The request for this essay left me smiling. In the last year, I have learned only too well the difference between Wiccan and Witch. I am not sure even yet that I could give you a precise definition, but I can tell you about my experiences being first a Wiccan, then a Witch, and finally finding my own individual path and leaving both behind.
I became a Wiccan six years ago when a college friend introduced me to the religion. I was drawn to it because Wicca condoned the use of, even encouraged the use of, magick. I had felt magick in my blood since I was old enough to crawl. I knew the power. I only needed a belief system that would allow it.
Shortly after I was introduced to Wicca and began to study, the Goddess came to me in her threefold form and told me more or less what the Charge of the Goddess says - that everything I needed was within myself.
At that time, I did not fully understand what this meant, and perhaps that is just as well because there is a natural progression in magick, and it is good to have the grounding in the basics that Wicca gives you. So I studied. I learned about the tools of Wicca. I became friends with the elementals. I prayed to the old gods, and when I needed comfort, I called out to the Goddess and she held me in her gentle arms.
Wicca was a beautiful religion. It gave me the alternative to Christianity that I needed. It opened my eyes to possibilities that I had not previously began to consider. Yet, I felt that I had reached a ceiling with Wicca. Studying on my own, I had learned about the religion, the cycles of the year, and everything that I could possibly learn of the religion. I had read the classics in Wicca - The golden Bough, The White Goddess, and Leland's Aradia. I had read the new books by Scott Cunningham and Silver Ravenwolf, but there had to be more. Had I reached a dead end with Wicca?
Then I decided to find a teacher. I had not been able to unlock the keys to the power that I wanted on my own, so I would ask the universe for help. That night, a full moon, as midnight approached, I went down to my ritual area at set up my altar with a candle for the God and Goddess and my ritual tools. I called the elementals, and then I began my intrusion of the otherworld. I made a pentagram in salt on the floor, I sat in the middle of it, and holding my athame up, I envisioned an arch from stonehenge opening to my lifepath in the astral world. I envisioned the symbol that I used for the teacher I desired (a Dragon's Eye) and pushed it through my image of the arch and onto my lifepath. When I felt the symbol connect with my lifepath, I brought down my athame quickly into the center of my pentagram, anchoring what I had just done in the astral to this plane. Then I knew that it was done, I cleaned up my area, and went to bed.
A few days later, I was walking downtown and noticed that an occult shop had opened since last time I had been in the area. Curiousity prompted me to go inside and I fell into Fate's tangeled web. The store itself had little to offer in the way of merchandise. It seemed to be more of a hang-out place for pagans. The owner asked if I would be interested in taking a beginning Wicca class from him and I shrugged and said "why not." I then completed basic and intermediate classes in Wicca, after which I was asked to join their coven.
My first ritual there was Lughnassad. It was a beautiful ritual in which we offered the first fruits of the earth back to the Goddess. After that, my life became so entangled with my coven that I was rarely absent from them for more than a day. It was then that I began to realize that I was not a Wiccan but a witch.
Some members of my coven were purely Wiccan. They followed the rede, believed in the threefold law, tried to harm none, and worshiped the old gods. Then there were those who did not know what god they worshiped. They sought only the raw power of magick. It was a drug they craved, a need. Magick consumed them and was their biggest desire. They were two different breeds altogether. The Wiccan followed her path for the same reasons that the Christain attends church. The Wiccan needed her belief system. The witch followed her path to do, feel, and become magick.
One day I was raped by an old friend. It was an experience that I could not deal with. Not only had my body been invaded, but the perpetrator had been violent and had beaten me severly. That night, bruised and emotionally spent, I called out to Hekate as her child. I said, "Mother, protect your own." And she did. I will not say what she did, but I felt vindicated. As I related the experience and told my coven about calling on Hekate for vengance, they asked how I could use magick to harm. They reminded me that I was Wiccan. I replied that I was no longer Wiccan, but that I was a witch. That experience changed me.
Then I became somewhat dark. I used whatever I could to obtain magickal power. I used some blood magick - my own, not anyone else's. I began to dabble more in high magick - in the world of ritual. Then, and only then, did I find a deeper meaning in the words of the Goddess - that if it is not within, you will not find it without. I began to understand that my magick could be done without tools, without books and the ideas of others. I began to understand the true power in visualization and manipulating the astral to change this world. I was a true witch.
Then I had a conversation that made me realize I had stepped to far into the world without boundaries. I ran accross a stranger who was Wiccan. At the university, they were doing free AIDS testing. Just for S&G's, I stopped and let him prick my finger. While I waited for the news that I was clean, he talked with me. As those who are familiar with magick know, we can find others who dabble in magick without any secret handshake or password. There is no need for such nonsense. When we look in each other's eyes, we know those of our own kind. I don't know what that power is exactly, but I have long since accepted it. Within a few moments, he and I were conversing about magick. He was Wiccan, and as light as they come. I do not mean that disrespectfully - quite the contrary as a matter of fact. He said that he could see the darkness in my eyes, that he could feel it eating me, consuming me. That scared me a little. I knew then that I would have to find a path and stick to it. I needed a disciplined belief structure. So I was a witch that had moved beyond Wicca. I still needed a religion.
I was still with my coven, but there was a new presence in my life. I had found a new teacher and he began to teach me Thelema. Thelema was the ritual magick that I loved and felt the power in, but it was also a concrete system. It was not quite a religion, and I couldn't call it that, but it worked. As I did the rituals, I felt the connection to the Divine with no particular godform, no face to the power. Here was something that I had moved into that was beyond Wicca and Witchcraft. It was a path of my own. I was still a witch, I still wanted the power, but I was something more now because I had a working system to put the magick into the context of.
But I was also still with my coven and growing very discontent. I had been asked to lead the Midsummer ritual, so I did. A few weeks ago we went out into a clearing in the woods, set up tiki torches, adorned our cloaks, and worshiped the old gods as the lightening bugs flickered like fairy lights in the darkness around us. When the ritual ended, I hugged by brothers and sisters in the craft one last time and bid them farewell.
In a very interesting turn of events, the next week after I left, the coven split into two very seperate camps - the Wiccans and the witches. It seems they were only compatible to certain degree. They are, after all, two very different breeds of individuals, even if magick is common to them both.
And that is my story,
Eighteen and Innocent.
