The Path of a Christian Witch (6 page)

Ground. Focus. Get a grip. Trust.

How do I pierce the mystery of this object? I know there is a way. This is your task. Forget the others. How do I do it? I use my hands every day for cooking, working. They aren’t sensitive enough to pick up anything. That’s not me. I want to get into this object, into its very fiber. All I’ve got separating me from it is a piece of cloth. How do I remove this barrier?

Hold on. I’m wrong. There is nothing separating me from this object. My body is as much empty space as it is matter. Solidity of matter is an illusion, the same way that the distance between the object and me is an illusion. We are one and the same. And it is through my center that I will vibrate close enough to the object to know more about it. We can be one and the same. This how I need to do this.

I approached the object again. I saw my center glow with an aqua light and I poured myself into it, shutting out the notion that the object was far away from me. Distance was an illusion.

An image formed in my head. I heard pub songs and laughter. I could smell beer in the air. What was this? It seemed unlikely that these images had anything to do with what my teachers had placed in front of me. Anyhow, no time to ponder. Let’s move on.

I tried again with the next object. I heard a voice:
pile of rocks
. It was a clear, monotone voice, unquestioning.

And so it went for each object: red hair flowing in the wind, a running child, a flock of geese taking flight, a dragon, a woman holding an object close to her heart . . .

We came back to share our impressions for each object. As I related the images that I had gotten, my teachers’ jaws started to drop. Something was going on in the room, but they wouldn’t disclose the objects until we had all finished sharing. Being all very tired from the exercise, we took a short break. Our warden took me aside while the others were going downstairs. He took me to the side of one of the tables. He lifted the cover and took out a large wrought-iron cloak pin. He looked at me and said, “I wore this at the Highland games last year. And believe me, there was an awful lot of beer and pub songs flowing.” My breath caught in my throat. He then took me to another station. “These are stones that we brought back from our last coven gathering. You got an accurate image for most of these objects. How did you do it?”

I walked back to my car in a complete daze. There was no denying that something had just happened, and I knew that I would never be able to write it off as insignificant or coincidental. For the first time, I had proof. All this time I had engaged in the fool’s way. I had lived with the fear that what I experienced and what I cherished was completely bogus and that I could fall flat on my face and wake up from my illusions with a severe headache and an empty heart. This was such a lonely place to be, for if people knew that we were casting spells and conjuring charms, we’d get a nice ride to the nearest clinic. The only thing I had to pull me through was absolute faith. Complete trust. I had to accept suspending criticism for a time until I had enough evidence to convince myself that I was not a fool after all.

When I wonder why I get involved in this way of life, when I doubt it at all (and it does happen), I think back to certain events, like that challenge in class, and I know that I am not running after a pink elephant. I am a fool no more.

Magic: Dealing with the Contradictions

As the semester continued, I learned more about elements, spellcasting, ritual building, magical symbols, and tools. The position of the Roman Catholic Church on the topic of magic is quite clear:

2117 All practices of
magic
or
sorcery
, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others—even if this were for the sake of restoring their health—are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible.
Spiritism
often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.
[1]

The lack of explanation as to why magic is reprehensible makes it difficult to argue for or against such a position. One thing was clear to me at this point: Witchcraft was incompatible with Catholicism as traditionally taught. Yet it was not difficult for me to reconcile my faith and the practice of the Craft. Stark contradictions exist in the edicts of the Catholic Church regarding supernatural phenomena.

Catholicism is not completely foreign to the concept of the unseen. The Holy Spirit is the invisible component of the Holy Trinity, the messenger of faith and the holy fire that stirs the imagination and the will. Article 99 of the Catechism states: “Thanks to its supernatural sense of faith, the People of God as a whole never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply and to live more fully from the gift of divine Revelation.” It does not deny our ability to sense the intangible and to relate personally to God through the “supernatural.”

The discourse on magic seems to be stalled yet again by a problem in semantics. What is magic? If it is a “supernatural sense of faith” in the Divine, and if its presence can be felt and worshipped all around us, then we are quite close to the definition of magic that most Witches practice.

The church’s own norms of practice betray its belief in the existence of magic. It has already been established that the use of supernatural powers is condemned “even if this were for the sake of restoring their health.” Miraculous healing, however, weighs heavily in the decision to declare someone a saint. Pope John Paul II and the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued norms in 1983 that are to be observed by bishops when making inquiries into the authenticity of a request for canonization.
[2]
In these norms of practice, a detailed procedure is included to investigate miracles of healing. The use of supernatural powers for healing is not condemned by the authorities. On the contrary, it seems in some cases that it is highly regarded, worthy of the greatest honors.

Magic . . . miracles . . . semantics once more. I could put this worry to rest.

Magic: Theory and Practice

As I tried to synthesize all that I had learned about magic, it became apparent that basic magical theory is extremely simple. Yet its true application is worthy of the greatest spiritual masters.

Magic has two major components:
The Will and The Word.

