In Search of the Divine

I love music. I do, my tastes in music are so insane that if you took one look at my iPod your mind would melt at all the oddities on it.  The only times I ever truly ever felt close to the Divine has been when I have been dancing madly. I am not trained (although I fiercely wanted to be a ballerina, sadly I had not the body type or the tenacity for such an endeavour) but when I’m dancing I do not care. I flail my arms about, get into the groove and just am ME. I do not have any regrets when I am dancing. I do not have any worries nor am I self conscious when I dance.  I work up a sweat, sing along, sway my hips, whatever the song calls for. It was not until recently that I realized my dancing freed me.

I wish I could dance all the time. I wish I could feel as amazing as I do when a good song comes on and I feel that sort of joy come over me.  Recently I have been going through a very bad bout of depression and so I find myself trying to find solace in anything I can. So far that has been waking up around 3am, putting on some music and dancing until I cry.  In that moment I feel Divnity.

One of my pitfalls as a baby pagan was buying Wicca 101 books…many many Wicca 101 books. The first one I ever bought was Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. I still reference this book quite a bit even though I do not consider myself  a Wiccan. Another book I picked up? Silver Ravenwolf’s To Ride A Silver Broomstick. About 20 pages in I threw it out, a lot of it to me (and years later when I got more proficient on the internet I realized I was not alone in thinking this) seemed to take the whole “Us vs Them” attitude I completely abhor.  Needless to say though I kept buying books and books and books and books. I would beeline for the metaphysical section in the hopes of finding THE ONE. You know, the book that will completely and utterly show you want to do, how to do it and how to succeed at doing it.

Baby pagans in the world let me spare you a closet full of books and an empty wallet: THE ONE BOOK DOES NOT EXIST.

At some point I woke up and realized every book told me the same thing. I knew what the 4 quarters were, I knew what the words desoil & widdershins meant, I knew everyone’s different definitions of Magic (k? ijk?) yada yada yada. I still didn’t feel like I KNEW anything though. So I stopped reading them. I put down the 101 (and a couple of 102 books I bought), I lit a candle (attempted to do a formal circle casting, it was marginally successful, I think I just can’t do the solemn reverence thing well I was cracking up) and I listened. I spoke from the heart and I listened with my heart and BOOM! I GOT IT.  Now am I the world’s most knowledable pagan? Of course not, I’m still learning. I’m still muttling through taking the academic out of my practice and you know, actually doing it. This is key, at some point one must start doing it.  Me being the overthinker I am was scared (am still scared) of this. But it must be done, one can only learn from books for so long. Hence, the 101 trap.

Slowly I am climbing out of it. I do get the twitch every now and then to run & grab a book to see if I’m doing it right but I’m learning to trust myself and my Gods. This is a good thing.