When approaching paganism from the perspective of a shamanic witch, the first thing we need to do is adjust our perspective. In its simplest form, paganism is not a religion, but a tool for understanding and connecting to the flow of energy in the natural world.
At first glance, this makes a great deal of sense. If you think about our spiritual ancestors living in an agrarian society, they would need to understand the natural world in enough detail to know when to prepare the soil, when to plant, and when to harvest. If you take things even farther back in time, to a hunter-gatherer society, our ancestors would need to be in tune with the migratory habits of certain animals and know when various berries and plants were ready to eat.
What may not be apparent is that, even as modern homo sapiens, we still have a need to be in tune with these energies and patterns.
The issue is only partly that we need to reconnect to the energy and patterns of the natural world. There is the deeper issue that we should be an interconnected thread in that tapestry, rather than our current state of near total disconnectedness.
Our problem is that our culture is so fundamentally disconnected from the natural world, that we see ourselves as being separate from the environment and the world we live in. To most of us, the sun is simply a light in the sky, trees provide shade and require us to rake their leaves in the autumn, and animals are something we keep as pets or view in the zoo.
However, when you stop looking at the world around us as a physical realm and begin seeing it as an expression of Spirit, two things become immediately apparent.
First, there is no definable difference between us and the rest of the natural world. Think of it this way. Let's say that you took some wood and built a table. Still having a good supply of the same wood, you built yourself a chair. From a mundane perspective, it's easy to make the argument that the two things you built - the table and the chair - are very different. You sit in one of them and you use the other to set things on. But from a spiritual perspective, both are artistic expressions, a relationship between the craftsman, his tools, and the wood. When we look at the paintings and sculptures of Michelangelo, we consider them as expressions from a single master artist, not disconnected pieces of art. The defining criteria isn't what makes them different, but how they are fundamentally the same.
From the perspective of a shamanic witch, all of reality is alive. To use our analogy of the table and chair, everything is an expression of spirit, a relationship between Spirit, spiritual laws and principles, and spiritual energy. If everything came from Spirit, then everything is an expression of Spirit. The final form isn't what's important. It's the creative vision and expression that lives in that creation that we honor, the unifying Spirit, not the tangible object. If everything is an expression of Spirit, then by default, everything is sacred because Spirit is sacred. It's only when we begin to impose our own artificial criteria that we begin to draw lines and create a separation between ourselves and the remainder of the natural world.
Second, by honoring the world around us, by default we are honoring Spirit. This is where our analogy of the craftsman and the table and chair begins to fail. The creation of the furniture is a finite act. There is a defined beginning when the craftsman begins their work and a defined end when they step back and decide that the piece is completed. Life, in the broader sense of the natural world, has no defined beginning and end. It is a continuous process, a never-ending expression of Spirit. A mountain doesn't simply form, a forest doesn't simply grow, and a child isn't suddenly born. There is a process at work, a continual interaction of spirit and life. Tectonic plates push together to form a mountain, their movement having been set in motion with the creation of our planet. The process that brings the first seeds to a forest, that gives the first saplings the environment necessary to insure their growth is impossibly involved. Even the birth of a child begins generations before its first breath of air, in the interwoven tapestry of relationships and events that brought the parents together and the exact combination of genetic material to the moment of conception.
In this endless expression of life, we find the very essence of spirituality. The timeless qualities of life, the essence of creation - they are all around us. The question shouldn't be, "Why is it necessary to reconnect?" but "How much have we lost by allowing ourselves to lose awareness of the sacredness of life?" There's a reason why we've allowed our environment to be ravaged to the point that it has. For the most part, we've been taught that we don't belong here, that our spiritual home is somewhere else, away from the "mundane" reality around us. We haven't been given a reason to care for the world around us - whether its the land, air or water or simply the person down the street - because they are all separate from us. But even if we are incapable of realizing the unified nature of reality, if we were only able to make the leap to see the rest of reality as a sacred expression of the divine, how would it change how we approach life? If you saw all of existence as a work of art created by your concept of Deity, would you honor it? Would you cherish it? How would your life be different from the way you live it now?
Our first step along the path as a shamanic witch is to reawaken to this interconnectedness of life. As you can imagine, just this first, simple step along the path can be tremendously transforming. I teach three simple steps to accomplishing this process.
First, pray. Set aside some time at the beginning of your day to give thanks for the blessings you've received and the blessings you've yet to receive. This may seem difficult given our busy schedules here in the industrialized world. I pray behind the wheel of my car every morning during my commute to work. The radio is off, my eyes are open, and I speak my prayer out loud.
Second, welcome the sun and the moon each day. You don't have to see them (in the winter I tend to leave for work before sunrise), but it's still important to welcome them. If you get the opportunity, seek out the moon in the sky and try to watch the sunrise and sunset. This simple process will go a long way toward increasing your awareness of the natural cycles around you.
Third, go out of your way to do something nice for someone or something at least once each week. It should be a situation where you have no expectation of being thanked or receiving anything in return. Surprise co-workers with homemade cookies. Pick up trash at a local park. The gesture doesn't have to be directed toward a person; it can also be directed to the natural world. The key is that you're intentionally doing it, not to be thanked or appreciated, but to thank Spirit for the expression of sacred life that is present in your world.
We'll expand upon this process and revisit it on our journey together, but for now, I encourage you to take these simple steps to reconnect yourself to the weave of Spirit that is all around us.
I hope that you find this insight useful. It has guided me well over the years.