...'til it's gone.
Well, that's not entirely true of all things, but it's especially true of one of the few important things in life, this being the need to belong. There's a part of me that misses being Wiccan. I'm not entirely certain as to why I long for the brand of Wicca I was introduced to (I was raised on Silver Ravenwolf and Scott Cunningham), but the longing is there. I miss being able to write off my actions against others as being a karmatic enforcer of sorts. I miss being able to curse people with the three-fold rule: "It's gonna come back to you, asshole, three times three!" Yes, I was sad enough to actually have shouted that at someone. Kill me now.
I miss being able to identify with others whom have patterned themselves after the same stereötype. I miss being able to dress in black clothing and automatically be accepted by others of my ilk. I miss being able to imagine faeries in the trees and visualise them stealing my car keys and shit like that. I miss being able to blame such faeries for my own irresponsibility when it comes to leaving keys or sunglasses or other various trinkets around the house. I miss being able to go to Christians and say "but we're good too!" .
I miss the various quests I was either given or took up on my own. I miss crusading against the 'religious right'. I miss debating for environmental rights and being able to blame the Republican administration for every woe of the land. I miss that search for my dream coven, where there'd be twelve Witches, all of various signs, working in an egalitarian manner to right the wrongs of the world. I miss standing in front of Planned Parenthood with my Wiccan friends, pointing and laughing at and mocking the über-Christian, pro-life protesters. I miss the fun I had spray-painting a pentacle on that church...dressing up gothy and creeping people out at K-Mart...Oh, the times we had.
But that's part of growing up, I guess. I suppose the message of this essay is that I feel Wicca to be a juvenile religion. Not necessarily in theory, but certainly in practice. The groups I've worked in have proven to be nothing but a soap opera with a mystical façade: a circle of friends, bound together by oaths they daren't break, but they do everything in their power to make each other feel miserable. The magical theories I learnt while Wiccan have proven inferior to those I have learned since my advent from Wicca into serious paganism. The connections to generic faceless deities have proven far inferior to the communions I've had with Ptah, Bast, Set, Maät and Sekhmet since going my own way. The code of ethics I live by now is far more coherent and I stick to it much better than the Rede/Threefold system, which I have since found to be flawed and, at least in my own eyes, to be unethical as well.
I long for the nonconformist conformist I used to be, the childish Wicca games I used to play, the zealous vandalism of which I used to partake...I miss being that Wiccan Warrior. But I could never be that again...because I've grown up. I can't see myself settling for that anymore, and I suppose being clouded by my own judgment I can't really fathom why anyone would setlle for so little. But then again, I was very happy settling for that for just about four years. I guess some of us are just...*sigh*...kids.
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