The Path of a Christian Witch (9 page)

I was in church one Sunday, pondering the meaning of Christ’s visit on Earth, when our priest said something astounding. He said, “Christ is our teaching. He left us no book, no writings, no dictates to regiment our lives. Christ is our example. He is the model upon which to build our priesthood.” As Christians, everything we need to know about God, or the universe or whatever we choose to call it, stems from Jesus Christ. He is our model, our teacher. By sitting with him and reading the accounts of those who knew him, we become fulfilled as human beings.

Jesus came as a man. He was born of a woman and discovered the world as does every other human child. He learned a trade, a very humble one. He participated in worship in his synagogue and at the Temple. He celebrated with his kin at weddings and feasts, rejoiced with them and mourned the passing of friends and family. In short, he was truly human. He felt joy and sadness and anxiety and fear. He did not live in detachment from the world in order to be closer to God. He brought God here with him. And throughout his life, one thing never wavered: he had complete faith in God.

This faith is what allowed him to walk on water, heal the sick, and feed the multitudes. His human condition did not separate him from God; his faith united him with his Father. He had an unwavering hope in his Father even as death was approaching. Jesus said, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could tell this mountain to uproot itself and plant itself somewhere else. And it would do it.”
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It is truly the essence of faith in the Divine—the knowledge that nothing is impossible when one plunges within and turns in complete faith to the Almighty.

Ever since I was a little child, Jesus has been my confidant, my solace, and my counsel. He would come to me in my dreams and answer the most profound of existential questions, and without effort I would understand. I felt his presence around me, so much so that if I left him behind for a while, a great, unexplained despair would take hold of me. I would then rush to a sanctuary and sit in his presence. And my hope was restored. He answers my prayers in the most tangible of ways, and he has never left me in need. He comes to me in dreams and visions still. He is truly there.

I don’t believe that I am special in this. Jesus still talks to whoever takes the time to engage him in dialogue. He promised that he would be with us until the end of time. And he is keeping his promise. He truly is here.

Mary: Virgin, Mother, and Crone

When I was a child, Mary was always the sweetness of life. She would come to me in my dreams, hold my little hand, and show me things about the world. Often, they were sad things: misery, war, pain. But I felt safe with her. And I could look at the darkest parts of the world without fear. I could be in the poorest, dirtiest ghettos of human existence and
feel
what it meant to live there. I could stand at the foot of the cross and feel the rage and sorrow and complete surrender. My whole being would vibrate at the frequency of what was around me. Such was the gift of her presence.

Mary is a crucial pillar in my practice. She is the essence of the Sacred Feminine—the Virgin, Mother, and Crone. She deserves to be discussed in depth, because she is the embodiment of the Divine Feminine. We will return to her shortly to give her the attention she is due.

The Blessed Ones:
Those Who Served and Loved Him

Since the dawn of time, our world has been graced with the presence of God. The raw presence . . .

Some men and women truly have lived in this presence. Why some and not others, I do not know. Attunement, maybe? Maybe special circumstances? Nevertheless, these blessed ones have received special gifts from God. By getting to know their stories and their teachings, we find the light and breath to make us grow. I have often screamed out in frustration, “Who will lead us? Who will teach us?” I have come to realize that the ones who passed before us are our true guides. These blessed ones have received gifts of wisdom, and their legacy truly is a divine one.

The Apostles:
Each apostle has a story and special character. Jesus did not dismiss them for their flaws or outbursts. He accepted them completely and blessed them with his presence and teaching regardless of their shortcomings. Many of them have also written their accounts of Jesus’ teachings. Only two of them, Matthew’s and John’s, have made it to the canon. The Nag Hammadi library,
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unearthed some sixty-five years ago, has given us seekers a gift of wisdom beyond what could ever have been hoped for. It features many Gnostic texts and is a must for anyone interested in Christianity beyond the regimented practice of the church. This collection features Gospels from Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene, although the last has been severely damaged. These new accounts show us new facets of the teachings of our Lord. Each encounter with Jesus was unique, and this is reflected in these writings. This richness of experience is a divine gift. Many names, not all of them apostles, are mentioned in the Scriptures, and they each carry a special experience:

John the Baptist

The Disciples

Joseph of Arimathea

Nicodemus

The Centurion

Lazarus

The Disciples of Emmaus

The Women

The Myrrh Bearers

The Weeping Women

Veronica

Mary and Martha

The saints:
The stories of the lives of the saints offer tangible lessons, teaching through action. They are true companions for the road, not only because the church has deemed them worthy but also because their stories resonate with the presence of God here among us. These stories are also full of symbols that reach us on a very sub-logical level. Many saints have also committed their thoughts and mystical experiences to writing, especially the monks and sisters of the monastic era.

We also have modern-day saints in our midst today. Their whole being beams with divine light, and just standing in their close vicinity can open our thirst for more closeness with God.

The matriarchs and the patriarchs:
The Old Testament is filled with men and women who have shaped the history of our people. We Christians are, after all, an offshoot of Judaism. We retained our Jewish roots and customs for most of the first two centuries of the common era. The figures of the Old Testament are part of our lineage and our mythology, and much esoteric and symbolic knowledge can be gained from them. There are the obvious figures who are most widely known: Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, Abraham and Sarah, and all their descendants. There are also some occult figures that are of interest to those who study the Mysteries: Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who is only fleetingly mentioned; the Pagan wives of Jacob; the Queen of Sheba; and the warrior women of the Torah. These women emerge with such force in a male-dominated era that they become a true inspiration to all those seeking strength and wisdom. They are our true mythology, our connection to a time of old.

