How to Become a Witch (2 page)

Introduction

Why Do You Want to Become a Witch?

S
ome find their home in the Witches’ Craft,

Touching magick, wielding power,

But each must seek and find their path,

Is this your way, is this your hour?

Merry meet! That’s a traditional greeting among Witches. We’re glad you decided to look at this book, and we will be even happier if it helps you begin your journey into the world of Witchcraft and Wicca.

Perhaps you heard about the Craft, became interested, and are exploring it alone. This book is a good introduction. Or perhaps you’ve found a coven, and they have recommended this book (or handed it to you and said, “Read it!”). Most exercises/activities are designed for someone working alone, but they can easily be adapted for anyone working in a coven.

Almost everything you have seen and heard about Witches in popular comics, cartoons, role-playing games, songs, books, television shows, and movies is wrong. Those are fairy tales—fantasies—entertainment.

There are real Witches, and we are two of them. Amber has been an initiated priestess for over thirty years, and Azrael entered the Craft about twenty years ago. Both of us have traveled and taught the Craft throughout the United States; Amber has served as first officer of the largest Witch network in existence, and we both help run an institution of higher learning for Witches and other Pagans—Ardantane Pagan Learning Center. We know something about the modern Craft.

But Witchcraft is incredibly diverse from place to place, coven to coven, individual to individual. There is no One True Way to be a Witch—and that is one of the glories of the Craft. There is room for individuality and freedom and different points of view, which are the bedrocks of Witchcraft. It is no place for dogmatics, followers, or sheep. If you want to be told what to believe and how your spiritual life should be, look elsewhere.

Start with this fact: Witchcraft is partly craft (the arts and skills of magick) and partly spiritual path. Some Witches focus on the first part, some on the second. Many of the spiritually oriented people, including us, call ourselves Wiccan Witches, or priestesses (or priests) of Wicca.

Our heritage as Witches is in the ancient, nature-loving religions and folkways of Europe. Our formal spiritual path, Wicca, as a modern Neopagan religion, got its start in the 1950s in England. Our future is unlimited.

Witches abhor dogma, creeds, ironclad rules, authority, and anything that stifles the human spirit or treats people as subjects, market segments, or mere consumers. Witches prize individuality, spontaneity, creativity, and freedom. We seek wisdom, love, and power to be used for individual freedom and the common good.

Witches are explorers. We believe in the value of science and technology when carefully and ethically used. But we know that science has barely touched the mysteries of life and death, and so we are also mystics and adventurers in the realms of mythology, magick, meaning, and the realms of Spirit. We know that there are realities beyond the material world and consensus reality, and we intend to explore them. We move among goddesses and gods, animal allies and plant devas, faeries and legends, sylphs and salamanders, speaking stones and talking trees, and our world is deeper and richer, more colorful and harmonious, than most people will ever know.

You will need courage to follow this path. Dwellers in the ordinary world will call you crazy, or foolish, or possibly evil. Yet there is something harder than facing their condescension or ignorance: facing the changes that will happen within you. Of the Goddess, we say, “Everything she touches changes,” and if you wholeheartedly enter our world, you will be changed forever. Some of the changes will be exhilarating and wonderful, empowering and intellectually expanding. Others will make it harder for you to relate to the “muggle world”—less content with convention and habit and mindless labor. Your spirit will be Goddess-touched, and you may become a little wild, a little fey, and a little weird. Accept that or seek another path.

This world is not for everyone. Most people would do better to choose a different spiritual path with more rules and guidance and fewer challenges. But if you are heart-drawn to the Craft, then you are welcome—whether you are female or male; white, black, brown, yellow, or red; straight, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Most Witches know that the outer package matters very little; what matters is your courageous heart, your open mind, and your questing spirit.

To Be or Not to Be

If you stop and think about it, it’s pretty strange that anyone would want to be a Witch. After all, most of us have been raised to think “Witch: green skin, pointy nose, warts, scraggly hair, nasty, old, with a shrill cackle….” Of course you know better, but that image is still there under the surface. What could possibly be attractive about that?

Let’s look at some of the reasons, good and bad, that you might be reading this book.

Some Really Good Reasons for Choosing Witchcraft

There are several very solid reasons for becoming a Witch, and yes, one of them is a desire to affirm your worth. Becoming a Witch doesn’t make you better than other people…but it may help you understand that all people, including you, are part of the divine energy that creates and sustains the universe. Thou art Goddess. Thou art God. You are not the Creator, but you are part of the Creator’s essence. Knowing that places a great responsibility on you to act wisely, lovingly, and thoughtfully; Witchcraft can train you to handle that responsibility with grace and honor.

You may feel a deep need to connect with your heritage: with the people of field and forest, the healers, farmers, hunters, warriors, and explorers of the past. If you have been a Witch in past incarnations, or simply a proud Pagan, the old ways may call to you. If the modern world and mainstream faiths seem alien to you, maybe exploring a faith rooted in nature will feel like coming home.

If you are female and have grown up in a culture that still belittles you, then you might need to affirm the power and beauty of being a woman. As a Witch and priestess in service to the Goddess, there will be honor and strength and self-acceptance in a way you have never experienced before. Wiccan women have the whole range of goddesses to inspire us—not only pretty and gentle ones but warriors, scholars, leaders, and wild ones.

