First Degree Initiation (28 years later)

Steve playing the handpan in the covenstead

By Steve

It really is nearly 28 years since I first began practicing Wicca, so it's a little strange to think of myself as having just attained a first degree initiation.

I consider myself to have long since become a third degree practitioner, if not of Wicca explicitly. I trained at Diana's Grove Mystery School for many years. I've traveled in service of teaching and leading ritual, I've created and taught classes, I've integrated my Pagan principles fully into my life. I've done everything a "typical" third-degree practitioner does, and I've done it for nearly twenty years.

But the Mysteries do not travel in a straight line... and sometimes the path takes us down what we expect to be familiar ground, only to find that the labyrinth has rearranged itself while our attention was elsewhere.

When Colleen told me that I would be required to explicitly fulfill the requirements for first-degree initiation, I am sure that I smirked, at least a little. And then I remembered that I get from magic what I put into it. So I thought about what it would really mean to go back to the beginning, and meet familiar terms and ideas with the experience and knowledge I've accumulated. What holds up? What is challenged? What is deepened?

Pleased with myself for finding such a productive attitude, I looked at the modest list of tasks - books to be read, research to be done, quizzes to take - and dutifully began procrastinating on all of it.

A month later, my teacher, my mentor, my guide, my sensei, Ginger, had a stroke.

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I had seen Ginger every week for more than eight years. She was not, strictly speaking, a therapist - just a social worker with vast compassion and a counseling service. I first went to her in desperate need, pointed in her direction by a trusted friend. And in her, I found a wellspring of wisdom, strength, and love that transformed my life. Very certainly, I did the hard and heroic work of healing - there is nobody else who can heal us other than ourselves - but it was her guidance showed me the way out of the deep darkness.

I had always known that the day would come that her light would no longer be there. I had wondered many times over the years what it would be like, what I would do. At the root of it all was one question: Would I be able to go on without her?

She recovered enough from her condition to be able to continue seeing me from her assisted living residence, and so I did. Some days there didn't seem to be much of her there, and on others it was just like it was when we were back in her home.

And then, the week before Yule, I went to see her like always, and found nobody there.

While she lay in hospice, I was able to see her one last time. I used it to read her the story of the Ainulindale, the heavenly music that created Middle Earth and suffuses all life and time, from J.R.R. Tolkien's grand fantasy world. She never woke up, but I saw a tear on her cheek as I left for what would be the last time. Two days before the solstice, her light went into darkness.

After the initial debilitating grief at the loss of someone so dear, I did what she would have done, what I always hope to find within my spirit. I took my sorrow in my hands, resolved to carry it, and I got up and kept walking.

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By this time, I had already completed much of my initiation homework, and discovered that it really was deeply enriching, even for this know-it-all. I was able to notice how far away I had grown from the most basic practices - practices which are taught first for good reason. As I began to reintegrate them, I noticed that... I was doing real magic. I was transforming my life, little by little, day by day, bringing a little more awareness to what I was doing and why.

Initiation itself was one of the most magical experiences I've ever had. And that is all I will say about the experience itself.

What stays with me is the realization that I am ready and able to guide the ongoing journey of my healing and growth, to take responsibility for seeking out my wounded places and to bring my true intent to the work and transformation needed there. This is not merely aspiration. This is what I have been practicing, without realizing it. This is me, listening and answering the call of my heart. No guide, no mentor to lean on. Only my own spirit and will. And it is enough.

More than ever, I see myself as I am. I see the boy become a man. I see my strength and love and courage. I see my dark hunger and addiction. I see what I am when I am centered and still, and I see what I am when I am careless and wild. I see choice, not circumstance. And I see new possibilities everywhere, including the possibility of peace. Of serenity.

Of Pride.