Who do you love like this?  Have you told them lately?

LYRICS:

Moon so bright, night so fine
Keep your heart here with mine
Life’s a dream we are dreaming

Race the moon, catch the wind
Ride the night to the end
Seize the day, stand up for the light

I want to spend my lifetime loving you
If that is all in life I ever do

Heroes rise, heroes fall
Rise again, win it all
In your heart, can’t you feel the glory?

Through our joy, through our pain
We can move worlds again
Take my hand, dance with me

I want to spend my lifetime loving you
If that is all in life I ever do
I will want nothing else to see me through
If I could spend my lifetime loving you

Though we know we will never come again
When there is love, life begins
Over and over again

Save the night, save the day
Save your love, come what may
Love is worth everything we pay

I want to spend my lifetime loving you
If that is all in life I ever do
I want to spend my lifetime loving you
If that is all in life I ever do
I will want nothing else to see me through
If I can spend my life time loving you

We see religion, magic and wisdom in living as being united in the way one views the world and lives within it — a world view and a philosophy of life which we identify as Witchcraft — the Wiccan Way.

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You have probably heard the statement that a Witch can be a Witch without being a Wiccan, and a Pagan may or may not be a Wiccan or a Witch, but a Wiccan is a Wiccan and a Witch both.  Principle #7 gives a nod to that by calling our way of life both Witchcraft and the Wiccan Way.

For those of you who are new to Wicca (and before you ask), I regret to inform you that there is no central text or book you can read entitled The Wiccan Way and endorsed by Wiccans around the world.  As part of the lack of central authority that was mentioned in Principle #6, we also lack central religious pamphlets and propaganda.  The Wiccan Way is about as precise as The Wiccan Who’s-In-Charge — which means, not precise at all. 

As with Principle #6, this is both a strength and a weakness.  No, there’s no one telling you what to do, so you might do it incorrectly, but then again, there’s no one telling you what to do, so you get to do it your own way which is right for you!  It always amuses me when people talk about White Witchcraft and Black Witchcraft because, frankly, there’s so much variance and mixing of this and that, I really have no idea how we’d ever come up with anything but grey anyway! 

Principle #7 is actually my favorite because it emphasizes something very central to the practice of Wicca — regardless of how you choose to practice.  This principle is about the sacredness of living and the juxtaposition of what one believes and what one does as the essence of what it means to be a Witch.

• A Witch doesn’t put their spirituality in a box six days a week only to dress it up and bring it out on Sundays.
• A Witch doesn’t see magick as something they do, but rather a living and breathing current in which they participate.
• A Witch doesn’t see their mundane life as separate from their spiritual one, but rather as the same unified existence.

For a compartmentalized society, this is a huge thing to try and understand.  Many people today have a Work box, a Family box, a Play box, a Religion box, a Spouse box… we divide up our lives according to what we are doing and with whom we are doing it. 

That’s not how Witches live.  Within our lives, we have all the same responsibilities and expectations upon us.  However, instead of moving from role to role and task to task, we honor the sacredness in each moment as part of the whole experience.  For us, living and faith and magick are all inseparable from each other. 

This means there’s no need to go somewhere special to have a religious moment, nor is there a need to fulfill special conditions for something to be magickal.  We are equally engaged in a spiritual moment when we are cooking dinner as when we are helping with a child’s homework as when we are snuggling with our mate at night.  We might choose to do ritual, but those rituals are no more or less sacred to us than doing the dishes when your life is unified with your Path.

This point of view is very different from the modern idea that to be religious one must dress a certain way, go to a certain place, do a certain thing and thus faith becomes part of one’s life.  Witches practice in a way that is radical and yet on the horizon of spiritual evolution.  As mankind begins to make strides towards personal ethos and individual relationship with the Divine, the frontier of spiritual development upon which Witches already live will become settled by more of humanity. 

Witches aren’t the only ones who understand this, however.  The world is waking up quickly to this kind of sacred Now-ness and unification of belief with practice.  But all Witches should realize that they are leading by example, even if they don’t realize it.  Personal relationships with the Divine Spirit outside of the need for mass centralized worship is a huge step in human spiritual evolution.  It’s a step that, once taken, will simultaneously make huge strides for peace between peoples and nations.

