Walking the Path that Fits
We are brainwashed folks. Let’s face it.
We shove size 9 feet into size 7 shoes. We starve ourselves down to fit a specific dress size. We laugh at people wearing socks that don’t match. We assume that just because someone does something a different way than we do, they must think we must do as they do as well.
Conformity runs so deep in our society we do it without thinking.
We are so used to having to fit ourselves into an established institution that we often can’t fathom anything else.
You don’t join Wicca because it’s almost everything you believe, except for a couple of things, and then change those opposing beliefs just to be Wiccan!
Your clothing should fit you, not you fit your clothes. The same goes for your spirituality.
Of course we all want to belong and today you need a label to get anywhere.
“What Trad are you?”
But aside from finding a name, or BrandName, how do you build a spiritual path around … yourself? I suppose this is why Mystery Schools have the words “Know Thyself” abouve the doors eh?
It used to be that we had no choice but be all things to everyone. Most folks were solitary or in small Covens. Tiny communities don’t have as much talent, skill and ability to draw upon. Old school Wicca was, and still is, very much about being a Priest/ess, which made everyone a Priest/ess.
However in this new millennium, more and more of us are out of the closet and showing up at events or meetings and so forth. We have a wider pool to draw upon.
You don’t have to be a Jack-of-all-trades or a Priest/ess anymore, unless that’s your thing of course. You can find a niche, or two, and fill it
Personally, I’d call myself something of a Jack-of-many-trades but certainly not a Jack of ALL. Divination has never really been my thing for instance. I connect and work with the land in the wild and with animals more than in a cultivated garden for another example.
I have spent most of my adult life practicing as a solitary, also practicing on a farm or acreage. Much of my path is based around having to be resourceful, using what is at hand, and getting by on your own. For that is how I have lived much of my life.
My path has a strange mix of modern practice, revivalism and reconstruction, for I am a modern woman, a child who grew up a child of immigrants and in the Celtic Diaspora. I have lived somewhat traditionally, on a farm raising livestock, drawing water from a well and all of that. Yet I have also lived in major cities and practiced in parks surrounded by skyscrapers.
I walk my Path the way I live my life.
How do you live your life?
Does your spirituality fit you, or are you trying to fit into a spirituality?
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2 Responses to Walking the Path that Fits
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I spent a lot of years trying to fit my spirituality into somebody else’s box. Doesn’t work anymore. So…I live my spirituality as it fits me. My base is Wicca, post-Christian, that is, but Momma Nature is my teacher, guide and friend, and we work together. With a little of this, and a little of that. It works for me.
Great and relevent article. Thanks!
This is such a wonderful question, and one I think we have to continually ask ourselves or risk the very error of “trying to fit.”
When I was young, I studied and sampled all the world religions (as I believe everyone should do, for how can one object to or reject something about which one knows nothing?), even after I recognized The Craft as my true spiritual calling. I continue to be knowledgeable, aware and respectful of the spiritual paths of others.
Like you, my spirituality is flexible enough to survive in any environment because it has always been an essential part of who I am, how I think, how I act and how I live. It grows and evolves as I grow and evolve. I do not label my Path, but to make others who need such identifiers more comfortable I will tell them the traditions my path most resembles (you say you grew up with the Celtic Diaspora, which helps others to identify with that aspect of your path; I identify myself mostly closely with Faery and Green (or Natural) Witchcraft).
My path is also eclectic because, in addition to reading widely in the witchcraft genre (and being a modern woman — oh, I like that!), I am also well read in anthropology, archeology, ancient history, etymology, religion, psychology, botany, geology, etc., and the knowledge I gained has both influenced and been incorporated into my spiritual path — just as it has influenced and been incorporated into my life and every day living. And I’m not done learning to live or living to learn yet!