Spirited (3 page)

Time is a concept that we have shackled and constrained into the mere forms of wristwatches. In truth, Time is unruly, ravenous, and militant. Like Death, it waits patiently, forever weaving upon a spinning loom. Age is Time's daughter, and she comes to all those who live and die. Youth is revered and relished. It is the fresh, effervescent spirit of Time—the kind generosity served to all. Yet society encourages Youth to grow older, faster. Yes, we must all grow older, gracefully and honestly; there is no denying that fact. And there is no denying that responsibility helps young people mature and develop into respectable beings. But Youth is not a physical passage; it does not disappear when we hit thirty. Youth is eternal. Youth is in thought, in action, in sound, and in spirit. Youth is not n
aïv
ety, childishness, or immaturity. Youth is inspirational, flowing, experiential, and cultivated. Youth is here and now; it is in these words before you, in the sacrificing of my humility to record my thoughts, philosophy, and spirituality on paper. Youth is forever embedded in the depths of Life's essence.

Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884–1964) is believed to be the father of modern Wicca and one of the instigators of the renaissance of European Paganism. Part of what he believed as his inherent duty to the Craft was to secure its place in the future as an accessible spirituality and for its traditions to be embraced by the new generation, the youth, so that Witchcraft and its ancient lore would not perish into obscurity. It seems many contemporary Pagans forget or minimise Gardner's great deed to us and are content to think that younger people who approach Pagan spirituality are fluffy morons seeking fantastical powers. This is an unfortunate situation, as the youth are those who will herald the Craft into the future and who will continue to practise the old ways and customs in a modern world of technology and globalisation. The future remains unclear, forever lingering on the horizon where dreams and desires are born into reality.

Like most things in Paganism, the young Pagan is an eternal paradox built into the very matrix of Pagan culture. Being a young Pagan in this world does not imply we are less versed in our lore and practices than older Pagans, nor does it suggest we are less experienced or of lesser value. A young Pagan is devoted, innovative, unique, and spirited, and it is the latter quality that this book is named for.

[contents]

A Witch's Becoming

A commonly asked question from the curious towards many Witches today is “Can you become a Witch or do you have to be born one?”

My response to this is unconventional in that I have built up support from various esoteric philosophies and personal revelations to conclude that, to some degree, magickal ability must be a natural predisposition for someone to practice Witchcraft. However, I also acknowledge that all humans have the potential to wield power within them.

Every culture in the world originally sympathised with a form of shamanic worship, or spirituality, in which the spirit worlds and the human planes could be connected through the concentration of the mind and the use of special plants and aromas to obtain occult, or “secret,” information, usually for the betterment of the community. So therefore, in truth, each and every one of us has a family history of some version of Witchcraft. Thus, this ties into the Voudoun belief that every human is born of Magick. This means that each soul brought forth on this earth bears the ability to harness the energies within and without them for their own use. Whether we choose to honour this advantage or not is something of a personal decision. To have the potential and therefore the ability to “become” a Witch is to simply be born with a creative energy. In essence, the life path of Witchcraft is cultivated by all who seek to express, not through overt logic or reasoning, but through those actions and suggestions that are so vividly human we often mistake them for primitive activities. Dance, song, poetry, and music are all creative self-expressions. These crafts form the nature of Witchcraft and are often employed in ritual to raise energy.

It is said that we each have an individual gift. The so-called gifts that are apparent in almost every human today are, in my belief, forms of Witchcraft and Magick—and in fact, one of the more obscure definitions of Witchcraft implies expertise in a certain area, supernatural or not.

Witchcraft is a system of working with and understanding Magick, and Magick is the essential flow of life's energy. When we are creative, we are honing in on the flow of life's energy and using it to fashion, form, and express our innermost desires and needs. With this skill, we are able to evoke a plethora of emotions and change an entire perspective simply through rhythmic breathing. This is true and genuine Witchcraft: the ability to make ourselves feel what we wish ourselves to feel. The ability to seemingly create life from nothing. The ability to invoke the spirit through the simplest of gestures.

