How much of your magical teaching is relevant in the 21st century? How many of you can pee in a jar and put it under your front stoop for protection? Not as many as you think, so what does the 21st century witch do in such cases? They become the creator of their own magical tradition.
Traditions must evolve to survive and stay relevant. Are you brave enough to be part of the evolution?
The foundation of tradition is critical. That is the experience and wisdom of those who inspire you, of course understanding the foundation of your spiritual patch brings you stability to explore further. Foundations can be the stability or they can be the limitations. I like to look at the foundations of my spiritual path the requirements of the age and culture of those who crafted that path. The magical needs of the hearth witch of the 1500’s is not the magical needs of today. I don’t even have a hearth, I have a furnace and central heating.
Thank goodness that the hearth witch of long ago tested her spells and paved the way for me. Now I get to pave the way for that magical practitioner 100 years from now who may stumble across something I tried and succeeded with. Who knows, they may have to figure out how to do a candle spell in an age where paraffin candles are no longer available. I tell you, my sister in the future, grab the idea and the spirit and make it your own.
In every class I teach I remind my students that someone and sometime had to decide what magical uses each plant, rock, or animal has. If they can decide, so can you. Someone decided that red was for love and someone else decided red was for war. Each of these magical practitioners had a strong feeling about their definition and they had to have some type of success with it to validate their decision. That is how tradition is built, trial and error, experience and myth, results and cautionary tales. This is also how you can build upon your own tradition.
When I started making candles for fun, I didn’t agree with the traditional recipes and colors. I read, learned and did my own trials to come up with my candles. I even changed the color of protection from white to black. I felt that black would pull in all the protection you would need and build a stronger fortress. This was not the tradition of any of my teachers and many initially refused to use a black protection candle. I stuck with it anyway. Now I read in some of the newer books on magic that black can be used for protection. I was the decider of my own tradition and others decided that they agreed.
We get the best of both worlds, we get the strength of tradition and we get energetic pop of creation – use them both and be the magic maker.
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