The Self

We talk about the Self like it is a real thing, like we know ourselves. Neither is true. Yes, yes, the Craft is full of people who think that the Self is something sacrosanct, the place from which all power emanates. Mostly, those are not people I fuck with. But I understand that this colonized view is how most of the white folks I am sworn to think of the Self within witchcraft. Some witches even use this to make claims of “autonomy” and basically anti-social behavior. So, my love, let me tell you how I think of the Self and how I have found this idea through my own experience.

I guess, to start with, experience is the Self, although it seems to be constructed in many ways by the expectations created by the cultural setting. Our experience of Self is just that, experience, and nothing more. Others experience us as Self, but we experience the world. It is the experience of that world that gives the witch a particular type of Self, an embedded self. A Self that is part of the world, that is inextricable from the world around us, and also from all things living in said world. Are you still with me? Because this is very hard to understand from a dominant cultural paradigm. We are fallen in love with this world. It is not that we refuse to leave it, but that it is integral to our constitution as witches.

People in Western magic love to talk about interdependence, but honestly don’t really understand what that is for the most part. When I read the writing of mostly white male witches, they seem to think of it as something independent selves do, as a conscious choice, rather than as something interdependent selves are, as part of their construction (see Markus and Kitayama for more ideas around how the interdependent self works). The Self is not a discretely boundaried thing that exists as separate and continuous. If you have ever looked at photos of your bad hair as a teenager, you know the feeling. You are looking at a Self that has long passed from this world, and it gives us a shiver, because that Self is dead. The Self is always in a process of dying and simultaneously in a process of becoming. We are not static, even when we feel stuck or stagnant. It is why feeling stuck or stagnant is so uncomfortable. In those moments, we are being dragged along and getting roughed up by the gravel. It’s wearing our skin down, shedding against the rough places in our lives. That is how rough places serve us, usually. This is a basic tenet of Buddhism, the concept of No Self, the idea that we have no continuous stable Self that is us. Only a collection of illusions that give rise to the belief in a Self. The Self is a product of perception, and like all perception, it is prone to illusions, just like vision is prone to multiple optical illusions. You cannot step in the same river twice, they say. Not just because the river is flowing and those molecules are long gone by the time you take the next step, but because the Self you are at the second step is different. Now you know the temperature of the water, the speed and force of the current, the rockiness or sandiness of the stream bed. That knowledge changes the second step. And the third, and all the steps to come. It even changes how you approach crossing a river for all other rivers and river-like bodies of water. Maybe even all bodies of water. You are forever changed, both you and the river.

I think that might be the biggest difference in how I see the Self. Witches often see themselves as special. I do as well, but not in the same way. The real miracle of the Self is that it is not special at all. In fact, it is like every other thing in this world, in a constant state of becoming. We are not different from rocks or trees or other people. And by other people, I mean two-legged people, four-legged, finned and winged people, plant people of all kinds, mycelia, and of course, non-solid entities and everyone else. Time passes differently for all these species, so that can make communication more difficult, as can variations in values and motivations. This is one of the ways that witches are special. We actively seek out relationships with all these people. If one walks between worlds, it is important to communicate and make friends and ask for directions. That takes work.

This brings us to something about the Self that is deeply beautiful. You see, we are made of all the things we have experienced and have knowledge of. On the pentacles, the Iron point is Self, but the Pearl point is Knowledge. We create the Self of Knowledge, actively. I have said before that magic is in relationships. Those relationships become part of us. For an independent self, the Self is constructed of all the ways it is separate and distinct from the world around it. For an interdependent self, the Self is constructed of those relationships themselves, which is why I am sitting here writing this for you. Because I love you. I may not even still be alive on this plane, but I love you, and I likely was ride or die for your initiator, or their initiator. So I love you, because you are the part of me that is yet to come. You are part of what I am becoming. We take in relationships and those make up part of what we are. The fact that I can talk to redwood trees and chickens and angels makes me what I am. And every day that I gain new knowledge, I am changing. I am also part of this world, and therefore part of other people as well. So not only are you part of me, but I am part of you, part of your journey to have become what you are now. And what you are currently and always becoming.

I tell my students that witchcraft training is like the Ship of Theseus. Every time the ship comes into port, repairs are made. A new mast here, new planks there. At some point the ship contains no original parts. Is it still the same ship? Yes, and no. Witchcraft training is about refining who you are, bringing you in contact with the true Self. And that true Self is always dying and always becoming. I tell my students there is a reason that studying with me takes about 7 years (more or less). I’m waiting for cellular turnover. I’m waiting for the Craft to be lived. I’m waiting for the Craft to be tattooed on their bones. I’m waiting for certain practices to become reflexes, for worldviews to shift. But more importantly, I am waiting for t hem to develop relationships with Gods and Guardians, Fae and Ancestors, and the song of the universe itself. Dance in the winds that roar in the darkness between the stars and you will notice something. You do not perceive a self. You perceive the star winds. That is all the Self you get, my babies, that is all the Self you fucking get. The knowledge of dancing with the night sky, and the songs that other creatures sing for you to dance with. That knowledge changes a person. It kills one Self and creates another. You cannot become a witch without it.

Yes, my worldview is influenced by Dharma and Aristotle and Psychology. But long before that, it was nurtured buy a father who taught me to read the lines of the world. He taught me how to listen and sing to butterflies and hear the stories of trees. I learned to be a citizen of the world, and how to belong. As a fat disabled brown child, I often didn’t belong, at least not in a way that contributed to Self. I remember crying in my room and my grandmother coming in and asking me why I was crying. I replied that I did not belong and that I didn’t have any real friends at school. She stomped out of my room. I sat there puzzled and was downright frightened at her when she returned. She came in and told me to stop my crying. She slapped a folded buck knife into my little 7-year-old hand. I looked into her black black eyes and she had that look like she was telling me something very serious and she was only going to say it once.

“Of course you don’t belong,” she said. “It is for you to make your own belonging. The world doesn’t owe you that. You make that together. Take this knife and carve yourself a place to be, out of flesh or bone or concrete or wood. You make a niche for yourself and you live there. That is all there is.” She left my little second grade Self wondering at a woman who gives a 7-year-old a sharpened knife. But you know, I never misused that knife. I understood something that day about constructing the Self. We are the greatest art we will ever produce, and it is a collaborative pop-up interactive project. That it is impermanent only adds to its beauty. She is long gone now, but she is still becoming. Her badass becoming makes me more of a badass for her being a part of me.

Dance in the arms of angels and gods. It is your birthright, my love. Die every day and be reborn. You will have all the help you need. You aren’t doing this alone. The thing that makes a witch special is that their Self is a part of all things. You were born to make love to the universe. Don’t worry, it will make sure that you do your job.