The Path of a Christian Witch (16 page)

All of nature is sacred. It holds a special place in a Witch’s practice because it is a reflection of the Divine. Finding a special place outdoors allows a special connection with God, one that you cannot find indoors. Think back through your life. Is there a place in the world where you felt a complete sense of peace—a place where silence was not a burden, where you could stay for hours without feeling restless or eager to leave?

Maybe it is under a special tree in a park, or atop a mountain, or by running water . . . walk through your neighborhood and sense the energy around you. See if such a place reveals itself. This place will always be there, will always be pure and always divine. You can make it a place of special pilgrimage when you need to reconnect to your source.

Astral space

Sometimes we need a place that is our own, away from the world, a place we can go to in an instant. This is an astral temple. This place exists between the worlds, and it is built with your creative imagination. It can be as glorious or as simple as you want. It is your own design and it is completely private. No one else has access to it. If you wish, you can also build a meeting place with friends so that you will always have a place to meet, no matter where you are in the world. You will see that this place will get a life of its own: it will change with the seasons, and all sorts of entities will visit you and tell you great things.

Building your astral temple

Sit down comfortably and leave the workings of the day behind. Take a moment to center your energy and ground yourself. Clear your mind completely. You are about to take a journey into the unseen world.

Focus inward. The world you are going to has not yet been created. You are sitting in the Great Void. There is nothing around you or under you. Do not fear. You are always a few breaths away from returning to the world you know. You can go forward without fear.

In the distance, you see a light. You walk toward it and see that it reveals an entranceway. Notice the shape and form of this gateway. This is a special gateway. It is the entrance to your own sacred space. When you open this door, you will find your own private sanctuary. Take a deep breath and go through the door. Take a few moments to look around from this vantage point. Is this a familiar place, or is it a place you have never seen before? Are you indoors or outdoors? Are you alone, or are others coming to greet you? Most important of all, how do you feel?

Take a few deep breaths to take it all in. Now, take your first steps into your sacred realm. Walk around and explore to your heart’s content. No portion of it is off limits. It is your space; you can go where you like. You can add things and shape the landscape as you walk through it. Continue walking through to get to know your place.

Once you have seen it all, find a quiet place to sit and take a few moments to feel your space. Your sacred space is alive. Let it tell you its secrets. See yourself breathing and relaxing, and know that you can come back to this space anytime you wish. Take a moment to give thanks for the wisdom you have received. Get up slowly and find your way back to the door. Say goodbye to your temple and walk through the door, back to our world.

Take a few moments to become reacquainted with the physical world. Then slowly open your eyes. If you feel lightheaded, place your forehead on the floor to redirect excess energy back to the earth. You may also want to eat something. The trip to your astral temple will become easier and easier every time. With practice, you will be able to sit down, center, ground, and cross your gateway in a few minutes. Then you will have all the time in the world to roam your sacred space, talk to its inhabitants, and enjoy your refuge away from the world.

The path of the seeker

To seek is to keep your vision always open to receiving the wisdom of the world. Wisdom is everywhere: in nature, in books, in unexpected encounters, in meditation . . . The Witch seizes every opportunity to develop herself. This way, we fulfill the teaching of Jesus to “be perfect as God is perfect.” Because Witchcraft is a path of the world, we do not need to withdraw to a hermitage to achieve this wisdom. We simply have to make room for it in our daily life, so that every action becomes an act of learning. This can be done in so many ways: in how you cook the family meal, by truly listening to a friend’s story over tea, by making time to read and learn more about topics that intrigue you, or by expressing your creativity by making things.

There are masters all around waiting to teach and share their experience. Sometimes they are quite familiar, like your child, parent, or family pet. Other times they appear in a more spectacular way, perhaps as sorcerers, shamans, and healers. By keeping our vision on, we take advantage of every opportunity to learn that presents itself. By keeping our humility and compassion alive, we can also notice when it is our turn to be the teacher and guide those who seek.

To Love

A moral code

I had just sat through a sermon from a replacement priest at our church, and I was completely disheartened. The province’s bishops were sitting in conference, deciding on the new orientations of the Catholic Church in Quebec. To me, that seemed to be promising. Why not sit down and look at new ideas, new ways of celebrating? Why not reflect on what is important to us?

Well, this priest had just shattered my hopes. He theatrically moved around the pulpit, spitting profusely with missionary zeal that the core values of the church would not be touched. Homosexuals would still be banned from church. Divorced people would still be denied the sacraments. These “core” values would not be changed. I was furious. If this was the core of my religion, I wanted no part in it.

“How is this in keeping with Jesus’ teachings?” I ranted in the car on the way home. “These are all man-made rules. Jesus taught us about love and simplicity, about listening within and not following authority blindly. Gay people and divorcées . . . can they not live the highest ideals of our faith, more than this preacher, this holy man of God who spreads hate so hastily? Is that morality? Jesus told us to love. The only line of conduct we should follow is . . . ”

I paused for a moment. I tried hard to regroup my thoughts, all my experiences, all I had received from my religion and my hours in prayer, in quiet conversation with Jesus. I tried to perceive with all my senses how we could express a way of life, a line of conduct, in a few words, the way Jesus would have wanted. I took a deep breath, and out of my mouth came words that seemed to flow from somewhere else: “If you do harm to no one, including yourself, then you can do whatever you wish.”

