I love it when Science meets Witchcraft.
Way back in March – do you remember March, when we all thought, hey, we’re gonna be cooped up for a couple weeks, this oughta be okay and then we realized it was not gonna be okay at all and some of us are in fact still cooped up and might be for quite some time yet)? – I decided to treat myself to a year’s subscription to MasterClass, to keep me entertained though this quarantine and through the winter when things slow down and get quiet. I just finished watching Chris Hadfield’s MasterClass on Space Exploration, which was just fascinating. Hadfield was Commander of the International Space Station, and is one of the rare few of people who have ever walked in space. And he’s adorably Canadian.
There was a “bonus” video at the end of the class, where Hadfield talked about his journey to becoming an astronaut, which I watched with total fascination. He was describing something in logical, rational terms that I used to teach as Witchcraft. What he said, and I am paraphrasing and summarizing here and not directly quoting, was to figure out who you want to be and what you want to be doing in 5 or 10 years, and start changing yourself immediately so you can become that. Put your goals up on the wall, so they inform every decision you make. For example, Hadfield decided that he was going to be an astronaut when he was nine years old, so what would he do on a weekend when he didn’t have any plans? Well, what would get him closer to his goal? Maybe reading a particular book would give him a better understanding of some specific thing he needed to learn or some quality he needed to bring out in himself in order to become an astronaut. He joined Air Cadets when he was in his early teens and learned to fly airplanes. He joined the Canadian Air Force to learn to become a fighter pilot, and hopefully a test pilot – and he took his training more seriously than he had ever taken anything in his life, because he knew if he got top marks, he’d have a better shot at getting into the test pilot program, which was something he had noticed several American astronauts had in common.
He reshaped himself while keeping his goal and intention at the front of his mind at all times, and the world shaped itself around him. By the time he was in his early 30s, he was in the Canadian Space Program, and started working for NASA shortly after that.
In the Craft, we do pretty much the same things when we want to achieve something or create something.
We create an intention, put our focus on it, create an altar invoking a deity who represents what we’re trying to do, and maybe we write a poem that we can recite that includes our intention and a prayer asking for their help getting the outcome we want. Sometimes we even go so far as to wear colors or stones or specific symbols associated with that deity, so that all day long we have that color in our eyes, or the weight of the stone around our neck or on a finger to remind us to keep our eyes on that prize. We’re great at making altars and writing spells. But the part some of us miss all too often is that pesky doing something every day to remake yourself in that image.
When I decided I wanted to be a sound healer, I started reading every book I could get my hands on about it (the bookshelf above is but a small portion of the ever-expanding selection of books I own and yes, have read, on sound, vibrational, and energy healing), learning, experimenting, taking classes and workshops (which I also still do), getting certifications (ditto), and changing the way I listened to everything around me (an ever-evolving process). Every place I went I would look for things that could possibly be sound healing tools (okay, I still do that, too). I did something every day to make myself into the best sound healer I could be. I still do that, too, even in quarantine. I do something, every day.
And the World reshaped itself around me, and made a space for me to live the life I wanted.
Pretty slick, huh? And you don’t have to get all Witchy to do it, if that’s not your bag. If it is, by all means go for it! Get thee to a Table of Correspondences and get your Witch on. Make that altar, write that spell, wear that Goddess-bling, do whatever it takes to put your goal top of mind. But then, and I think this might be the most important bit that gets overlooked all too often, do something, every day, to remake yourself in your own image. Change yourself, and the world will open up a space for you to be who you are becoming. So who do you really want to be?
As always, Gayla, good advice and discussion. For a long time I operated only on, ‘What needs to be done?’ Part of that is necessity—what is on one’s plate and one’s responsibilities. No regrets there and to some extend this continues. However, at some point in my life, things started to shift from ‘what needs to be done or expected?’ to ‘what is possible?’ and not of the sense of success or goals but an opening to the questions, to the energy’s of the body and a training of the heart field. So many activities started to open up with this and then there was more questions and more mysteries and more openings. It might sound confusing but, for me, it’s sacred, exciting and it involves attending to it everyday.
Yes! Oh, that old “what do I have to do today” thing is so unhelpful. I’m so grateful to have made the transition to “what do I get to create today?” – and I will never look back. Love it that you are making the same transitions and movement into living your truest life.