not for us little folks circling an average star in a corner of one ordinary galaxy out of millions. How arrogant to believe that our little minds could encompass the whole truth, God-Reality-the-Universe-and-Everything, when most of us can’t even do algebra.

There is no One True Path for all humanity. But there is one that is right for you, that fits your needs and understanding at this time in your life. It might be Witchcraft; it might not. Nobody can decide for you.

You probably do need something, you know. Some kind of religious or philosophical framework that gets you through life, some clear set of beliefs that enables you to play well with others and to like what you see in the mirror. All religions are attempts to provide that and also to give you a chance at reconnecting with what is real and true and good at the heart of things. Don’t we all have a sense of longing, a sense that somewhere everything is the way it should be? That there’s a haven, a sanctuary, in your mother’s lap or your lover’s arms, in heaven or paradise or Summerland, on a distant star or in a dream? And isn’t religion, each religion, just a knapsack of ideas and supplies to help you in your search for that place? And don’t we each travel a different road and need different things on that journey?

Choosing your path is a big deal. Choose wrong, and you’ll spin your wheels in theological mud, get lost on some dead end of conflict and confusion, or mistake the road for the destination.

If you choose Witchcraft, you are choosing a lifestyle, a fluid and evolving set of beliefs and a certain way of understanding and experiencing life. You are also choosing to ally yourself with a community of seekers, all gathered under one banner but each one unique. Some Witches are the finest, truest, best friends and sisters and brothers you could ever hope to walk with—and some are selfish, shallow, irritating creeps that take all the “fun” out of dysfunctional. In other words, they’re human. Just as human as anyone of any faith you might meet anywhere. But most of us, most of the time, are trying our best to become
better
people.

What is it about Witchcraft that calls to you? Is there something that whispers in your blood, some past-life heritage or ancestral voice that calls you back to the old ways when we were one with earth, blood kin to every creature that runs or flies or swims?

Is it the Goddess and knowing that a woman is so much more than a virgin, a sex kitten, or a bitch? A mighty affirmation that female
is
sacred, that the mysteries and body-knowing and birthing, creating, nurturing, sustaining, protecting ways of women are the prime and essential core of life. That you, girl, are
good
?

Is it the deep certainty that God, the male part of the Divine, is much, much more than either a nice man in a white robe or an evil-tempered tyrant in the sky? That God is and must be the quickening, bright, joyful dancer at the gates of dawn, the loving father and bold explorer and wise healer and a thousand other ways for men to be?

Is it simply this, that sacredness and the heart of creation are in the forests and seas and mountains, that nature is holy everywhere and always, and the books and temples and rules of men are a pale shadow of the power and grace of the earth?

Or is it still deeper and subtler, a sense that the world we see is only a fragment of All That Is, that there are realms and realities beyond this one—in the world of spirit, on the astral planes, in dimensions half-seen by mystics and magicians—that you must explore?

You can still walk away from Witchcraft. There are many excellent spiritual paths and ways of life that can help you grow, enjoy life, and progress toward your destiny. You might be very happy giving your heart to one of the mainstream faiths…or casting aside religion and turning to rational, humanist values…or seeking contentment in your family and career, looking no further than the good things immediately in front of you.

If not—if the moonlight calls you, and you can hear the panpipes and see the flames of the sabbat bonfire dancing—we’ll be waiting in the forest, in a circle near the old oak tree.

Appendix A

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