Monday, September 18, 2017

Be the Witch You Needed When you Were Younger

a thing going round on witchy tumblrs, which is the line, 'Be the witch you needed when you were younger'. At my great age it is causing me to think back on the qualities of the witch I actually needed when I was younger.
For a start the witch would definitely have told me to trust my own intuition. I wasted far too much time when I was young, listening to what other people thought and putting my own will to the back of the queue. What I needed was someone who would validate that I had the power to know what was best for me, and also the power to make judgements on when other people people were nasty pieces of work.
I needed an experienced witch who would encourage me to think that transformation was possible. Those dead words 'that's impossible' were a great part of my upbringing and at the time it was difficult to realise that I had far more options to hand than I realised.
I needed a witch who would invite me into the kind of experimentation that witches do...of casting a spell knowing that it is 'impossible' and having it work, that kind of thing.
And yet...there's something missing. I have been describing the sort of witch I would now think my younger self needed, with the benefit of hindsight and of course with the assumption that I want to guide me where I am now. In reality the witch of 25 years ago would have required several other gifts, not least to be the sort of person who could make me listen! And also not to guide me too firmly to a particular destination and risk awakening my resistant streak!
So I suppose the reality is that the witch I would actually have needed is the sort of witch who would read where I was and read the signs of what was happening in my life. As a young adult I was already recognisably me, with all my willfulness and spikiness. The witch I needed was someone who would enable me to become more completely myself by doing the tasks of this life rather than the many years I wasted not getting on with them at all.
And I suppose that is the sort of witch I ought to be for younger people. Not too heavy-handed and nurturing to people's own personal power rather than prescriptive. No challenge there, then. In fact if I can find a witch like that even now, I'll be very chuffed indeed.

2 comments:

  1. How much younger?

    Actually, ignore that. As far back as I can remember, I needed a witch to give me a ruddy good shake and tell me what to do. In fact, I need that now. If you need me, I shall be spending the next few hours giving orders to myselves in a mirror.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, if only it worked when it's one witch to another!

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