Follow-up Questions for Readers:

1.  Do you agree with Principle #7?  Why or why not?

2.  Looking at your life, would you say that your religion, magic and worldview are intertwined as you practice your Craft?

3.  What are some ways that your worldview affects how you interact with the larger world around you?  How are you different from others in a way that you can trace directly back to your faith?

4.  Do you believe that, if everyone had a personal relationship with Deity and lived their beliefs, the world would be a more peaceful place?  Why or why not?  Do you believe it is possible for humanity to attain this?

5.  Principles In Action:  Read Chop Wood, Carry Water or another book that talks about the sacredness of everyday moments.  Next time you are doing chores, see if you can find the sacredness in the task.  What beliefs do you have that you have not found a way to embrace in your daily life (ex. you believe in the God and the Goddess, but do you honor them daily)?  Make a list of traits or beliefs that you embrace in your life and then, make a list of things you do that demonstrate those beliefs.  For example, if gratitude is on your list, do you have a regular time each day that you say “thank you” for what you have?  Principle #7 states that it is not enough to simply believe a thing — Witches turn their beliefs into actions, and this Belief-Into-Action holds the mystery of the path that we walk.

Photo by Eddi 07 (via Flickr).

One of the best things you can do in the winter to assure your herb gardening success is to look at your land.  Winter is a great time to do this.  The trees are without their foliage, the shadows fall cleanly, and the ground is hard enough that you can see the way winter rains flow off the landscape with minimal interference from plants and grasses.

Everyone can grow SOMETHING on their property, even if you don’t have a plot of land.  Many herbs, such as chives and rosemary, do quite well as potted plants.  There are even herbs for shady areas, such as sweet woodruff and foxglove.  Even if all you have is a ditch, you’d be surprised just how much plants like mugwort like that sort of thing.   The point is, you have to know what you have before you can plan what you want to have in the way of herbs.

Before you begin, grab yourself some graph paper and make a rough drawing of your yard.  If you can get the plot drawing from your county courthouse, you can use it as an easy template so you’ve got something to scale (this helps people who are drawing challenged)!  Once you have your template, you can then begin to mark areas.

Here are some things you need to notate about your gardening space:

Do I have room in the yard or in will I be confined to growing things in containers?  I prefer growing things straight in the yard as there is less chance of error when I let Mother Nature do her thing.  Pots require careful tending and making sure that you don’t over or underwater them — I will say upfront that I’m liberal with the watering can and end up doing potted plants more harm than good, so I stick to the ground.  *smile*

What area of your yard gets the most sun?  The sun in the winter is lower in the sky, but it still follows the same general east-to-west pattern each day.  If you can remember back to last summer, what area of the yard was always in the sun?  It’s probably still in the sun in the winter, although for a shorter amount of time.  Mark this place because many herbs want sun, sun, and more sun.

What area of your yard gets the least sun?  Obviously, the north side of the house is going to be sun challenged as will anything with a northern exposure.  But what about summer shade?  All those trees are going to leaf out!  If you’ll go outside when the sun is up and check it several times a day, you can tell by the shadows that fall (more or less) where your foliage is going to be.  Any land under a tree is going to get only morning or evening/afternoon sun.  Any land away from the trees will get more sun at some point during the day.  Mark areas of full and expected partial shade/partial sun on your yard map.

What area of your yard gets flooded when it rains?  This is your “moist” area.  Plants that really love that bit of extra moisture are going to do better near this spot.  You might not want to plant your herbs directly in this area but even planting them near it will allow the roots for water-loving plants to leech moisture from the nearby soil.  Now, once you have figured out where that moist area is, look at the surrounding slopes to find your areas with the best drainage.  Mark these on your map as well.  Plants that traditionally grew on slopes and mountainsides are going to like land that drains well and dries out quickly (many of your Mediterranean herbs are like this… they don’t like wet feet, and the drier soil helps concentrate their herbal oils).

