After my right hand/ left hand activity, I decided to tell my student Grey about what my left hand had said. He had come over to hang out and cheer me up. Suddenly, he got very excited and started taking with his hands and asking me questions. It was very clear that something was happening again. He said, “How does your witchcraft feel? What can you say about how you experience it? That’s what we want to know. That is what has to come into the world.”
Even this many years later, I often think that I have nothing to say about the Craft. So many people have written about the Tradition, and the Tradition is not something that lends itself to the written word. It’s an oral tradition. It’s supposed to be passed as an intimacy. I hadn’t considered writing about the Tradition itself, but maybe Grey was right (who am I kidding, my students are always right). People keep calling me elder and stuff, so it seems that the time has come to write about witchcraft. When Grey asked me that question, I realized something that I should have noticed before. For me the Craft is sensual, visceral. I feel the flow and the current. I feel the presence of spirits and non-corporeal beings physically. Grey’s question just kept burning in my mind, just like that other question did. It haunted me. What does my witchcraft feel like? And I kept coming back to it feels like love. I thought about the Mighty B’s suggestion, that this was a time that I could dive into my witchcraft. I decided to begin a devotional practice. The Tradition doesn’t really have a lot of those, and lots of witches in The Tradition love to boast that they do not bend the knee to any god. That’s not how I do things. For me, this is intimacy, communion. It is a gift. Perhaps because I am a leather dyke and do Dominance and submission, I understand that power. I have no idea how powerful an act like this could possibly be. Hey, let’s find out (this approach is affectionately called “team guard rail” in our circle). How, and to whom, would I show my devotion? Where to begin?
So, I have to stop asking such questions aloud. Seriously. Because it was like a chorus of “ me me me me me, pick me!” I took a deep breath and felt a hand on my shoulder. The voice was so clear, and he spoke for all of them. “Come to us. We are ready to receive your love.” It was the Guardian of the East. I felt swept up in this feeling, like I was being pulled along gently. Grey told me later that he felt it was East speaking through him when he asked me the question. This was like finally being chosen for kickball. It was like being asked to prom. It was this beautiful, and weird, warm feeling of being taken in.
Ever since my initiation, I have had a close relationship with the Guardians. They are called many things and the lore around them can be confusing. I have found that I can communicate with them, although it doesn’t always involve language, East being the exception to that rule. And here they were, doing that strange waiting that is full of meaning, but that I didn’t understand. East gave me instructions as to what I was supposed to do. I am to come to him in the morning, naked. I am to draw the sigil of the Gate on my throat, and then his sigil inside that. Then I am to do the movements that we use when we cast circle to call him, and to feel my devotion. I need to summon an outpouring of holy longing, a desire that reaches out across the vast universe. Then we would work together. The room felt so full of light and energy, and so full of welcome.
He kept saying that he wanted me to write out loud. That I needed to be seen. I had spent so many years quietly working behind the scenes out of view. East said that this time was over. I was so nervous and sad about this. He passed his hand over my head, as if to still me. And then I felt embraced.
“You are the Moon to my Sun,” he said. “You need to write. In fact, you will find that doors will strangely open if you do this. You are the Moon to my Sun, and you reflect only me. Not other people’s wants and desires of you. It is time to love the world like you love your students. It is time to be loved like they love you. It is time to write out loud. It must be out loud.”
And then that weird sense of uncoiling that I feel every time that they disengage. I am left sitting in a darkened kitchen. Too much time had passed, more time that I felt should have passed. I started to move my limbs again, to stretch and bring my consciousness to my body. I’m about to start a journey. I don’t know where it will end or what will be asked of me. I do know that this is going to change everything I know.
Seyewailo 