The Circle of Witchcraft: Part Two
The first time I cast a Circle may have been for a dedication ritual I did in either 2000 or 2001. Earlier than this however - before I had found the books - I had been drawn to roam around my neighbourhood, which I often did opening to the spirits of the land, to discover fallen and found items. I believe I did this over several days or weeks and then I climbed onto the roof of the house I grew up in and I called the spirits of witchcraft to me in spontaneous, improvised, intuitive ritual that definitely worked. My life is my evidence for this. I recently remembered that ritual and I felt how I stepped into the Circle of Witchcraft then. At least 25 years ago now.
I was 11 years old when I realised I was Witch in the year 2000. I was 12 when I took magical, ritual steps to dedicate myself to that unfolding. I was 13 when I was initiated into an eclectic witch coven. I was 14 when I realised I was hungering for something else, different, older, that I could sense behind the books and practices available to me then. When I was 15 my words and thoughts on the Craft first appeared in published book and my fetch-mate began to consistently appear to me. When I was 16 I dedicated myself to Persephone as Her priestess. And when I was 17 years old I was initiated into the Coven of the Wildwood. I stepped into the Circle of the Craft with three others that night. I found what I was looking for. It was calling me home.
I have been reflecting on this a lot lately. On this labyrinth of events and initiations and deepenings into Mystery. The night of my initiation into the Wildwood haunts me powerfully to this day. The things I saw and felt - and the subsequent events in my life - propelled me deep into the Wild Craft. It felt fated and has entirely shaped my life into what it has become and is becoming. I came into something I wasn’t fully cognizant of at the time and that we - the members of the Coven of the Wildwood - only really understood several years later. And truly, it is a mystery that constantly affects and transforms me.
Six months after that initiation into the inner court of that coven - which we call Dedication, but that is not equivalent to what other modern Craft traditions call dedication - I claimed the firebrand. It happened on a hill five minutes walk from the apartment I shared with my partner at the time, who was also a member of that coven before he moved overseas. The rites of passage all went through up until that point were aspiring to the Wildwood (which is sealed with an Aspirant Blessing at the hands of initiates) and Dedication (which is initiation into the Tradition itself). Some then choose to take the firebrand, the flaming stick or torch. Some see this as stealing fire from the Gods or as reclaiming and remembering oneself as alight with that holy fire since the beginning. Or both, or something else altogether. If Aspiring is how we are breathed into the Witch’s Woods, then Dedication is the stepping into the Circle of the Craft with your Sibling Witches of the Art, and taking the Firebrand is lighting up that Circle from within to get the attention of very Ancient Powers and to get the deep attention of One’s Own Holy Self… and the Firebrand Initiation - at least for me - dissolved me into the Circle, anchored it deep within my sovereign being, and I became one with that Circle, wed with it. A walking-wandering doorway to the Wildwood itself. It is not an initiation that all desire or will engage, it is a deep marriage to the Wildwood and Our Covenant and Tradition and to the Gods of the Wildwood. I underwent that initiation alongside a beloved of mine in late April, 2007.
Becoming the Circle of the Craft happens in multiple, perhaps infinite, ways. But first you need to desire and long for the Craft and then you need to come into the Circle. The Spirits may help you to do this as I offer in the last chapter of my book The Witch Belongs to the World, or perhaps you will end up being helped as well by the hands of living, human witches. Either way, a witch is a witch and it is Witchcraft who makes us.
The Circle of the Witch is a haunted place, haunted with the longing of the broken-open witch. It is not a Circle that takes us away from the world, it is a Circle that enjoins us to the Infinite, that orients us as a compass through the Mystery, with the Mystery. It can also - if we need it to - hide us, keep us safe, keep us focused and contained, while we commit to the journey. It is a Circle that harrows us much as helps us. It is the sacred crossroads that we carry within us but also travel through. It is the power of the Witch beating within us, a crucible of the heart tending the way, lighting the way, reminding us that we are part of the sacred, we too are a child of this Place.
And there are ways and tricks we get there. You may desire to know: read this if you wish! And in the knowing, there is inevitably the doing, or else there is nothing risked, nothing changed. And to do this thing - you must risk, you must change.
