In Modern Witchcraft, we focus our endeavors heavily here in this middle world of flesh, bone and stone. We live jubilantly here on Earth, knowing that in the world of Spirit, we’ve won first prize when granted a body to inhabit for a time. We glory in all five delicious senses, but we don’t forget where we came from, or where we are going. Witches are walkers between the worlds of heavens, earth and underworld, denying no part of our inherent divinity. All hungry, lusty and transcendent, our magick works the Will into the meeting of our needs–whether that need be for a lover, the right job to pay the mortgage, or a cosmic-egg-cracking, bush-burning, Divine conversation of apocalyptic proportions–in witchcraft, that is OK . Strike that…in witchcraft it is a requirement.

In The Living Temple of Witchcraft, Vol. 1: The Descent of the Goddess, Christopher Penczak writes: “Mastering our needs in the physical world is a key component to the witch’s expansion into deeper levels of consciousness…much of the western world has been brainwashed to believe that taking care of your physical and emotional needs, your base needs, is not spiritual. We have been brainwashed by the dominant institutions to think that renouncement and denial are the spiritual roads, while indulgence and exploration are not. For a witch, nothing could be further from the truth.” Page 52.

Witches accept all our many-layered selves. Our Craft nurtures and balances our spiritual, mental, emotional AND physical selves, to empower our Divine Will. You see, that alignment through all the selves creates this open channel connecting the highest heavens to the deepest roots. The Witch becomes the conduit of tremendous cosmic power, and the vessel of our bodies is going to need to be in tip-top physical state to handle it, so by all means, pamper yourself. Not to mention the Charge of the Goddess invites us to worship by drinking “the good wine to the Old Gods,” dancing, making love and being merry. In short, the point of incarnation is to thrive and enjoy ourselves as an act of Divine Love.

We even embrace what we call the shadow-self–what the dominant religions have long demonized as cardinal sins. The path of the witch demands that we open the closet door and invite all the skeletons of fear and forbidden desire to come right out into the temple and play. We name them, indulge some, transmute others, but we face it all down until we come to love exactly who we are, warts and all. We own our shit, and then deal with it. It is through this process that we throw off the bonds of slavery imposed by denial and shame, and claim our personal sovereignty. I believe that it is the repression of these shadowy things that is an aberration of nature, which is how I define “sin.” Repressing nature is a root of “evil,” in the world.

We delivered this lesson in one of our coven’s introductory classes a few weeks ago as we began working with elemental energies. That night, inspiration struck my friend JoyLeaf, the Maiden in our coven who was raised as a Lutheran, and has a Baptist minister father. She and I both know too well about the “brainwashing by the dominant institutions.” She wrote a blog on just this subject and has allowed me to publish it here.

Be of the World! It’s the best part of Witchcraft. 😉

~Heron