(NOTE: I first wrote this in 1997, I think. After it got posted to Real Magick, I forgot about it. I found it again as I was going through some old files. Although some of my opinions in here have changed (mostly on how I see the gods), it still stands on it's own. I basically cleaned up some of the grammar. Here is the old version here.)

Scott Cunningham once wrote:

"My break from Wicca came in '82 October when, after a year of leading a coven (of five persons) in the APGW I was more than fed up! 'Living room wicca!' I was heard to say. Put the pagan back in the countryside and the heathen back on the heath! Put Nature back into it, for it is supposed to be a religion honoring it!

Egos get too big, it becomes a chore to do circle, etc..."

- diary entry, Whispers of the Moon

I never really understood these two quotes until I started communicating with some other pagans. It became especially clear when I decided to begin something called the Tennessee Spirit Unity Alliance back in the mid nineties. I'll admit it - I was in my mid twenties and flushed with the possibility I could unite everyone under an big ol' umbrella of tolerance and understanding. (Indeed, I had a rose colored, fluff bunny moment.) Well, it turned into a big lesson about the world and where I stand on the whole issue - live, let live and stay the hell out of my face with which path is the best one). The Christians yelling about how witches are evil, the witches yelling about how the Christians don't know what they're talking about and how so-and-so couldn't possibly be a 'real' witch because so-and-so doesn't 'walk the talk' or they weren't initatiated or they weren't iniatiated in a certain way or that they didn't stick their tongues out a certain way as they cast the circle...one wonders if these people have even stood alone under the moon on a clear night and actually talked to the gods, much less gotten to really know them. Many a time, it would seem they prefer to just confer their oh-so-very-human ideas of who and what the gods are on Them instead. That and sit on their high chairs and complain about how others are lesser than themselves because they don't have degrees or what not.

I actually had one person to tell me once - after I gleefully found a Watchtower call that involved actual stars - that I was 'getting too literal about it.' Too literal about a faith that is literally based on the stars, earth and nature? Somehow, I don't think this person would last too long in the times that Stonehenge, the medicine wheels of Wyoming, and Teohua...(note to self: look this up - you know, that place in Mexico) were in use.

I also had another person, who is rather prominent in the Nashville pagan scene, call me 'psychobitch' after I would not stand to have a disagreement with another witch be made public while I was in her shop. It would seem that she needed fodder for gossip.

...and this the way people think it should be? I think not.

Not long after these inicidents, I too had a break from Wicca. Truth be told, I never went back. The reasons weren't only based on this incidents but because I got to really thinking (again) about what I wanted and needed in my spirituality. Wicca simply didn't fulfill those needs.

Today, don't ask me what the name of my path is - it doesn't have one. I don't believe in giving it name - it's just too limiting. Sometimes even labeling it as 'pagan' or 'witch' is limiting but hey, you gotta explain it somehow. I don't use a lot of conventional spells - I guess what I do is more akin to 'wild' magic. I need something, I visualize my need and then ask for it. If it's knowledge I need, then I use the techniques that I learned in core shamanism. I talk to the earth; the winds, the trees, the stars in the sky - not as gods but as fellow beings. That is the only way I can describe it - just don't let that description fool you. I'm no saint or blithe new age wannabe trolloping through daisies.

In the end, I think we all have the degrees we need to revere the gods in whatever way we wish to - 98.6 of them to be exact...and I am unanimous in that.

By the way...what is 'the walk' anyway? Is it an amble? A glide? A slow stroll? A fast scurry?


Back

This page is © 1999 - 2004 by Dawn Firewolf, All Rights Reserved.
1