Why we must play at being witches

It may appear that this post contradicts my recent one about taking our witchcraft very seriously. That post has actually got a lot of hits, so it will be interesting to see which gets more in the long run. I don't personally feel it is actually contradictory: if the pursuit of magic is the reconciliation of all things (ultimately), then surely it is always a good sign that magic is afoot if the magician can hold apparently contradictory ideas at once. The magical law for this is Bonewits's Law of Infinite Possibilities, for those who like that sort of thing.

The reverse side of this coin, the side I talked about in the previous post, is that if magic is making things to be as I will, then I'd better be damn well sure that I'm acting as if what I will is actually happening. Put another way, & this for a lot of people is the really scary bit about magic, I must be completely pure, that is there must be nothing in my life that detracts from my will. There is a passage in Starhawk that describes the sort of activities that stop this happening, & they are things like pilfering from my boss, lying to my lovers, and so on. The witch must be the most reliable of people for the magic to work, & this begins with my total certainty that my word reflects reality as I know it.

To return to the side of the coin I'm examining in this post, I don't want people to think I'm overly snooty about any activity that may appear to be 'playing at witchcraft'. One of the things that prompted me to start this blog in the first place was a wish to write a manual of advanced witchcraft: in fact what I've found writing this is it isn't possible to, you just have to develop into your own witchcraft based on your own hedge.

One of the ways one does this is quite literally by playing at witchcraft. I described in a previous post the creation of my magical daughters, which must stand for me as my own example of not doing magic according to how the books say it should be done. It also stands as one of the most powerful & successful acts of thaumaturgy I have ever done, purely because I just did it & didn't let what the books say bother me. This entry into ones own magic means just doing it - I know that sounds obvious but it is precisely what many people brought up on books (or human teachers) of the 'stand here, say that, do that' variety feel inhibited from doing.

Many books' rules are often useful in the early days of doing magic, when the magician can so easily end up going down the path of madness or oblivion, but my feeling is that people's growth as a witch frequently depends on having to act in a situation where they have to break their own most deeply cherished magical principles. For example if you adopt a firm inflexible rule that you will never do a spell on another without their consent (the originator of this idea is supposed to by Raymond Buckland, it certainly doesn't go back to the really early days of the movement), you will almost certainly find yourself in a position where you have to. For example you may find yourself in the hands of people who misuse you until you have enough & have to do something about it.

The reason I'm calling this by the apparently childish name of 'play' rather than the dignified words 'ritual' or 'psychodrama', is that I want to put the accent on magical thinking & tapping into that young brain we have that is the seat of magical ability.

The one reason magical people cannot work miracles is that we have that doubt in our mind that we actually can. The child's mind has no such inhibitions, although the difference is that our magical thinking has to be volitional because in the process of growing up we've learned we can't do it.

To unlearn this preventative conditioning we have to access our young brain in one way or another. Simple correspondences used in magic are often enough to do this. The chaos magicians have a saying 'fake it 'till you make it': do your magic & keep on at it, & act in accordance until the desired change happens. Re-reading Regardie's mammoth Golden Dawn tome recently, I am struck both by how turgid it all is & how the rituals creak like an old bed at this distance of time. It is only towards the end of the 20th century that magic has escaped from its Golden Dawn straitjacket (not to decry them at all, but it really doesn't have to be like that). It escaped into wicca & witchcraft, the former of which also has a tendency to become hidebound, then into chaos magic, which has also become fossilised.

I feel the way ahead may be in the model of magic embodied in a little girl in a fairy dress waving a wand, wishing very hard, & finding that what she has wished for has actually happened.

My generation is lucky, we were the last that actually played, before the advent of video games. As Granny Weatherwax would put it, we made our own enchantment in those days. What our playing did for us was develop our imaginations, which in itself assists the magical ability to visualise. As with playing so with magic: if you don't have the sense to see the danger for yourself in, say, swimming in a quarry, you should abandon the pursuit of magic here & now. I want magical people to be people who have the sense to see danger coming & not raise up that which they have no way of putting down. Yes, I've talked about breaking rules, but one of the advantages adults have over children is an ability to weigh up the likely consequences of our actions. Once that's done is the moment to rush ahead with childlike abandon. So let's put down the Golden Dawn regalia, & get out there & actually play at magic. Who knows, without anyone telling us we can't do it, we may prove to be very good at it.

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