The Mistress of Magic

The Black School, John Jude Palencar

The Alexandrian witch Maxine Sanders once complained that witches in the south of England were working magic for her sick son and that they called on the Goddess to do as she willed and released their power to her, and her son sickened. She said it was irresponsible of a witch to call up power and put it in the hands of the Goddess, and that if a witch didn’t know exactly what she was doing, and exactly how much power to use, they were doing something very dangerous. She was angry at those witches trying to heal her son. She was probably angry at how little she herself could do.

Since I’m not exactly sure how a witch would do that or if witches ever did that, I’m going to have to call bullshit on that.

One weekend, a long time ago, I went with a decision I had been waiting on for some time. I decided to initiate into the Craft, to “become” a witch. This took a great deal of thinking, as much as it did to identify as queer. I was deeply devout and deeply devoted to my God who at that time I identified as the God of the Roman Catholic Church. Everything that happened later was all a result of knowing that anything we called God and the God I was experiencing relationship with and too, had to be bigger than churches, didn’t seem like he had much to do with church and the people I met there at all. The attraction to the Craft was the same as the attraction to a queer life, to other men. In some way shape or form it had always been there always delighted me, always seemed natural and would take me away from the dullness I was living in that I sensed was untrue.

There was very little going for my life when I initiated. I was pretty lost as to what mattered or where to go next.. Possibly I thought this would show me, but really I was filled with the excitement of what Gemma Gary calls “a walking away”. That weekend it was very hot and I was living with parents who had bad air conditioning and didn’t like to use it. I had procured my first robe and spent the weekend reading cards and lighting candles and really thinking about this new commitment, taking the ritual bath, thinking, that’s done, and really, only being at the beginning.

The internet existed, but not for me, not really, and it was a lot of long searching through bad books and dead ends and false stops, coming to strange places and staying to long in them before I finally made it to taking a first degree, second degree and third degree and this was before I came to 1734. So, I sit here, as a witch of many years and a little bit of wisdom, and propose one of the most important questions: what is magic? No, I pose another question: how does magic work?

I don’t know.

After so many years I’ve heard, we’ve heard…. Oh, hell, a lot. This candle for this result, bergamot and sassafras mixed together to that. Tying up this that and the other in such  way for such a thing to happen. The Book of Shadows which Gerald Gardner invented (or assembled) and which Alex and Maxine Sanders largely cribbed has several very specific ways of doing things and we are told we who have seen it online haven’t see the actual book actual covens use cause every coven is different and…. But presumably if you do not get your results, there is a lack of precision to what you have done Those (usually) men who bill themselves as ceremonial magicians are very firm about how precisely you do rituals to command demons and I’ve heard some frankly stupid shit about how they do magic and how precisely they do it and if they don’t do it right. And the sigil masters, who always get it right, because they know the right way to draw the sigil. Or the long bearded, bespectacled D and D playing magicians who tell ou magic really is a science you just have to…

But this all bullshit.

Since when I began and nothing really turned out until much later where many things I long for still haven’t happened, but many powerful workings have born strange fruit, I have learned a few things. One very powerful working was a weather one. I had wanted to go to the beach with a friend who talked about wanting to go places and who had a good car. I never have. And we had made our plans for the weekend. Almost as soon as we had she checked the weather which predicted terrible weather for the rest of the week and that weekend. I, however, began a long and powerful working despite what the forecast said while the week yielded worse and worse weather. I only needed the sunny Saturday. Friday night the sky was black and foul but when I woke up on Saturday it was one of the best, sunniest, warmest days that summer. My friend said she couldn’t go because her washing machine was acting right and she really wished she could but….  All that Saturday the glorious weather sort of taunted me and the sun winked down and me and asked me if I’d learned a lesson. Looking back I realized she’d always been untrustworthy and eventually I broke off ties with her. The next day the weather went back to being foul.

So often in our workings and ritual, and in the Great Work, which we call “magic” we don’t really know what we need or what we’re asking for. I thought I wanted good weather, but what I wanted was a reliable friend and the sense to do things on my own and for myself no matter what the weather was. Some practitioners believe they are in control of spirits or gods or demons or whatever, but this is silly. The thing about the magic done at our altars and in our circles is there is a Master of the magic, and a Mistress, and it is not us. We are apprentices.

In the Last Unicorn, the magician Shmendrick stops being a fraud and surprised to learn he is a real wizard. The way the magic works is always a surprise, for when it is time, instead of trying to manipulate or control he holds out his wand and says, “Magic, do as you will.”

The Magic is not simply a tool, and definitely not solely a servant.

Let the Magic lead.

And it does as it wills.

And then surprises come.