Personally I feel that advancing on the path is two-fold. One part is to follow our passion and delve deeply, becoming ‘expert’, in the topics that call to us. The other is moving from ‘doing’ Pagan practice to ‘living’ or embodying Pagan practice so it becomes integrated with our whole being. I think, for many people, that’s a very scary prospect, they keep themselves unconsciously on that 101 wheel because it’s safe, familiar, and non-threatening.

Slainte,
Sarah

Merci pour cet article que j’ai trouvé vraiment très intéressant:
Me permets-tu de le traduire pour mon forum, en mettant un lien vers ton blog ?

Bises
Die Hexe

Blessings,
Anthony

After you’ve internalized the basiscs, you dig deeper. And then take it into yourself and make it your own, letting it and you change along the way.

As a teacher of mine once said, “You want to be a witch? So BE a witch!”

My personal definition of advancement is thinking and doing for yourself – it doesn’t mean reading certain books or getting certain degrees in a coven. The best teachers and mentors will make sure their students are actually thinking for themselves and making connections on their own. As Dion Fortune said “there is only one initiator” and that is yourself.

I call m yself a witch, yet reading your post, I wonder if this is appropriate. What does my spiritual practice look like? I engage with nature, conecting to the spirits of the stones and the various plants, to learn about their magic from the source dirrect. I have special affinities to some crystals, and to some plants. Im make charms from these stones, wands from woods, incense and potions from various plants. I have made witch bottles, poppets for both healing and binding, inscribed candles and created sigils to some effect. I have read tea leaves and crystal balls, and have a notebook full of perosnal tarot reflections. I appear to have two familiar spirits…but they’re not very big or lively becuase I haven’t been feeding them with my time and attention. I have done a small amount of mediumship. I have walked in the forest with Pan. I have talked to mary mother of God, though she seemed more like a catholic Lilith.

But I don’t call the quarters, I don’t have a purely ceramonial knife or athame, I don’t celebrate the sabbats (though I try to be mindful of the behaivour of the moon) and I dont worship any Goddess or God. Even worhsiping the God of my Christian Heritage never made sense of felt right to me…does the divine really need his/her ego stroked? I cant recite the wiccan rede, because the trees never taught it too me. I have never read most of the famous wiccan/witch books (except for the Spiral dance and the holy Book of Womens Mysteries–and Im not even a woman). Im am fortunate to have a guide of soughts…a clairvoyant yoga intructor who has walked this path before. I don’t wear a pentacle and I have never even met anyone who belongs to a coven. I really never have practiced 101…oh shock horror.

So….whats the point of my rambling….I want to ask you…WHAT IS ADVANCEMENT? Am I a witch? what is a witch? I thought I was a witch lol. all very curious.

if none of the above makes sense…dont worry about a reply..thanks for the thought provoking article.

Blessings,
Anthony

Still, it’s a real issue that people hit a certain number of years in the Craft and start to feel all stuck and like their wheels are just spinning. I was there for a while myself and the book is the stuff I figured out (as a solitary) to move me past it. Writing the book was an initiatory experience for me (I also delivered a baby about two weeks after I delivered the completed manuscript) and I found that having finally written out all the stuff I wished I’d been told before — I no longer needed most of it.