Angels and spirit folk:
Angels are an indisputable part of our collective experience. Numerous cultures report tales of winged creatures sent by God. Humans who have had insight into these entities report a full hierarchy, with classes of angels, rankings, and special assignments. A number of names have been heard on the wind; the most important of these are the archangels, who have been the intermediaries between God and humans since the dawn of time: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel. Michael is the Warrior, associated with fire, whose mighty sword cast Lucifer from heaven into the depths of hell. Gabriel is associated with air. He is the messenger, the one who announced to Mary the special role she would play. He is also said to have dictated the Koran to Mohammed. Raphael, angel of earth, is the Healer. His name literally means “God heals,” and many biblical scholars believe he is the healing “angel of the Lord” mentioned in the Gospel of John. Uriel is the angel of water, love, and compassion.

Every morning in elementary school, we would say a prayer to our guardian angel. It is probably through this angel that we can best be acquainted with the angelic realm. No other entity has a more personal connection with each of us. Kabbalah, the mystical teaching of Judaism, professes that all living entities must have this angelic presence so that the breath of God can sustain them.
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Our guardian angel is our life force, our counsel, and our connection to the unseen world. Angels sometimes come in visions or dreams, and with time and practice one can learn to recognize them. I had a dream once, so vivid that I knew I had left the world for a little while. There I met my angel and she talked to me. Now, every time I see someone who looks like her—who has the same complexion, the same radiance, the same crystal music, and the same smell of sunshine—I know that I am in the presence of an angel. And I open my mind and heart to receive the angel’s gifts.

It is by choice that I have not gone into detail on the people listed in this section. So much is written on these characters, and some of them have written such an imposing amount of works, that this titanic task is impossible. Nevertheless, we are seekers. I merely wanted to open the door to a new world, a new perspective on the world we thought we knew. Embrace them and get to know them. They will reveal themselves to you in the most blessed of ways.

God as a Woman

It was not until I reached adolescence that I realized how difficult it was, as a woman, to find a sacred expression of myself. The repercussions of this are tangible in every aspect of society. Our sexuality is repressed, childbearing considered a burden by the workforce. It is more difficult to find equitable work conditions, and often we are left with more work and less pay. As a Catholic I was also submitted to the preaching of men who knew nothing of what it was to be a young woman, a wife, or a mother. From a sociological point of view, I knew all this. I had read some feminist texts in college, and although I found the ideas a little exaggerated and the approach aggressive, I understood the need for the feminist voice. Yet it was not until the door to the Sacred Feminine was reopened to me that I realized how much we are thirsting for a different way of experiencing the world: a feeling, a vibration deep in our being.

This exalted state of being that makes us vibrate in symphony with something other than ourselves, which makes us cry or laugh for no
reason
, this is the Goddess. This is the state of receptivity that brings us into a state of correspondence with the world. It is that state that lets us contemplate devastation and be truly moved from deep within our core. This is the seat of compassion. This is the seat of uncontrollable fury that can destroy all in its passage. It is where the desire for life resides, life in spite of everything. And always the unshakable faith and hope that we may see ourselves in the eyes of our neighbors and truly see the grandness of our condition.

Until then, the Goddess wasn’t much more than a mythological figure, like so many Greek or Roman statuettes. Then one day I picked up the groundbreaking work of Merlin Stone.
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I understood then the true reverberation of the Sacred Feminine. As I flipped through the pages of Merlin Stone’s book, I felt myself connected to a time of old when women were held sacred due to their status as life-giver and life-sustainer. In these goddess-worshipping societies, women could own businesses and land, participate in the political organization of their communities, choose their spouse, and lead people in worship.

I realized how much I had been thirsting for the recognition of my divine purpose: that of giving and sustaining life. That golden calf, symbol of the life-giving goddess, had been destroyed to give way to the worship of manliness, war, hostility, and aggression. The corporate world still thrives on these principles in a futile chase to build empires made of paper. What is that compared to the power to give life, a power that both men and women share? Thousands of years later, women are still trying to regain the position that was ripped away from us when male deities overthrew Goddess worship. We all suffer the consequences. It is time to bring her home.

The Femininity of God

Was the Goddess still here among us? Could I still find her? How to make place for a Mother Goddess when the Father stands so large in the foreground? For me, visually, God was a man. But I knew that to be absurd. God had no body in the biological sense. He could not be male. I found that most theologians agreed with me: in God there is,
in the sense of sexuality
, no gender. Only certain factions of extremist Christians will argue to the contrary. As with most issues so far in my search, we were facing a problem of semantics. Most languages do not have a suitable pronoun that is genderless and that could be suitable for a personal encounter with God. Most pronouns that negate gender, such as
it
, are impersonal and denote a notion of inferiority. This forces us to use a gender-specific pronoun when speaking of God, who has traditionally been referred to as male. As I opened my eyes and ears, I became aware of subtle changes. I heard “Our Father” become “Our Parent.” Somehow, that did not resonate with me. I could not conceive of a genderless God. Regardless of where this trend will take our worship, our initial problem seems solved: God is not male.