Today, after centuries of oppression and a gradual growth in favourit­ism towards conventional science and matters of “logic,” the fields of creative expression and artistry have faded into childish recreations and hobbies. Western society has sought to emulate this in matters of family and community values, raising their children to outgrow games of visualisation and imagination at a young age and forcing them to grow up faster. However, our society's belief in nurturing and protecting a child's innocence has balanced this factor out, and so the belief in such characters as the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus has become widespread. However, the children of today and past generations have grown into a conformist world where we must belong to the alpha group or be ridiculed and ostracised because of differences of opinion and unconventional traits. In a way, this has often destroyed the morale of the spirit of individualism to such an extent that those who do, in truth, have varied beliefs and philosophies shy away and adopt the guise of the social sheep, simultaneously ignoring the validity and political right to express themselves freely.

The Witch embraces social diversity and is the very archetype of secrecy, anarchy, and emotive extremity. The Witch questions what is evidently backward and suppressive while upholding change and transformation as successful pathways leading to genuine self-discovery. It is the Witch who rejects fear in the name of curiosity and thus opens the door to the world of Magick, which is the underlying resonance residing in all things.

Witches are the inheritors of an ancient skill that unites the wilful force of the conscious mind with the subliminal realities of the unconscious. Witches are the weavers of fate itself, and for this reason our knowledge is eternally bound to humanity's prevalence on earth.

The Natural Witch

“Witches are born, not made” is a statement that bears some attention. The philosophy and reasoning behind this statement are as follows: being born a Witch does not mean you must have come from a family of Witches. Its basic meaning is that those who will “become” Witches were Witches all along. The process of becoming a Witch is actually one of realisation and revelation. At the end of the road, you will have come to realise you have just walked a circle and come to the same place you had initially begun. However, the time in which it took to walk that circle has evidently changed the face and feeling of the beginning cycle, and now an entirely new experience is unfolded.

Our existence as Witches is a paradox in this globalised and industrialised world. We are the nonconforming cogs of the social automaton and therefore spin off to create our own personal validations for our existence. As Witches, we fight for our independence and right to freely express publicly or otherwise who we are without having to live in shame or remorse. We should not have to fear losing our friends or being cast away from our homes because of who we are. This is our home just as much as it is anyone else's, and we demand our right to live here, in equal standing with all life forms. As Witches and Pagans, we seek to highlight this system of cooperation and living. We are living beings, as are all things that breathe, consume, excrete, adapt, and so on. There are no standards of living apart from those introduced by the feudal systems of caste imposition.

In a world that has gradually fallen to political shouting games, war and destruction are imminent, and because of this there is a kind of destiny that seems to work its way into the potential lives of humanity, the voices of the earth. There will always be those who wish only to live and let live and to be the force that will allow for true democracy to continue. Consider the greatest and most renowned historical and spiritual figures—Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ. These individuals are celebrated and even deified by their respective followers because of their nonviolent teachings, their peaceful stature, and their infinite compassion towards others. It was the Dalai Lama of Tibet who said “my religion is kindness” and Christ who instructed his followers to “love thy neighbour.” And not unlike Gandhi, Pagans and Witches also actively incorporate the principles of peace and love into their spiritual paths in order to cultivate a positive reality.

Witches are born into families of any description, but from an early age we will all bear a keen curiosity for those things termed
supernatural
. We will often hold on to our childlike longings and dreams, ignoring the constant nagging to grow into “maturity.” Whether those who are born to be Witches and Pagans are born into families that preach extremist views on religion or not, there will always be that persistent hole inside of us that yearns for attention and desires fulfilment. Fate then brings us to realisation and, as they say, we come home.

