When we start in the world of Paganism, there are many rules that we might care to follow, respecting times, correspondences, protocols, and more. For a long time we make sure to do it exactly as the book says, and get used to the fact that there’s a certain way to do this and that. Recently, before re-opening my Witchcraft instagram page, I was thinking about these strictures a lot, had an identity crisis, and decided to break the rules.
Sleeping Beauty’s Dream
Years ago I decided to open an Instagram account as a therapist and tarot reader. I showed several things that I did: my power animals, my way of reading cards, things that I believe in – my spiritual practice, in general.
Over time I gained confidence and showed things that are not seen in the holistic world. Needless to say, the response was mixed. The public in Venezuela couldn’t understand that a reiki master who knew about angels had tarot decks with vampires and a (fake) raven skull.
Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, “The Sleeping Queen” [Wikimedia Commons]
Once someone even attacked me on social media, discrediting me, my practice, my content, and calling me ignorant, in a nutshell. I met the person in question, and although he is a name with a lot of weight in the holistic world, he’s someone so conceited, hypocritical, driven by money, that he told me things like “sigils are not to be shared.” (The following week, he himself was sharing sigils.)
I allowed critics like this to get to me. I lost interest, got tired, and temporarily closed the page. What began as a Círculo de Transmutación (Transmutation Circle) and became Transmutare went into a coma indefinitely, like Sleeping Beauty.
Red Riding Hood and the Wolf
Over a year ago I wrote about how I used pop and electronic music to heal others and how well it worked for me, but until recently I hadn’t paid it much attention. I was used to doing things a certain way, because that’s how it appeared in the books, that’s what worked for others.
While I’ve always been an advocate of personalizing one’s practice as much as possible, I hadn’t thought about how diluted mine seemed to be. Although I have practiced magic with music for years, although I have a particular way of meditating, visualizing, energy ways and doing my magical works, I have almost always shown what people expect.
I can meditate and work with sounds of the forest or instrumental music, and my reiki sessions are with Celtic music, but deep down I’m still me. In the first meditation of the first level of reiki, when we visualized ourselves in a peaceful place, I saw myself in a cemetery. (What could be more serene than that?) I thought something was wrong with me, but my master just laughed and she told me, “it’s just that you are too darks,” a common way of referring to some from the Gothic subculture in Latin America.
Gustave Dore, Red Riding Hood in bed with the wolf. Untitled illustration from Les Contes de Perrault, an edition of Charles Perrault’s fairy tales illustrated by Gustave Dore, originally published in 1862 [public domain]
So many criticisms made me doubt what I do, how I work, what vibrates with me, doubt my results. Criticism came to my books, my articles, my social work. The world made so much noise that I was silent until I was lost in my own dark forest like Little Red Riding Hood. The difference is that I was her and the wolf at the same time.
Witchcraft, fairy tales, and Lady Gaga
Witchcraft is the weapon of the hopeless. It’s a tool to empower the despised, marginalized, outcast, poor, and displaced. I was lost for a long time, thinking about what I could do to be more authentic and not feel like I was doing the same thing as everyone else, until I thought of showing exactly what others hate but I love.
In a discussion, someone told me, “there’s no consistency between what you say, what you do, and what you show. You scare people away.”
I replied, “If it has worked for others, it will work for me – or should I start talking about angels, unicorns, and rainbows?”
Sure it works, but I was watering down my knowledge myself. I myself was my enemy out of fear.
Weeks ago my main Instagram was hacked, and after going through mourning, I told myself that I wouldn’t die from losing an account. I opened a new profile, took a deep breath, and moved on. Shortly after, I decided that I would mix three spiritual passions: Witchcraft, the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales, and Lady Gaga, who with her songs has propelled me in my hardest moments, and which I have also used as spells.
Lady Gaga performing in Dallas during her 2014 Born This Way Ball tour [Anonymous5454, Wikimedia Commons, CC 3.0]
I decided that if I was a monster in the eyes of the holistic community, I would embrace the concept. If I was already a Little Monster for loving Gaga, I could be a monstrous Witch too. Thus Monster Witch was born.
Baptized in a River of Fire
The passion that I haven’t felt for a long time – the desire to write, publish, share what I do, everything that was gone because I allowed it to be gone – it all came back with such force that I can only say that I’m starting for the first time. This time it is a concept I’m completely in love with.
The Witch’s path is not easy; it never is. I allowed myself to forget that to be victorious, one must be faithful to one’s principles, to one’s work, to one’s art. The result was that I let myself be defeated. I gave away my power, and I was left alone by my own decision. After my crisis of faith, questioning myself, looking back, looking forward, and seeing where I am, I know what I have to do.
I have a lot of work ahead of me, a lot of reading, trial and error. What used to be fairly connected ideas are merging and that requires dedication, patience, effort, but I’m eager to find out what will come of all this. I know it will rain fire on my head, more than before, but this time I’m more than prepared.
After all, I was baptized in a river of fire.
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