It was a day in early spring when the power of being a witch struck me with such abruptness it left me standing in awe.
I was deep in the rainy Coast Range mountains of Oregon state, preparing to work with a sacred site I had adopted and interacted with for several years. Weeks before, I had performed a ritual with a group of pagan friends, using the rite to welcome in the coming spring, becoming a part of the process of the changing seasons, something that many witches refer to as the turning of the Wheel of the Year. As I looked at the world around me, as I stopped, centering myself, filling myself with the energy of Nature as I breathed in the clean, crisp mountain air, my eyes began to slowly drift over the land that encircled me. Tiny bits of green had begun to show on the birch trees that filled the area. The first flowers of spring had begun to bloom.
Spring was in the air and I had participated in a ritual that welcomed it in, that called the rising natural energy back into the weave of life. Was it my participation in the ritual that had helped to bring life back to the world? Or had the ritual simply reconnected me to the power of the seasons, to the swelling of life-giving energy in the natural world around me?
To be honest, it didn't matter. From either perspective, I had become a part of the seasons. No longer did they turn unnoticed. No longer was I simply an observer. I was a participant, a part of the dawning of spring.
And after years of practice, after working countless rituals and experiencing wonders the mundane world only dreams of, I finally discovered my path, the meaning behind my identity as a witch. What for so long had been mental exercises and principles that I applied with measured regularity, suddenly became something real and alive. It was as if a hidden door opened for me and welcomed me into the spirit realm. For the first time, everything that I did, everything I believed, and everything that I was as a witch truly made sense. It was at that moment that my path truly began.
Lesson Five: Beginnings?
And here you thought we'd started long ago!
For a moment, let's compare our personal practice to an oak tree. When you think of an oak, you may think of an ancient, gnarled tree, its roots sunk deep in the earth, the branches reaching for the sky. But that oak tree didn't just suddenly appear. It began as a tiny acorn. It had to find the right conditions to grow - just the right soil, not too much light, enough water to nourish it. And then that tiny tree-to-be had to push. And push. And push, just to get through the shell of the acorn.
That's very similar to what you did when you began to search for your own answers, when you began the quest to find something that met your spiritual needs. Like many of us in the pagan community, you were probably raised Christian, explored some meditation and Eastern thought, but nothing seemed quite right to you. Nothing was home.
And then you found the Craft.
To many of us, being a witch is simply that - a process of coming home. Sometimes it feels like this was what we were meant to be our entire lives. That we have spent every moment from birth searching for this. Start talking to us and you'll find that many of our favorite moments as children were spent outdoors, that we laid on our backs, staring up at the moon in awe, and that as adults, we longed for that simple connection we had as a child. To me, that's what witchcraft is all about. It isn't about spells, or power, or the desire to appear special or weird. It's about reconnecting.
Like that tiny acorn, you've pushed through so much to get here, breaking through that shell to feel the soil. Remember way back at the first exercise, "Learning to Listen?" Remember how hard it was to do seven consecutive days without missing even one? But that process taught us so much about ourselves, about what we want from life and from this path we've chosen to follow.
As we pushed the pieces of our shell aside and began to make our way through the soil, we found the light of the sun and began to reach for it. We burst through the soil and began to experience the world around us. And now, as we look at the landscape in which we live our lives, we find all the things that we need to grow. It might come naturally for that tiny sapling, but if you're like me, I needed a friendly push every now and then to keep me growing on my path.
From this point forward, the path this course offers gets much more intensive. This guide will make the most sense to you if you can think of this course as a ritual. In Lesson One: Learning To Listen, we went through the first stage of ritual work - cleansing. The first exercise, Learning To Listen, began our process of transition from a life where we simply drifted by on cruise control, to a life where we are alive and where we actively participate in the cycles and energy of the natural world. The second exercise we did, Attuning To Natural Cycles, continued this process of transitioning. We began by stepping from a mundane life to one where we noticed the natural energy around us, to a world where even the sun and moon are filled with magick. We continued the process by reinforcing this process of transition each morning and night.
