by Joey Morris
Have you felt it, Witch?
There’s been something in the air of late; a palpable electricity, a fire in the belly, a need to be heard…
A call to action resonating with spiritual souls who are turning against those that would suppress them, silence their power or intelligence, who would call them unruly or insane just for speaking from their heart and soul.
The call is now for personal sovereignty, passion and purpose and rejecting anything that is not a deeper, dirtier truth.
Inspired by Carolyn Elliott’s Do Not Be Careful What you Wish For and with this thread of spiritual energy and message flowing through my very being I invite you all to ditch the (witch) practice of making yourself small for others’ comfort.
This energy has cranked into overdrive since Lilith in Scorpio sang it from the stars above, highlighting how every woman since the supposed first woman (that would be Lilith according to the Bible) has been called monstrous for speaking out to what it is they want, need and are about.
Lilith is a prime example of a “woman” (Goddess) who burned too brightly and was supposedly punished for it.
She refused to submit to Adam and was cast out of paradise, so the story goes, becoming the mother of monsters.
The truth, such as it is, requires stripping back what we have been told, refusing the dogma and seeing with our witch eyes.
The Dark Goddess in her many forms, is primordial, ancient and primal.
She cannot and will not be tamed by the whims of others. She is not a slave to the whims of any other.
And here, and now, she looks into the depths of you, her eyes the ageless night skies and challenges you; “Are you small, witch?”
Fear of Lilith would make her mortal rather an Goddess, and vilify her power so that she and the fruit of her loins were monsters.
Fear of being judged for who we are, warts and all, makes witches aim lower than they perhaps ought to, and as previously discussed in Be Afraid Witches — being afraid of yourself, your identity and what others think of you is a poisonous fume that clogs the deep spiritual breaths required to keep your witch heart pumping.
Personal empowerment can be a tight rope balancing act where we find ourselves keen to master ourselves on the one hand and at risk of over inflating our ego on the other.
If we are not cautious then we can find ourselves acknowledging personal truths about ourselves and then feeling that they somehow should apply to other people too…
Because what’s right for us is simply right, right? Wrong, Witches.
This too is an act of making ourselves small; thinking only in terms of our own inner microcosmic existence, afraid to be different from those around us, to see the world through our personal lens whilst acknowledging that really, our experiences, thoughts and feelings only apply to one individual; us.
There is a tendency to attempt to rationalise the behaviours of other individuals in order to grasp the why.
As though somewhere along the line human beings decided to apply the scientific method in the strictest sense to every aspect of life around them including every aspect of each other.
Whilst I have enormous respect for and encourage scientific studies in most aspects of life, I wonder whether as Witches sometimes we seek to dull the mystery, the enigma and the passion of witchcraft just in order to justify and explain it to others.
Some concepts may never be fully quantified and explained no matter how hard we, as a human race, seek to do so; our connection to Deities, the affect soul deep symbolism has on our psyche, irrational fears… just to name a few.
The urge to classify, rationalise, and quantify spiritual practice seems to go against the grain of simple belief, and worse, it demands explanation from other human beings as though somehow we deserve to have the mysteries of their heart and soul explained to us for whatever reason.
Perhaps because we are afraid that we are too small to have our experiences mean something if we stand alone.
Instead sometimes we have to get wise to the act of surrender and vulnerability and that it is perfectly okay to not understand everything or be able to explain everything.
That mystery is dipping your toes into the shores of the sacred; an initiation into something that in essence is not meant to be fully knowable.
My personal relationship with the Goddess Morrigan highlights this to me daily; as a Goddess whose energy shape-shifts, evolves and refuses to be quantified, I can hear her deep laughter at anyone seeking to rationalise and interpret her simply.
The minute you think you have a handle on Her essence She will shift and change again, slipping through your fingers like water.
Big Goddess, Little Human.
It is not that we should ever stop seeking higher truth or for explanations, the pursuit in itself is noble and requires humility; to acknowledge that we know little and understand even less, but at least we are thirsty to know.
The world around us excites our sense of adventure.
We want to know what lies beyond that metaphorical hill, hear the stories others have to tell and be touched by a higher power than ourselves.
To know that we are small in the grand scheme of time and space is to be humble but to acknowledge we have our own unique brand of self that no-one else has ever been or ever will be is to rock our own spark of inner divinity.
We have to stop denying our inner power and refusing our magical identity simply because others might not accept us or tell us how wrong we are, and conversely we have to stop pointing a finger at others in accusation because their spiritual practice (whatever that might be) is not the cookie cutter identi-kit to our own.
The current political and social climate is rife with an “Us versus them” mentality lacking in understanding or kindness.
Passion and personal calling are pillars of personal sovereignty and they can serve us beautifully along the path.
But when we become entrenched by them, bound to them so that we become tyrannical in our approach to other people, be they Witches or not, spiritual or not, like us or not… we have cut ourselves off at the knees.
We become desperate to control outside of ourselves as though that is where power lies when instead mastery of the self is a far great accomplishment.
In desperation to be seen as powerful, popular, intellectual or perfect we in fact hand over our power to someone else.
We become small.
This journey has been a personal one, along the road of self-discovery and shadow analysis of inner traits that lend themselves to the problem of making myself small.
There are those fears of being wrong, being right and that I do not measure up to an invisible standard, both self imposed and imposed by others.
I offer this essay neither to tell you how to think, how to act or how to be, simply place it in front of you and ask that you consider how you think, how you act and how you are.
Lastly, the truth I keep coming back to is that all passion must be tempered with kindness; for as Arthur Golden in Memoirs of a Geisha puts it;
“We none of us find as much kindness in this world as we should.”
There is a strength in being gentle with the hearts and minds of others; a skill in passionate beliefs tempered with understanding, and something truly enigmatic in the process of connecting energetically with a higher calling.
Shedding the fear to be who you are, who you are becoming, without constantly apologising for yourself.
It is an act of courage in refusing to suppress yourself, in remembering who you always wanted to be, embrace your incredible unstoppable magical will but not forcing that role onto anyone else either or expecting their path to look anything like your own.
So let the energy of the Dark Goddesses twinkle in your eye and love yourself, all the parts they told you were ugly, undesirable or unnecessary.
Reject the idea that you cannot be yourself, entirely and utterly yourself and let your personal sovereignty shine through, and when you see another individual cloaked in the majesty of their own personal brand of weirdness, raise your hand to salute their awesomeness… not to slap them down.
IN CONCLUSION
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About the Author:
The YouTube channel blends discussions of spirituality, witchcraft, the Celtic path, and the Goddess Morrigan alongside lighter topics such as visiting pagan places and witchcraft supply shopping.
It also showcases StarryeyedSupplies, which is an online metaphysical store created and ran by Joey offering a wide variety of supplies and tools for witchcraft, all handmade with magical intent.
Joey’s shop can also be found via Facebook.
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