My Life with the Gods

 

Klee - Diana in the Autumn Wind

I can say with little doubt that I was born a Witch, but it took me until my mid teens to actually realize what that was. What kind of child I was could be summed up with the words, overly imaginative, romantic, creative, dreamy, a loner, disconnected from reality, and somewhat hyper active. I was obviously suffering from some degree of ADHD, and that was exacerbated by living under a father who was temperamental and physically and abusive. When other kids in my class thought about who would be successful in life, I would likely have been considered nearly at the bottom of the list. What I lacked was the ability to be focused and disciplined, and I lived in my father’s fearful shadow, since getting any attention from him had highly negative consequences, both physically and mentally. I grew up believing that I was not particularly smart, but was gifted with some creative abilities, even though I took them for granted and really didn’t develop them as I should have.

As a youth, I didn’t fit in with any group and felt too different and apart from my peers. I had lucid dreams that powerfully moved me, and a yearning to find some kind of spiritual meaning to my life. I felt that religion was an internal experience that was personal and deeply significant, but I seemed to lack the ability to find out what that experience was or how to develop it. I dreamed about having unique powers, like the ability to fly, read minds or heal the sick, and I met with strange individuals who I thought were angels without wings, and skulked around locations that seemed so real to me that I felt heartbroken when I woke up to face reality. My waking world, at that time, was devoid of color, lasting happiness or joy, and growing up was so difficult, because adults seemed to live in world where dreams died and reality imposed itself in harsh and limiting ways. I didn’t seem to feel attracted to their world, but then, suddenly, the mod era dawned, to be followed by hippies and the raging counter culture. It is in that tumult that I finally saw my place in the world, or at least the direction I needed to follow. The counter culture brought wonder, joy and vibrant color into my life.

Rock music, psychedelic artwork, drugs, free love and open sexuality were highly attractive to me and my peers, not to mention a kind of renaissance culture that allowed for the exploration of nearly anything, especially old fashioned beliefs, superstitions and debunked ideas of the supernatural, which were resurrected and wrapped up with modern science, science fiction, and fantasy and made available to a spiritually starving middle class youth culture. I was part of that movement, and I was able to find an identity and develop a belief system based on whatever I was able to find that was in print and useful. I did not choose an institution or an organized religious or spiritual group. I chose some kind of imaginative Witchcraft before I really had any kind of material to help me develop my beliefs. In my dreams, I met remarkable people and what I later determined, were actually Deities. They talked to me, and I had lengthy conversations with them, although the content of those conversations were difficult to recall not long after waking, and being functionally illiterate, I didn’t write any of it down.

Revelations came to me in the form of books that helped me define what it was that I had discovered within myself. Earlier, I had scoured the public libraries and aside from historical accounts of the infamous Witch Trials and Scott’s book “Discoverie of Witchcraft” I found very little of use. That also includes the pulp books by Louise Huebner, which according to her, I couldn’t be a Witch because I was a young man. I read Gardner’s book “Witchcraft Today”, but there was very little in the book that I found useful on a practical level. It was when I acquired Lady Sheba’s “Book of Shadows” and Paul Huson’s “Mastering Witchcraft” books that I found what I was looking for, and on top of that, I was given a copy of June Johns book “King of the Witches” that helped to define myself as a Witch, and to understand what that entailed. I also collected the book “You Forever” by T. Lobsang Rampa, that was a text book for gaining psychic abilities. These books became the backbone of my nascent spiritual and magical practice.

Another thing that happened around this time was that I took a large dose of LSD-25 that literally opened the doors of the world of the psychic and visions to me in way that nothing else had previously. I also started to smoke pot and that also helped bring me into the domain of dreams and make that world fully available to me while conscious and fully awake. In the background was the music of the Beatles, Beethoven  and the Moody Blues, and an overworked and overly romantic imagination that gave birth to my magical undertakings and gave names and identities to the Deities that I had been dreaming about and talking with since I was quite young.

Because I had such a powerful imagination (and I still do to this day), I never had any issues about talking to entities and individuals that appeared in my dreams or seemed at the edge of conscious awareness. It was a gift that I later found that few others actually have, but it was born out of an extended childhood, where I retreated into my fantasies to escape the harshness and the fear produced by living in the same house as my abusive father. My father could, and often did, transform a joyous occasion into one of fear, darkness and hurt. I saw my father as a dangerous force in my life that was unpredictable and often even mentally cruel when kindly disposed towards me. In his eyes, I was a disappointing idiot, not to be given much consideration except as a subject of ridicule or a target for the threat of violence. (He did change and mellow over time, but my feelings toward never really changed, and he was hard to be around for any length of time.)

