I’ve learned that, like the Wheel of the Year itself, my life moves in cycles. I can remember being a Blue Star Dedicant years and years ago and realizing—courtesy of my very astute teacher who told me I needed to keep track of these things, which sounds obvious now but totally was not at the time—that my interests, moods, relationship with my body, and connection to the gods all ebbed and flowed according to the seasons. I am the happiest and most ambitious over the summer. In August, I have to be mindful of depression, which will set in as school starts. Halloween is fun, but I tend to be sick or injured this time of year. December is a good time to talk to the gods and feel them most strongly in my life. Imbolc always has be gunning to start some new spiritual project that’s usually a little beyond my scope at the time. I spend too much money in May, because all of my Taurus is hanging out and I feel good about the coming time off. And so on.
Years of doing this, and I finally have a reasonably good sense of myself. I used to try to fight it, but I find that it’s easier to just flow and be patient with myself. Work isn’t going away, and neither is depression, tax season, or final exam schedules, so better to just do what I can to prepare and move through these things as gracefully as possible.
My coven has a cycle to it to: times when it’s easier to meet often, times when people need extra support, and times when I feel like the worst high priestess in the world because I have to relinquish much of the coven’s functional work to others for the sake of my mental health. It’s not a problem, but in the past it’s been very frustrating. When you don’t recognize patterns and respond accordingly, it can feel like everything is just happening to you beyond control.
Harmony Nice is one of the leading voices in this latest incarnation of Wicca, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this book does what Teen Witch by Silver RavenWolf did in the nineties, both good and bad. Though I’m not its target audience by any stretch, I see myself twenty years ago in this book. Adult me is uncomfortable with that at times, but it’s the truth.
Some fights just aren’t worth having. As I get older, I appreciate how finite time is and how quickly it passes. I started my course with Tarot School, just as an example, in 2012. I bought it for myself as a present for winning a graduate fellowship at my university. I was in my first year of an MA program in religious studies, on my way to a PhD, by anyone’s account. But that didn’t happen. Life stuff came up, I got deeper into the academic life, and I realized that it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I finished the MA and left. In the years that followed, I wrote and published my first book, worked as a professional tarot reader, went back to school, got a teaching certificate, started teaching high school, and put more and more energy toward writing. I also went back to school, this time for English, concentrating in creative writing. I’m about to be 35. Most of my friends are married, have children, and are a decade into their careers. Their lives are more conventional, and I’m often left feeling like mine has just been a string of false starts and bad choices. I’ve done plenty I’m proud of, but I always think, “Man, what if I’d known what I wanted from the beginning and had just gone for it? How much more could I have done by now?”
But it’s also about choice. Imagine the 7 of Cups—often taken to indicate the need to make a decision without getting lost in fantasy—except instead of resting gently on a fluffy cloud, someone’s beating that guy with all of those goblets while everything goes flying, making a giant mess. That’s the 7 of Wands. This guy, swinging his wand around on that cliff, is trying to take on all of his battles at once, and he’s about to get his ass kicked. Not because he’s deficient in any way, but because he’s not focusing on what actually matters.
It’s out! It’s out!
