The Holy Hunger of God Herself is the love a scorpion has for its prey. It is absolutely true that the cosmos is a dark forest of predation and merciless give-and-take, but also a place of interdependence, co-reliance, and reciprocity. You see it around you in the bioregion, everywhere.
For witchingkind, the Holy Hunger is a secret whispered on the Winds that roar in the darkness between the stars. It is perfect Love, just as the stars spin in the swirling eddies of the Milky Way, all dancing around Death (the Supermassive Black Hole) at the center. An eternal return.
For those who approach La Grande Belle Dame Sans Merci, and ask of Her Hand, she will first rend us apart before making us wise...if she chooses us. We must suffer--experience friction and disintegration and identity-death, being "Cleft from the Herd"--before we can become whole. Before we can bear the sign of the True King, whose brow shines with gnosis, who has tasted the three drops of wisdom from the poison cauldron, who wears the Crown of Thorns.
This is the crown offered to each of us who take the risk to pluck the Rose. Old Fate raises us to Her, to be gods, but first dismembers us and then grinds our bones to powder. There is no godhood without death; even the etymology of "god" has linguistic associations with the grave mound.
Phenomenally, this looks like being messy, really facing our shit, having our lives fall apart, and even coming undone. All of our Flow is being redirected. It is the quest to make the Pearl. All the old rules no longer hold sway, for we become part of the hidden covenant, those who ride back and forth between wake and dream, re-membering the whole, re-enchanting the world and ourselves.
To put it simply, we must learn to fall in love with our own Mystery, and manifest this into the world. Robert Cochrane, late Magister of the Clan of Tubal Cain, reminded us to not seclude ourselves but be in the thick of human culture.
Dr. Cornel West reminds us that "Justice is what love looks like in public." If this is true, and I believe it is, then the work of the witch is to extract justice for the Wild, the living embodiment of the Otherworld -- even the Wild hidden inside of our civilized selves. This is the place where we all dream deep, beyond the boundaries of this wicked human civilization.
So love like God loves--a hard love that coddles no weakness, that is merciless in its desire for the Other. Tear your heart out and let it burn cinder-black on the Pyre. There is no mistake that witchcraft is associated with poisoning. We imbibe wisdom from the toxic, as we transform it within ourselves in a kind of healing, becoming intoxicated, in ecstasy.
This looks like toppling institutions of social power that oppress the people. This looks like being in service of the Land, the bioregion, the whole body upon whom we live, move, and have our being. And if the body of the Land is the body of the witch, this looks like reifying our wholeness through practice and discipline, literally "taking on the teaching."
We must respond to the spoiling of the bioregion and climate change, and in the modern miseries engineered by the greedy, insatiable Capitalists, and get our hands dirty in the work of it all.