Getting Punked by My Craft (Again)

Here we go again.

Musings on my Craft, labels, maturity, and community

Every time I think I have an understanding about what kind of Witch I am, my skill set, my understanding of the cosmos, here this chick come again.  My Craft rebels, goes rogue.  

Me:  I am a wiccan!

My Craft:  2 years of Kemetic practice devoted to Isis

Me:  My Patron is Isis.

My Craft:  In strolls the Morrighan.  And She’s smiling, petting a Crow.

Me:  My Craft leans Left Hand done in Right Hand path ways.  Maybe I’m Thelemic-lite?

My Craft:  Orisha.

Me:  Look, I dwell in the dark places without fear!  I am a Weaver!

My Craft:  Angel numbers… and aliens… and the Akashic Records.

Da actual F*ck, Craft? Why are you like this?

From the Witch Squad:

Quote:  My Craft: b*tch you thought

True words, friends.

I don’t know how many times my Craft is going to punk me out until I realize my Craft, a true mastery of my Craft, requires me to follow where the path of my heart and development leads.  It’s responsive, breathing, and evolving.  It’s watching my life and adjusting accordingly.

I’m sure I’ve said this elsewhere, but I’ll say it again.  I used to play the violin enough to recognize what happened as music.  There are no frets on a violin, only muscle memory and spatial recognition.  A teacher told me that I don’t need to play perfectly in tune, I just need to listen and adjust quickly.

I’ve dusted this advice off over and over in my life and it does not stop being applicable.

Something, (who’s surprised?) has changed in my life.  So my Craft, aligned with my Higher wiser self, has been leaving me breadcrumbs to find my way to continual thriving so I can honor my commitments to become a better human and soul in this lifetime.

And yet, ‘cause I’m kinda dumb, I keep having to talk myself into allowing my Craft to be itself once it breaks out of whatever mold I’d formed around it.  I’m just sensitive and psychic AF, that’s why I can trance easily.  And who cares where I go… oh snap, I’m in someone else’s metaphysical playground.  There’s different vocabulary here, a whole other community!  And if I pause, we have plenty in common and plenty I can learn from them.  They aren’t “my people”, meaning they don’t desire major things that I require in the core of my spiritual path, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friendly.

I’ve spent the last 15 years confused about solitary witch culture.  That’s a different post altogether, but let’s just say I’ve been stumped, having had a different Craft “upbringing” and understanding of what a coven life looks like.  (TLDR - it includes lots of solitary practice.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been quietly working on understanding my energetics in the background, gathering techniques to patch up the weak bits and lean into the stronger parts of my make up.  All good things.  Then, just like I did as a baby witch, I learned there’s words, vocabulary, names for this shit.  There’s a whole community.  Many many years ago I tiptoed in, got what I needed and was thrown into a whole new journey that lasted a decade.  All of a sudden, it’s back.  Unfinished.  Tapping its foot, wondering what took me so long.

I still don’t think they are “my people.”  But I am a part of this subcommunity.  (It doesn’t really matter what it is - Nordic, Kemetic, Setian, Thelemic, Druidic, BDSM Kink, Conscious, ATR, Cartomancers, insert whatever here.  It’s the same process.)  I know that I’m a part of this sub community because I know them.  I see authors’ names and know who they are.  I can think back to CONs I’ve been to, know references, am fluent in vocab, can recognize terms that are the new evolutions of old vocab.  I can enjoy nuanced differences in the way a person does a thing, suss out new techniques or application of old techniques and be delighted by what I find.

I’m a part of the community.  But I’m not a part of a formal structure within it.

Oh.

I feel both slightly empty and unsure, like I’m waiting for someone to hold the door for me.  Is it ok that I’m here?  Do I need an invite?  

AND

I am completely satisfied with my level of involvement and entanglement.  I do not want to join a group.  I do need to engage the thing that this subgroup does.  A good way to do that is to interact within the subgroup… as an individual.

Oh.

It’s taken me 15 years to arrive at this place.  (Feck.  Angel number 222 as I glance at the time, trying to wrap this up. Insult to injury. I can literally talk to gods while walking down the street. What do I get instead? Thumbs up through a clock.)

This is how entire swathes of people show up at Pagan Picnic each year and I have no idea who they are because they aren’t at the rituals or stomping grounds that me and the old heads lurk.  This is how they can delight in this wide open space of expressing this thing but not need to be consumed by it, to drape themselves within this identity.

They get what they need and that’s enough.

Oh.

Quote from the Witch Squad: 

“Self-conception and security is obviously an illusion.  Especially in craft.”

What I have learned is to hold my identity gently and be able to flex.  There are pieces of me that have gotten distilled down, gotten refined, and polished to a sheen.  This part of me does not wear the labels we think it does.  It’s a carefully selected inner court of tendencies and frequencies that gets to the heart of who I am.  For me, it does not wear a face or a gender.  It has chosen expression through specific cultures, time, place, and this body I wear.

The rest? Well...it changes.