My Magickal Genealogy

It has only been quite recently that I have fully accepted the concept of “Witch blood,” or the inheritance of the power/gift from biological ancestors. I have always known that my father's family is deeply reverent, steeped in the animistic mysticism of Bali, where they still live. My late grandmother was noted
in her village
as a skilled healer and holy woman and consulted as a priestess, for lack of a better term. My mother has told me stories of members of our extended family falling ill after a rather intense possession (this tends to happen a lot in Bali) and then seeking refuge with my grandmother, who would nurse them back to good health. My grandmother had the gift of divination through the oracle of dice and was a spontaneous medium, as spirits would enter her at any given time (a predisposition that is now manifest within me and was evident within my sister when she was younger). My mother relayed to me the time of the blessing of my father's newly built temple. My grandmother had been carrying a tiger's skin to bless it, and as she walked, her behaviour began to change into that of a tiger. She dropped what she was carrying and fell to the ground, clawing and snarling at those gathered around her. Similarly, in the past few years I too have been filled by spirits, presences, and even gods without consciously having anything to do with it. I have found myself thrashing around the circle and channelling power that has nothing to do with my mortal frame. Also, like my late grandmother, I exhibit talents in the area of divination, specifically relating to the Tarot and palm reading.

My father is what I would call a lay priest. He serves no congregation, only his gods and his family. He is a devout Hindu practitioner and speaks of his encounters with extraterrestrials, the fair folk, levitation, and all things mystical. My mother's family is another story altogether.

My mum has six siblings, of which she is the youngest, making her the seventh child (a number steeped in various folkloric associations). Her sisters are involved in professions that relate to either healing (in the form of nursing) or that of teaching—concepts that appear within the traditions of the Craft. My mother, while claiming no special gifts, is quite empathic and perceptive. Her late father despised churchgoing and Sunday school, and in one photograph taken with his class, he is the only one scowling at the camera.

Peter Farquharson, my grandfather, owned a chicken farm, where my mum's family grew up. Peter employed dowsers to search for water on the property and invited the bushmen, called “swaggies,” to stay at the house. He also spoke to the gypsies, known to everyone else as vagrants, who confided to him stories of stealing chickens for food from other farms. They never touched his. He was a very Pagan character. I have since learned that his family, despite the prominent Scottish surname, was mostly Irish, whose ancestors, perhaps, resided at Goath Dobhair (Gweedore) in northwest Ireland, County Donegal. His aunt also happened to be the famous Sister Elizabeth Kenny, who is world-renowned for her treatment of polio and her many Kenny Clinics in Australia and the United States. She was a remarkable and strong-willed woman who went against the traditional establishment and who earned many honours in her name, being one of the few to be granted freedom of passage to and from the United States. In her earlier days, she was called a bush nurse and was versed in midwifery and healing various injuries and ailments. She was said to be a tomboy who loved nature and horse riding. She was also seen by many to be a miracle worker, whose healing power was more than just a skill acquired by practical physical means.

I do believe that this rich heritage has endowed within me some special affinity with the forces of the natural world, and I do recognise that genetics can add to and even shape the various qualities of an individual—perhaps even metaphysical qualities.

Blood Witch
—it's a term that the NeoPagan community has rejected, and spitefully so, although the movement permits the words
otherkin
,
dragon
,
faerie
, and (shock, horror)
Magick
, which any other communal sphere on this planet would deride with a high level of scepticism. What is it that other Witches and Pagans find so blasphemous concerning the concept of genetic Witchcraft? Is it rooted in the fact that Gerald Gardner was attacked by people purporting that his Wicca was nothing like the traditional Craft which flourished in various places in Europe? Or was it that many Pagans found their way to the gentle earth rhythms of the Craft via ceremonial rituals stemming from various occult fraternities who taught that Magick was an art of discipline, and by no other means was it possible to attain mastery over it? Or could it be the simple fact that many believe the Pagan faiths to be open to all and sundry, that all who accept the long-kept wisdom of the Old Ones will feel within an awakening of latent power? It is true that any one individual has the ability to channel universal energy; however, are there not those who are of greater skill and who more naturally apply it in their lives? Why is it such a stretch of the imagination to conceive of these naturally inclined Witches as perhaps being heirs to a magickal lineage of power flowing through the blood? I feel that power comes from both blood and spirit (breath), hence the validity of both the blood and the spiritual Witch. But when both power sources are united and acknowledged as complementary and integral to the other, the true Witch is born—one whose Magick arises from the call of the spirit and is infused by the rushing of the blood.