What area of your yard is “southern exposure”?  The southern exposure area that backs up to your house is a “sweet spot” for gardeners.  It’s a great place to put plants that normally don’t do well in your climate band.  The full sun southern exposure gets them plenty of warmth, even in the winter, and if it’s backed up to the house, the house becomes a radiant heat collector for solar energy, gently warming the plant at night.  Plus the house shelters the plant from the harsh north winds.  I have managed to get a Bay tree to grow outdoors year-round in the Chattanooga area just by finding a good “sweet spot” and carefully taking care of her.  Find your sweet spot on your map!

Now that you’ve marked these areas, be sure to mark where your outdoor water spigot is located as you’ll be needing it.  Also, give some thought to where you think you might like to put garden beds.  Don’t actually draw them out on your map.  I like to use construction paper and make several “plot” shapes and move them around until I finally decide on one I like. 

If you want to grow a long-term perennial herb, such as echinacea or valerian, you need to find a spot that you can dedicate to those kind of long-term plants.  Both of these plants (as well as others) require that you allow them to grow a season, sometimes two, before you harvest them.  I tend to keep my long term bed as a separate bed because they will require a different care schedule than other plants.

It’s a good idea to try and get your garden beds to conform to the landscape.  If the plot is on a hill, consider taking the time to terrace the hill a bit and plan for the work it will take.  If the plot is flat, raised beds are a wonderful investment, look nice, and make it easy for you to establish both permanent and rotational beds (meaning you change what you plant there each year). 

Once you have these main areas marked out, you can begin to select plants for them.  But that is another gardening lesson entirely!  We’ll save that for next week.  In the meantime, get out in your yard and see what there is to see.  Successful gardeners have a relationship with their land, which means accepting it as is and learning its quirks.  Go have a talk with yours today!

Photo by Rosefirerising (via Flickr).

I’m going to do a short series on herb gardening based on my much larger workshop that I give at gatherings about the same subject.  Herb gardening is one of my favorite practices as a Witch, and I have loved putting in and maintaining a garden wherever I have lived.  There’s just something about being able to go outside and gather what you need when you need it, getting your hands in the dirt and developing a relationship with your land, and taking that energy from the plants you’ve raised into your body and your magickal work through food, recipes, spells, and healing preparations.  I love it!

I’ve known people who have told me that they just can’t grow anything in a garden, that their thumbs are black, that giving them plants is like giving the poor living green thing a death sentence.  That doesn’t have to be true!  I’ll share with you some secrets that will give you an edge for success in your herb gardening endeavors, even if you’ve never grown anything before!

As we move along through the spring, I’ll add more articles to this series, including landscaping tips, herb information, garden blessing, inviting plant devas and maintaining good relationships with them, harvesting and storing of herbs, herbal recipes, putting your garden to “sleep’ for the winter, good tools to have on hand, and more! 

If you have a great recipe to share with my readership, feel free to email it to me and I’ll be glad to post it with credit to you!  Everyone needs to know an extra use for rosemary or what to do when you have too much thyme on your hands (haha!  gardening jokes will abound, too)! 

Spring is coming, and that means good “green” Witches start their gardens when the ground is still cold!  Tomorrow, I’ll tell you what that means!

Photo by Maia C (via Flickr).

This, of course, is the time that most of us chicken out because we don’t feel adequate enough, ready enough, strong enough for the task.  If that’s you right now, I don’t blame you one bit.  I’ve been there and felt that fear and it absolutely sucks.  But why is it so bad?  I’ll tell you.

Remember I said that the first step to making a change is conscious awareness that a change needs to be made.  If you’ve become conscious of the need to change your negativity, then there’s also a good chance that you’re feeling pretty bad about yourself right now.  I don’t know of anyone that has faced this beast without a moment where they looked in the mirror and really, really, didn’t like what they saw. 

There are three basic ways to respond to this moment of clarity. 

