We've Got Magic To Do, Just For You

Reflecting on her role in the Reclaiming Witch War (maybe it's not actually a Witch War, maybe it's more a lover's quarrel with the world), M. Macha Nightmare says:

To me, learning Craft gives us the sacred technology(ies) and thealogical framework to then proceed to work it and work it and work it, season after season, Wheel after Wheel. And with each working, we can go deeper, gain clearer understandings, have more profound experiences of the numinous. We can gain insights into the workings of the Worlds and the workings of our own hearts. We can grow in compassion and understanding of our sisters and brothers of our species. We can build a greater awareness of our interdependence on the Web of Life. We can feel our interconnectedness with all of life. We can learn wisdom. We can finder inner peace and the strength to work for positive change in our own lives and in the wider world.

I'm reminded of the words of my dear friend Steven Posch of Paganistan (one of the two best Pagan ritualists in all of North America, IMO):

"Witches' work is turning the wheel,
And round the wheel doth turn."

I say a prayer every morning when I finally admit that I need to get up and quit dreaming that says, in part, "Mother, allow me to be a perfect priestess in your service and, allow me, in all that I do today, to help to repair the Web." But I could, as easily, say "Allow me, in all that I do today, to help to turn the wheel."

Ms. Nightmare is touching on one of the more, IMHO, pressing issues facing Wicca today. How do we help those people who have "mastered" (ha!) what we all now refer to as "Wicca 101"? How do we continue to challenge people with new spiritual challenges and not, see, e.g., Witch Wars, with the same old stuff all the time? Part of the answer, as she notes, is to work it and work it and work it, season after season, Wheel after Wheel. And with each working, we can go deeper, gain clearer understandings, have more profound experiences of the numinous. But that's only part of the answer.

I get a couple of inquiries a week about how to "get started in Wicca." What's less-frequently asked, but more urgently needed, is how to continue in Wicca. My own circle struggles weekly with this issue, trying, evern moon and every Sabbat, to work deeper magic, to connect more deeply, to tread the magical spider thread that connects where we are (here) and where we want to be (there). It's the work of a lifetime. And, as helping to plan the coming dark moon is teaching me, a lifetime of work.

One of the best "Wicca 201" books I've come across is The Circle Within: Creating a Wiccan Spiritual Tradition, published by Llewellyn in September of 2003, by Dianne Sylvan. And, Thorn Coyle's Evolutionary Witchcraft can certainly be used to "go deeper." I've just started reading The Veil's Edge by Willow Polson -- a friend of Ms. Nightmare's-- which is written a bit simplisticly for my taste but which is billed as a book for "Pagans who have come of age." I'll let you know what I think.

Meanwhile, I'm grateful for those who believe that Wicca is worth fighting over and I'm grateful for those, like Ms. Nightmare, who aren't going away. I'm grateful for those like Starhawk (interestingly silent on the current Reclaiming debate) who start the trads and write the books that others can come along later and criticize. And I'm even more grateful for my circle of witches, working, stumbling, recommitting, trying, and, yes, thriving, at the business of turning the wheel.