I have been having some interesting conversations of late with various Witches and pagans in wellington, some from here and some from not here. One that struck me as being quite interesting was one about what the various levels of witchcraft, although levels is not quite the right word, and the different aspects of Druidry, namely OBOD Duridry, and not surprisingly these aspects and levels come in threes. Perhaps within witchcraft and Wicca there should be more emphasis on aspects as opposed to levels as to me that just smacks of elitism with judgemental pants and hierarchy, where as aspects is more about following where your own heart and skills take you. Anywhoo i have not heard the various levels and aspects explained this way, and it struck a chord, thus i thought i would share some of my ponderings, which start like this.. if i was ever to create a ‘tradition’ what would this aspect of it look like?
I think for me there would be three aspects, as well in a way three levels, but without the overt of nasty hierarchy of your doing it wrong.. gosh that sounds difficult.. lets see.. to start at the beginning..
The first level would be Witch, when a person first starts out, when they are finding their feet and learning about magic, witchcraft, and the basics, so to speak. The grounding framework of this type of path. This would not necessarily take a year and a day, for some it might be longer and for others it might take less. I believe this obsession with things taking a year and a day is for some quite unrealistic. Sure its fine if you like formulaic styles, “and by the word of the god and goddess this first phase will take a year and a day as they have decreed.. blar blar blar”. Not really me, i am much more of a person who is comfortable to go with what feels right, and for me, this initial stage of being a witch was well over a year. Before i learnt anything or perhaps it is more accurate to say that before i stepped? Found? Was pushed *cough* onto this path, i was a seeker. I knew that there was something out there calling, but could not find it, however i was defiantly looking. From the ages of about 16ish to the age of around 24 i was seeking, i went to the theosophical society, various talks on various spiritualities, talked long hours with a naturopath, and homeopathy, and various other ‘alternative’ healers and thinkers. It was not until i was 24 and a friend gave me a deck of cards that my feet start to find this path of the Witch. My years as a beginner where fruitful and full of the wonder of discovery, reading, experimenting, talking, formulating ideas and then reformulating them as i learnt more and then having that all change as i experienced things that are difficult to put into words.
The second step if you will, is a more conscious one and for me, although i did not think of it as such until recently, is that of the priestess or priest if you are a boy. As i said this step is a more conscious one, as opposed to the sometimes foundering around that i did in the first step, i did not and have not lost the Witch aspect, as it is very defiantly who i am and how i live my life, but i am also priestess, and this came about during an odd spontaneous dedication ritual, where i made myself known to the divine, and that i was open to the divine will, but at the time i perhaps didn’t see it in those exact words, but then on one level i am currently wondering if i did.. *ponders this*. Anyway, i can remember the dedication, me standing in front of my altar, with my naked self, just me and the divine, stating firmly that i was purposely stepping on to this path, i was making a very conscious choice to continue on this path that felt so much like home.
The third step? Aspect? Is that of teacher, or what i am calling teacher because this is how my path has formed. Just over a year ago i did a self witnessed dedication, some might call it an initiation, but as i do not belong to any tradition as such, i have come to see it has a dedication, where i once again dedicated myself to the divine, and my community as Witch and Priestess, this was a couple of months before is started to ‘offically’ teach others in small classes, to impart knowledge and what i knew and also encourage others to figure out what and where their path lies. I have come to realise that it dosn’t matter what style, tradition, formal or informal path you chose to walk on, if it is not speaking to you, if it doesn’t raise your spirit, move you, then it is not for you, and i am happy to help those who are looking to find what path that they are crying out for, no matter if that is pagan of whatever flavour, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever.. just so long as it speaks.
Now the thing about these levels is that they are also aspects to, because i have not forgotten or forgone what came first, i am still a Witch, a Priestess, and now a Teacher, and while i have and am experiencing all three, i also can see that each is important in its own right, none is more or better than the other, they are aspects as opposed to levels. Which neatly brings me to the second three aspects of my imaginary tradition. These three are much stronger aspects and not so much level as they are quite important in their own right. Now Ali from Meadowsweet and Myrrh sums up these three aspects quite beautifully, so instead of me bumbling along you should go along there and read what she says. *nods*..
Druidry i have been told recently is not so much about the levels in a hierarchal sense but more in teh sense of giving a space and framework for people to try out all manor of things that they may or may not have any talent in or draw to. And that this is so that they may find that aspect, that talent and that calling which is home and become a mastercrafts person, so to speak.
