The Magick and the Mundane

I was asked to write about witchy daily lives and where the magick comes from. Well, here's mine.

Every morning when I wake up, I move the curtains aside a little bit and look outside. I notice the color of the sky, the clouds, the sun, the woods surrounding my home; hear the wind rustling through the trees or the rain falling on the roof. Lately of course, it’s been seeing that the trees are getting barer and there are more gold leaves on the ground than green grass peeking through. I look for signs from nature about what’s coming and I listen. I take a deep breath, close my eyes for a second and remind myself that no matter what the day brings, I am ready for it and I can come home to my little peaceful corner of the world and just be. 

I have to get ready for the day by myself and talk to no one, or else I feel rushed, bothered, and agitated. I’m not a morning person and I definitely am one who needs plenty of me time, which is why I love that short, peaceful span when the witchlings have gotten on the bus and I can put on some music and start thinking as I prepare to face the day before leaving for work. The house is pin drop quiet and a little bit eerie, as if the walls are suddenly watching me. That is when my ghostly little girl is there; sometimes making noises to get my attention, but mostly it’s just a feeling that I am not alone. It’s kind of comforting now, actually. If you really paid attention, you’d see that there are spirits all around.

I have a fantastic job, work with great people and enjoy what I do, but the bottom line is that it’s not feeding my soul (but it is what feeds my children, so I keep doing it), and this has become a necessity for me. Something changed over the past few years and I have to do things that I find spiritually fulfilling or I become a mean, aggravated, yelling version of me once I get home that I really don’t like to be. I think its part of awakening and finding your calling. Everything else just feels like a waste of precious time and so, so shallow. I look at everyone around me mindlessly going about their days, one rolling right into the next, thinking this is life as we know it, how it’s supposed to be, that fitting in and keeping up are the important things, but only just skimming the surface, that average, boring surface that if only they would stop and notice the tangible electric spark in the air, on the wind, in the feeling of a raindrop hitting their skin, that they would see a tiny ripple in that surface, peer in a little more closely, and realize there is a whole other world down there, up there, all around there, and they just need to dive in. Strip off the convention and the paradigms and go blindly into the water, just trusting in it all. I can talk a good game to anyone who hasn’t yet awakened, gently suggesting new ways to see, when really I just want to shake them and scream, “WAKE UP, THERE IS SO MUCH MORE!” But then I remember that not every soul is ready for that, that it is their own journey and that maybe my purpose for crossing their path is to be that sorta nutty girl with the deep, wild eyes who talked about Fate, and the Soul, and the Universe and the Goddess as if there were REAL and maybe someday they’ll notice the spark and that tiny little spark will relight their fire.

At night, when everyone is asleep and it’s so very dark, the vast, comforting dark, I am alone with the sky and the moon and the stars and my thoughts. I do the usual cleaning and picking up, the putting back together of what was taken apart and undone throughout the day, and it becomes like a meditation for me, so much so, that sometimes I realize I’ve wiped the counter top this way and that until my arm is a little tired but then I feel satisfied and accomplished, and I can slip into my little me time world and do the things that feed my soul. Sometimes I listen to a song that makes me feel so alive, like I am hurtling through time and space, almost like how I imagine it would feel to fly, and I dance until my heart is pounding, breath fast, every nerve tingling, dance like The Witch of Portobello, feeling it with every fiber of my being. I do all of this until I am truly tired, eyes heavy, and there is nothing left to contemplate that day. Every night I sleep with the window open so I can hear the Goddess and her creatures as I fall asleep and again as I wake up. There is nothing so beautiful as the sound of the night as you drift off to sleep. Nothing. 

That’s where the magick comes from; from finding the beauty and the lessons of the Goddess in every single moment, just slow down and look, feel, ask and you shall receive. The Goddess is all things, in all things; she is a place, a being, a feeling. You can add all the props in the world, with the athame and a chalice and the incense and the salt and the water and the candles all in the right place on your altar, but really it’s all a bunch of stuff that you don’t usually need. The Goddess is around you all the time, and if you stop and notice that just once every day, then that is good enough. She will know.  She will hear your call. The answers are not in the motions of the ritual itself, they are in the feeling you get when you create your intentions and set them forth into the Universe to become. They are in each mindful step you take every day that fills up your heart and brightens the light inside you that you shine out to the world.  Remember if that which you seek you find not within, you will never find without.