How to Become a Witch, Amber K. [new books to read .txt] 📗

With Spirit start and end each day,

I am a Witch at every hour.

An ye harm none, do as ye will,

Touching magick, wielding power,

Heal always, never kill,

I am a Witch at every hour.

I cast the circle, raise the cone,

Touching magick, wielding power,

And pour the wine when magick’s flown,

I am a Witch at every hour.

Work your will, but earth revere,

Touching magick, wielding power,

And every creature living here,

I am a Witch at every hour.

Soar upon the astral planes,

Touching magick, wielding power,

Visit woodland faery fanes,

I am a Witch at every hour.

Dance the round with Pagan folk,

Touching magick, wielding power,

’Neath the stars, beside the oak,

I am a Witch at every hour.

I am Goddess, neverborn,

Touching magick, wielding power,

I wear the crescent, wear the horn,

I am a Witch at every hour.

We may forgive, but we can’t forget,

Touching magick, wielding power,

We’ll claim our place in sunlight yet,

I am a Witch at every hour.

Many seek, a few may find,

Touching magick, wielding power,

That Witchcraft feeds the heart and mind,

I am a Witch at every hour.

[1] “I Am a Witch” by Amber K, 1998; revised and expanded by Amber K and Azrael Arynn K, 2009.

Introduction

Why Do You Want to Become a Witch?

Some find their home in the Witches’ Craft,

Touching magick, wielding power,

But each must seek and find their path,

Is this your way, is this your hour?

Merry meet! That’s a traditional greeting among Witches. We’re glad you decided to look at this book, and we will be even happier if it helps you begin your journey into the world of Witchcraft and Wicca.

Perhaps you heard about the Craft, became interested, and are exploring it alone. This book is a good introduction. Or perhaps you’ve found a coven, and they have recommended this book (or handed it to you and said, “Read it!”). Most exercises/activities are designed for someone working alone, but they can easily be adapted for anyone working in a coven.

Almost everything you have seen and heard about Witches in popular comics, cartoons, role-playing games, songs, books, television shows, and movies is wrong. Those are fairy tales—fantasies—entertainment.

There are real Witches, and we are two of them. Amber has been an initiated priestess for over thirty years, and Azrael entered the Craft about twenty years ago. Both of us have traveled and taught the Craft throughout the United States; Amber has served as first officer of the largest Witch network in existence, and we both help run an institution of higher learning for Witches and other Pagans—Ardantane Pagan Learning Center. We know something about the modern Craft.

But Witchcraft is incredibly diverse from place to place, coven to coven, individual to individual. There is no One True Way to be a Witch—and that is one of the glories of the Craft. There is room for individuality and freedom and different points of view, which are the bedrocks of Witchcraft. It is no place for dogmatics, followers, or sheep. If you want to be told what to believe and how your spiritual life should be, look elsewhere.

Start with this fact: Witchcraft is partly craft (the arts and skills of magick) and partly spiritual path. Some Witches focus on the first part, some on the second. Many of the spiritually oriented people, including us, call ourselves Wiccan Witches, or priestesses (or priests) of Wicca.

Our heritage as Witches is in the ancient, nature-loving religions and folkways of Europe. Our formal spiritual path, Wicca, as a modern Neopagan religion, got its start in the 1950s in England. Our future is unlimited.

Witches abhor dogma, creeds, ironclad rules, authority, and anything that stifles the human spirit or treats people as subjects, market segments, or mere consumers. Witches prize individuality, spontaneity, creativity, and freedom. We seek wisdom, love, and power to be used for individual freedom and the common good.

Witches are explorers. We believe in the value of science and technology when carefully and ethically used. But we know that science has barely touched the mysteries of life and death, and so we are also mystics and adventurers in the realms of mythology, magick, meaning, and the realms of Spirit. We know that there are realities beyond the material world and consensus reality, and we intend to explore them. We move among goddesses and gods, animal allies and plant devas, faeries and legends, sylphs and salamanders, speaking stones and talking trees, and our world is deeper and richer, more colorful and harmonious, than most people will ever know.

You will need courage to follow this path. Dwellers in the ordinary world will call you crazy, or foolish, or possibly evil. Yet there is something harder than facing their condescension or ignorance: facing the changes that will happen within you. Of the Goddess, we say, “Everything she touches changes,” and if you wholeheartedly enter our world, you will be changed forever. Some of the changes will be exhilarating and wonderful, empowering and intellectually expanding. Others will make it harder for you to relate to the “muggle world”—less content with convention and habit and mindless labor. Your spirit will be Goddess-touched, and you may become a little wild, a little fey, and a little weird. Accept that or seek another path.

This world is not for everyone. Most people would do better to choose a different spiritual path with more rules and guidance and fewer challenges. But if you are heart-drawn to the Craft, then you are welcome—whether you are female or male; white, black, brown, yellow, or red; straight, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Most Witches know that the outer package matters very little; what matters is your courageous heart, your open mind, and your questing spirit.

To Be or Not to Be

If you stop and think about it, it’s pretty strange that anyone would want to be a Witch. After all, most of us have been raised to think “Witch: green skin, pointy nose, warts, scraggly hair, nasty, old, with a shrill cackle….” Of course you know better, but that image is still there