Right back now, ok so when you mix both of the threes together, i find that this path becomes less about who is grand poohbar and who has reached the highest level, nor is it about the race to the top to see who can get there the fastest because to do or believe any of the afore mentioned i believe means that the message of this path has been lost. However for me the mixing of these three aspects, these three learning stages, these levels if you will is more about understanding and learning where your or in my case my talents lie. For me it was about teaching and ministry but not in the sense of healing, or counselling but more in the way of helping light up someone else’s way, or as i was to learn helping them light up their own way, these things are and have been much more important to me than being at the top or having teh official initiations of “insert tradition here” tradition. But having said that, if that is your path, and is what speaks to you, being and or finding a tradition to belong to or to initiate into, then i am more than happy to help you find that, more than happy to help you understand what that means to you, because that is my path as Witch, Priestess, and Teacher.
Of course i wonder if there is further steps, and if i really did have a tradition how that would work in with other things that i believe traditions have or need.. hmm.. *ponders*..
What would you tradition look like if you equated your journey so far to one?
*contemplates navel*
Showing posts with label witch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label witch. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
are you pagan enough? you are pagan enough
I have been reading around the internet on various message boards and other places of pagan focus, of late and what i keep coming across is the attitude of ‘your doing it wrong’ or you shouldn’t be doing this, or you can’t do it that way, or you can only do it this way and you know what, this bugs me a lot. It makes me roll my eyes and wonder why and how some people can be so closed minded that they are unable to put themselves in others shoes, or unable to conceive that the actually may be a different way of doing it, and that that different way while not working for them may well work for another. The other reason this makes me roll my eyes and bash my head against the wall is the fact that with in Modern Paganism there is no central authority or liturgy or governance or papal authority to tell us how it is, it doesn’t exist.. zip narda nothing, thus those that are stating that you should or shouldn’t are actually going about it all wrong or in the word of so many other pagans out there.. ‘YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG’
Of course with no central authority, liturgy, governance or papal authority there is no doing it wrong, instead there is doing what feels right. Now if you join up with a group, grove or coven of a particular tradition there will be rules and indeed a central type authority even a coven book of shadows which will need to be adhered to, of course you will have permitted to adhere to these rules and authority by the initial step of joining said group, grove, or coven. However if you are a solitary or no longer wish to belong to or take part in that group, grove or coven, the rules etc of that group, grove or coven no longer apply. Paganism in its many forms is after all a religion of assent. That is you assent to be a part of that religion or spirituality or group and for as long as you associated with that religion, spirituality or group you identify yourself that way. I.e. I am a ‘insert tradition here’ wiccan, because i am a member of this ‘insert tradition here’ wiccan group. Whereas if you stop associating with that group or grove or coven, you are no longer that you no longer identify with whatever religion or spirituality it was. Ie, i used to be a Wiccan of ‘insert tradition here’ but i left and now i am a Buddhist. In the example the person is no longer assenting to be Wiccan of whatever tradition but instead assenting to be Buddhist. Ostensibly with communities of assent a person chooses to belong or not to belong.
So back to the should and should nots, one of the other ways of defining what something actually means, cause you know the hugest flameings happen around terminologies and authority, *this is me once again rolling eyes* is majority consensus, that is that most of the people agree with this statement or this interpretation of x.. For example.. Wiccan Witch Wicca Witchcraft. As far as i can tell there is a group of people out there getting their panties in a bunch over these terms and how they are to be used and not be used, and there are a bunch of people out there who use these terms interchangeably and there are some people in-between.. a sliding scale if you will.
Language like many things in this world is quite fluid, and living, English is a living language thus prone to change, and change of meaning, for example, arse, now about 8 years ago, when hanging out with a group of friends, when the comment arse! was said, it meant that an error had accoutred.. someone had forgotten to bring their wallet, or someone had dropped their phone, it was said when misfortune occurred, however when a new friend was introduced into the group she had a new meaning for the word. How she used it was that whenever anyone said arse, it meant that they had spotted a tight perky look worthy specimen of arse and that we should all look at it. Quite a different meaning from the original one of misfortune. As you may be able to guess the transition of arse from one of denoting misfortune to one of site to behold, was a very quick one, and one that expanded out beyond the core group of friends to that of associates and acquaintances and occasionally hangers on. It is also interesting to note that this new usage, while continued for a couple of years did eventually fall into disuse, actually the word arse itself also pretty much fell into disuse.. arr younglings so fickle.