The first reaction involves beating yourself up for being such a horrible person.  If this is your tendency, then you have a chance to get a HUGE head start on your gardening work.  Go into the moment and listen to yourself.  Listen to every nasty, mean, cut-down you want to level at yourself and write it down.  Once you write it down, put a voice to it.  Who said that first?  A parent?  A boyfriend?  A friend?  A teacher?  Was it something you told yourself after someone broke up with you or rejected your friendship or after you let a parent or friend down?  If you can put a voice to the negative words you tell yourself, you have found the first of your creepers and roots!!  Congratulations!  Now, all I want you to do is sit there with these creepers and watch them wave at you.  They can’t hurt you now — you’ve seen them!  If anything, take a moment and realize the separateness between you and them.  You are not your negativity; you are something more than your negativity, and it needs you to live.

The second typical reaction is to deny it.  Denial comes in all sorts of ways.  Clues to whether or not you’re in denial:  you’re blaming someone else without taking at least partial responsibility; you’re coming up with excuses as to why you couldn’t have made any other choice; you’re shrugging it off with the thought that people can either deal with you the way you are or they can go jump off a cliff; you tell yourself that you need your anger/mistrust/fear/hatred/worry/etc. to protect yourself and then you go right about the business of your life.  Basically, denial allows you to look in the mirror and then immediately forget that what you see there applies to you.  It’s like looking at something close up in clear focus and then, choosing to look at something far away — the close-up object goes out of focus and disappears to your vision.  The minute you become preoccupied with other people and what those other people are doing or you begin projecting things onto other people, you have lost your close-up focus.  You’ve lost the mirror and the lesson you could learn.  If this is you (and if you are aware that this is you), then your job is to sit with the mirror for a bit.  It’s not going to hurt you.  The negativity is not you.  It’s just something you’ve let go on a little bit too long.  But you can’t do it if you’re too busy denying how your garden grows.

The third (and only) response (not reaction) is to do nothing.  You see it.  You look at it.  You hear the negativity speak in your head.  You cry or get angry and you let it flow through you.  You might feel disgusted with yourself, but a little healthy guilt isn’t a bad thing — it’s a sign that you need to realign with something higher and more pure.  I call this third option a response and not a reaction because this actually shows you are present in the moment — few people can do this automatically, so don’t feel bad if you don’t fall in this group.  I didn’t the first few times I was faced with the mirror.  The way you know that you are in this moment is because all it engenders for you is a feeling of peace.  That’s what true knowledge does — it answers completely.  You know the situation.  You see it.  It is what it is for whatever reason it is at this very moment.  What it will become isn’t decided and what it came from can’t be changed. 

So what if you wake up like me and find that you’re a whining, drama-stirring, stress-addicted, pain-filled person who has been beaten, abused, molested, taught to fear life and God and the world itself, never allowed to pursue your own dreams, grown up believing that everyone else was more important that you were or could ever be?  SO WHAT?!  It’s not the truth — it’s not the soil, the core of you.  These are just the vines choking you, trying to kill the life and the light within you.  Being able to sit in that moment and not try to change anything, just to be there and look yourself in the face and not push away any of the realization… that’s important.  No, that’s crucial.

The negative voices can be loud though.  You might hear yourself say, “Yeah, but so-and-so is just as bad about doing this as I am!” or something like that.  Again, SO WHAT?!  You can’t change them.  You can’t make them make better choices.  You can’t weed their garden for them because, guess what?  They’re not going to tend it and it’s just going to end up covered up again unless they make the choice to get rid of the infestation on the inside themselves.  All you can tend is your own plot, your own spirit-land.  It’s very easy to give yourself an out — oh, kudzu chic is in this year!  All the neighbors are doing it! — but really, you know better, don’t you?

What I’d like to see you do is get to a point of calm acceptance of where you are right now.  That is the best preparation you can do before heading into the wilds of your negativity.  You need to realize that the infestation is not you.  It’s only your lack of attention and self-maintenance that has allowed the negativity to get out of control.  With some hard work and continued focus, you’ll whip it your inner landscape back into shape and it will be much easier to maintain positive grounds.

You’re not destroying your garden — you’re doing some much needed weeding so that the things that you want to grow have the chance to grow.  So grab your pruning shears and your shovel, and let’s go take a look and see what’s gotta go!

More next week!

