On the night of December 24, 1996 there was a full moon, and
I was standing outside a tiny Catholic church in my hometown of Magee, MS
waiting for my first boyfriend to finish up his duties as choir director for
the Midnight Mass that just happened. It was a bit chilly, and the sky was
clear. My boyfriend’s father was standing nearby talking with a fellow parishioner,
and I overheard him say something about the winter solstice and the full moon,
so I looked up. When my eyes made contact with that lunar orb this electric,
tingling sensation ran all over my body. Shocked, my eyes focused on the moon,
and it was as if everything else quickly melted away. All I could see was a
tapestry of white, blue, silver, and black. From nowhere, inside my head, and
all around me, I heard a woman’s voice say, “You will find your path soon,” and
as quickly as it came on, the whole thing ended. I remembered where I was when
my boyfriend walked up and started talking. I probably looked all deer in
headlights, but shook it off and went about the night.
That next week on New Year’s Eve I found myself in a
bookstore in one of the malls in Jackson, MS, and I wondered into the tiny New
Age section and started browsing through all the titles. I squatted down to
look at the bottom shelf and one cover caught my attention. A guy in a
yellowish robe was standing near a stone altar holding something with smoke
coming off it. As I reached for it and stood up, another electric rush went
through me, and I felt the spirit of my mother standing behind me. She died
when I was 8, and I’d felt her from time to time growing up, but never this
strongly before. It felt as if she placed her hand on my left shoulder, then
faded away. Well, I’m not that thick-headed, so I bought the book! It was Scott
Cunningham’s “Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner.” I devoured it and
went back to buy as many books as my Wal-Mart paycheck allowed. So many new and
exciting concepts and things to try, and so many questions! Like, was the voice
I heard the night of the full moon my mother’s or someone else’s? If it was
her, was she actually guiding me towards this path? I grew up Pentecostal but
left the church after I realized I was always staring at the butts of the
football players and not the cheerleaders, but witchcraft? Wicca? Isn’t that
the devil? I mean, I'd had a long fascination with it growing up, reading all the books in the library about it, and all, having dead relatives visit me in dreams, but... I’m going to Hell now, right? I’m fucked.
It would be years later before my mom’s sister (now my
stepmother…welcome to the South!) told me that Momma had started practicing
witchcraft before she died. Of course she did! Red headed, one of ten kids who
couldn’t get away from home fast enough, so she stole my dad out from under her
sister and ran for it. The adventurous black sheep that she was, Sagittarius
sun sign, housewife in the 80s, of course she practiced witchcraft! Looking back I
think it’s probably safe to assume her spirit was really there, giving me that
nudge I needed to begin what’s now been a two decade journey into the
fascinating, frustrating, exciting, disappointing, and ever renewing world of
modern witchcraft and Wicca. Try as I have over the years to quit this
addiction, it seems to be my drug, and the sight of a full moon always brings
on a craving. In fact, I had a conversation with Her last night, which is why I’m
writing this today. I want to share my story in hopes that it helps or inspires
others in some way. Maybe others are struggling with a similar type of thing.
Ok, enough with the after school special, back to the story.
So there I was, back at my community college dorm reading
all these books. (Yes, Llewellyn books…every single one…whatever, it’s all I
could find/afford back then.) Dashing off to the crafts and fabric section of
the local Wal-Mart, I started fashioning my tools and making my robe. By hand;
no sewing machine. My Aunt Yvonna (no, no…where I’m from we pronounce that
WHY-VONE-AH) taught me to hand stich before she died. (Yes, there were a lot of
deaths in my family growing up, and that plays into another area of my
spiritual life that comes in years later, but that’s a different thing.) Before I
could blink, I had all the things! I was the witchiest Wicca witchlet in
Wesson, MS, which is where my college was. Gay and a witch in rural south MS in
the 90s. I have no idea how I survived, but by the grace of the gods I did, and
by 1998 I wound up attending Mississippi State after having taken a year off school
to live it up in the state capital. I’m sure everyone is familiar with the wild,
legendary gay nightlife of that one gay club in Jackson that kept closing down,
moving locations, and changing its name. What were its names again? The
Birdcage? Jack and Jill’s? Polyester? The Village? Yeah, that one.
My time at Mississippi State opened me up to other eclectic,
pagany people, as well as ceremonial magicians, vampires, and other goth kids
of many flavors. I got some folks together, and we created the Mississippi
State University Wiccan/Pagan Student Alliance. Which is a fancy title for the
handful of us that would meet once a month and talk about things we had absolutely
no real experience in, because that’s what college kids do. But it was the
first one of its kind in the state, and we were all proud of that. This opened
us up to some expected situations, like all the Christian groups trying to tell
us we were all going to hell at our fall festival booth. And some unexpected ones
like me becoming friends with one of the Campus Crusade for Christ counselors
to the point that I stayed in her minimalist apartment one summer while I took
summer classes and she was off on a mission trip. Curiously, it was that summer
where I was listening to a radio show on NPR (seriously, she did not have a TV!)
when I first discovered anything Afro-Caribbean. They were doing a special on
Santeria, so after the program I went to the university library and started doing some research.
Like the good eclectic Wiccan I was, I immediately started to pray to the Orishas,
and they must have answered cause I lit some incense, called to Shango, and
there was a thunderstorm half an hour later! Yeah? No? Ok, well, whatever.
