Now that school is done and I have caught up with 80% of the things I needed to do, I have been considering my path again. This is something that I re-examine on a regular basis, but sometimes I reach a point where I find myself at the crossroads. Lately I find myself there quite a bit. Not always, but many times standing at the crossroads can be a signal of a death\/rebirth cycle. This is where I currently find myself. Things around me are changing, things are dying. Things I thought were solid are not. People I trusted I no longer trust. Friendships ending, beloved cat leaving. All the security blankets taken away\u2026<\/p>\n
I became this insane woman so focused on things like academia, business, movement, and other airy things. I lost myself. Sometimes it happens, sometimes we have a moment where we say \u201chey I need to go on this journey\u201d and so we do. There are ups and downs, and reasons we went on the journey to begin with. However along the journey sometimes we loose ourselves. Up till last night this is what I thought. I had completely compromised who I was trying to fulfill all these requirements I had placed on myself, or so I thought! You see just when you loose yourself and feel like you are standing naked in front of the world raw and open you look deeper past all the superficial things and into the core of who you are. When you wash off the dirt you can see the roots, their size, strength, and exactly how they are formed. This is what happened for me\u2026<\/p>\n
Years ago I wandered down the Wiccan path, first the eclectic path, then the initiatory path. It filled the gap and gave me the confidence I needed. I then wandered down the path of the Reiki Healer. It also filled a hole that needed to filled. I had to learn how to heal. I wandered down the path to Avalon. I found home here, or at least for a while. You see one can not live in Avalon all the time, but if I felt at home there, then where did I belong in this world? After the loss of my mentor I spent the last few years in a state of wandering. Wandering here and there. I found Traditional Craft an found that there are some aspects I loved like the history and folk magic and some things not so much. I learned that I am most happy working water magic, and I have the best results. I learned that plant spirit work was just as important to me as regular spirit work. I learned that plants, nature and death were a vital portion of my craft. I learned that I am not interested in diabolical craft. However the academic portion does interest me! (Just not as a practice) You see I believe in being balanced. So I acknowledge that the dark is as important as the light. I learned I was not impressed with the modern Wiccan\/Pagan movement, and many other things about my path. Sound familiar? Not the white light and not the diabolical craft either, but balance. One can not live in the extreme of either and maintain balance. Read more about my thoughts on that here<\/a>\u00a0and listen to me babble on in a video here<\/a><\/p>\n To go forward you HAVE to go back.<\/p>\n I worked snake and wild carrot medicine among the swamp waters and cypress trees. I worked with the great weavers, and the dark mysteries of the waters, I was a Witch. I just had no idea at the time that this was the case because I was only 10. After fierce studying \u00a0as an adult that is exactly what it was. I learned that going back to my roots does not mean going back to where I first learned about the craft, it was when I first started practicing the craft. You might wonder how a pre-teen who has never hear of these things could be practicing them. I do not know if it is faery blood, as some call it, past life memory as others might, but I just was and I knew who I was then, there was no label and no politics\u2026<\/p>\n I think it is time to take you back into deep memories. When I was a young girl I grew up quite different than many. We lived a very simple life, part time latchkey kids and full time fun! My dad finished school and found a good job. It was about then, in my pre-teens that we moved into a new home. We were all proud of this home, for us it was our first home we had ever had built and we had great pride. My parents were smart they chose a home that was alongside a wetland preserve. Nothing could be built behind us, and like much of the Florida habitat it was swamp land. This here was the beginning of my journey. My mother home schooled us for reasons that don\u2019t need to be mentioned. However this did play an important role in establishing my roots. Besides spending most of the summers on the hot beach in Daytona, I would spend much time in the forest\/swamp behind my house. I would finish my work, grab my boots and be gone. Another important part of this was that the neighborhood was under construction. This meant dumpsters full of supplies! We recycled some of those supplied into a \u201ctree house\u201d well it wasn\u2019t a tree house because there was no tree. It was a little cottage on stilts on the edge of the property line and partially into the hedge. It sat on the boarder of this world. Each day I physically crossed the boarder into the swampy forest. I spent all my time gathering charms, snakes, feathers, flowers etc. I hung them in the cottage, placed them in jars etc. I was known in the neighborhood for identifying snakes. We would get all sorts of calls about me coming to see if this snake was poison or not. In fact I once was grounded for catching a pygmy rattler in a jar, I also caught a baby coral snake that got me busted as well. These are all energies of the Witch. Not the ceremonial Witch, but the energies of the Hedge Witch and the Hedge Rider (Read about the differences here<\/a>)<\/p>\n This was the time that my dreams started. I have seen spirits since I was very young, but my dreams began about this time. Or I should more accurately state that I remembered my dreams, and noticed patterns. I had dreams of the future and the past. My empathetic abilities were turned on, I lashed out like an angry tidal wave, unable to control the feelings from a hundred different people at once. I have a good control of it now. However I still do melt down here and there I know what this is. It took me years to control the flood of emotions and even longer to figure out why I couldn\u2019t control them all the time. Today I see this as a sign. When I lash out or can\u2019t control my emotions this is a sign that something isn\u2019t right. It is a sign that I am unable to properly process the \u201cempathic hits\u201d this means one of 2 things. Either the persons energy has changed so drastically that it is not aligned with mine any longer. Or my time with them is simply over and I am unable to process the grief of the loss. One thing about being a psychic empath is sometimes you feel the feelings before the event occurs. This makes for one crazy life, but it can be dealt with and worked to ones advantage. (I can see all you empaths nodding) There is nothing like loosing your mind over something before it even happens. No this is not the same as self fulfilling prophecy, these events are out of our control, and often we don\u2019t know what they mean until later (and hours of meditation wondering why you are crazy) Back on track!<\/p>\n So These are my roots. I kept thinking that all my education was the foundation I was wrong\u2026 It was only the support beams. It was not the rock solid foundation at the bottom, it was what helped to expand my walls. I began to get angry with the community. I became confused with all the different corners that were at war with other corners, or at least hurling cows with insane insults over castle walls at each other. Which corner do I choose? Where do I fit? Better find a side because it isn\u2019t safe out here \u00a0in the center. So for a while I chose a corner, then found it wasn\u2019t right, so I chose another and also wasn\u2019t right, so I searched and searched. This led me to academia, oh what a ride that was. So enjoyable and so horrible all at once. It was another \u201cthing\u201d that I thought I needed for validation. Turns out it wasn\u2019t true\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cto truly walk the path of the witch means you best expect to be faced with challenging events and your deepest fears sooner or later. To be a witch means you will be asked by the spirits to do work that they want you to do, and it\u2019s not always the kind of work you would ask for. That\u2019s sort of the point, though.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>http:\/\/thewhitethornwitch.com\/2014\/05\/02\/a-witchs-work\/<\/a><\/p>\n This statement is truth the entire blog post is amazing go read it. We are all so different in our paths, the Witch can not be defined by conventional means. Instead she is defined by her\/his work. I do not define my path as being a path of water, instead my work with water (and other things) defines me.<\/p>\n Then a few days ago I posted this on facebook\u2026<\/p>\n