Photo by Pensiero (via Flickr).

Yesterday, I mentioned that almost everyone has an area of personal negativity that can use a bit of magickal elbow grease.  I also listed ignorance of your own negative tendencies as a risk factor.  Before we get into the nature of negativity, I’d like to talk about personal ignorance and its incredible ability to undercut our personal power.

To begin simply, you cannot change what you do not know needs changing.  Change is an act of will.  Change requires an understanding of the current state and perceived new state that is different than the current state.  Then it requires the energy to move from one state to the next.  It takes willpower. 

Willpower takes conscious thought and is most effective when applied in a specific direction.  We can use tools to help us do what we need to do.  Tools are useless without willpower — a fulcrum does nothing just sitting there, and a lever is just a bar without placement and correct pressure.  But when used with focus and a goal in mind, a fulcrum and a lever (or, let’s say, a Witch’s tools) can move very heavy objects.  Negativity, by the way, is a very heavy object.  Moving it can take all our willpower and every tool in our arsenal, but it can be done!

In yesterday’s article, I likened negativity to a tenacious vine.  I would like to stick with that analogy because it gives us the best understanding of how many aspects of negativity works. 

Every human being begins their life as benign as the soil.  Depending on the kind of person you are, your personal “soil” might be very rocky and not conducive to much foliage, or your soil might be rich and lush with nutrients and plenty of water and the ability to hold that water.  Negativity is like a plant.  It is born from another plant of like kind.  It might develop from a seed and have a chance of growing or not.  It might start from a creeper off another full-grown plant, or maybe a part of root that has broken off and come to life on its own.

Let’s apply that analogy to negativity. 

Some negativity is just a seed.  A stray occurrence or situation that isn’t your usual life.  Depending on the conditions of your internal “soil”, that seed may or may not get what it needs to grow. 

If you’re fairly rocky (meaning solid, less fertile to change, more defined in your internal conditions), that seed may not get much of a chance.  A negative moment drops into your life and then doesn’t even get a start.  However, we also know that negativity is a creeper vine.  It doesn’t need deep soil — even the most shallow person can be beset with negativity.  And creeper vines, with time, can split rock.  It’s just a little harder to get started in hard ground.

On the other hand, if you’re fairly lush and fertile, you have the makings of a perfect storm.  If you have plenty of water (emotional energy), plenty of heat/sun (creative energy), and plenty of depth (spiritual capacity), the chances of negativity worming its way in and doing a systematic takeover is almost a sure thing at some point in your life.  Witches are especially subceptible to negativity because our Path involves close work with creative forces of the Universe, because magick draws deeply on emotional energy, and because the Craft requires maturity gained through experience and spiritual depth.  

But seeds aren’t the only kind of negativity that can root inside us.  You also gather negativity from proximity to other well-established sources of negativity.  Negative family members, negative friends, negative spouses/lovers, negative coven  members, negative community members… each of these already has an established crop of negativity growing.  If you’ve ever grown a vine plant, you know that all a vine needs to spread is the promise of fresh, non-viney soil.  Similarly, you might have also noticed that it’s quite easy for you to pick up negativity just by being around other people who are negative.  Their mentality “creeps” into you and before you know it, you’re overrun.

Situations and experiences that are negative can also be the cause of negativity infestation.  In this case, a situation or experience is the root of the problem and this root breaks off deep within you, deep in your past.  This root can lie dormant and fail to live, or it can slither its way up through the soil in all directions, sprouting multiple plants simultaneously until you wonder how, suddenly, you got to be so negative all the time.  The plant looks nothing like the root, after all… hell, you might not have seen the root for a long time.  But it’ll be getting down and digging out that root that gets rid of the infestation.

If all of that wasn’t bad enough, negativity’s vine has one final, detrimental quality.  It doesn’t matter what beautiful things you have growing in your garden — how sweet, kind, honest, creative, talented, beautiful, or understanding you are — like a vine, negativity can cover these things up, pull them down, and destroy them.  When negativity overruns you, your good qualities are masked.  Other people can’t see them, and you can’t let them shine.  It’s not that they’ve disappeared, but good traits need air and sunlight and water, too.  Negativity sucks up all the nutrients your character needs, smothers them, pushes them down, and eventually, you can’t see them either.  If you’re not careful, negativity can outright kill some character traits, and you won’t be able to get those back until you deal with the negativity choking everything out.

