The Young Tradition

Of course what many of us know as the Craft is far from what is commonly called Wicca or paganism, and the further we get into our path, the further it will get from those easy names. Once again, I am making sideways stabs at Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon, and again I am struck by the fact that it unabashedly not only sticks to the Americans (that wa the point of her book), but has no real problems solely focusing on white people dabbling in the occult. She is talking about beliefs and ways of white Americans who are trying to start another stream of religion which she and they call paganism and which excludes large swathes of what most of us know as the Craft. Adler intentionally leaves out Eastern spirituality, but she also excludes American and British root traditions. Satanists, and therefore anyone who acknowledges anyone who could be called the Devil are excluded. So the Witch’s Devil is excluded from Adler’s witchcraft and paganism. In her very thick book there is little about Gardnerian witchcraft and as far as I know, nothing of Alexandrian. Because she defines witches as a subset of pagans, and who use Christian ritual or reference a monotheistic God are also excluded which means Clan of Tubal Cain, again traditional witches on both sides of the Atlantic, high magic, Voodoo, Candomble, Santeria and all Afro Carribean practices.

There are many witches who came into the Craft through a steady diet of Llewellyn books and paganism, or even through Gardnerian and Alexandrian witchcraft, and as they went deeper and needed a thorough spiritual practice, became Buddhist or Hindus or became so Buddhist and Hindu in their practice that it makes no difference to call them witches. And of course, there are those who gave up and went back to church, considered magic a phase. When we come to the Craft we are all seeking different things, and in the light of the Craft will discover what these things are. In time we may find that those things are found by simply entering another religious path, or deepening the one native to us already.

But there are some who find in the occult a deeper devotion, who turn toward those paths ignored in Adler’s book, and outside of the stream of paganism, and deepen themselves in the cousins of Candomble, Voodoo and Santeria, who follow the old wisdom traditions of American and Britain which, usually, in Britain, are called witchcraft. We go down and down, for the craft is as deep as we who practice it are willing to go. It is always a little ahead of us.

And the thing for all of us is that we do not know what to do. We are walking in the dark because there is no way for us prepared. There is no tradition for our tradition. Indeed, we have eschewed traditions and dogmas, teachers and absolute teachings to follow another way, one that we must build ourselves. The going is hard, because this is not just the getting of power, but the getting of mastery over ourselves and not just the getting of knowledge, but the getting of wisdom and understanding, and we don't have the wise grandmothers. We've never seen peace. we didn't have the elders or the in tune and spiritual parents who could set us on our way. We haven't seen the way. The way is counter to this world in which we live.

“The path to life is never very easy for very long. That path is worth it. All beside it pales. Devote yourself.”