If you are male but feel disgusted at the macho posturing and power games that society expects of you, and if you are looking for other models for being a man, Wicca might be the spiritual home for you. As a male Witch, you can be courageous and strong without being a tyrant; gentle and loving without being effeminate; and sexual and lusty without being an exploiter or game player. (In fact, the strong women of Wicca won’t stand for games, and it takes a strong man to enjoy the company of powerful women.)

You may be called to Wicca or the other Pagan paths because you love nature far more than you could ever love a “holy book” or the inside of a church. For you, perhaps, the wind flowing through tall pines is sacred; a stone warming in the sunlight is sacred; wolves and hawks and silvery fish are sacred. If you are inspired and empowered and healed and free when you are in the wilderness, Witchcraft is one path that is a natural fit.

Or you may have an abiding curiosity about the deep energies and mysteries of the universe. You may or may not be drawn to science as a career, but you know in your heart that there is more to the cosmos than science has yet discovered. You are called to be a magician, a mystic, or perhaps an artist or poet. Through inner journeys, using the very personal and subjective tools of mind and spirit, you want to explore the metaphysical heart of reality.

You may have come to the Craft with a powerful need to explore the shadow side of reality. By this, we do not mean that you want to steep yourself in evil. But you do understand how a worldview that is all rainbows and sunshine cannot equip us to handle the darker side of life. There is pain and anger and fear in the world and in ourselves, and if we do not face these powers and come to terms with them, they will control us. Some religions conveniently divide the whole world into good and evil, and simply tell their followers to embrace what they define as “good” and reject what they have labeled “evil.” If only it were that simple! Wiser heads know that we must face and understand and heal what is hurting and hurtful inside us before we can face evil out in the world. Wicca has the tools and the will to encourage this inner journey.

Another reason for the appeal of Wicca is that we understand and accept the inner child, or younger self, within each person. We may be adults on the outside, but that childlike, playful, curious, and adventurous part never really goes away, although many people try to squash it into submission or at least hide it. Witches don’t. That inner child is what keeps our minds and hearts youthful. Its laughter heals us, its delight gives us joy, its curiosity makes us creative. So Witches dance and sing, light bonfires and make love, play music and put on costumes, feast and drink mead. When no one is harmed, why not?

Pause now, and think. Which of these aspects of the Craft, if any, call to you? Which ones feel like a cool drink to one who has wandered too long in the desert?

Some Really Lame Reasons for Choosing Witchcraft

If this path calls to you, you must weed out any motivations that are shallow, ignorant, or fleeting.

Being a Witch can be a great way to get attention; often the wrong kind, but some people crave attention so badly that they’ll do anything to get it. Being honest with yourself, is that what you want? People staring at you, whispering comments, gossiping about you?

One might become a Witch because of low self-esteem. “I’m a bad person. Everyone must know I’m bad. Okay, then; I’ll show them how bad I can be. I’ll be the worst thing they can imagine—a Witch!” Then, when “they” scold you or avoid you, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Some young people choose things, including a religion, to show that they are more liberated and adventurous than their boring old families. They may even want to deliberately shock their parents. Of course, whether you copy your parents’ lifestyle or choose one that’s the exact opposite, it’s still letting them control who you are. It’s still all about them, not you. It’s far more empowering to choose your religion according to what is exactly right for you, regardless of how it compares to your family.

Some are drawn to the Craft just because they want to be interesting, special, and unique. Well, you are that already! It might be hidden from others or even yourself; it may be that you’ve never expressed the authentic person you are. But there is absolutely someone unique and fascinating in there. Don’t cover it up with Witch trappings unless
that
is exactly who you are.

Some people come to the Craft because, frankly, they’re lazy. They assume that they can have whatever they want with the flick of a wand or a muttered spell. They’ve been reading and taking Harry Potter too seriously, or they’ve seen too many fantasy movies. They don’t realize that magick is work, sometimes more work than getting stuff the old-fashioned way.

Another uglier reason that some are attracted to the Craft is that they want power. Not just self-empowerment (which is certainly a virtue in the Craft) but power
over
others, as in control and manipulation. As in “I can make you do my will, serve me, love me. I can use the robes and dramatic props—and maybe even magick itself—and be the master!” Not only is that selfish and unethical, it’s just stupid. Why? Because whatever energy you send out to the world comes back to you. If you send out nasty, arrogant stuff, you have just attacked yourself. It will come back.

Choice Vs. Blunder

Have you explored other paths? If you choose Wicca, let it be an informed choice.

Almost every religion has within it great truths and wonderful people. All can be paths to the Divine if followed wisely, lovingly, and diligently. But any religion can also be misused, as an instrument of prejudice, hate, fear, and violence. Look at the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and so on.

The challenge is not only to find a spiritual path, but to find the heart of that religion and let it guide all your actions.

Why not explore other paths? Your cultural heritage gives you a place to start. Are your ancestors from Ireland, Lithuania, Japan, Polynesia, Spain, or Brazil? All had, and have, their own ancient religious traditions.