Devotion and Solitude: The Work of the Witch

I don’t hesitate from the use of the word God. Replacing it with the term The Divine or, the Gods makes things hazy, or makes the thing I’m speaking of seem less than God. So, witch that I am, we will stick with the Germanic word, God.

I have refused to be part of a congregation anymore. It sucks me into rooms and away from the fire.

            

For years the discipline was to get my ass up and be at church on Sunday, make the ride in all weathers to attend daily Mass, get up and see that I was in church on Saturday evenings, make sure I was at Bible study, be sure to attend church gatherings, religious events and holy days. This commitment to community continued when I was involved in Judaism and when I approached Hinduism. It died altogether when I settled in the Craft. It serves to say that all the time I went from religious house to house, I was an initiated witch. I kept ending up in communities because I was trying to learn and I stayed until I had forgotten why I’d come. Now my discipline is solitude. My discipline is to resist the urge to participate in community, to develop this thing that had begun in me, and build this fire. To find the Craft in my worship. Sometimes the worship may feel so good we forget or neglect the responsibility of actually doing the Craft and being the Witch.  Even now, as I firmly describe a witch as a priest, I am aware that in many forms of the Craft there is no word for this devotion. In Asatru it is called being godowned, being and Odinsman, a Freyrsman, a “wife” of or “spouse” of a god, a term also used in Voudou. Newer religion and revivalist religion seems to be the best teacher for devotion these days, and thinking on this, it is perfectly fair to revive all religion, including those that are currently extant. All religion should be reconstructionist, under rebirth and revision. All true religion should be revival. And for the Young Traditions, magic burns at the heart of this revival.

What is the difference between the devotion of the witch and the devotion of one who prays and is not the witch? What is witchcraft? Like many forms of religion, including Christian Pentacostalism, it insists that the lovers of God have also been given power by God, that to exist in God is to work the power of God. It is not only the insistence that there is such a thing as prayer and prayer does change things, does effect the world, but that the meeting of the soul with God brings new things into being, that prayer is not passive requesting, but an active creation, a bringing forth of something, and an entering into a power which one manifests in this present world whether it is called ashe or Manitou or seidr. The witch is not simply humble requesting that God bless something. The which is also placing that power on all she or he does. The witch is consciously and constantly working to invest all that she does with a transformative and holy power. What I am saying here is that the devotee is not simply forcing their private will on things and making them happen, but blessing things so that what happens, what is done is actually the event of God, is a blessing, is the coming of God, so that all magic is truly ashe, is truly the Divine Presence of the Holy Child.  The magical deeds are not simply bringing forth things we want or need or thinking we need in the time, but each magical deed is filled with manitou, the presence of God. The devoted witch is always bringing forth God.