Right then back to Wiccan Witch Wicca Witchcraft. When a person is first starting out or discovering this path of magic and paganism, they are bombarded with a variety of words, which at first glance denote the same thing.. namely wicca and witchcraft, but sometimes pagan and paganism, druid, etc etc, these seem at first glance to be the same, especially wicca and witchcraft, in fact some of the literature and books is quite misleading, i mean to say that guy Gardner who wrote the first book used both and it seemed that he was using them to denote the same thing, and now there are a whole bunch of these other books using the word wicca and witchcraft, and when i surf onto the internet and go onto pagan message boards, or text achieves, often the wiccan and witchcraft stuff is on the same page. (Go use the Google oracle and find out) And given that my friends do not react with such disbelief when i say wiccan, as to when i say witch so i am going to be using the word wicca Are you getting a picture here.. you should be.. in fact i bet many of you older pagans out there have memories of similar instances, where they used the word interchangeably partly because you didn’t know any better and partly because you were still figuring it out, and partly because it was the most common word in use of the day...
See now i believe that the main reason that i always referred to myself as a witch, was because way back when i first started out, i very quickly became unimpressed with those that referred to themselves as wiccan, and many of the books that were available in New Zealand were lacking something and because i felt this magical path as being something much more serious than those oddly dressed, bawdy uninformed non thinking wiccans over there i would be a Witch thank you very much, and that would be Witch with a capital.. recently i have attached priestess to that title but that is a whole nother story
But after a while i did settle on the title of witch and have never really changed it.. eventually i came to the understanding that wiccans were part of a tradition of some sort, and witch’s where solitary , along the way i can remember understanding it wiccan as a religion and witchcraft as a practice, also that Wicca was the religion that all Witches practiced..a lower case w referred to historical witches, and a Capital W referred to Modern.. and several variation on those ideas, understandings and terms.. all very complicated, and it did take some years to understand, to feel the difference and to be comfortable in how i labelled myself.
Now there really is the curx of it all, labelling yourself because not only is Modern Paganism a religion and spirituality of assent, it is also one of self labelling. And given that there is no central authority, liturgy, governance or papal throne, you can pretty much label yourself anything you want moonbeam starflower. *cough* As an aside to this the understanding of the labels have also changed over the last 60 years or so. This was pointed out to me by a good friend Grail For at first you called yourself a witch and then went and joined a coven, and studied hard, (i guess you could add here became wiccan) now days you did not call yourself a witch or wiccan until you have joined your coven or studied for at least several years.. it is reversed, people scoff at others who have deemed themselves wiccan or witches but are only just starting out and i wonder if its cause is because of the turn away from groups and the emphasis on the individual.. but alas that is also whole nother story.
Back to this self labelling.. often the label that you start of with changes and grown as your understanding of your magical path also grows, deepens, and changes. Some may start of as referring themselves as wiccan, and then a few years down the track they opt for pagan, as they are no longer practicing as much or no longer feel the calling they once did. Others change and add titles and labels priest, priestess, high priestess,
Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Traditional Wiccan, hedgewitch, urbanwitch, traditionalisy, cabalists.. gosh they are quite endless as well as the many woven paths that are available to a magic worker or spiritual explorer.. or plan old pagan. Some even come to the conclusion that it is not the label that is important but how one lives one s life. Although a label can help in finding information, books and heading in the direction that you are called to head in.
In practical terms, and what this post is all about, when a newby arrived on your blog or message board, and uses the word wiccan, and you have decided that to you a wiccan is a tradition and that you must be initiated etc etc or however you use the word.. do not jump down their throat about it, can come across with the almightily authority on high, cause it is your way and only your way is correct, because as mentioned before “YOUR DOING IT WRONG” and you end up doing a couple of things, 1. Looking like a completely close-minded egotistical bigoted idiotic prat.. CEBIT.. and 2. You will end up not just sending the original enquirer fleeing for the hills, but a bunch of other people like me who have been around for a while, know what they know and are happy for the most part to share that, and also know that what they know might not be knowing for others. And frankly having someone else shove their interpretation of what every word down your throat is really off putting. There are better ways of dealing with this.
