Here goes...

So... I received some guidance this weekend that I need to just shatter the Broom Closet once and for all. For those who know me well, this will come as no surprise. For those who know me a little, it won't exactly be a shocker. And for those who don't know me at all, I look forward to meeting you...

     Bogeyman: "You a witch or something?" .
     Susan: "I'm just... Something."
                                  Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

That's exactly it, I think. I'm... Something. Parts of what I do and what I am may fall under the umbrella of "witch," or even "Witch," and maybe that's the word I'll end up with, but at the moment, "Voracious Student" and "Relentless Seeker" seem to be more appropriate. "Druid" is good, too, as I am a songwriter and wordsmith, and Druiding is all about that. But neither one seems perfectly right. I am, as usual, neither fish nor foul. That's okay. These things happen.

Many people question the relevance of witches in our oh-so modern era. We don't need the batty old lady in the cottage just outside the village who we despise unless we need her to help heal the sick, birth a baby, terminate an unwanted pregnancy (or better yet, explain how not to get pregnant in the first place), tell us how to solve disputes, tell us when to plant and when to wait, whether or not to build a giant building there or there, sit up all night with the dead to ensure safe passage to the Other Realms... No, we have doctors and architects and lawyers and midwives and agricultural software and undertakers and... consultants... We don't need her services anymore.

Yeah, we do. Witches have the knowin' o' the hidden things (or "hiddlins' ", to quote Pratchett again), like how to walk between the physical and spiritual worlds and connect dots between them that bring clearness to confusion. Like how to see where the spirit is broken and is causing physical illness to manifest. Witches, for want of a better word, see how the macrocosm and the microcosm fit together like a hologram, and how each part contains the whole. When a person suffers spirit loss or a soul injury, there is no doctor who has the training to cross into the spirit realms and find what was lost and call it back, or fix what got broken so the love of the Divine Mind can once again flow unimpeded through the heart. But a Witch does, and he or she will do it, and that will open the paths of potentiality so that healing can happen.

Druids also have some hiddlins', including word magic, music magic and ceremonial magic. Being a songwriter, I have long been fascinated by the interplay between words, melody and presentation. Words have power, and music has power. Put them together with intention, and there's a lot can happen.

Reiki is an energy that has the power to heal spirits as well as physical bodies. It has an intelligence and a will of its own, and those who choose to practice quickly become adept at putting their own egos aside and allowing Reiki to use them as an instrument. I am working hard to refine myself as an instrument of Reiki, and hope to make many strides forward in that area over the next several months.

And that's what I'm voraciously studying and relentlessly seeking, to "ha' the knowin' o' the hiddlins'," to walk between worlds, to use all my talents to help increase the levels of joy and light and love in this world. So consider the Broom Closet door smashed permanently open. Call me what you will, Witch, Druid, Priestess, Student, Seeker... Crazy... Yes, that's a possibility. But I think a very very remote one.

Love and Light, Love and Light, Love and Light...

A Long Journey Began, and Begins Again

In January, I started a journey, and it's been amazing, brilliant, magical, beautiful and more life-affirming than anything I have ever done. I began doing an intensive spiritual training, part of which is studying and beginning to practice Reiki. I look back at my journals, even from two weeks ago, and I cannot believe how much I have learned, how much I have progressed, how much I have grown, changed, bloomed, become in four short months.

It started with a Reiki treatment from my dear friend and cousin Mumsy, because I was feelin' a little off energetically, mentally and physically. Once she had done a full treatment, I knew I needed to do whatever it took to bring the energy of Reiki into my life on a daily basis. And I have a feeling that Reiki may have picked me, too. There was a powerful rightness about it all. So Mumsy and I began working together, me studying meditation, energy, chakras, auras, magic (the real stuff, which is neither Harry Potter nor David Copperfield, but more like Granny Weatherwax), and finally, yes, Reiki, and today, April 14, is the day of my initiation into Reiki, my first attunement.

I've been using some books by Christopher Penczak, The Inner Temple of Witchcraft and The Magick of Reiki, to learn the meditative, energetic and magical skills, and a book by Caroline Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit to study the chakras and a system of symbolic, poetic diagnosis of dis-ease in mind, body and spirit. These are astoundingly challenging, complete, complex and masterful books to work through, and I am grateful to have them in my life.

I feel like I have reached a major threshold, and after crossing it I cannot remain the same. Reiki is always a part of one who is attuned, it can't be shut off. It makes wonderful changes, some subtle, some tremendous. Even now, before my initiation, I feel the transformation beginning, and I am ready. I have surrendered utterly to the will of Divine Mind. I am ready for whatever lessons are next.

Bright blessings, and blessed be.