TW: references to thoughts of suicide, and episodes of anxiety and depression.
5 months ago my life changed forever because I gave birth to my daughter. The first two months were hell and every day I would wake up crying because I didn’t die in my sleep the night before. My postpartum hormones were an absolute wreck and I dealt with severe depression and anxiety. I’ve since gotten my meds and therapy worked out and things have much improved. But there’s currently a giant hole where my spiritual practices once were.
About a month before I gave birth, I went on sabbatical as high priestess of my coven. I’ve since decided not to return as a coven leader and handed over the reigns to a friend and initiate of mine. Coming to that decision was not easy, and I have mourned it, but it was the right one. I spent this past weekend celebrating Samhain with my coven one last time. The coven was born on Samhain and my leadership of it ended on Samhain. It was bittersweet but I appreciated the cyclical nature of it.
And now I have to figure out what the hell to do with my spiritual practices. It’s my opinion that Gardnerian Wicca was designed for coven practice moreso than anything solo. While I’ll always be Gardnerian (you can’t uninitiate someone), I want to take this long break away from coven leadership to redesign and refocus my personal spiritual practices. What originally felt like a death is actually an opportunity for healing and reinvention.
So, where to from here? What do I do with the last near decade of Gardnerian practice?
The Hermit
During our coven’s Samhain ritual, I asked my ancestors for their advice on what steps I should next take on my spiritual journey. I pulled The Hermit and was immediately pissed off. “I have to go it alone?!” I angrily thought to myself. I was already feeling isolated from the newness of parenthood, my anxiety and depression, and my choice to retire from coven leadership. “But, wait, there’s more!” the card seemed to say to me.
I asked a dear friend of mine for their opinion of the card and this is what they said: the Hermit is like a monk in that he comes from cloistered life. He wanders around for awhile, from place to place, but he will return to his home. The lantern he holds is his guiding light, but it only illuminates the immediate path in front of him; it doesn’t give him the whole picture.
Saying that “…he will return to his home” really stuck out to me. I may feel like I’m currently wandering around in the wilderness but I do have a home and I will likely return to it one day. Is that home Wicca? Gardnerian Wicca, specifically? or somewhere else? I practiced Wicca before I became Gardnerian, but I also belonged to other spiritual, non-Wiccan communities before choosing this tradition.
So, where’s home?
The High Priestess
Yesterday I performed my first solo Samhain ritual in nearly a decade. I decided to pull a tarot card to help me figure out where my spiritual pursuits should go this season. The High Priestess card jumped out of the deck while shuffling and I interpreted that as my answer. My first thought was that it’s serendipitous to pull the High Priestess as a high priestess that just retired from coven leadership. However, something I’ve learned is that being a High Priestess isn’t just about coven leadership; coven leadership is an aspect of the role but not everything about it.
To me, the card is reminding me to use my intuition and experiential knowledge to guide my spiritual path forward. I need to find that “middle way” between logic and intuition and be careful not to overthink every step of the way. The High Priestess becomes a High Priestess when she’s assumed a certain level of mastery in her spiritual art. There’s no end to her learning, though, and she should strive to continue honing her skills. In this way, I’ll always be a High Priestess even when I’m not in active coven leadership.
I still have my gods to worship, my rites to perform (even solo), and my Craft skills to refine.
My Path Forward
Forward is my only way through, it seems. I have my wisdom gained from experience to guide me, as well as my trust in those who have been with me every step of the way so far. I’m not truly alone in the way the Hermit might first appear because I still belong somewhere, even if I’m going it alone right now. I’m still part of the Gardnerian community, the Covenant of Hekate, and the Sisterhood of Avalon. I may be spending more time alone and my spiritual practices will be done solo for awhile, but I still have Community.
I’ve decided to focus my solo efforts on reestablishing my Sacred Center. Coven leadership required me to place my focus on creating an experience for others and I lost part of myself in there over the years. So I’m going to use this time to recenter and realign my spiritual equilibrium. It’s high time I remember what it was like to create experiences for myself and to recapture the magic(k) of my practices. I can also use this time to sharpen my Hearth Witchery skills, creating a house and home that is clean, safe, and loving for my daughter.
There are so many paths I can take that all propel me forward from here. I have the wisdom of the High Priestess to ground me and the wandering spirit of the Hermit to guide me.
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