Negativity can also be kind of pretty and useful.  There are some people that love negativity and wear it well — we go to them to bitch because we know we can always find a friendly ear and more fuel for the fire.  Sometimes it’s cool to wear that angst like a crown on your head, becoming the gothic equivalent of the May Queen or May King.  Negativity makes a very useful trellis and prop for your bad habits to where you don’t really feel like you have to change them.  And negativity flowers at least a few times a year – you know, when you expect the worst and you get the worst and then you can say, “See?  Told you so, at least I’m not disappointed!”  Ah, the sweet smell of negativity in full bloom!  Just pleasant enough to keep you from ripping that patch up in the garden, nevermind that you complain about it the other 340 days of the year.

I hope this helps you understand a bit more about what we’re actually dealing with when we begin to work on negativity.  Most of us are far beyond the ”have seed, might sprout” state.  When I came to the realization about my own negativity, you would have thought I deliberately planted the stuff — and I did, at times.  You probably have, too.  More on that later.

Tomorrow, though, we’re going to prep the gardener a little bit.  It can be daunting looking out your back window and seeing a jungle that you know wants to eat you waiting for you to step out and wage war against it.  For now, just give it a glance, know it for what it is.  Your negativity is not you.  You are bigger than it, beyond it.  It needs you to live.

That means that you are more powerful than it will ever be.  Take a moment and really get that.

You are more powerful than it will EVER be.

More tomorrow!

Photo by KudzuPlanet (via Flickr).

Everyone has areas of negativity that need to be dissolved for optimum health and happiness — some people have more than others.  How much negativity you have within you is based on a lot of factors. 

Here are risk areas for potential negativity.  I will list these as personal traits or past experiences for reasons I will explain later.  You might have one or a number of these, ranging from mild to strong in severity:

Abuse in your past (physical, emotional, mental, sexual, spiritual).  This includes physical violence, sexual molestation, rape, emotional battery, mental assault, spiritual restriction/repression, ranging from an isolated incident to living in conditions where these things occurred for a long period of time.

Mental illness (either diagnosed in you or in a family member with whom you grew up).  This includes everything from depression to bipolar to various personality disorders.  Mental illness affects the mind, which includes perceptions.  A person acting under the influence of mental illness will not behave the way a normal mentally-healthy person will behave, and as a result, can do damage to those around them very easily, especially the young.  If we love that person, it can be even more damaging as we are more likely to internalize their actions.

Major loss (death, destruction of home or family).  Major loss, especially when young or still dependent, can cause a sense of “life being against you” or a fear of future loss.  Fear is a majorly debilitating form of negativity, especially when worry-based.

Poverty (lack of necessities, including a lack of love and nurturing).  Includes physical poverty in forms of not having enough food, water, shelter, clothing, medical care, but also includes a lack of emotional support or mental engagement with others.  A lack of love and nurturing creates as much of an energetic impoverishment for some as being without food.

Stress (either from a traumatic event or traumatic surroundings).  Stress can be transitory or, in some circumstances, a way of life. 

Lack of mentoring from parents or other guides.  Most people are not taught how to monitor their thoughts or their emotions, about the connections between them, and how to divide what is real from what is merely perceived.  Without these skills, negativity breeds easily.

Natural mindset.  In the whole nature-versus-nurture argument, there are some things with which we are simply born.  I believe that some people are born with a potential for accumulating negativity.  It’s just “how you’re wired”.  This isn’t to say you can’t learn new skills, just that you have an affinity with darker energies that others never truly encounter or understand.  This is very normal for Witches, as we must work with Light and Shadow equally. 

Fixed personalities.  Includes both people who have serious trouble with change as well as people who are older and more set in their ways.  Everyone has a degree of “fixedness” in them.  Astrological charts can help you determine how “fixed” your personality might be — look at how many planets you have in Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius (give more weight to the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars being in fixed signs).  Combine a Fixed personality with other negative risk factors above, and you have someone who is likely going to stay in a negative rut unless jostled out.