So ask yourself, is the original enquirer asking a honest question, but have used terminology that you do not agree with? So perhaps they have come up said the dredded i’m a solitary wiccan, and i wanted to know if i can include roman pantheon in my daily devotions? Quite often these questions are short and lacking on context but still there is no reason to flay them alive, instead it would be more useful to engage them in further discussion with the added bonus of non judgemental information about the roman pantheon, not to tromp over this persons beliefs with your big cauldron of goo.. the phrase, ‘how i see it’ or in my opinion, or variations on that would be much more likely to be read, by your original poster, and others who also come along and who knows it might even spark an interesting tread about the original topic that has now morphed into a deeper discussion or into a completely different discussion.
So remember folks There is no central authority, liturgy, governance, or papal authority within Modern Paganism, this means that everyone has the right to believe whatever it is that they believe even if we do not believe it. And starting out a conversation with “YOUR DOING IT WRONG” or shouldn’t and should, will get you nowhere and just make you look stupid.
And finally, if it speaks to you, if what you are doing, what you believe and what you practice speaks to you in the centre of your heart, and makes it sing, you are so doing it right, no matter what anyone else says.
Of course with no central authority, liturgy, governance or papal authority there is no doing it wrong, instead there is doing what feels right. Now if you join up with a group, grove or coven of a particular tradition there will be rules and indeed a central type authority even a coven book of shadows which will need to be adhered to, of course you will have permitted to adhere to these rules and authority by the initial step of joining said group, grove, or coven. However if you are a solitary or no longer wish to belong to or take part in that group, grove or coven, the rules etc of that group, grove or coven no longer apply. Paganism in its many forms is after all a religion of assent. That is you assent to be a part of that religion or spirituality or group and for as long as you associated with that religion, spirituality or group you identify yourself that way. I.e. I am a ‘insert tradition here’ wiccan, because i am a member of this ‘insert tradition here’ wiccan group. Whereas if you stop associating with that group or grove or coven, you are no longer that you no longer identify with whatever religion or spirituality it was. Ie, i used to be a Wiccan of ‘insert tradition here’ but i left and now i am a Buddhist. In the example the person is no longer assenting to be Wiccan of whatever tradition but instead assenting to be Buddhist. Ostensibly with communities of assent a person chooses to belong or not to belong.
So back to the should and should nots, one of the other ways of defining what something actually means, cause you know the hugest flameings happen around terminologies and authority, *this is me once again rolling eyes* is majority consensus, that is that most of the people agree with this statement or this interpretation of x.. For example.. Wiccan Witch Wicca Witchcraft. As far as i can tell there is a group of people out there getting their panties in a bunch over these terms and how they are to be used and not be used, and there are a bunch of people out there who use these terms interchangeably and there are some people in-between.. a sliding scale if you will.
Language like many things in this world is quite fluid, and living, English is a living language thus prone to change, and change of meaning, for example, arse, now about 8 years ago, when hanging out with a group of friends, when the comment arse! was said, it meant that an error had accoutred.. someone had forgotten to bring their wallet, or someone had dropped their phone, it was said when misfortune occurred, however when a new friend was introduced into the group she had a new meaning for the word. How she used it was that whenever anyone said arse, it meant that they had spotted a tight perky look worthy specimen of arse and that we should all look at it. Quite a different meaning from the original one of misfortune. As you may be able to guess the transition of arse from one of denoting misfortune to one of site to behold, was a very quick one, and one that expanded out beyond the core group of friends to that of associates and acquaintances and occasionally hangers on. It is also interesting to note that this new usage, while continued for a couple of years did eventually fall into disuse, actually the word arse itself also pretty much fell into disuse.. arr younglings so fickle.
Right then back to Wiccan Witch Wicca Witchcraft. When a person is first starting out or discovering this path of magic and paganism, they are bombarded with a variety of words, which at first glance denote the same thing.. namely wicca and witchcraft, but sometimes pagan and paganism, druid, etc etc, these seem at first glance to be the same, especially wicca and witchcraft, in fact some of the literature and books is quite misleading, i mean to say that guy Gardner who wrote the first book used both and it seemed that he was using them to denote the same thing, and now there are a whole bunch of these other books using the word wicca and witchcraft, and when i surf onto the internet and go onto pagan message boards, or text achieves, often the wiccan and witchcraft stuff is on the same page. (Go use the Google oracle and find out) And given that my friends do not react with such disbelief when i say wiccan, as to when i say witch so i am going to be using the word wicca Are you getting a picture here.. you should be.. in fact i bet many of you older pagans out there have memories of similar instances, where they used the word interchangeably partly because you didn’t know any better and partly because you were still figuring it out, and partly because it was the most common word in use of the day...