The Will is our personal desire, or motivation, to see the object of our magic come to pass in reality. It is a verb, a desire in action. It rises up from the very center of our being and creates in the world the object of our desire. It is not merely a want for something. To want something implies that we are, in some measure, lacking it. We then sit passively in a state of lack, in a state of want. But when you “will” something, you are never lacking in anything, for the minute you conjure up will, you create that which you wanted. It is already yours.

I had been using magic for a while and had learned the theory. The depth of the experience eluded me still. As with most of the great lessons in my life, I understood this concept in the most mundane of ways.

The front passenger door of our car had not opened in weeks. One day I got fed up with riding in the back seat. I put the key in the lock and decided that I was going to sit in the front seat. I simply turned the key and, through sheer force of will, the door opened. It was on that day that I realized how difficult it is to do magic.

The example itself might seem simple enough: insert key and turn. But the real key was not in my hand. The key was my
will.
For a split second, I had no doubt that the door would open. Not a shadow of a doubt. You will hear critics of magic say, “If magic was real, all those who pretend to use it would win the lottery and live the rich life.” I believe that if someone can achieve sufficient will to win the lottery, he or she will win it. It is not sufficient, however, to say “I want to win the lottery.” You have to be able to say “I will win the lottery” with absolute conviction. It goes as far as feeling no surprise whatsoever when you do win.
No
surprise. No “Oh my God, I can’t believe it!” Nothing.

I don’t have that kind of will for winning the lottery. I know no sane person who does either. But this kind of will is the foundation for magic. Pure will. This is the most difficult part of magic. It is not walking around a circle in a clockwise motion and waving a short sword over a cup. It is first and foremost the Will.

Maybe a note on ethics is appropriate at this time. It is not because you
can
will something to happen that you
should
. As a Witch and as an enlightened being, you have a responsibility to protect the world from harm. With power comes responsibility to work for the betterment of humanity. This is not to say that magic for personal gain is necessarily bad. We must be able to support ourselves physically and financially to continue our work on Earth. If winning a large sum of money means that you will be able to put forth a project that will help the whole community, how can this be bad? However, as humans we have a very narrow view of existence. We tend to see ourselves as the center of our private universe. This makes it hard to be really objective on the full outcome of our magical work. From this vantage point, magic that causes “no harm” can easily become magic that “causes no harm to me”—and sorry to whoever happens to float in the way! Even without intending to harm anyone, it is easy to keep our blinders on and put “
our
good” before “the common good.” So, we have to work magic with our eyes wide open and with complete honesty.

Blessings come from the Great Source. The ethical Witch will put her request to the Divine and add that no harm may come to pass due to her request. If someone else’s life may be saved by winning money, then may it be so. The laws of karma are then clean and you have acted according to your will and the will of creation. So now you are aware. Be careful what you will for.

All you need is will. There is no more to say about it. It is so simple, and yet it is impossible for us to fathom. And this can’t be taught. You can only be made aware of its importance and its effects. Jesus taught that if we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we could uproot trees. This was not merely a metaphor for the importance of putting our faith in God. It is the essence of will. I believe he meant this in the most concrete of terms. When you truly believe that you influence the world, the world responds in kind.

One Blue Moon

The very air in the room was burning my skin. I felt as giddy as a little girl. I wore my new wool tunic, work of my hands, and a blue veil covered my head. I felt echoes of a distant Passover dinner, maybe, in a different life. All of us dressed for a feast, busying ourselves to prepare offerings and cleanse the room for this sacred occasion. Eva was our host this night. There were also Sara and Candace from class and one of Eva’s friends who had come to assist us. We didn’t formally speak of a coven, but we all knew that we were building something together, whatever its name might be.

It was a blue moon in August and the skies were clear. Eva had asked us to assist her in the dedication of her sword. After we had blessed it, we passed papers around to write down our petitions. I took the paper and laid it down in front of me.

I hated this moment. Whenever someone would ask me what I would want out of a spell, I was always at a loss. I was not in need of anything. I had a loving man in my life. My family was well and healthy. We were comfortable in our new house. I enjoyed my work and had a group of great friends. A new realm of magic was opening up to me in a way I could only have dreamed of. What could I ask for?

The circle was tight with energy. I could feel the presence of my guides around me, blessing me. I breathed in the magic and the beauty of the moment. I picked up my pen and wrote,
That things may stay the way they are
.

Things did not stay the way they were. The coordinator position that I got the week after the ritual fell through in the first week of October. And the pregnancy that we celebrated in September was lost by Thanksgiving.

My request could have been:
That love continue to fill my life
or
That magic may continue to grow in and around me, that my work continue to bring me satisfaction
. Instead, the things that the universe had already set in motion for me were abruptly halted.

Once you have a will for something, you must formulate your request. As my example shows, this is as important as strengthening your will toward a cause. It requires the beautiful faculty of imagination that is so vital in magic. You must see exactly the form of what it is you will to happen. The universe processes a lot of requests. It tends to prefer the ones that are clear and easily understood.