Never Falter

"Ye who take but one step on this path must continue to the end, for this path is beyond life or death."

-Patricia Crowther

As we go into the second year of Lapwing and Hound, one thing that comes to mind is the need to keep being true to the Craft and the dedication to continue walking in the Mystery.  The adept does not stop seeking, does not stop digging deep, does not cease from devotion. The witch does not stop undoing normal ways, and breaking off from assumed norms and yet, most who take up that mantle eventually do. This is why so many of you have nothing to say, have never really practiced the art of having something to say or doing a deep dig. Too many would be witches, content to walk away from the churches they grew up in, content to accept something else, were also content to never dig deeply or search for a new thing. This is why so many descend into endless postings of memes and notes about nothing truly interesting, or selling what little witchy wares they have, planning the same old conventions and gathering they have every year, business witches, witches stuck in some type of made up theology because they have given up their own search for truth because that type of searching is hard.

There is an odd thing I’ve seen which is some occult people mocking Christian faith healers and Pentecostal people. This is strange to me because, once you have embraced the occult, and once you understand that power is everywhere, once you embrace the name witch, you have lost a great deal of the right to be sarcastic and doubting. Recently I heard about something not recent at all, the prayer meetings at the Cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Leipzig which were held for years in East Germany once a week, and spilled out into the entire community. The power of that prayer is regarded as one of the triggers for the end of the Communist regime there. So many people, gathered together before the Divine presence in resolute hope and love brought about a mighty work.

Once I made a posting called Witches Unite, but the truth is there just are not enough witches for only witches to unite, and like any other movement, when looked at closely, there are some devotees and a large number of congregants (posers, dead weights, semi devout, confused, hangers on) who are not about to do much of the Great Work. Twenty centuries ago, a great revelation yielded Christianity, and such was the spirit of that religion that almost immediately, Christians began to divide from each other one what was the right way to receive this revelation, who was real, who was false. They turned within and built up dogmas, doctrines, right beliefs. It could not be helped. Christianity was spawned from Judaism, a religion which denied the truth in all other religions. But in this age we reach beyond borders. It is not enough for a witch to call to other witches. It is, frankly, too many silly and useless people bearing that name. From now one people of good will who walk on the borderlands and live in the left hand world, who know and work magic and prayer have to come together and recognize each other despite their differences and never minding what they call each other, or how they name the Great Work.

In the next year we continue to veer away from the common way of things and go bone deep into the truth as we can know it, to not camp down on a few assumed points of someone else’s theology, but to remember that God is a Stranger and we are ever walking toward that Mystery. If the mystery is a thing to be solved, then we are in trouble, but if the mystery is to be loved, then we are on a true path, for how can we ever reach the end of knowing or understanding that which we love.