How did you get here?
Wicca found me when I was 24. I always knew I was looking for something. It was long before the internet so there was no such thing as “going online” and nowhere to “post” for a coven to join. And anyway, I was a solitary even then. It was just better to keep my questions to myself. Maybe you thought so too.
Isn’t it sometimes safer and smarter to go after the mysteries of the Universe on your own?
Sounds quaint doesn’t it?
I want to say that Wicca’s out in the open now, and nobody has any superstitions anymore and you can do what you want. But, just before the pandemic I went to a big box bookstore in the Midwest, USA. There was not one single book on Wicca in the entire place! I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was just looking in the wrong section. When there WAS NO SECTION I had that “uh oh, keep your head down,” feeling.
At home on the East Coast the shelves of Barnes and Noble are packed with books about faeries, crystals, witches and everything in between. But in some places women still have to hide. Even though as a friend always reminds me, “we’re everywhere.”
You might hate Amazon but at least now you can go buy a book and learn, study and practice Witchcraft on your own, wherever you are.
And it starts with a book a lot of the time
When I was young there was a vintage bookstore in my town, crammed with every odd thing. A bell over the door clanged when you walked in. The place was thick with that old musty book smell that stays on your fingers for hours. Down the basement the quirky owners kept all of the weird books hidden away from the popular mainstream histories, fiction and biographies they had upstairs.
In the darkest corner in the back, where none of the tourists to my little port town ever shopped was a section marked with a faded and curling strip of paper tacked to the shelf: “Esoterica.” What a great word. Secrets, hidden mysteries, magic, ritual.
Of course all of it was just the finger pointing to the moon, as the Buddhists say. But it was a start.
What was your start? Did you find a book, meet a person, have a dream? Did your clairvoyance wake up? Did you have an epiphany?
Was it something the minister or rabbi said one day that made you say, “Nope. I’m out”?
What made you become a metaphysician? An earth-based practitioner? A card reader? A non-conformist? A witch?
I’d love to hear.
Blessed be,
Diane
