Different Stories, Same Circle

One of the hardest things new Witches have difficulty with is time. The approach to time in Witchcraft, and Contemporary Paganism as well, is that time is circular. All and everything exists in cycles, and not a linear time scale that can easily be mapped on a line.

There are many things that can be taught and shown to someone training to become a Witch, but they will and can only begin to think in this manner with experience and self-discovery. If the truth of the matter was shown, even this cyclic thinking would only be the recognition of patterns of the now, for the mystery is that All Time is Now. Think of the circle as being the outer circumference of the point that is the All-Moment.

Our lives are a journey, a grand tale, where we are the Hero. It is all a divine dance, and we are its center, we are the point around which the dance circulates. Early on we struggle with the division which we perceive as separating us from the interconnectedness with the rest of everything. We struggle in that moment to discover who it is that we are, we see ourselves as as individual apart from; an individual who is like a stranger and yet perfectly us. This seeking of the Self is at the core of our Hero’s journey. No one else can walk the path of our life, but it will play out. It is our challenge to triumph. There is drama, pain, suffering, love, comfort, hate, confusion, and the rest of the crux of human experience. It is all there; all of it. No two stories are alike.

If we take a moment and look to the myths of old— to the Greco-Roman myths, to the Norse Eddas, the Irish Mythological Cycle, etc— therein we will see played out for our eyes tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes. These stories inform us about the Gods and Goddesses, the cultures from which they originate, and most aptly they tell us about us and being the Hero. Around the practice of Witchcraft there is tons of lore relating to the mythos of our Witch Lady and Witch Lord. These cycles when examined are amongst other things a story about us, a modern and living Hero myth whereby the Witch has the path of the Gods and Goddesses revealed and made accessible to them. Most Witches do not solely work with one cycle, but incorporate the old cultural myths and the lore of their Tradition into their own Craft.

All of time is a circle, and the lore of the Gods and Goddesses tell the story of that circle. In practice, we are born at one point upon the circle, die upon it, and are reborn when we return to the womb again. The circle in essence is life, and it is our Hero journey. The patterns of that cycle are timeless. The day-to-day struggle we experience and the struggle of day-to-day life several generations ago are very different, and yet, the patterns of those struggles are the same. Existence is a circle and each generation tells its own tale of Heroes, and at the point in the middle we are all upon the same journey.

Boidh se!

-Spanish Moss

"Lost in a thicket bare-footed upon a thorned path."