How to Become a Witch by Amber K. (large ebook reader txt) 📗

serving the Goddess and the Old Gods, expressing the sacred in the world—being priestesses and priests!

What God(S) Do We Serve?

Most Witches serve both the feminine and masculine faces of Deity. (Some focus exclusively on the Goddess; very few focus only on the God.) We personify them and call them Goddess and God, or Lady and Lord. Frequently we refine these great polarities further to more specific aspects like the Moon Goddess and the Hornéd God. We can get more specific still and speak of individual, named deities like the moon goddess Selene or the hornéd god Cernunnos. And even a named, individual goddess or god may have more than one aspect; we can see the Celtic goddess Brigit in her role as Healer, or Poet, or Smith.

The green man

One of the favorite God-forms in the Craft is the Green Man. He is masculine divine energy as expressed in the plant kingdom, especially the sprouting, growing, blossoming energy of the wilderness. He is often represented as a semihuman face, with leaves forming his hair and beard and even sprouting from his mouth. Many medieval cathedrals have the Green Man carved into the stone and wooden decorations. One theory is that Pagan artisans built and decorated these churches, and because they didn’t know or care about Christian symbolism, they used the images of the Old Gods of nature.

Now, many Witches are perfectly happy working with, say, the Lady and the Lord, period. Usually they don’t feel a need to get any more specific. Others might base their rituals on the Moon Goddess and the Sun God. And many others work with an entire pantheon from a specific culture, such as the Celtic deities Arianrhod, Brigit, Ceridwen, Dagda, Lugh, Manannan, the Morrigan, Rhiannon, and so on.

Though the old pantheons of northern and western Europe are popular among Witches generally, there is nothing to prevent one from working with any pantheon in a Wiccan context. That is, you can be a Witch and work with the deities and mythology of ancient Egypt or classical Greece or early China or anywhere else. You may feel strongly drawn to a particular culture and era—perhaps through a past-life connection—and feel both fascination and strange familiarity with the religion of that time and place. Follow your heart.

The wild hunt

On stormy nights, the spirits of the dead ride in the Wild Hunt. You may hear the thunder of their black horses, and the lightning struck by their hooves reveals their huge, dark forms in the clouds. If they catch you at some lonely crossroads, you may join them and ride the night forever. The huntsmen may be Faery folk or werewolves. Their leader may be Woden, Herne, Charlemagne, the Teutonic goddesses Holda or Berchta, or the Welsh god Gwynn ap Nudd. Our deities include the dark, mysterious, and dangerous, perhaps because we have no devil as a catch-all for anything difficult.

Many Witches work with a small number of deities special to them and develop a “divine circle” of guides and role models. For example, Azrael enjoys working with Brigit, Amaterasu, and Ganesh, whereas Amber has bonds with Brigit, Hecate, and Coyote. Divine relationships evolve and change, too. Once Azrael worked a great deal with Persephone, and Amber was deeply involved with Bast, but life changes, and those particular needs are no longer so great.

Still other Witches are deeply devoted to one particular goddess or god and work almost exclusively with that divine aspect. It could be Isis, Odin, Habondia, Pan, or any other. But in such cases the Witch may explain that she was chosen by the deity, rather than the other way around. The Witch is called to service and has no desire to seek elsewhere.

Many Dianic feminist Witches focus only on the Goddess. Their need and their joy is to explore the feminine side of the Divine that has been neglected and devalued for so long in Western patriarchal society. For some, the Goddess is simply their source of strength, pleasure, and inspiration, and there is no wish to divide their attention and explore male deities. For others, our civilization seems horribly out of balance in its focus on patriarchal gods and values, and Goddess awareness is essential to restore balance and harmony to the world.

Many of us explore God aspects that have been neglected by the mainstream faiths: God as Warrior, Lover, Brother, Sage, and Trickster, among others.

We all explore and honor the faces of Deity that seem right to us, and in the Craft we are free to do so.

Training, Initiation, And Degrees

Wicca has long been a religion of initiates. That is changing as more people want to be Witches but don’t feel the need for an initiation. Others don’t want to practice with others, except perhaps to attend a public ritual—for which you don’t need initiation; you just have to show up. For many, the practice of Witchcraft is a private thing, and solitaries answer to no one but the Goddess and the Old Gods about their initiations or degrees.

However, a foundation of formal training is ideal, and now there are many choices of where to get that training. The traditional way, of course, is to join a training coven, committed to passing on Craft knowledge so their students can grow as Witches and eventually form their own covens, if they choose.

A second option is to take online courses. These can provide good information but cannot replace experience-based participation in a group for learning things like raising and grounding power.

A third alternative is to attend live workshops like those sponsored by metaphysical shops, at festivals, or at Ardantane. Here the teaching is face to face, and students gain the experience of practicing in a group. Of course, classes at bookstores and festivals are on whatever subject the teacher wants to teach, not necessarily what the student needs at the moment.

So what constitutes basic training for a Witch? Here is a list of skills and