A week later, I was browsing in a downtown bookstore. I’d had no formal training at that point and was only starting to learn about Wicca and Paganism. I picked up a book on Wicca and opened it up at random. I could not believe my eyes. In bold print, in the center of the page, was the most perfect synchronicity I had ever experienced:

An you harm none, do what you will

The Wiccan Rede

I believe in the fundamental goodness of humans. Poor circumstances create the kind of ugliness we take for granted: greed, hatred, violence . . . I am not so naïve that I do not see that there is great evil in the world. But I see it as surrounding us rather than inhabiting us.

That is surely why I find the church’s whole polemic on sin so repulsive. If this stain eats at our core, then why bother striving for something greater? For an elusive “heaven” at the end of our days? The kingdom of heaven is here now. We have already begun our eternity. In the mystical tradition, the coming of the Messiah is not the coming of a priestly ruler. It is the coming of a new consciousness, an evolution above our present human condition. We make heaven here, now, on Earth. It is our gift and our mission.

There are unfortunate currents that constantly bar our way to attaining this higher consciousness. One may call this evil or sin. Sin, by definition, is a state of separation from God. Anything that separates us from our godliness and our connection with something greater than ourselves is a sin, a rupture in our relationship with the Divine. In a world where we live in suspicion and in fear of others, we feel the need to clearly define rules of conduct for harmonious living. In such a world, the simple words of the Wiccan Rede may seem too vague, requiring too much trust in our neighbors. But read them again, one more time:

An you harm none, do what you will

Isn’t that beautiful? Doesn’t it resonate deep inside a sense of trust in the world, a sense of underlying benevolence as well as a deep sense of responsibility? We are the law. It is not a set of rules that belong to a forbidding judicial system. We breathe life into this law by our every thought and action. We are responsible for the well-being of all that is. In this sense, the law is not a barometer for punishment. It is a precept for life. Jesus reprimanded the authorities of his time by telling them that they were betraying the core of the law by bending to the letter of the law. He gave us back this core precept of
love
. He gave us no other instruction. None! The Almighty cared not about regimenting our lives with precise rules of conduct. Free will is such a sacrosanct value that no new laws were given to betray this concept. Only a core on which to build our lives. A cornerstone on which to build our church. Love, always and above all.

I felt truly blessed when I saw the Wiccan Rede staring back at me from the page. I tried to find a fault with this law, a loophole where “evil” might still leap in. But I knew that there was none. Our ten commandments warn us about concrete things we may do to harm others. They all fall well within the Wiccan Rede. It even extends further in the sense that it does not limit itself to loving your brothers and sisters. “Harm none” also includes yourself, your environment, all aspects of nature, the Web of Life that connects us all. It is simple and non-negotiable.

If morals alone don’t keep people in check, there is a second law that flows from the Rede, which is also of great importance in the practice of magic: the Threefold Law. It simply states that whatever you put out into the world comes back to you threefold. Makes you think twice about doing silly magic tricks of a doubtful nature, doesn’t it? There are people, including some Witches, who are power hungry and who love to bully people energetically. Such people forsake the Wiccan Rede and take a chance on the Threefold Law, for personal gain or to “help” someone else. What harms you, harms all. That is the mystery of the Web. We grow in love. That is our creed. Nothing less is acceptable.

___

I had a dream.

I was walking on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a sparkling lake. I could see my breath on the air, but I was not cold. I saw a man in a wheelchair propel himself off the side of the cliff down into the crisp waters below. Curious, I jumped after him. The water was deliciously fresh and tasted sweet. When the water dripped over my eyes, I saw the mountains transform themselves before me. They took the shape of majestic angels blowing their horns. A man swam past me. I recognized him as the man in the wheelchair. He splashed around happily at the newfound functioning of his legs.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my angel walking on the shore. I scrambled out of the water as fast as I could, fearing that I would lose sight of her. I ran after her, but she kept on walking, paying no heed to my struggle to catch up with her. She wore a shiny golden dress. Her skin was the color of copper and her hair was dark, falling over her shoulders in thick curls. I said, “Please, wait. Tell me something. Anything. Give me a clue as to the meaning of it all, something to keep me going.”

She turned briefly, let out a sigh, and said, “The answer is to love.”

And she went on her way.

There was something special about the way my angel told me the greatest secret of my life. She did not take on airs of mystery or make dramatic pauses to emphasize the importance of the message. She said it matter-of-factly, simply, almost with impatience. Her attitude seemed to say, “There. You have it. Why are you so intent on finding something else? That’s
all
there is.”

Building a community

It was a beautifully sunny day in the mountains along the coast of southern Italy, near Salerno. I hadn’t been back to Italy since the death of my grandparents six years earlier, and the air itself was singing with memories past. My husband and I had embarked on an organized tour with a group from the village where my father was born. This trip, however, was to take us to places we did not expect.

After two failed attempts to visit someplace of touristic value, we ended up at what had been our destination all along: a mountainside sanctuary, for the annual pilgrimage in honor of Our Lady of Fatima. The sanctuary was filled with ladies dressed in the traditional black, singing hymns and reciting rosaries as loudly as possible. We entered the tent set up outside for the occasion, in order to attend Mass. I listened with horror
to a young man, barely older than I was, as he preached about the sufferings of the Virgin Mary. He hollered that she had suffered more than any other woman ever had at losing a child, and that our sins were the cause of that suffering. How could a man, a priest, know anything about a mother’s suffering? What audacity!

I had just seen lines of women outside, standing at confessionals waiting to be cleansed; one of the women was a relative of mine who hadn’t spoken to her aging, demented mother in years. People were pushing to buy gold medallions to pin on a statue of the Madonna that was to be brought out for the procession. It was such a circus! I was suffocating in this crowd. I truly felt ill. I looked to my husband and whispered, “I have to get out of here
now
!”