Social conditioning.  Our media and entertainment industries are geared to make us focus on the negative.  The old line “If it bleeds, it leads” in mass communications classes is a good example.  Do not underestimate the effect of reading/hearing about deaths, rapes, missing children, natural disasters, political scandal, immoral activity, crimes, drugs, murders, and wars on the baseline psyche of human society.

Being unaware of negative potential.  Many negative people are unconscious of their own negativity, and what you do not know you are doing, you cannot change. 

Company of other people who are victims of negativity.  This tends to go hand in hand with being unaware of one’s own negative potential.  Negativity has a frequency, like any other kind of energy.  It doesn’t harmonize well with positive energy (unless the negative person can tap into and drain the positive energy from the “up” person — also known as a form of psychic vampirism).  But negativity harmonizes well with other negativity.  The phrase “misery loves company” speaks to this.  Negativity expands exponentially when combined with others’ negativity — hence the reason “bitch sessions” and “mob mentality” have very real power.

This list is by no means complete, though I do believe I’ve covered most bases.  Could you see yourself in any of these situations or statements?  Don’t be afraid to admit it to yourself — it’s okay.  You can’t be any worse than my count:  I had them all.

Let me shine a ray of hope for you.  Negativity is not an externally created state.  It is created and maintained within yourself.  If you feed and water negativity, it will grow as quickly as ivy or kudzu (a tenacious vine seen especially here in the South where I live).  If you can cut out the root, you can destroy it.  It does not have to take over your life and pull down your good memories in a tangle of fears and anxiety and anger and depression.  But like any vine, negativity must be tended with vigilance and without mercy or it will creep into all areas.  It can be hard to do that first clearing out of your own negativity — just as it’s hard to uproot an ivy patch — but once it’s done, minimal and regular checks to yank up negativity “creepers” becomes second nature.

I’m here to help you with your negativity, to help make your life better from the inside out.  In the next couple of weeks (and for longer, if I find more to say about the topic), I’ll be sharing with you my experiences of one of the most important pieces of magick you can work for yourself.  I’ll give you some tools — but remember, tools only do work if you actually use them.  I’ll share some insights about negativity and how you can recognize you’re getting “in that bad place”.  I’ll tell you some personal stories about my life and what created my “negativity set-point” and about the difficult relationship situations that showed me that I needed to change. 

If you are ready, joy awaits you.  I promise.

Photo by Eddi 07 (via Flickr).

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and today more than ever, I am reminded that Love must begin within you, live within you.  When you gonna make up your mind?  When you gonna love you as much as I do? 

Love yourself.

LYRICS:

Snow can wait, I forgot my mittens
Wipe my nose, get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart when I think of Winter
I put my hand in my father’s glove
I run off where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping beauty trips me with a frown
I hear a voice “Your must learn to stand up for yourself
Cause I can’t always be around”

He says
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I’ll always want you near
You say that things change my dear

Boys get discovered as winter melts
Flowers competing for the sun
Years go by and I’m here still waiting
Withering where some snowman was
Mirror mirror where’s the crystal palace
But I only can see myself
Skating around the truth who I am
But I know, dad, the ice is getting thin

When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I’ll always want you near
You say that things change my dear

Hair is grey and the fires are burning
So many dreams on the shelf
You say I wanted you to be proud of me
I always wanted that myself

He says
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses have gone ahead
I tell you that I’ll always want you near
You say that things change
My dear

We do not recognize any authoritarian hierarchy, but do honor those who teach, respect those who share their greater knowledge and wisdom, and acknowledge those who have courageously given of themselves in leadership.

_____________

Principle #6 is what I like to call the tragic flaw in the Wiccan construct.  In literary terms, a hero is said to have a tragic flaw when he possesses a trait that is both his highest good and his undoing.  If anything is Wicca’s tragic flaw, it is our lack of central leadership and hierarchy.

