Experiential Witchcraft

My plans were to be at Pantheacon, but I am home. Here I am, blogging on my rooftop deck with the early spring bursting all around me. Yesterday and today are the kind of sublime days that demand to be admired. It’s balmy out, and the plum trees in the front and back of my house are in peak bloom. The air is perfumed with the subtle scent of the blossoms, and it truly is the most glorious of days.

I’ve been preparing for Pantheacon for days now, and thinking a lot about Hecate’s response to Thorn’s and my musing on a lack of depth in Craft writings. Her point is that the Craft has up to now been an experiential thealogy, not primarily passed on thru the written word. This is certainly true, as when I began practicing there was a dearth of written material on feminist spirituality and neopaganism. We were too busy reclaiming and creating it. That time has now passed, and what with the internet and so many more books being written, we really are in a different stage. Unfortunately, the majority of books are still recipe books filled with words for spells and focusing on a general “how to” of being a witch as opposed to moving and inspirational books springing from our thealogy that are on par with what Buddhist’s have been writing.

I’ve been feeling called to attend Pantheacon partly to see how this change is expressing itself, and what it feels like. Yet, here I am on my deck, having just brought up the lilacs that need to be planted. It’s the right place to be. Witchcraft, like any spirituality, is meant to be practiced. Not just written about and talked about. Years ago, to my chagrin, I realized that at our public ritual to celebrate the solstice we had huddled together tightly in the cold of a San Francisco summer listening to a priestess laud the beauty of the sun while meanwhile the sun himself had been slipping into the sea, with not one of us witnessing and actually experiencing his descent.

Yesterday and today are days that need to be witnessed, demand to be experienced. In a few days time these blossoms will not be so potent with fragrance, and fog or rain may remind us that winter has not completely withdrawn. But today, oh today! I celebrate and soak up the beauty of rebirth, the emergence of spring in this gorgeous city by the sea.

In a few hours I will make my way down to Pantheacon, to the Doubletree Hotel that invokes not a whit of treeness or love of the green world. It will be filled with witches, some which are dear and beloved friends, all committed to the worship of this green spinning globe, this beautiful world. I’m so glad I’ve been in it all morning. It truly is sacred. And smells good, too.