Seeking and Finding

Meeting new people can be an awkward thing in any circumstance, but even more so when you're essentially interviewing (or being interviewed by) someone for potential entry into a training group. Like a job interview, or even a date, things can seemingly go very well, only for one or the other person to decide that the fit just wasn't right. Sometimes they'll tell you, other times you'll never hear from them again; and either way, you're left to wonder why (unless, of course, they tell you--a rarity, though not an impossibility). 

There are many ways to approach bringing people in to the craft. Not everyone runs a training group or Outer Court; I've heard of groups that simply meet socially with prospects for however long it takes all parties to determine whether the person will be brought in or not. I recall someone once saying (I'm paraphrasing here) that their task was to throw out all the reasons why someone wouldn't want to be initiated, while another said they would rebuff an inquiry two or three times just to test the petitioner's determination. I personally like the idea of chance meetings that turn to friendship and a gradual interest in joining the coven, but perhaps that's just my romantic side. We have had chance meetings lead to initiations before, and that's generally worked well, but we've also had people who sought us and were interviewed who came to be long-term coveners, so I can't say for certain which way is best. The roads which lead people to a particular group are just as varied and convoluted as those that sometimes lead them away to another coven, another tradition, another spiritual path entirely. 

So many factors figure in to making a good magickal working relationship possible. Some are social: most people tend to gravitate toward their own demographic cohorts, and away from anything too far outside those parameters. Some are personal: similar personality types, senses of humor, even political leanings and sexual/relational preferences can come into play. And then there are the intangibles, what you might call energy or chemistry or synergy: it's impossible to wholly define them, but they exist, and when they're off, you know it, and you ignore it to your peril. (Ask me how I know.)

I pulled a card before meeting the most recent seeker who approached us; the meeting went well, lasted a good while, seemed productive and positive, and ended with an email saying they didn't think it would be a good fit. While it didn't break my heart, it was disappointing, but I'll take upfront disappointment any day over the alternative of spending months working with someone only to have them depart, particularly if the departure is acrimonious. It's all part of the very glamorous job of coven leader, one among the many things you sign on for all unawares while upholding that promise you made to keep the craft alive. One of the first things we learn is that this particular path isn't for everyone; maybe sometimes my job really is to help people determine what it is they don't want.

At The Equinox

I'll admit, I was feeling less than festive at the autumnal equinox this year. That's unusual for me, as fall is my favorite time of all, and so many of the things that I love best take place this time of year--but there it was. Nonetheless I baked a loaf of utterly non-traditional soda bread (filled with raisins, currants and cranberries), arrayed the altar with pumpkins and gourds and fruits and the monster acorns I've been gathering on my rambles through the neighborhood, and contrived with my closest fellow witches to celebrate the season's turning as best we all could. I decided to do a reading, using the deck that I always switch to at this time of year, and I'll share it with you here:

(Images are from Kipling West's Halloween Tarot; in this deck, Pumpkins replace Pentacles and Bats replace Swords.)

Oddly, I felt rather better after that!

Introducing The Witch

(Note: The original posting date for this was March of 2010, on another blog I maintained.)

from the Halloween Tarot, by Kipling West

If Hogwarts existed, and I'd been plucked from my muggle-born world and sent there to study, I think I would have enjoyed Potions most of all. (As a child I'd have gone in mortal terror of Professor Snape, though by my teen years I would have been regularly costing my House points for snarking back at him.) I love experimenting with things, making messes, making potions, making magick--the magick of scent, that most evocative of sensations. I love settling in to my witch's cottage (yes, I have one) and setting out my ingredients, setting up the atmosphere for crafting something wonderful. I work by candlelight, of course, and utilize things like cauldrons and stone mortars and pestles, wooden bowls, wooden and pewter and silver spoons, glass jars and stoneware jars. I like music for background and inspiration, but since it's impossible to play the harp and do handwork at the same time, I use recorded music instead; Blackmore's Night, typically, though it might as easily be something else in a similar vein.

When I was blogging on the Temperance card the other day, I completely forgot the version to be found in one of my all-time favorite decks, Kipling West's Halloween Tarot. I got that deck out this morning and when I turned her up, I couldn't believe I'd forgotten. That's me, the me I have in mind when I'm doing my thing with my herbs and oils; the witchiest me, not a High Priestess of the Wica or anything ceremonial or outwardly imposed. That's the me that I held in my heart and my imagination from the time I was just a child, and to me that's what Witchcraft will always look like: cauldrons and cats and owls and hats, something bubbling away over a fire, shelves of obscure tomes and jars filled with you-don't-even-want-to-know-what. Steady hands, good instincts, curiosity, a willingness to experiment, those are the characteristics of Witchcraft to me. The religious aspects, and all the other trappings, they have their place but are wholly secondary to me in my practice. The craft, the Craft, the work of the hands and the imagination and the senses, that is Witchcraft, and that is magick. It's my own weird science, and it fulfills me.

(Yes, I was one of those kids who had a chemistry set, and a backyard meteorology set, and I made messes and set things on fire and drove my parents nuts. I used to stake out plots in the yard and conduct archaeological digs. I even had a job working in a laboratory once; I loved it, wearing a lab coat and gloves and messing around with beakers and centrifuges and such. If you were wondering.)

I remember being quite young and finding paperback books on Witchcraft, all of them the kinds of little books by folks like Hans Holzer that were so popular in the early 1970s, and I read those books and sort of glossed over the descriptions of "skyclad" ceremonies and ritual sex and such. I was culturally aware enough to dismiss those as being hippie free-love stuff, not actual, you know, witchcraft, which certainly involved the necessary ingredients of cauldrons and cats and owls and hats and potions and candlelight and...you get the idea. I'm considerably older now, and I'd like to think better educated and more experienced, but that early image of Witchcraft has never left me, and I guess it never will. No matter what my age or experience level, I'll always be that little witch in her cottage, mixing up something arcane by candlelight, overseen by cats and owls and the quiet stars above.

(Bonus: I also own boots like that. Stockings, too.)