See now i believe that the main reason that i always referred to myself as a witch, was because way back when i first started out, i very quickly became unimpressed with those that referred to themselves as wiccan, and many of the books that were available in New Zealand were lacking something and because i felt this magical path as being something much more serious than those oddly dressed, bawdy uninformed non thinking wiccans over there i would be a Witch thank you very much, and that would be Witch with a capital.. recently i have attached priestess to that title but that is a whole nother story
But after a while i did settle on the title of witch and have never really changed it.. eventually i came to the understanding that wiccans were part of a tradition of some sort, and witch’s where solitary , along the way i can remember understanding it wiccan as a religion and witchcraft as a practice, also that Wicca was the religion that all Witches practiced..a lower case w referred to historical witches, and a Capital W referred to Modern.. and several variation on those ideas, understandings and terms.. all very complicated, and it did take some years to understand, to feel the difference and to be comfortable in how i labelled myself.
Now there really is the curx of it all, labelling yourself because not only is Modern Paganism a religion and spirituality of assent, it is also one of self labelling. And given that there is no central authority, liturgy, governance or papal throne, you can pretty much label yourself anything you want moonbeam starflower. *cough* As an aside to this the understanding of the labels have also changed over the last 60 years or so. This was pointed out to me by a good friend Grail For at first you called yourself a witch and then went and joined a coven, and studied hard, (i guess you could add here became wiccan) now days you did not call yourself a witch or wiccan until you have joined your coven or studied for at least several years.. it is reversed, people scoff at others who have deemed themselves wiccan or witches but are only just starting out and i wonder if its cause is because of the turn away from groups and the emphasis on the individual.. but alas that is also whole nother story.
Back to this self labelling.. often the label that you start of with changes and grown as your understanding of your magical path also grows, deepens, and changes. Some may start of as referring themselves as wiccan, and then a few years down the track they opt for pagan, as they are no longer practicing as much or no longer feel the calling they once did. Others change and add titles and labels priest, priestess, high priestess,
Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Traditional Wiccan, hedgewitch, urbanwitch, traditionalisy, cabalists.. gosh they are quite endless as well as the many woven paths that are available to a magic worker or spiritual explorer.. or plan old pagan. Some even come to the conclusion that it is not the label that is important but how one lives one s life. Although a label can help in finding information, books and heading in the direction that you are called to head in.
In practical terms, and what this post is all about, when a newby arrived on your blog or message board, and uses the word wiccan, and you have decided that to you a wiccan is a tradition and that you must be initiated etc etc or however you use the word.. do not jump down their throat about it, can come across with the almightily authority on high, cause it is your way and only your way is correct, because as mentioned before “YOUR DOING IT WRONG” and you end up doing a couple of things, 1. Looking like a completely close-minded egotistical bigoted idiotic prat.. CEBIT.. and 2. You will end up not just sending the original enquirer fleeing for the hills, but a bunch of other people like me who have been around for a while, know what they know and are happy for the most part to share that, and also know that what they know might not be knowing for others. And frankly having someone else shove their interpretation of what every word down your throat is really off putting. There are better ways of dealing with this.
So ask yourself, is the original enquirer asking a honest question, but have used terminology that you do not agree with? So perhaps they have come up said the dredded i’m a solitary wiccan, and i wanted to know if i can include roman pantheon in my daily devotions? Quite often these questions are short and lacking on context but still there is no reason to flay them alive, instead it would be more useful to engage them in further discussion with the added bonus of non judgemental information about the roman pantheon, not to tromp over this persons beliefs with your big cauldron of goo.. the phrase, ‘how i see it’ or in my opinion, or variations on that would be much more likely to be read, by your original poster, and others who also come along and who knows it might even spark an interesting tread about the original topic that has now morphed into a deeper discussion or into a completely different discussion.
So remember folks There is no central authority, liturgy, governance, or papal authority within Modern Paganism, this means that everyone has the right to believe whatever it is that they believe even if we do not believe it. And starting out a conversation with “YOUR DOING IT WRONG” or shouldn’t and should, will get you nowhere and just make you look stupid.
And finally, if it speaks to you, if what you are doing, what you believe and what you practice speaks to you in the centre of your heart, and makes it sing, you are so doing it right, no matter what anyone else says.
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