one
Stepping into the Circle
THE GODDESS IS ALIVE AND well in Texas.
Her sacred grove is a one-bedroom apartment on the
East Side, where the traffic noise rattles the windows and
rain leaks in through the crack above the door. In the age
of computers and stock portfolios, She has traded Her celestial
raiment for a business suit. The Hands that spun the
web of creation chop vegetables, light incense, type letters.
The Voice that called the stars into being answers the hotline
at the domestic violence shelter downtown. The Goddess
sings Aretha Franklin in the shower at night, and
sometimes She forgets who She is.
Then She looks in the mirror and sees the light of the
Sacred in Her eyes. She remembers dancing bare-breasted
at Beltane and standing with arms upraised in the center
of a ring of oaks with chant ringing in Her ears as She
weighs dragon’s blood resin at the local metaphysical supply
store. She thinks of the praise that falls from Her lips
on a moonlit night. She remembers Herself.
So can you.
By now you have read books on Wicca, searched the Internet
like a big-game hunter on safari, and networked until you
couldn’t tell one Amber or Raven from another. You’ve bought
specially charged candles and been to festivals; you’ve memorized
lists of correspondences for colors, days of the week, elements,
astrological signs, herbs, deities, and animals. Maybe
you have been part of a coven or other sort of group, maybe
not. You have certainly gathered quite a collection of ritual
robes, jewelry, and tubes of henna paste.
The problem, however, is not with whom you have worked
or what you have worn. The problem is that you look in the
mirror and you still don’t remember who you are. Life feels
heavy, and the rituals you attend have started to bore you.
There is something fundamental that’s missing from your
religion, and you hate to admit it. After all, when you found
Wicca, it felt so much like coming home. Does your dissatisfaction
mean you’re in the wrong house after all this time?
Before you start to pack, consider this: humans are a
species constantly in search. At the beginning of our history
we searched for food, and when we realized that potential
food was much bigger than we were, we searched for a big
stick to hit it with. We searched for shelter, and then when
the basic issues of survival were covered, we searched for
community so we wouldn’t have to face the dark nights
alone. Once we learned to band together and share the labor,
we had time to search for something bigger: meaning, purpose,
something to explain why we are here and why we
share our existence with disagreeable things like murder,
flood, politicians, and mosquitoes. We needed something to
give us a place in the universe—a vantage point from which
things made sense.
Religion of any kind is a way to find that something. It
became clear to the human race that the meaning of life—
the purpose of it all—would not be the same for every person.
Hence the rise of so many religions and philosophies.
Every faith approaches the search in a different way and
finds a different idea to focus on. Christians, most often, seek
salvation from our own sinful natures and deliverance from
the evils of the world. Put very simply, Buddhists seek
enlightenment—a transcendence of the physical realm in
order to pursue the spiritual one. Wiccans, along with a number
of others, seek union.
Someone once asked me, “What’s the point of this Wicca
thing? I mean, if you’re not trying to get into Heaven or find
Nirvana, what are you trying to do?”
That is a tough one, and a question I don’t think many of
us have given a lot of thought to. It is difficult to step back
and look at the bigger picture. I gave the only answer I knew,
then or now. The point of Wicca, the real mystery behind it
all, is to remember the Divinity within ourselves and all
things; to manifest our God and Goddess all the time, every
day, every moment; to love as They love, to give as They give;
to serve Them in perfect trust, and thus bring Their grace
more fully into the world; to understand that we are the
embodiment of the Divine love and nurture, and to express
that love in the world; to walk as God and Goddess.
Sound impossible? It isn’t. We already have all the tools we
need; we only have to recognize them and teach ourselves
how to use them to return to a view of the world where anything
is possible—to see like a child with wide eyes and an
open heart.
The rituals and other tools of Wicca serve as a bridge
between ourselves and that goal, and as tools they can be
used effectively or clumsily. I can’t count the number of rituals
I have attended where the most spiritual part of the event
was the potluck afterward when everyone shook off the
boredom of another full moon just like the hundred before it
and really got to celebrate. The most moving rituals are the
ones with the fewest stage directions and the least fuss,
where energy flows along its natural currents and we dance
with it. Unfortunately these are in the minority for most
groups, and in solo Wicca it can be even harder to create a
sense of the sacred when using the same old chants and the
same old colored candles. We try not to venture too far from
what we’ve learned from books and covenmeets, since
branching out means that eventually our branches will intersect
with those of other religions. Wiccans have great pride,
I have noticed, in how different we are from the world’s
biggest sects. Perhaps we think it shows growth on our part,
or perhaps we simply want to distance ourselves from the
ways of our youth that often left us scarred and wanting. We
forget the moments of fellowship, the hymns that were part
of our blood, the parts of ourselves that those faiths actually
did satisfy even if we grew beyond them and went searching
for something more.
The problem is that in our desire to separate ourselves
from our childhood faiths and eke out a place of our own in
the grand scheme of things, we refuse to learn from our religious
heritage. Obviously if the Christians do it, it must be
useless. Never mind the millions of people who do find the
Christian tradition a fulfilling path. Never mind the people
out there who are striving to be
Christlike—not political, who
are not our enemies. We can’t learn anything from them, of
course. Everything we need as Wiccans is in a book somewhere
or in ourselves or in the natural world, right?
The vast majority of our co-religionists nowadays have read
all the books on beginning Wicca they can stomach and don’t
live anywhere near the natural world that our ancestors had to
struggle with for daily survival. It’s difficult to revere nature
with any sense of reality when the nearest natural area is thirty
miles away and the closest thing to it is a manufactured park
littered with beer cans and stray drug dealers. We spend all day
encased in metal and glass, going from house to car to office
and back again, and many even work through meals.
Where does that leave us? We are in many ways disconnected
from the nature we are supposed to worship. If having
a ritual outdoors means schlepping into the country with a
ten-pound bag of ritual tools (the mystical Tote Bag of Shadows)
and soaking ourselves in bug repellant, what do we do
the other three hundred or so days of the year? In our society
we are constantly bombarded with images of violence, hatred,
and indifference, and our attempts to change things are often
met with hostility. The magic in the world sometimes seems
to have a precarious hold on life at best. How can you live as a
7
Wiccan every day when your lifestyle is better suited to urban
guerilla warfare?
It isn’t enough to be a Wiccan on full moons or sabbats.
No one ever became fluent in a new language by using it
once a month. The best way is to surround yourself with the
lesson; to speak Wiccan from dawn to dusk until it becomes
your nature.
One oft-overlooked remedy for our modern dilemma is
the ancient tradition of a daily personal practice. In every
religion the world over there are people who take the devotional
path, giving over large parts of their day to ritual,
prayer, and communion with whatever face God wears for
them. The dictionary definition of the word
devotion is to give
wholeheartedly to something. Given the Wiccan view of the
universe as a place of cause and effect, it would follow that
the more you devote to your sense of the Divine, the more
the Divine will devote to you. If our goal as Wiccans is to
turn our belief in the God and Goddess into reality, immersing
ourselves in our relationship with Them is the surest way
to turn our belief into knowledge.
How do I know this? My life is every bit as hectic and the
city I live in every bit as toxic as most people’s. I haven’t
reached some blissful state of spiritual perfection, but I have
seen its nearest neighbor in people I have encountered over
the years, and I have begun to learn from their success.
The first group I noticed whose religion and life were as
one were Catholic nuns who worked in the hospital where I
was a secretary at the a...
