A friend of mine insisted that I see The Secret. It would change my life, she suggested. Well, she was right, but not in the way she expected. I started to believe that the failure of a relationship and my inability to simply bounce back and move on was all because I had failed to think positively enough. This hurt more than it helped. Realizing this has taught me some important lessons about being a witch and what we do and do not have the power to change.

As a witch, I believe in the law of attraction. I have experienced the law of attraction at work and without a doubt I believe in its power and validity. Lately, however, I have come to understand that there is only so far that we can take this belief before we wander into the territory of self abuse. Some things are simply beyond our control. Certain life experiences are not meant to be altered, particularly those, like grief, which serve the ultimate end of healing us of pain. When we are already hurting enough, who needs to add our own abuse to the pain we are suffering? And why should we wish to impede the healing process?

A simple answer to the why is that pain is painful. No one wants to feel pain. We humans develop so many mechanisms for avoiding pain. I could offer countless examples of how people can avoid feeling grief without even having to venture into the territories of other sources of pain.

One thing about being a witch is that we take responsibility for our own shit. This can be both a blessing and a burden. Setting out to take responsibility for grief is tricky, and in this I have learned through first hand experience that it is better to be a mere human first and a witch second. How can we claim responsibility for pain inflicted by another or for the natural grief that follows a loss? We can't. And we shouldn't believe that we have to. It's also a mistake to think that we can "wave a magic wand" to make the pain go away. Grief does not work that way.

Magick hasn't failed if it doesn't accomplish the naive desire to stop the pain of grieving. There is no way to short circuit grief. It must be felt. Endured. Lived through. And no amount of magick can change that. This doesn't mean that we are bad witches for failing to accomplish it. Even magick can't accomplish the impossible. When we say that magick is for the highest will, harming none, we include ourselves. The universe knows when the ends of a spell or other work of magick would actually work against our highest will or would have a detrimental effect. Stopping grief is merely postponing the inevitable. Nothing is served by trying to circumvent a necessary part of loss.

I have worked cleansing rituals and banishing spells. The fact that I still feel grief doesn't mean that I have failed as a witch. It simply means that I am human. I hope that my magick has paved the way for an easier time managing my grief, but I was wrong to think that magick would make my pain vanish altogether. Only time can do that.

As for the law of attraction, I believe that the space I have created in my life - through the magickal work I have done and the shift in my own energy that I can only realize through the human work of coming out on the other side of grief - will someday make me ready to welcome someone new. As a good witch I know that this will happen when it serves my highest will.

Good Goddess, please make it sooner rather than later!

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 8:00 PM