The Path of a Christian Witch (5 page)

[
1
]. T. Lobsang Rampa,
Les Secrets de l’Aura
(Paris: Éditions J’ai Lu, 1971).

[
2
]. Alma Daniel, Timothy Wyllie, and Andrew Ramer,
Ask Your Angels
(New York: Ballantine, 1992).

The Search: Introduction to a Paradox

First Steps

“You must be Adelina.”

A young woman with long, curly hair smiled at me. She was wearing a T-shirt and faded jeans and sporting a pair of sneakers. No black fingernails, dark makeup, long robes. I looked around the room: there was a young woman with glasses and frizzy hair, another woman my age, a young man who could be Indian, and a huge fellow with long hair.

No goth queens, no vampires, no hags . . . I was almost disappointed. But at least I could breathe a little better.

I soon understood why the teacher knew my name. Everyone here knew each other. Unlike me, they were already practicing Pagans; they had read all the classics and were familiar with the Pagan community. They were taking classes to cement what they already knew. I was starting from scratch.

I sat down, waiting for the class to start. Across the room I heard one of the young women burst out laughing. “Don’t beat yourself up about it,” she told her neighbor. “After all, we’re not Christian.”

I cowered in my chair. I knew that nothing was meant by the remark, and I did not take it personally. But I had no intention at this point of broadcasting my Christianity.

I didn’t want to bring up my Christian beliefs for two major reasons. First of all, I knew full well that many of these people had been hurt, as I had been, by one form or another of Christianity. Many had rebelled against a confining, narrow-minded Christian upbringing and had chosen Paganism as a way of fulfilling themselves. For many, Christianity was synonymous with patriarchy, the degradation of women, sexual repression, and the rejection of anything and anyone that does not fit into the established order. I completely understood why someone would want to reject such an institution. I didn’t want to bring all that back into their sacred havens. I had made a clear distinction in my mind between the church as a political institution and the teachings of Christ. Often the two did not match, and I felt no obligation to follow the dictates of a church that did not follow Christ’s teachings of love and humility. But this was not the time and place to get into a philosophical argument on the divide between church and faith.

The second reason for my remaining “in the Christian closet” was because of the historical treatment of Witches by the church. As I learned more about Paganism, I came to know more about what are called the “burning times.” During the Inquisition, countless men and women were tried, tortured, and brutally murdered on counts of Witchcraft. They were tried by a biased tribunal of priests and bishops who coerced testimonies under torture. Often, hearsay of suspect behavior (like healing someone! . . . ) would be sufficient to arrest women and interrogate them. Under torture, they would confess to devil worship or sorcery and be sentenced to death by burning or drowning. A whole manual was written by the church on the method of investigating a Witch. It was an optional reading for class, but I could not stomach it.

I was very aware that this was a shameful part of my heritage. I had joined Pagan circles to celebrate femininity; my church had spent centuries trying to eradicate it. The people in this room had full rights to hate everything I represented. Maybe I could give some reparation for what had been done. Until this moment, the atrocities of the unholy Inquisition had had nothing to do with me. They were merely a page in a history book. As I became involved with Paganism and Witchcraft, they became part of
my
story. It was just another reason to really make a split in my head between the political institution and the spiritual heritage that is Christianity. It strengthened my resolve to discard whatever bigotry was diffused by the church and to focus on the core of what it meant to be Christian. I was here to meet the Goddess and celebrate her mysteries through ritual and magic. Christianity would have to wait.

Working the Magic

“Pair up with someone. We are going to work on sensing energy fields and on shielding today. You will get the chance to work with everyone, so you can see how different people have different ways of manipulating energy. First off, sit in front of your partner. Simply sense their energy. What images, feelings do you get from them?”

We were a month into our study of Witchcraft and Paganism, and this was our second class in energy work. We had practiced the basics: centering, grounding, and sensing our own energy fields. We had expanded and shrunk our energy fields and felt each other’s fields. I now sat in front of Karen. I centered and grounded. Then I opened my center to her field. My head was filled with a bright fuchsia-pink color. I smiled. A big Easter egg.

“All right, everyone. Now, you will shield yourselves. Each person is responsible for half the shield. You are to connect your shields in the middle. Make sure the seams are tightly secured and that there are no energy leaks.”

I sat in front of Nina this time. We knew each other well, and we had similar energy signatures. We slowly set up our ends of the shields. I could feel the energy moving toward the center, dancing back and forth, not knowing what to do. I could sense different colors waving back and forth. Steadily. Slowly. We adjusted our speed and size of shields so that they covered us completely. Great!

