Circle Around like the Moth

The topic of conversation last night moved, as it sometimes does, to a
girl we met at a pagan gathering last year. She was a young, beautiful, probably
early twenties hippie chick, who didn't wash, didn't hold a job and was
self professed "from the stars." Now, I could go on about what I think
about such practices, and I do have opinions, (and not all of them are right!), but really where my brain goes to is the way that people cobble together bits of
traditions and leave out the hard parts of theirs. Traditions, I
believe, are used to create a necessary tension inside to help catapult
us forward. They work, not because they are right (my hope is that if
we are in a tradition at all, it is right for us), but because they are
facilitating a creative tension in us that activates the inner life. It
creates a reminder for us about where we are going and why. This is
what is said when we speak of discipline.

Many traditions have ways of disciplining. Eastern traditions have
archery, yoga, meditation work, silence and mindfulness practices. Some
Christian traditions have rules about alcohol or drug use, swearing,
sexuality or fasting. Our tradition of Wicca and others like us, have
disciplines towards the upkeep of hearth and home, fasting, prayer
work, daily meditations, no drug use/ no heavy alcohol use during
certain stages of training. Other Wiccan trads require you to become
vegetarian, hold vigils at certain times, not practice other traditions
at the same time, and so forth. While the action does limit the
initiate, the point of these is not aimed at the limitation, in truth,
but to act as a reminder and help the initiate develop some sort of
self knowledge and awareness.

As a Wiccan priestess, I am always telling my initiates that it is easy
to be an initiate by yourself. The work starts to get hard when you
move into community. We are all saints alone. It's easy to be fluid
when there are no requirements. Our craft is perfect when no one is
looking or when I can cobble together any practice that makes me feel
comfortable. Craft isn't about being comfortable, its about embracing
our power, being grounded in our truest self, and living fully and in
right relationship with nature, humanity and the Gods. (among other
things) Priestess Miriam of the voodoo tradition in NOLA once told me
that my job as a priestess wasn't to make people comfortable. It was to
make them uncomfortable. Because if they get comfortable, they will
pull up a chair, put their feet up and stay where they were. The job of
the tradition is not to make us comfortable, it's to make us stronger.
It is supposed to push us off the ledge (proverbially speaking). Boot
camp isn't comfortable. University work isn't comfortable. Child
rearing or holding a job isn't comfortable. We get comfortable as we
become stronger.

One of the most common pitfalls today that I see in craft is lack of
discipline. As soon as things get tough, the first thing that gets
chucked is our meditation practice, our spiritual communities and our
regular magical work. We remove the tension to make ourselves
comfortable in order to go back to what we were doing before. There is
a sense that because we were comfortable before and it felt good, it
must have been right, and what we are doing now must not be because we
feel anxious, stressed, angry or hurt. We freak out and remove the
tensions as quickly as possible. I also have noticed that the reason
most often stated of why people come to paganism initially is because
they can do what they want when they want and how they want to do it.
They are "tired of the monotheistic right and wrong system." What this
sounds to me is like a child's perfect world of "I don't want to eat my
veggies, go to sleep ever, or clean my room". What it creates is a high
chair tyrant who has serious problems with authority, who has no
grounding in reality, who has no ability to function in the real world,
and has a entertaining level of self delusion of what their abilities
actually are. People are using their spirituality as a justification
for their lack of discipline and aimlessness.

Any true faith system, magical system or religious system worth its
weight is going to require its initiates to hold to a discipline. It is
going to make its initiates work, act with intention and they are going
to feel limited. Paganism isn't about not being limited, its about
freedom. People get confused about this. They think that freedom means
doing anything that you want. However, this is a misnomer. Freedom as a
state of being is freeing yourself from impulses that whip you around
and run your life. Disciplines remove you from the “fear tradition” and
instill a “tradition of intentional living.”

To go from whim to whim to whim isn't freedom. It's slavery.