Because my father was a steadfast atheist, and made his opinions about religion quite well known, he persecuted me for my beliefs, and took pleasure in ridiculing them. That only made me more of a steadfast adherent and a rebel against what I saw as his callous and insensitive nature. I did feel deeply, and emotions were my bedrock, and I also sensed other spiritual beings than myself, and I felt the “energies” of churches, people of faith and their congregations, and I knew that my father was dead wrong. Religion was a real and living experience; I knew this because I had experienced it directly. However, to fulfill my rebelliousness and to keep in synch with nature of the times, I chose the religion and faith of Witchcraft, which I believed was the oldest surviving religion in the Western world.

So, when I was sixteen, I unwittingly began my true path within Witchcraft. As I pointed out, I had been talking to dream-based beings who were spirits and Deities for many years prior, but I took it all for granted, and because I was on an ego trip (as all young people are until the beginning of adulthood and its responsibilities), I felt that I only needed to be true to myself. I wanted god-like magical powers, but I felt that they were my due, and I was overly shy about getting religious and bowing down to any of those dream-based Deities, because I had been talking with them for years without having to assume any obligations. I knew that as a true Witch, I would need to bond with one or more of these Deities in my imaginative mind, but I put it off. Developing my psychic powers and experimenting with magic was too much fun to be spoiled by the supposed limitations imposed by some God.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that the one factor in my life that made dealing with my abusive father possible was the unconditional love that I received from my mother. My father mentally abused her, and ridiculed her, but she was a real power that kept the family together and tried to heal the damage that my father had wrought on his children. I saw her as weak because she didn’t stand up to my father unless he threatened to do more than abuse us. I had dismissed her in my mind, because my father had shown her to be weak and ineffectual. However, my mother had more of an impact on me than I realized, and when it came time to directly face one of the Deities of Witchcraft in a kind of spiritual reckoning, I chose the Goddess of Witchcraft in her guise a moon godhead and mistress of magic.

I atoned for my unwillingness to subscribe to any Deity through her, and ever after, I was powerfully bonded to her in body and soul. I would enter into a simple meditative state, bow down with my head to the floor, and call her to come to me, and she always would. I felt a creeping coldness, then a warmth, and she would talk in my mind and her voice had a whispering quality that I compared to the sound of the wind blowing leaves in the street. She taught the basic framework for working a simple kind of magic, and guided me for a few years until I found a coven of Alexandrian Witches who I begged to initiate me into their practice, and they happily obliged me.

What started out as many dream-based personages and identities became a single Goddess, but from there I rediscovered a plethora of spirits, angels, demons, Gods, Goddesses, Demigods and various imaginative entities. They were always there, but I had to learn to recognize them from my dreams as a child. Once in a while I would meet something that was quite frightening in my dreams, but mostly, the conscious reality of living with my father was more than enough fearful, painful and humiliating. My dreams seemed to offer a refuge from that harsh reality, so I never really had any encounter with entities that were terrorizing or frightening. Some of them were odd, and others quite strange and even alien to me, but I always felt at home and protected in my inner world, and it is likely that my internalized impressions of my mother had something to do with this experience.

So, how do I help others to directly experience spirits and deities? First by letting them know that such experiences are not the mark of someone suffering from mental illness. That it is a real phenomenon and not one that should stigmatize someone. Then helping and guiding them to learn and then master the arts of meditation and trance. Entering into that controlled and peaceful mental world is the first step to engaging spiritual entities. Learning to sense and see magical energies (what are called etheric energy fields), and fine tune one’s sensitivity is a never ending process, which can produce astonishing results in some but not all people. I used to promote the ingesting or smoking hallucinogens, and I would still be in favor of this approach so long as it is the means to an end and not the end in itself. Opening the doors of perception can require a sledge hammer approach for some people, but others are sensitive enough not to need such an approach.

Additionally, working within sacred space and adopting a liturgical practice to one of more Deities is also important, and these beings can be engaged with divination tools so they can, in a fashion, communicate with humans. Thus, Tarot cards, I-Ching coins, runes, Geomancy sticks, pendulum, and dice or knucklebones work quite well, and ultimately, godhead assumption and communion will bring the targeted Deity into the framework of one’s conscious mind, making direct communication possible. Once that direct communication occurs, it makes it quite easy to hear and talk with other entities, as if a veil has been lifted, and so it has.

I have worked with many individuals, and they all, through persistent effort, find a way to visualize and communicate with Gods, Goddesses, Demigods, angels, demons and earth-based spirits, faeries, elementals and any other kind of bodiless entities. The key is to be open minded, and open hearted, and the rest will naturally follow.

Frater Barrabbas