Existence often ignores our personal agenda. The events that take place in our lives make us collapse and we feel like everything prevents us from moving forward as we had previously planned. Our life and our path are subject to that of others and to those things that we do not expect, to the Inevitable.
All this affects our approach to Witchcraft: there are times when we want to consciously move along the way and we find ourselves unable to advance, and, suddenly, in the worst time, we feel forced to advance in the path of Witchcraft in a way that does not allow discussion. Surely many will recognize that feeling. But these little dilemmas, these small personal battles are more important than they might seem, and perhaps they should remind us of the main reason that led us to follow the path of Witchcraft, the reason which motivated us to accept this challenge and decided to dedicate Part of our existence to know the Invisible. Because, the saying that goes “Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans” could also be easily applied to Witchcraft.
Let’s not forget that Witchcraft acts subtly in our daily life, since it does not depend on us but it is a path that is capable of surviving on its own. But life, in its frenzy, drags us along. There are times when we encounter chaos and we just let ourselves get carried away by life, and it is at these times when the inertia of whirlwind helps us to accomplish goals that often seem impossible. We are able to draw strength from unexpected places in order to move forward, although, within us, we may not want to move on.
But when calm comes, when commitment and obligation just stop and we can choose whether to act or not, whether do what you should or enjoy a well deserved rest, we often succumb to slumber, and start feeling guilty. On these occasions, when we believe that we are not doing anything productive, or that we are not moving forward in the path of Witchcraft, we should just stop and analyze the situation.
I have often found the phrase “use it or lose it” being used regarding Witchcraft, stating that, when we stop performing Magic or practising Witchcraft, we start losing the magical capacities we have had, or losing contact with the spirits with which we had once dealt with. But Witchcraft, as a path of life, is always there, and will continue to be, no matter how many 30-day challenges we want to follow or how do we want to accomplish a deadline in our witch’s agenda. Witchcraft still exists in the background, together with our vital problems and daily nuissances.
There are, of course, a series of things that we can not ignore, especially in those cases where we have made pacts with spirits. But despite these vicissitudes, we must learn to see how life, Death, and Witchcraft continue to work in the dark. And even in those times when we feel we are not achieving the goals we had posed on ourselves, and we feel like we want to move back for a while, this is also an advice that we receive from our intuition, our instinct, the one that brought us here in the first place. Intuition and instinct are also part of the Art of Witchcraft, and they speak through it. Ignoring our inner advice will just end up in trouble.
Just like nature, which lays in slumber during the peak of winter, Witchcraft perpetuates its cycle, waiting for the right moment to bloom again. We, as practitioners, can not force the rhythm of things, but our responsibility is to discern lazyness from the need to slow down, we must know what role we must accomplish within our own path, where do we want to go, and what are we prepared to do, so that, either in chaos or calm, we can feel in our place.
