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Beginning Magician
Laura Fuller (Snow)
I
grew up in a household that was nominally Christian, although we went to a
variety of different denominational churches over the years, most of them the
more liberal, less dogmatic variety. I
never felt at home with Christianity, though, and while I gave lip service to
the various beliefs espoused by the different churches we belonged to, I always
had too many questions to be a believer.
I think, looking back, that our participation was more about the social
aspects than the religious ones, and it stopped abruptly once I had been
Confirmed in the 8th grade.
Of course, that corresponded with a move from Missouri to Ohio, and not
finding another church we enjoyed participating in.
During
high school, I flirted briefly with Wicca, although that felt a bit woo-woo and
contrived to me as well. The biggest
draw was the recognition of the sacred feminine which had been completely
lacking in the Christianity I’d grown up in.
In
college, I returned to my roots in the Catholic Church and even briefly
considered becoming a nun. I might have,
if I hadn’t decided to get married instead.
I practiced regularly, even if I still dealt with the unanswered
questions of my youth and struggled with the more conservative elements of
Catholicism.
It
wasn’t until 2004 that I left the church and spent a time as a Recovering
Catholic. I was thoroughly disgusted at
the social direction the Church had been going, and their lack of spiritual
support during my personal crisis. For a
while, I was nothing, and then I stumbled, quite by not-accident, upon
Asatru. I was (and still am) quite
happily Heathen, even if I have merged that practice into the structures of
ADF. My first real magical work came through
a Spae session at the Troth’s 25th Anniversary Trothmoot in
2012.
Having
completed the DP, the CTP-Preliminary work, and most recently the CTP-1, I
believe that I have managed to gain a basic understanding of magic. Further, my definition of magic has expanded
through this work. I would not consider
myself a master in any sense, but I grow more comfortable with it daily.
My main reason for taking on the Magicians Guild
Study Program is that as an ordained priest (well, ordained in about a week from
when I’m writing this), people expect a certain level of magical
competence. While I feel fairly capable
with most aspects of my priestly vocation, magical work is the area I still
feel weak. Whether that is because I
truly am weak or whether that is a lack of confidence on my part is in the end
irrelevant. I say that because lack of
confidence makes anything I do that requires my belief less likely to be
successful. I know this, at least in my
head. Now it is a time to convince my
heart.
Taking on this study program provides me the
impetus to keep a consistent practice that I hope will strengthen the skills I
need to be a good priest and allow me to aid those in my community with this
set of tools.
My final reason is that, having come from a
Heathen background, I wish to explore in more depth the magical traditions of
my chosen hearth culture. I recognize
that part of this will be a carry over with the study program of the Order of
the Raven and Falcon, but learning more about the northern traditions magical
practice and how it relates to other Indo-European magical traditions will, I
feel, only make me a better magician.
The short answer to this
question is that ‘practice makes perfect’.
In many ways, I feel like I should be able to stop here.
In Neopagan Rites, Bonewits defines rituals “as any ordered sequence
of events, actions, and/or directed thoughts, especially one that is meant to
be repeated in the same manner each time, that is designed to produce and
manage one or more altered states of consciousness (ASCs) within which certain
results may be obtained,” (Bonewits 196).
While Bonewits was speaking about rituals, the same is very much true
about magic practice. When the same
pathway in the brain is taken over and over, be it thought or emotion, it
becomes easier. Memory is based on this
principle and many mental disorders, such as Alzheimer’s, are caused by the
disruption of these patterns (University of Texas-Austin). By beginning a daily practice wherein we take
our brain through the same exercises, we strengthen our mental muscles,
deepening the channels of thought. The
mental synapses of our brains fire faster, we process better, and the
information moves from our short-term to our long-term memory.
The second reason is similar. Learning anything is a series of stages. In order to someday master calculus, we have
to first learn algebra, which requires an understanding of the Order of
Operations, which means we have to know how to do basic arithmetic. You can’t just jump into calculus, you have
to start at the beginning by memorizing your multiplication tables.
Magic works much the same way. If we want to be able to accomplish the
raising of major mana, if we want to be able to rely on the effects of our work
and be able to see it manifest in the world, then we have to start off by
mastering the basics, such as grounding and centering. In ADF we are introduced to this first step
in the Dedicant Program, with the Two Powers Meditation. Once we have mastered the basics of grounding
and centering, we are potentially ready to move on to the next step, whatever
that may be for the fledgling Druid Magician.
For my own practice, I have decided to be more
intentional in my paganism in general. I
have signed up for the online IP program with Rev. Jan Avende and have
completed the First Circle of courses for the Clergy Training Program. This is how I’m starting making a conscious
effort to include something ADF in my daily life. There is a daily task to complete in Jan’s
structured program and part of my clergy discipline has been to include daily
devotionals both upon waking and when going to sleep. Structure in general is not my forte. I will use the structure she has created and the
discipline I’ve managed to put into place to improve and build my own daily
magical practice. It has begun with
meditation and breathing exercises, now I feel ready to embrace other practices
as well. I will see where the programs
take me, but it’s establishing the habit that I need right now.
Self-understanding is critical to anyone, not just a
magus. That said, without understanding
ourselves, without being acquainted with our strengths and weaknesses and
everything in between, we surely will fail at magic.
One reason for this is that when one is interacting with the
unseen, one has to be confident. Not
just seem confident, but be confident.
To know that you are capable of the tasks you’ve set for yourself. To know you are both strong enough to see the
task through and flexible enough to bend with the unexpected that will
inevitably come your way.
Honest self-assessment is hard. It’s human nature not to take criticism well,
but more than that, when we’re critiquing ourselves, the rubric is all but
impossible to pin down. Sure, sometimes
we can see if we did something or didn’t do it, but we can’t always tell why an
exercise didn’t go as planned, especially when we’re looking from the inside. It’s easy to try and place blame on someone
or something else when it’s ours to bear, and on the flip side, it can be easy
to take on too much guilt and blame for something outside of your control, a
tendency of survivors of all sorts of hardships. Neither lets one see with a clear vision what
actually happened.
For the purpose of this study program, then, I plan to
accomplish this by journaling to establish when I am and am not meeting my
goals. Part of self-knowledge is having
integrity and being your word, acknowledging when you falter, and working to
get back on track. Self-knowledge is
also admitting your weaknesses.
Structure and consistency are both areas I struggle with. Journaling will help me track that and be
accountable for it.
Another way I will work towards self-knowledge is through
being honest about my past, my reactions, my triggers, my ways of thinking and
being. Some of them I already know: I’m
an ENTP and I function well when presented with logical critique. Some of them I’m discovering, like the long
term impacts of being in an abusive relationship for sixteen years. Knowing
what they are isn’t some sort of magic bullet remedy that makes them go away,
but it does allow me to predict my own reactions and work around them. At this point, that’s the best I can do. Learn, grow, and move on.
Works Cited:
Bonewits, Isaac. Neopagan Rites: A Guide
to Creating Public Rituals that Work (Kindle Locations 196-198). Kindle
Edition.
Corrigan, I. (n.d.). The Two Powers
Meditation. Retrieved 12/8/14, from adf.org.
University of Texas at Austin.
"Neurons in brain tune into different frequencies for different spatial
memory tasks." ScienceDaily. Accessed 12/3/14. Web.
17 April 2014.
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