I was sitting with a few friends over drinks recently and we were talking about our respective journeys in spirituality and religion. I have a bit of an uncommon story myself and was sharing how I was processing all the change that had come about in my life. You see I started exploring paganism broadly as a teenager in the 90s and witchcraft specifically in the early 2000s. Then, after a particular deployment in 2008, I abandoned all spirituality entirely. A few years later I experienced a conversion to Christianity, rushed out and got engaged to someone I’d know for two months and proceeded to spend the next eight years trying to make a very unhealthy marriage and we’ll say “ill-fitting at best” faith work out.
A lot of therapy, a spiritual reawakening, and a divorce later, I have to figure out what to do with this decade long detour. “I think the thing that kept me trying to make it all hold together” I said “was the idea that I had wasted ten years of my life”. James said what good friends are supposed to (and he’s right) “If you grew, it wasn’t wasted” There’s a part of me that agrees. There’s a part of me that’s grieving anyway. There’s a part of me that sits with these questions late at night and finds its voice here:
A Waste
What makes time wasted? It’s an odd question, but seriously. I know how to waste food, money, and love but time? There’s a sense in which I guess we waste something when we don’t use it well or get something out of having spent it. Did I not use about a decade of my life well? Did I not gain anything from having spent it? That feels a bit dramatic and honestly, I’m not even really sure that that’s how we’re meant to inhabit time: with this very capitalist/consumeristic mindset. As if the way I inhabit time itself were an exchange of some sort; a great cosmic transaction.
So What Happened to Me Spiritually?
Every good therapist does their own work and spends plenty of time in their own therapy. Over the course of my own, I was able to see some unconscious patterns that had been driving things in my life since that fateful deployment. I’ll stop short of saying that my conversion experience was entirely a psycho-social lunge toward an imagined “normalcy” that I felt I missed out on; but that was definitely a piece of it.
Now, re-entering pagan and witchcraft spaces feels both like a long overdue homecoming and a venture into strange foreign territory. A lot has changed. The internet certainly plays a big role in that. Am I discovering my path afresh? Do I pick up where I left off?
Interlude: The Full Moon Ritual
I set those questions aside to carve out a little sacred space for myself and the gods. There were candles and meaningful objects on the altar. There was food and drink to enjoyed and offered. I rededicated myself on a full moon that was incidentally connected to an 18 year karmic cycle. Although I’m not historically huge into astrology, this seemed appropriate. 18 years ago I made a decision to just stay with what was in front of me and felt easily accessible rather than venture out and forge a new life. It was a vocational decision but its shockwaves touched every corner of my life.
Now I’m venturing out in nearly every way.
There are things to be built over time like community and a sense of how my practice interacts with the various areas of my life like work and relationships (more on that in my next post). There are things to be let go of and lingering effects of those ten years to be worked through. For now though, my Goddess and Horned God are enough to begin the venture.
Some Saturdays
When I first started my practice as a witch many years ago, I had a lot of internalized beliefs that had been gifted me by Protestantism and civil religion. I had no problem with the Goddess but a Horned God felt “bad” in ways that were more Christian than I was willing to admit. Somehow Cernunnos felt accessible for me though and he still does. Brigid, the poet’s (and I would argue the therapist’s) patron feels like an old friend I haven’t spoken to in years. Our conversations are different these days, however.
The questions I have are not about my future. My aspirations are not spells. Most of my life goes on as it has. I’m reinhabiting my practice as witch and looking toward things I’d like to include next like traditional Wicca and a coven. I’m making new friends and building the life I was afraid to step into the void and create when I was in my mid twenties.
Some Saturdays though, I sit with a cigar, bourbon, and just the right music and I listen to the questions my soul is asking now. How do I inhabit my life well? What do I want to build? How should I cultivate the kind of inner world that results in me building it? Some Saturdays, sitting with the questions rather than rushing to answer them, is time well spent.