After graduation I hung around for another semester to apply
for grad schools, which translates into: I had no idea what I wanted to do with
my life and the new Bachelor’s in philosophy and world religious studies. (Really?
What the hell was I thinking? I was thinking a LOT because of all those
philosophy papers I had to write!) But there was one thing I knew I had to do,
as it had been a burning desire for the last few years. I had to move to New
Orleans. My mom’s family had lived in New Orleans long ago, and I grew up with
stories about it, but it wasn’t until I was 18 that I first visited. Friends
brought me down here to party at the gay clubs (back when 18 year olds could
still get in, you just got this huge black X on your hand), and I absolutely
fell in love with it. Obsessively. I drove down every chance I got. Shopped at
the witch shops, as there were a lot more back then, walked around the French
Quarter, marveling at the history and architecture, and danced in the clubs.
For a poor little gay Mississippi boy, living in New Orleans would be a dream
come true.
And I made it happen. January 2001 I started the Master’s
program in religious studies at Loyola University, and almost immediately
started meeting Pagans, Wiccans, and many others in the city. This was a lot
different from my mild Mississippi State meetings with the WPSA, lemmetellya! The
local Wiccan church, which held all the public circles, had just had this huge blow
up between the two head priestesses, and everyone was all up in arms over this
or that, and I had no idea what was going on! So, I just focused on completing
my correspondence training with this coven in Connecticut I’d made contact with
towards the end of my time at MSU. The Sacred Garden Tradition of Wicca, it was
called, and I did all my training via email and degree initiations in my little
solitary circles. I did eventually start up my own coven in this, but it didn’t
quite last that long. I had no leadership experience, and the rituals were a
bit like a bad high school theater version of the movie The Craft. Bad acting
and really crappy special effects. I did manage to meet the Gardnerian coven
around that time and started their Outer Court training, but after my friend
got busted having an affair with the High Priest’s boyfriend I got blackballed.
No matter, as I’d found Haitian Vodou at that point, and from there a whole other
adventure started…which I’ll write about later.
Ok, fast forward a few years to 2005. Witchcraft and Wicca
had been on the backburner for a couple of years because of Vodou, and I was
starting to feel that percolating feeling inside, but wasn’t sure what to do
about it. Oh, but wait! Remember the Gardnerian High Priest I mentioned? Yeah,
we totally started dating, and I moved in with him. I know, it was fast, but the
house I was living in sold, and I couldn’t find another place in time. Well, this
High Priest held a few different Craft traditions, and he brought me into the
Minoan Brotherhood, the BTW offshoot tradition for gay/bi men started in NYC by
Eddie Buczynski in the 70s. Finally! I was initiated into a legit tradition of
witchcraft! And connected to an oathbound community…er, Brotherhood…um, secret
online group where no one seemed to be able to get along. But you kind of have to
expect that when you have a bunch of queens with titles arguing over, I mean
discussing, things behind the safety of a computer screen. Anyway, plans were
being made for me to be brought into the Gardnerian coven (the same one that I got
kicked out of their Outer Court), but the High Priestess wasn’t all that keen
on the idea. She had a distaste for my involvement in Vodou, and it took a lot of
convincing, but she finally agreed. And it almost happened! But….late August
2005…y’all remember what happened in New Orleans around that time? Yep.
HURRICANE KATRINA.
After realizing how bad it was about to get in the city, my
partner and I packed up two Chows, some clothes and all our ritual tools and
Books of Shadows (like ya do) and got the hell out of town. We evacuated to the
High Priestess’ restored antebellum plantation house in Port Allen, just over
the river from Baton Rouge. Two hellish weeks we spent there with 12 people, 12
dogs, and 20 cats. Hellish not because of the conditions, which were pretty
comfortable all things considered, but hellish because of what happened next. A
couple days after the storm hit, because I was a probation and parole officer
at the time, I was sent back into the ruins of my beloved city to help evacuate
all the prisoners who were still sweltering in the prisons and jails. It was a
nightmare. Worst thing I’ve ever had to go through in my life. When I got back
I pushed all those images to the back of my mind and focused on doing what I
could with the house and those staying there. Not knowing what any of us where
going to do with our homes flooded and jobs closing down, and everything in
complete chaos, my partner got word from his family in Massachusetts, and we
decided to go up and re-start our lives in a place I’d never even visited. In
fact, I’d never been north of the Mason-Dixon Line. A whole new way of life. I’d
be trading in my sultry Southern summers and everything and everyone I knew,
for four seasons in that fantasy land called The North. Given the
circumstances, it was the most logical choice, but truly I was excited. Of
course, I’d be leaving my dear New Orleans, but the city was a wreck, and I was
not about to be reassigned to some parish out in the middle of Louisiana to
live in a place much like the conservative Mississippi I’d worked so hard to
get away from. Also, his family lived in Beverly, which is just across the bay
from….SALEM! The place where the witches are! Little did I know what was in
store for me there.
"...the rituals were a bit like a bad high school theater version of the movie The Craft. Bad acting and really crappy special effects."
ReplyDeleteI know this feeling all too well, as I'm sure many others do. Thank you so much for articulating that particular part of your experience.
What I would love to read is a post of suggestions that you feel would help others more their own practice from the above quoted state. What are some ways that you think witches could improve their practice from "bad high school theater" to a powerful and visceral experience?
Can't wait for part 2
ReplyDelete