My witchcraft is the opposite of delusion. It's about facing what's true and real about yourself and the world—head on—and making right relationship with it. You have to get clean with yourself. You can't practice this kind of witchcraft if you hide things, getting mired in habitual misperceptions about who you are and what you do and what you deeply desire, or if you're lost in a fog of human confusion.
The kind of witchcraft I do is not a hobby, it isn't playtime. It's a vocation, the spiritual calling of one's skill into action. It's not easy, comfortable, or always very pretty. There is no "Ascension", there is no long-awaiting plateau where everything suddenly gets perfectly wonderful and better and there is no longer any struggle. That is not the real world, that is a fantasy, a delusion.
No, my witchcraft is riddled with struggle, with suffering. Why is this okay? Because it is through life's struggles that Wisdom is won; just as it is with friction that a pearl is made. It is in following one's passions that you win this Wisdom, this Vision of Truth; for when you follow your passions you learn something unmistakably true and real about the world, and about yourself.
Faery Tradition initiate Morpheus Ravenna, in the documentary _American Mystic_, says something along the lines of not believing she was put here to be comfortable, but rather to "experience the depth and breadth of what Creation has to offer." I too share this perspective. The kind of witchcraft that I practice and get caught up in is one with the Faery Rade or Wild Hunt. It is a covenant with the Land that is about plunging into the ebbs and flows of Creation and becoming a part of what is foundational about reality, getting to be a part of the "Insides" of where you live and move and not just seeing the world at its surface. The Underworld could just as easily be called the Innerworld, as it is "under" the surface of what we human beings can easily see. This is why we call it the Unseen.
But you know what? This is profoundly shareable. It is shareable through the act of loving those dear to us (love is a verb, after all) and practicing compassion. The word compassion means to "suffer with"—none of us are alone in our struggles, none of us is ever alone. The world is filled with spirits—countless spirits—unnumbered awarenesses each touching another, making a web of sensual awareness across the Cosmos.
So what does it mean to want the kind of witchcraft that I practice? It means you're committed to letting go. It means you want to take risks. "To know, to will, to dare, to keep silent." These aren't just pieces of good advice, they're a map.
Right now, where I live, we're entering into the Autumnal season. I associate Autumn with the West of the Compass: the winding road into twilight and shadow; marshes, bogs, deep pools, mirrors, grave mounds, shady forests, and sunset.
And especially with the winding up of things, how the Redness of our flesh is set "to dare." Risk has been on my mind a lot lately, because I'm truly realizing at this era of my life that playing it safe and really living your Passions have little overlap. If you want to embody your Passion and win Wisdom, you have to take risks, lots of them! This is apart from "knowing things". This is gnosis, what is in the blood and bone and breath. The beating of your heart, the flutters in your gut—hell, this is what you know deep down in your balls and in your cunt. This is the knowing that can weave life anew, that is filled with Promise—a Cauldron brewing something truly magical. But like all such things, more than a few drops can kill ya.
They say that sleeping on top of a Faery Hill or grave mound for a night will make you either Dead, Mad, or a Poet. In one sense, these can be seen as all the same state, a tripled kenning for the indwelling of mystical consciousness. The awakening of the Luciferian gnosis, the Fire-In-the-Head. This is what star-gods have chanced to steal from the High Places and long ago brought down into the Land, the Cunning Fire that made witches what they are. It's our legacy, and it is wrought of the very Daring that makes human beings into something more-than-human. The Master Spirit stretches across all the "kinds" of Being, because He dared.
If you want to do this kind of witchcraft, this is the kind of thing you must do: let go and Fall. Be willing to become more than you started out as, or maybe something you always have been, but have forgotten. It is time to be re-membered. But first, you must risk everything to be torn apart and reduced to your primary parts.
I wish you good daring in this hallowed season, wherever you live, whatever kind of person you are. May you dare well, and follow your passion to wisdom. May you be whole. Waes hael.