Why I’m Still a Witch

The short answer: I have no idea.

I’ll start this post with a confession. I’ve barely practiced in the past month. My altar’s gathering dust. I hid my Morrigan shrine when we had guests and I haven’t set it back up. My practice always waxes and wanes to some extent, but for the past few weeks, I’ve been having some serious doubts.

Partly it’s because the blogosphere is so damn toxic and judgmental. People whom I suspect are very nice in real life throw barbs like the Internet was a dart board. I feel constant pressure to describe my relationship with the Morrigan in a way that conforms to that of the hardliners. How do I tell people that the Morrigan is okay with me not tending her shrine for awhile? How do I tell people that she’s okay with me not even believing she exists a good portion of the time? How do I tell people that I’m okay with that? The attitude of “if you displease the gods, you’ll be sorry” is so insistent, its volume turned up so high, that I feel like there’s no space for those of us whose experiences tell them otherwise.

The consequences of me not tending my Morrigan shrine aren’t being struck by lightning, or having my bones broken, or the earth swallowing me up. The consequences are nothing more–and nothing less–than a dampened, atrophied spiritual practice. But every moment is an opportunity to begin again, and the Morrigan is patient with me. That’s my experience, and there are a lot of people out there for whom that is not okay.

But if you read this blog regularly, you already know my complaints about the blogosphere. When I get really fed up, I just stop reading blogs for awhile.

My more serious doubts have been coming from other sources. I attended my first Reclaiming Witchcamp last month, and it wasn’t the transformative experience my friends had all described to me. Don’t get me wrong–the magic definitely worked. We worked with the story of Baba Yaga, and my life was suitably upended as soon as I got back. It’s not fun to realize that you have to quit your job and find a new home for your beloved cat on the same day. (Both situations involved a lot of pissing contests.) But while some of my friends spend the entire year looking forward to the next camp, I have yet to feel any need to go back.

In fact, Witchcamp made me wonder whether the Reclaiming Tradition is really a good fit for me at all. That, in turn, made me wonder why I want to practice witchcraft in the first place. When I talked to my husband about it, I compared my doubts to trying to find a jewel in a pile of dirt. I know it’s there: something beautiful and rare and worth searching for. But damn, how much longer can I keep digging? (Incidentally, the Baba Yaga myth involves sifting through dirt and picking out what’s useful.)

But here’s what’s really telling. Even when I don’t feel any need to practice, even when I feel certain that it’s all a bunch of hooey, even when I start looking into Shabbat services at the progressive synagogue not too far from my home, I can’t stop thinking like a witch.

I notice patterns: in the weather, in the things people say, in coincidences that feel just a little too perfect.

I’m mesmerized by nature: the bee hovering by the lavender blossoms, the seed that falls on my picnic table.

I converse with the Morrigan, even when I’m sure I don’t believe in her.

I put on my little pentacle ring–the one that, miraculously, no one at work has ever noticed–and feel a sense of comfort.

And I know I’ll always be a witch, whether I want to be or not. Whether or not I stay with Reclaiming, whether my practice retains its current form or morphs into something new, whether I keep practicing witchcraft as a religion at all or turn more towards Jewish-flavored cunning craft–witchcraft is in my blood, wound about my DNA.

In Reclaiming terminology, my Younger Self is drawn to it, and my Talking Self obediently follows. When my mind resists, I follow my body. My hands light the candles. My knees kneel before the altar. So be it. I take in the beauty.

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