Читать книгу Witch, Please: A Memoir - Misty Bell Stiers - Страница 10

I remember, as a child, sitting in the pews of a quiet church early in the morning, waiting my turn to confess my sins. I was always terrified. I would stare at the Virgin Mary, resolute before Gabriel, and say a million apologies to her before I ever reached the confessional.

It was supposed to make me feel better, this chance to have all I had done wrong immediately forgiven. I would say my prayer and list out all my misdeeds. I’d slowly count them out on my fingers. I felt like there must be a perfect number of sins, one that showed I was really trying but still acknowledged that I could never be perfect. I eventually settled on between six and eight, and I remember consciously making sure I had transgressions enough for each designated finger. One hand of sins weirdly felt like not enough, but two hands full seemed like way too many. Even so, I always feared if I had too many sin-free fingers left over, the priest would know that I wasn’t listing all my sins, or that I was obviously forgetting a truly important transgression or two. Was that an even greater offense, to completely forget a sin? I didn’t know, but it felt like it might be. And so I sat, listing every possible transgression, no matter how small, and steeling myself for my inevitable punishment.

My penance was never much, despite my fears to the contrary. I would be assigned an apology to someone, a handful of Our Fathers, perhaps a full rosary. (Man, the rosaries killed me. I always felt so bad when we had to bring Mary into it—I felt like she had dealt with enough, and the idea of disappointing her was always particularly heartbreaking to my small soul.)

Yet, once I was finished confessing and doing my penance, I never felt any different. I realized, years later, that this was because confession felt like a process outside myself. Someone else was judging my behavior and deciding how I could make things right, but that isn’t how restitution works. I needed to truly feel remorse and do what I felt was necessary to atone for my actions—and oftentimes, atonement is not as simple as saying a rosary or offering an apology. Sometimes, sadly, I cannot make up for what I did that was wrong; I just have to try to do better next time. That hurts, but it’s true: I have to live with my mistakes, with the consequences of my choices.

I’m okay with that—I’m learning to be. I have to be. I don’t always honor the divine in those who surround me; sometimes I do a rather horrible job of it. I must then own up to it and make it right as much as I can. I alone carry the weight of my decisions and their consequences.

If there’s no one judging our behavior for ultimate reward or punishment, no one outside ourselves to tell us what is right, you might wonder why Wiccans bother to do good at all. The answer is Wiccans believe that what you put out into this world is what will come back to you. This is often referred to as the “Rule of Three.” It is most easily explained as a belief that what you send out into the world returns to you threefold. While some people may think of this as karma, it is slightly different. I believe it’s meant to remind us that if we bring as much light as we can to the world, we will be more likely to receive light. Joy begets joy. If someone lives a life full of anger and negative energy, that person will most likely not be able to see past it to find the happiness that’s abundant in the world. Worse, negative energy attracts negative energy, so it simply multiplies endlessly. “Misery loves company,” anyone? We each define our own experience, and if we spend our experience looking to create magic and joy, we will find it many times over. If we hang on to resentment and disappointment, that’s all we will ever hold.

I’m a witch. I answer to no one but myself. It is up to me to create an existence that fulfills me, that makes me happy. I fully understand the power of words and intention, and I have promised to do no harm. I am bound by my actions and deeds. That’s truly what being Wiccan, being a witch, is about for me: honoring the power around me and within me, living in harmony with the world I am part of and striving to make it a better place.

For a lot of people, the definite lack of palmistry, magic wands, and incantations at the center of Wicca is a bit disappointing. Yet all of those things can be part of a given witch’s practice; if you came to visit me, you would see a broom hanging on my wall, white sage in a metal bowl by my door, and a deck of tarot cards in a hand-carved wooden box at the head of my bed. Those things just aren’t the heart of what being Wiccan is all about. In many ways, they are but trinkets and toys in comparison to the real work.

The real work is about taking responsibility. It’s about putting in the effort to understand yourself and what you have to bring to the world. It’s about honoring the divine in every living thing—not just the cute ones, not just the nice ones, but all living things. It’s about finding a way to view those around you as part of the entirety of your experience, learning to empathize, and, yes, sometimes learning to back away slowly.

Wicca is not about spells to fix your problems but about being willing to face those problems head-on with the intention of overcoming them. It’s not about changing the course of the wind so much as finding the strength to stand in it. It’s not about seeking some greater power outside yourself for what you need but about finding that power within you.

It may sound hokey, but when you act with the intention to bring joy and light into the world and you trust the power you hold within yourself, you can create a spell more powerful than any love potion.