From a positive perspective, this lack of central authority provides us with immense freedom to express and develop personal spirituality.  There are no dues to pay, except the ones we pay to the Universe as tuition for admittance to the school of experience.  There is no one to tell us how to do things or what to believe or which Deity is greater or lesser than another.  There isn’t a bloated hierarchy of religious leaders who have made faith their business.  There is no pressure to advance or excel and there is no Great Supreme Poohbah post to which everyone is attempting to be elected or appointed.  In short, Wicca is all about the faith and the practice, and not the PEOPLE in charge of the faith and the practice.  The Gods do not need figureheads or mouthpieces.

From a negative perspective, a lack of cohesive and central leadership causes Wicca all sorts and kinds of difficulties.  It’s hard to be accepted and recognized as a world religion when anyone who claims to be Wiccan has literally as much authority as anyone else who claims to be Wiccan.  There are no fiscal structures to help struggling circles and groves establish themselves.  There is no monetary assistance to help pay clergy for the work they do — and believe me, being clergy is like having a second full-time job on top of everything else, only you don’t get paid to cover your cell phone bill, your mileage, your sleepless nights, or your work to assist your circle or community.  Wiccan clergy work is all pro bono.  Without central leadership, it can be difficult to lobby for rights, push forward with larger, more unified agendas (because we have enough trouble agreeing on the agendas to begin with). 

Principle #6 states that we honor those who give of themselves as teachers and leaders, and to an extent this is true.  Yet, it has also been my experience that mankind has a compulsive competitiveness gene that makes honoring others secondary to getting honored.  So, you might have someone honor a teacher or leader for a time, right up until the point where that person decides that they, too, want to be a leader.  And since there are no real rules or enforcers about how one becomes a leader, leaders tend to pop up all over the place.  Once that happens, a secondary gene kicks into action.  This gene is known as the Political Gene and it’s an unpleasant little bugger.

The Political Gene (at least in Wicca) all seems to be about striving for position in a religion that has pretty much stated that there are no positions.  In short, people are playing King of the Mountain when there’s really no crown — there’s not even a mountain!  It doesn’t stop it from happening though.  Imagining people scrapping over a crown that doesn’t exist in the middle of a field that isn’t a mountain lends some pretty silly pictures though, and can really diffuse the tensions that get going when community squabbles start.  *smile*

In a  healthy Wiccan community (I know… it’s a contradiction in terms, but go with me here), Principle #6 works great.  Those who are sound teachers and good leaders and who give of themselves are respected by others and emerge naturally as those who are looked to for guidance and a good example.  This is our ideal.  Realistically, however, there’s a whole lot of ego and infighting that keeps this from happening.  We continue to espouse Principle #6 because, overall, that is how it works on a larger scale.  We aren’t a hugely networked, hierarchical business of priests and priestesses controlling all Wiccan movement from the top down.  But neither are we quite to the ideal world painted by Principle #6.

Though I truly believe we are working to get there.

Follow-up Questions for Readers:

1.  Do you agree with Principle #6?  Why or why not?

2.  Has Wicca been helped or hurt by its lack of centralized authority?  Explain.

3.  Is there a central authority structure that could help Wicca?  What would it look like?  How could we ensure it didn’t become Wicca’s own worst enemy?

4.  Is there “organic leadership” within your community where you are (arising naturally as stated in Principle #6)?  Why do you believe things are the way they are where you live and practice? 

5.  Is it possible for Wicca to continue to grow without centralized leadership?  What challenges do you believe we will face in the future as a result of our non-centralized structure?

6.  Are there other benefits we enjoy because we don’t have a central authoritarian leadership?  What are they?

7.  Principles In Action:  What does it mean to be a good leader?  What traits do you have that you feel should be honored within your community?  What traits do you feel you need to develop in order to take on more leadership in your community?  Within the next year, agree to lead some kind of community ritual, community service project, teaching project, or other outreach.  Leadership is a skill and to develop it, you have to use it.  Even if you cannot practice openly as a Pagan, you can still be a leader in your Community and earn the respect of others.  Find ways to step into your potential this year!

Photo by Eddi 07 (via Flickr).