Simple Ritual

As I move further along in my journey of  aging, along my path to becoming Crone, I notice that my life is less and less compartmentalized. Every aspect informs every other aspect. This doesn’t feel like an energy of diminishment, or downsizing. It feels like expansion, like the dissolving of walls, the removal of masks. It feels like integration and simplification, like becoming the one true self.

I haven’t exactly made my spiritual practice these past years a secret, but I also didn’t wear it like a tattoo. I’m still doing neither, but I am acknowledging it as a part of my complete picture. In case you’re wondering what my practice might all involve, this short video that came across my social media feed is close, although a little heavy on the ritual side even for this old Catholic girl raised in the rites and regalia of the Roman Church.

My spiritual practice is a connection to the Divine, whether called by Great Sprit, God, Goddess, Yahweh, Allah or the many names one may choose from. It is a partnership with the natural world and laws of nature that contain me in this life. It is a reverence for the existence of the Divine signature in all living things, especially humanity. It’s an ongoing endeavor to rise above ego and seek the greater good.

You can call me a witch, I won’t be offended, but I hesitate to call myself that. I’m not what you see in pop culture portrayals. Neither am I an epitome of evil, caught in satan’s grasp as most religions would have you believe. I am not Wiccan—which is a recognized religion. The saying goes: All Wiccan’s are witches, but not all witches are Wiccan. It means we don’t all practice as religion.

I like to keep it that simple. I know all the magic, how to use the props, how to conduct a high ritual—I am in fact an initiated Priestess. But don’t need any of that. I can just as easily go to the forest, or the shore or hillside and open my heart, mind and soul to the messages that will come. I can sit at my kitchen table, light a candle and listen.

I can do this, because I have learned the more intricate ways, because I have sought out spiritual knowledge on many levels, because I have done this since I was that child in Catholic school, and then that young adult who wanted to know more about other faiths, and that mature woman who wondered how and why the feminine aspect of divinity was lost. In my searching I found the common threads woven through all faith beliefs.

And now the lines that separated it all into this or that religion are dissolving and it is simply faith. Faith that there is something bigger than me, bigger than humanity, bigger than this life. It doesn’t matter what I call it or how I aspire to connect with it because when I do, when any of us does, we are woke to the knowledge that God and Love are one and the same.

But I am not through learning. I will not be through learning until this life is done, and I suspect not even then. To be a witch is

• To Know
• To Will
• To Dare
• To Keep Silent*

Blessed Be and Journey Well

*In times and places of persecution to keep silent is for protection. But it also means to refrain from arrogance, to keep your own counsel, and most importantly, never to proselytize.

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