There I was 10+ years into my craft, struggling to feel a connection, frustrated that I didn't feel like magic was part of my everyday life and searching frantically for an answer on how to fix all that and make it feel like it did in the beginning. You know the feeling, the first time that you watched "Practical Magic" or read "Harry Potter".
It was amazing and then you find out that there is something like that in the world, a real something that you can be part of! You search all the "Diagon Alleys" of the world looking for the perfect cauldron and that magical moment when your wand will find you. You pick up all the books and jump right in head first. Or some variation on all that. Somehow, over the years, THAT magic gets lost and the connection and enthusiasm you once had is harder and harder to cultivate. First off, don't feel bad. This happens in absolutely every religion and spiritual path. In Christianity they refer to it as being "on fire for Christ"(or not).
A few years ago I walked away from the spellcasting and potion making and my spiritual path took a New Age turn for awhile and then a metaphysical christian turn and then a Hebrew roots christian turn and then I got more into the Jewish kabbalah and Zohar teachings and they sounded a lot like the information that I learned in the New Age and I realized that, its all a big cycle and one thing invariably leads right back around to the same thing. Then I started learning more about Natural Law and that basically put everything into perspective for me. It was around this time that my broom started rattling around in the closet once again so I decided to dust off my old witches hat and get to brewin' ! I felt inspired but more than that I felt relaxed and natural about the whole thing. Of course, like most of you, I have enough witchy books to fill a library but this time I neglected them. Sure, I''ll occasionally pull out one or two for herb or moon phase references but this time I just started doing things my way instead of the "right" way and I realized something. The fantasy of witchcraft is what we lose over the years. We lose the magic because we start dragging it down to the level of reality and making IT mundane! The reason that we were so enchanted by witchcraft in the first place was because of the fantasy of it.
We all want our letters from Hogworts, to cast spells and brew potions, to flick our wands or twitch our noses and bring the magic alive in our life! Somehow we wind up making all these rules around it, categorizing it, taking it way to seriously and, guess what, our lives become just as boring as they were before. We sit around and wonder why Halloween is the only time we feel connected, feel the magic again. Well, I'll tell you; its because Halloween is the only time we allow ourselves to experience the fantasy again.
We need to be willing to get into our imaginations again, to play and fantasize again. The magical world is the world of imagination. Magic and imagination come from the same root word, for crying out loud! There is a reason that it is difficult for us though. Playing, imagining and fantasizing are very intimate things. We need to have a level of vulnerability to express ourselves. Be comfortable enough to show others who we truly are because your imagination is a very deep part of yourself. I've come to the conclusion that all the times in the movies that the witches aren't allowed to tell the truth of who they are to the normal people because they could get burned at the stake; is actually a euphemism for not showing others the truth of who we are in the magical world of our imaginations because of the fear that we'll get burned for it.
Witchcraft is fantasy, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. Its as real as you make it, but it is a different world. Fantasizing, pretending and imagining access the realm of the Divine Feminine within us. The right brain creativity, receptivity and intuition. You'll never be as psychic as you are when you are pretending. The Goddess doesn't want to be worshiped on an altar with things, she wants you to come to her world and play!
The pursuit of religions should be all about one thing: about understanding Life. Some of us are all about controlling Life, and I'm quite prepared to admit to that in my own case. That's what brought me to The Craft in the first place. The people I saw practising it seemed to have perfect control over everything, and that certainly attracted me. But Time and maturity have taught me that pursuing a belief system to get "control" is just about the same thing as the Spanish Inquisition. The pursuit of a belief system is about education. It's about learning why & how things in the World work. Things within myself. Things within Nature. Having that knowledge doesn't give you any extra powers. It gives you knowledge and that's all. But to my mind, knowledge is Everything - absolutely everything. It's the reason for Life. It's the fulcrum that existence rests upon.
ReplyDeleteYes I totally agree about knowledge. I believe that true wisdom lies in the same realm as the imagination because the first hermetic principle is Mentalism; that the ALL is mind. I feel that at times our pursuit of magic in order to gain control can lead it to being no more spiritual a task than balancing our check books. We tend to bring everything into the world of our left brain logic that way. Then (I know at least for me) wonder where the magic went.... well it exists in a different realm and all too often in our adult lives we forget how to walk through that wardrobe, ya know?
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