The work of Witchcraft is not just a mental exercise. If our intention going in is that it is just a mental talker game, then that is most likely all we will get out of the experience. But if we approach this work as if it is real—as if the beings and what they do to us in the trance worlds are not “just our imaginations” but actual occurrences taking place on what might be described as “another plane of existence”—then we will be able to get the most out of what it has to offer. (And honestly, if you do not want to get the most out of the Craft, then you probably shouldn’t be here anyway.)
At this point, I feel compelled to insert into this narrative a personal story from my own training in Faery Witchcraft and one that I often cite in my own classes. I call it “My Most Humiliating Moment.” After having spent nearly four years of weekly sessions in arduous Craft training, and having been formally dedicated to the Faery Tradition, my teacher revealed to me to a particular inner temple—a temple-space on the astral planes in which I was introduced to certain beings and symbolic presences. After we returned from our trance, I was then instructed to revisit this temple and those beings on my own and report back my observances the following week. When I next engaged my personal altar, I re-created the symbolic keys necessary to engage this particular temple and to petition the guardian spirits that stood vigilant at its gate. But they did not move. Again, I engaged the keys, thinking that I had somehow made an error, that my concentration was not sufficient, or that somehow I was not worthy. Still they did not move. Frustrated, I told myself that it was my own mind that was tripping me up, that whatever impediments I was now facing were of my own mental construction, and so—in order to move beyond obstacles of my own making—I decided to force my way in.
I had no reason to believe that this would cause any issue, but my immediate experience of the temple was off; my perception was that I was slowly swimming through the space as if through some unseen, thick fluid the consistency of molasses. My feet never touched the floor, and it was an effort in concentration to manipulate myself across the room and to engage the particular objects and symbols that were part of that week’s homework. I eventually did so successfully, and I made my way out of the temple and closed my rites. I was pleased that I was able to move beyond what obviously had been a mental block.
The next week I went to class and sat with my teacher and proudly gave the account of my week in my regular check-in. I will never forget what he said to me.
“I cannot believe you were so disrespectful.”
I was stunned. I had gone from feeling so powerful to feeling so powerless, the rapid extreme of emotional sensation was too much for me to bear and so the shock prevailed. It was if I had been smiling and happy and then suddenly slapped across the face. And it stung.
“You are treating your trances as if they aren’t real, as if they are simply a mental construct. If you continue in this way then this is just for entertainment, and then you will never go any further than that.”
Mortification erupted over my face in hot flashes. I had been so sure, so proud. How could I have been so blind? I was embarrassed because I knew it was true. I had been treating the work of the Craft as if it was a mental toy, a thing to idly pass the time, as entertainment. I hadn’t really committed to its Mysteries. Even having been dedicated to the priesthood, I still was only taking it so far, but not quite far enough to believe it was real.
I can distinctly remember that as my teacher continued to calmly explain his observations of my behavior, I mentally resolved to never come back to class. Even having spent years coming to class, doing trances, projects, assignments, rituals, participating in community rituals and events, I was prepared to throw it all away because I was embarrassed.
Fortunately for me, my training had not been done in vain. After a few breaths, I remembered that training, and so I decided to “breathe through” the immediate feelings of shame and embarrassment to see what lay on the other side. And when I did, I realized that it was my ego that was bruised, and that of course it would want me to stop coming to class and stop doing this work, as this is the very work that would allow me to be free of the ego’s death grip on my consciousness and keep me from being the most powerful Faery Warlock I could possibly be. With this realization, I decided that I would continue my studies and, not only that, I would now make certain that I treated the trances as being real.
Toward that end, I resolved to make amends to the temple that, in my arrogance and ignorance, I had inadvertently desecrated. I visited and petitioned the guardians there. I made offerings there and offered real-world actions to back it up. After some time the damage was healed, and I walked away from the experience a bit wiser than I had been before. What happened in the trance was real; it was just a “different kind of real” than what is physically true. I had gained an awareness of the poetic and with new eyes was able to see the truth that up until that point had eluded me.
Having now resolved to approach the Craft and its Mysteries as poetic truths, we may step more assuredly upon the path as it begins to deepen in strength and power. Only when we release the arrogance of the ego and surrender to the possibility of magic are we able to finally find it, hidden in plain sight—where it has always been.