Being a High Priestess isn’t much different from being any other type of clergy.  I get phone calls when people have bad days, when the shit hits the fan, when tragedy strikes.  I get phone calls on questions of faith.  I suppose the biggest difference in being Craft clergy versus being the standard “organized modern church-congregation clergy” is that I get a lot of ’how-to’ questions about the Craft itself.  After all, being a Witch isn’t like being Baptist:  you don’t just show up, sit in the pew, stand up and sing, sit down and pray, stand up and sing again, sit down and listen for 45 minutes, pray again, pass the collection plate, sing one last time, and go to potluck.  Being a Witch entails learning skills that take months, if not years, if not a lifetime to acquire and master.  So yes, lots of how-do-I-do-X questions.

But the crisis that is hardest for me, and perhaps other Clergy from other faiths would agree, is when someone finds themselves doubting the foundation of their belief system.  It’s especially difficult for Witches/pagans/Craft folk when we espouse a belief in magick and that we can change things with our Will and then… we do a spell and things don’t go the way we desire.  It’s not like praying and being told that “sometimes God says no”.  In our case, because we believe we are God/dess, it becomes a personal failure.  Like maybe this whole thing is nonsense and it doesn’t work at all.

Surrender is a very difficult lesson in the human syllabus called Life.  It can be a very difficult concept for Witches to learn.  As it is, so many of the Craft and pagan communities come to this path broken and beaten down, abused and outcast, victimized and codependent.  At first, I thought there was something about the Craft that attracted ‘fringe society’ and then I realized there was a common thread.  All of these cases, in some way or another, demonstrate a loss of personal power.   And if there’s anything that the Craft teaches, it’s how to get that back.

Many people who come to this path may not consciously be aware that the restoration of power, of one’s Will, is the central alchemy of becoming a Witch.  But it calls to us all, whether we recognize that call as inner healing, as the opportunity for growth, or as the girding of a warrior who will NEVER let *that* happen to them again (whatever *that* might have been that broke us so long ago).  In the process of pursuing this restoration of Self and personal power, sometimes we sink our feet into the mud a little too deeply, determined not to move because ‘we are power, we are change’.  We will what we will and so it will be!  Dammit!

And so, the Goldilocks path of the Craft (neither too hard nor too soft, but just right) ends up with a bunch of grumpy bears wondering who the hell ate our porridge, slept in our bed, and didn’t give us what we magicked up just last night.  Word to the bears:  surrender.

A redefinition of magick might be in order.  Magick is not “what I want so give it to me”.  Magick is about making changes in conformity with Will.  Not just any will, either.  It’s that Higher Will, that dictate of your Higher Self, that has to line up with what your Lower Self is asking for.  Your sophomore-decade lower self might really want that girlfriend and your Higher Self might see you missing out on the real love of your life if you got what you wanted.  So the love spell backfires on you (as they are wont to do) and you do what?  You complain that you’re sure why you believe in magick anymore.

It’s difficult to reaffirm the faith of a person who (a) feels like the art of magick failed him and (b) because *he* did the spell is feeling guilt for being a crap Witch, to boot.  Sometimes you can remind him of how other spells have worked miraculously and that’s enough to pick the person up and dust him off.  Sometimes that just goes in one ear and out the other like a bird through the brainpan of a Looney Tunes character.

These moments are where I have to remind the person I’m counseling that Magick is not Room Service.  You don’t just ‘order up’ what you want and it arrives on schedule with fries on the side and the little umbrellas in your drink.

Magickal ‘failures’ are like any other failure — an opportunity to learn a lesson.  And I’m not talking about learning a lesson about doing a spell better (most of those lessons come via doing the spell CORRECTLY and getting something you didn’t ask for and having to clean up after yourself… now THAT is a magickal failure, if you ask me).

No, when magick doesn’t work, it means that there’s something more important for you to do in this moment than to have your way.  Stop and think about that for just a minute.  When your spell fails, it’s time to look around and pay very close attention to the opportunity that is right in front of you.  Sometimes, it might be a lesson in faith and surrender, learning how to trust the course of your life and not bow in defeat at what you think is a setback.  Occasionally, getting what you want prevents you from getting what you need, and maybe what you need is right around the corner.  At other times, getting your wish granted may enable you to continue in an old pattern that isn’t serving you and so, your magick fails to push you further into a bad situation to prompt you with the catalyst to make a huge, but necessary shift.

There are all kinds of reasons magick seems to “not work”.  But judging the success of one’s magick based on whether or not you get what you want shows all the same pitfalls of a toddler judging the rightness of the world based on whether or not he gets a toy at the grocery store.  Sometimes, the answer is going to be no, regardless of how much Will you throw at it, how big a tantrum you throw, and Mother is still going to love you even if you think She doesn’t.

The mark of a mature Witch is having the grace to surrender to the outcome and seeking the lesson within the moment.  A mature Witch recognizes that the arrow loosed from the bow of her Will stays in flight until the target is struck… in the space between the worlds, time stands still and it can seem like that arrow isn’t moving at all for days or months until, suddenly something happens.  A mature Witch is patient and knows that immediate gratification is rare in Nature save in cases of hunger or thirst or sleep (the real NEEDS) — and I would argue that I know very few Witches who would say that the Gods didn’t meet their needs, even if they don’t always get what they want.  A mature Witch doesn’t beat up the Goddess or God within for “failing”, but instead looks for other opportunities to succeed.  A mature Witch recognizes that spells are but one way of exercising one’s Will in the world and examines her own life to see if her words, actions, intentions, and thoughts are in alignment.  A mature Witch holds himself accountable but doesn’t let accountability become an anchor of guilt.

Magick does work.  But it’s not a trick pony working for carrots.  It’s not an angry God saying ‘No’.  It’s not a judge meting out punishment.  It will not cure a mundane situation without mundane effort.  Nor can magick trump the laws of Karma and detour the lessons you have asked to experience.  These expectations of magick are what fail in these moments, not magick itself.

And while it is difficult, part of a High Priest’s or High Priestess’ job is to help others remember what magick is in those moments where life shows us (sometimes unpleasantly) what magick decidely isn’t.

Published 01/15/09, Witchvox Feature Article.