Since this Witches’ year is all about getting my witch on, I wanted to talk about a reason I used to not get my witch on.

The awesome thing about witchcraft and wicca is that you are never powerless – since it’s the spirituality of personal responsibility, we know there is always something we can do.

You can kinda strangle yourself with it a bit though.

I think like a lot of people, there are a few tangles in my character I’d like to brush out. One thing that always attracted me to witchcraft was the idea of facing and untangling these elements of your personality – banishing spells, spells to promote behaviour you like, and so on. Power to change! Right on!

I used to use Wicca to focus on changing myself, but not from a place of looking-towards-the-wonderful-result, rather a place of brooding-on-how-crappy-am-I-ness. I know when praying I was meant to ask the help of Goddess with stuff, so I did – Goddess, help me be less lazy, Goddess, help me like waking up in the mornings, Goddess, help me finish this paper that has to be in tomorrow. I’d plan spells to change stuff that I wasn’t keen on – mainly my shortcomings. I would just focus purely on stuff about myself I didn’t like and wished was not there, and as a consequence whenever I sat down to get witchy I’d just feel crappy about myself, and I knew that it was all my fault, because there are no excuses and I am a huge believer in personal responsibility, and then feel even crapper. I’d realise that I didn’t enjoy my spirituality and feel pants about that too, and that would go on the list of things that were wrong with me.

I was using spirituality as a way to kick myself, over and over, and remind myself I was not good enough.

No wonder I avoided doing any actual practice – it was such a downer.

I climbed out of it though – I explored a more devotional route with more emphasis on Goddess and less on Me, and through there to witchy practices that focused on beautiful results rather than broody shittiness. and found a way to a practice that makes me feel better about life, the universe, and everything rather than stuck in self-pity mud.