In the following lessons, our exercises extended the process, embracing the second stage of ritual work and setting up the things we needed to continue to move down this path and grow as a Witch. We learned the basic elements of ritual, something which we will apply again and again throughout this guide. And we began to explore not only the power of symbolism, but the concept of setting aside a specific space as sacred, a concept we will explore in much greater depth in this chapter.
In the last exercise we did, Symbolism, we began to explore not only the power of specific images, but the ideas of what we want to find on this path, the things that we are hoping to discover as we grow. What we have to understand is that, if this is new to you, you don't currently have the perspective necessary to speak that intent, the third stage of ritual. You need a little more time to setup, to step a little farther from the mundane and transition a little more into the world of the witch. It isn't that you don't understand what you want from your life, it's simply that you aren't yet aware of how rich life can be, of how much wonder, beauty, and blessing is available to you.
You have to realize that this isn't a slight against you as a person. By no means am I saying, "Well, gosh, you're so inexperienced that you don't really have a clue what you want out of life." What I am saying is that as we grow, our perspective changes. Each time our perspective shifts, we see our lives and the world around us a little differently. If you strive to continue growing on your path, this will become a continual process for you. Life will always be new. There will always be something new to discover, some new idea or concept to explore, some new lesson about yourself to learn. If you continue to grow, to expand your horizons, your world will never grow dull and you will continue to redefine what you're hoping to find out of life, like a sailing ship tacking into the wind. There will be times when the wind fills your sails, when everything around you makes sense and all of the pieces fall into place. There will also be times when you seem to be lost on the seas, when you have no idea where to turn next.
I have found this to be true in my own personal practice. I had been committed to my path, practicing for years, before that day in spring when it all clicked, when I realized what it meant to me to be a witch. You will find people that will tell you that you need to do rituals, that you need to dedicate yourself to developing your identity as a witch ritually from the very beginning in order to explore your path. I like to take a different approach. Think of this period of time as an opportunity to learn the skills you will need on the journey ahead, a time of preparation that will prepare you for what will come.
My approach to teaching isn't to have you meet certain criteria and to do certain things to move on with your studies. What I hope is that you will find your own personal path in the things that I teach, that somewhere in this guide, in the midst of what I share and the exercises that you take yourself through, that something will click for you like it did for me that day in the mountains. Perhaps you will find that, like me, the heart of your path is deep in the wilderness. Perhaps you'll find that it's working with the energy of an urban area, or focusing on the hearth, weaving magick into the kitchen, bringing an enchanted garden to life year after year, or something uniquely your own that I have never even imagined.
To do that, to find a path that resonates to the very core of your being, I cannot simply give you things to memorize, words to recite, or any lesson that says, "This is the right way. Learn to do it like I do." Instead, we both have to make a journey in this relationship of the printed word. I have to set aside my ego, to remind myself that you and I are equals in every way. It's not important that I may have been in the Craft longer than you and have gained enough experience to teach from. And it doesn't matter if you are brand new to paganism or a crone with decades of practice under your belt. What matters is the journey. Each and every mighty oak once began as a tiny sapling. Like that tree, each of us began at the same level, looking at the path before us with wide-eyed wonder, not having a clue where to begin, not having the slightest idea what to expect. Our beginning steps were often frightening and uncertain as we moved into the unknown. What's important is that you find a path that is uniquely your own, that says, "This is who I am" and not, "I followed Jeffrey's teachings and he made me a witch."
To accomplish this, we're going to take a different approach than you may have seen in books or in other courses. We're going to create sacred space, both inside our home as well as in an outdoor location that you will discover simply by following your own heart and your own instincts. Working with these two places, you will learn a vast array of skills, discover the power of myth and lore, and will learn how to continue your studies with Nature and the weave of life as your only teachers. I will share everything that I traditionally teach students for the first year and a day. There will be no correspondences to memorize. Instead, you will learn the traditional uses of an herb, stone, or other natural object, and then you will sit and connect with its energy in order to discover how to best use it in your own practice. Everything we will do in this guide will involve finding your own way. But by taking this approach, when you have scrolled down the final page in this course, when you have completed the lessons and set this guide aside, the path that you have discovered will be completely your own. You will have crafted the foundations of a new Tradition that is as unique as you are, that is an expression of who you are as a witch. This was the gift my teachers gave to me. And I'm honored to pass it on to you.