Between Old and New

One of the greatest gifts of my early thirties (at least as an occultist) has been an ever solidifying sense of my life purpose. And with that has come a better understanding of certain challenges I experienced in my twenties. I realised today after a wonderful talk with a fellow Crafter how incredibly clear that sense of purpose has become for me, how sharply defined and yet still as challenging as ever.

Of course there is always a certain degree of folly in talking about 'purpose'. As human animals it is enough in many ways that we are that we breathe, eat, sleep, wake, love, enjoy, suffer, create, destroy... There is great meaning in the many coloured tapestry of our simple humanity, and as time has gone by I have found myself slowing down more frequently to pay attention to it in new ways I wouldn't have thought to do ten years ago. To value the feeling that being me just as I am is quite simply 'okay', that I don't (as a human animal at least) have to constantly be pushing myself to be something other or to thump a foreign significance into things that are already meaning-full in themselves.

But as a witch there are always two lives lived, -at least. And the sense of purpose bequeathed to a true witch is undeniable, though I must say I do not believe we all carry the same purpose. For me I have come to understand my place in the occult world in terms of being a conduit between two things, a threshold, or a bridge - in my case between the old world and the new.

I come from a traditional English family and in many ways I came to maturity enamored of the past and the ambience of history. Many of the things I valued and in many cases still do, did not seem to be valued by the present world. My love for art and artistry, for long study and slow accumulation of skill, for beautiful hand written and hand made objects, for intense long term friendships built on leisurely face to face communication, deep and concentrated spiritual bonds with only a few people and settled communities where a friendship lasts a life time, my love for values like honour and hospitality and sundry old fashioned notions that cluster around these things; all of that made me a natural candidate for gravitating toward Traditional Witchcraft. At my first sniff of the flavour of it I knew I had come home, and I was far away from the plastic stench of disposable spirituality I associated with the New Age.

But I was also queer, gender and sexuality wise and differed from many traditionally minded people (both witches and non witches) who were part of my formative years. I didn't just differ from them in regards to this one issue but in many ways I was 'progressive'. For a time I tried to ignore the seeming contradiction but it never went away.

With the benefit of hindsight and expanded vision I realise that it didn't go away for a reason, inherent in this seeming dilemma was my occult purpose. In some humble way my life's work was to bridge this gap and keep a balance. Both to accept in positive elements from the modern world, but also to protect as many shreds of Old Craft that do not deserve to be the baby thrown out with the bath water of rampaging modernity.

As such I find myself always in the middle between post-modern movements that fully embrace the modern world on one side of me, and self consciously old fashioned traditionals who hold strongly to past foundations on the other. I am not trying to say that this 'middle road' represents some kind of ultimate perspective, only that this is the path I have to walk. I cannot always justify with pure logic the value of that which is old, worn in and reddened by usage and passed from hand to hand, or fully explain why I find it hasty to change the old ways too rapidly. But I can suggest that there is something productive for self growth in the humility involved in entertaining the idea that the accumulated knowledge of many full lifetimes of occult practice over generations may have something to offer that cannot be reproduced over night in an environment severed from its roots.

On the other hand though (because I am always to ride this hedge, to stand in the centre of this crossroads and perhaps be seen as 'sitting on the fence') there are lessons to be learned from the future as well as the past. And the young people who represent our future, who manifest it in fact, are in touch with the vital spirit of growth and have a better idea of how to navigate this new exponentially changing world - sometimes spiritually as well as physically. There is a world being created, for better or for worse, all around us that has not been tried at any other time in history. As a species we are doing unprecedented things, tradition can steady us in this heady time, the wisdom of our ancestors and the past can provide steady roots, but without flexibility in our branches we risk being unable to respond to an unprecedented world that includes many things our ancestors hadn't even the need to dream about.

If we go too far in one direction we risk hubris, in the other inflexibility, I do not wish to be guilty of either and the idea of an exchange of learning between old and new seems desirable to me. But I am also highly aware that as witches we don't all represent or manifest the same thing. I do not believe that we are all born here to heal or save the world. I believe our purposes and the powers we manifest to be as diverse as Nature herself. Certainly we can and at times have been a force for positive change in our environments and yet we are not always this one thing. And no matter how ethically bankrupt we may find a fellow witch who has no concern whatsoever for ecological crisis or aiding their fellow man, we would be lessening the scope of witchcraft to deny that as one possible way of being a witch.

I believe that there is something intrinsic about witchcraft, about the anarchic, wild story-soul of it that resists being harnessed to a particular or single goal or political motivation, no matter how noble and no matter how much I agree with the goal. This doesn't mean that I think witchcraft can't be political, in fact in one way of looking at it all conscious explorations of power are 'political thinking'. Certainly I would describe the spirit of witchcraft as 'revolutionary' but what that actually means in practice could be dizzying in its possible implications. And if there's one thing that really makes us humans uncomfortable, makes our skins crawl, is total, unclassifiable, dizzying diversity.

I believe that witchcraft by its nature is an ambiguous chaos-factor in human nature, that factor that Nature injects into our capabilities to throw all the chips up in the air. Tomorrow we could band together to save and heal or to lance and destroy. But what is more likely is that we will do many things, diverse things, things that look more like eruptions of natural forces of all different kinds. In certain contexts we will socialise the Nameless Deed that is simply in our nature, and we may agree to co-operate with a particular human group and we may perform positive services for that group, perhaps at some point that group might be something as immense as 'mankind itself'. As creatures aligned with morally grey animistic forces we are likely to respond with rage, sadness or other forms of resistance to the desecration of the natural world, because we are deeply of it. But each of us will fulfill our mysterious purpose in a way that might not make sense to those around us and may not satisfy someone else's definition about what our responsibilities as witches are. But if we fulfill the spirit-gifted purpose that has been burned into our brow when we were Called then we are playing our part in the grand weave of things in our own mysterious way.

And tonight I think I am okay with that.