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Witchcraft: It takes work not to know everything

Witchcraft: It takes work not to know everything

Last updated on: November 9, 2018 at 11:20 am by Rachel Patterson

Witchcraft: It takes work not to know everything 2018-11-09T11:20:01+01:00 Rachel Patterson

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Today’s confession

rachel patterson

I don’t know everything (but don’t tell my husband that…).

Sharing this with you was inspired by a couple of things:

One of them happened a couple of months ago on facebook. I shared the link to a blog I wrote about love spells – in one of the comments made underneath the link a person gave a warning about using love spells. To which I replied along the lines of “if you would like to read the blog post you will see that I have given several warnings”. Their reply was “I don’t need to read your blog, I know all there is to know about love spells”. Aside from the fact that it is really rude to comment on a blog link without having read the blog, it also makes you look really stupid, particularly as I had included the information in question. But the real problem I have is with the statement “I know all there is to know about love spells”.

I have been on this ole witchcraft/pagan pathway for many, many years now, and I absolutely love to study and learn. I have lost count of the courses I have taken, read libraries full of books and attended a huge number of workshops and I still continue to do all of those things. And I only know a small fraction of what there is to know. NO ONE person could possibly know everything, even about one specific subject.

It doesn’t matter if you have been studying for years, each person will have a slightly different take on things. Even when reading a book on the basics of the Craft I still learn things because the writer will share their own insights.

It scares me that people think they know it all, it is very dangerous and really quite arrogant.

Even after a gazillion years of walking this pathway I still get stumped on occasion. I have been giving talks to groups of people at pagan events and had a question thrown at me that I didn’t know the answer to. And I own up to it, I throw it back out to the audience and we always have an interesting discussion about it and we all go away having learnt something. Even if people have just learnt that I don’t have all the answers!

And on to the second inspiration…

It takes work

I teach, and it is my absolute honour and pleasure to do so and in fact I learn all the time from my students. Because again every person has their own way of doing things and will add individual twists to practises. Often with those new to the Craft there will be a refreshingly new way of looking at subjects.

However, I have noticed (particularly across social media) that people want instant knowledge and results from the Craft. The number of messages and emails I receive from people asking for spells to do this or that is incredible. All of them wanting results right now. Most of them requests from people that know nothing about the Craft at all.

But the big issue I have is there seems to be a section of people that want to be a Witch (Druid, Wiccan, Pagan etc), but don’t want to put the time, effort and work into learning and studying.

Becoming adept or even vaguely proficient in the Craft takes time, it takes a lot of effort and hard work. You do not just read one book and become an instant Witch/Wiccan/Druid High Priestess (or Priest).

On my personal journey it actually took me a couple of years before I even felt confident calling myself a Witch. I didn’t feel I had the experience at first to even carry the title.

The first course I took was along the lines of – read this lesson and then answer a multiple choice. Once you had done that you could move on to the next lesson. I learnt very little, because I didn’t have to put any effort in. I soon moved on from that course, looking for something more challenging.

If you make the effort and pay the money to take a course (and there are some really good ones out there) why wouldn’t you do it properly? Answer all the questions fully, do all the homework properly, work through all the exercises in detail – the only person you are cheating by doing it half-heartedly is yourself.

The pagan pathway is beautiful, and it will be life changing, it is definitely a journey of transformation. But only if you are willing to put in the work that it requires. One of my lovely students said to me last week “it’s going to be a bumpy ride” and yes it may well be, but it will be oh so very worth it.

Read all you can (plenty of books available to buy or borrow from the library), research everything (huge amounts of resources free on the net in the form of websites and blogs) and then get out there and do it. Only by actually practising it can you really get a feel for it. And keep working with it, keep reading, keep studying.

You will also keep learning along the way and there are always exciting new adventures to take.

Besides, life would be boring if we all knew everything wouldn’t it?

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