“Last task: you will combine your energies to create a uniform shield.”

I was standing in front of Eva. She had a knack for manipulating energy. She was a natural. You could almost feel a breeze in your hair when she set up to cast a circle, moved her energy field, or even just grounded and centered. She took me up by storm. I could hear her in my head, saying, “Come on now, don’t be shy. Just do it. Give me what you’ve got.” I awkwardly got myself together and gave her what I could muster. She really didn’t need very much. She did a perfectly good job in shielding both of us at once.

It was all very new to me. I had joined the Crescent Moon School of Magic and Paganism mostly for the religious aspect, to rediscover the feminine aspect of the Divine and to celebrate nature in its diverse forms. Yes, I’d had experiences with energy and some strange unexplained occurrences, and I believed in the concept of energy. But . . .

I was perplexed. I could stretch out my hand and say someone’s energy field ended there. I had impressions of color and some vague synchronicities at times with people. Who could say what it all meant? I could live on faith alone, but wasn’t this stretching it a little bit?

Joyce, one of our teachers, looked up from the front of the room. I looked back at her and shook my head. “What is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know about all this, Joyce. I want to believe it, but who’s to say it’s not all in my head?”

She looked back at me knowingly, smiling. “It i
s
all in your head.”

I felt an immense sense of relief flow through me at that moment. Why did I feel so free? She had just confirmed my worst fear! She’d just said that I
was
making it all up. It made no sense!

Ha! There was the key: it made
no sense
.

We live in a world of logic. The Age of Enlightenment has drilled into us the glory of science and the scientific method. In such a world, there is little room for subjective things. Such things have been relegated to the realm of fantasy or psychopathology. All my formal education has been in the biological sciences, and I believe in the rigor of the scientific method. It is, however, a very poor tool to evaluate non-tangible phenomena. Logic falls quite short in matters of faith and occult exploration.

So, here was the realization of that glorious day:

It is not because it is in your head that it is not real.

Magic taught me the power of imagination, the most underrated of human abilities. I’m not simply talking about the ability to build tales of valiant knights and mythic creatures. The faculty of imagination is much more than that. The word stems from the word
image.
It is the ability to produce an image where there was none before. I am talking here about the pure process of creation, not merely the mechanical process of putting together existing pieces in order to produce something new. At this level of processing, words become inadequate, and the only way we may hope to obtain some kind of understanding is through archetypal images floating through our intuition—a dawning of consciousness that we can’t really express. A gnosis.

With the advent of exciting new developments in the field of physics, the combination of imagination and logic is yielding great results. A new era of imaginative consciousness is dawning, and with it the acknowledgment of our magical practices. The bottom line is this: imagination is not fake, it is not wishful thinking. Imagination is powerful beyond our wildest dreams. It is the source of all creation, the source of all magic. And we were born with it.

We are the center of the universe. The world is created and re-created every instant through our beliefs and our intent.

The kingdom of God is inside you, and it is outside of you . . .
Split the wood and I am there. Turn the stone, and you will find me.

—The Gospel of Thomas (part of the Nag Hammadi library)

The Fool’s Way

I climbed up the stairs two at a time to the third-floor studio where our classes were held. Walking into the building was part of the ritual. The smells of incense and oils and the particular wave of vibrating heat always washed over me, marking the transition from the world outside to the world inside. Something was different today. I could also smell challenge in the air. My shoulders shot back, my senses sharpened . . . What would happen to us?

I drew back the curtain that served as the entryway to our sacred space, and I saw three long tables draped with long white sheets. I could see vague outlines of objects underneath. My classmates were seated. We looked at each other knowingly. Our teachers were seated, looking well pleased. Bad sign. We’d had other classes like this, where we’d had to protect ourselves against assault, protect others, test our energy. One of my classmates retreated to her bubble to focus. Another was jittery, stealing furtive looks. What challenge would await us today?

“There are fourteen hidden objects on these tables,” my teacher said. “Take a paper and a pencil. For each one, we ask you to sense the energy of the object and to report your observations.”

All right. We took different positions at the table to be able to work comfortably. Our warden stood tall in a corner, protecting us clumsy younglings from drawing too much attention to ourselves from eager predators on the outside. I felt safe. I approached the first object. I saw my friends bring their hands close to the objects to sense their vibration.
That seems like a good idea
, I thought. I brought my own hands to the first object.

Nothing. Just a dead, inert piece of something. I feel nothing at all. OK. I’m panicking. Another confirmation that I am making it all up in my head. I have no gift. This is all a big joke. What am I going to tell the others? When will it all be over? This is it. I’ve been uncovered: the Imposter!