Contains its opposite.

I am a Catholic witch and I am grateful to be so. Many of my other witch sisters have had to unlearn much from their Christian heritage. But for me and the particular form for rural Catholicism that I grew up with – connected to the land and not too judgey about what others were up to – moving into celebrating the Shabbats, honoring my ancestors and paying particular attention to nature’s changes was just a step into a different room of the same house. Maybe even a slip outside into the garden of the manor. But I digress, getting aught up in metaphor as I often do.

I am a Catholic witch, which means this about me:

I go to mass on (most) Sundays and the holy days that I like. I celebrate the liturgical year and have my children in a Catholic school. We are active in our parish community and I teach my children about the lives of the saints. I dislike and reject atonement theology. I believe that redemption happened at the Incarnation and had nothing to do with the brutal punishment, torture and execution of a man by the state. Spirit worked in that for the good, planing Jesus like a seed in the ground. BUT the redemption happened in the womb. As the eternal divine nature took on flesh – borrowed from an adolescent girl in an occupied territory. Redemption and making things new over and over again in the work of the feminine. It belongs to Mary – which is why she is venerated and glorified and (shhhhh, worshiped) as the mother of God. I am committed to the concepts of human dignity, common good and inclusion found in the tradition of the teachings and writings and anything in dogma that goes contrary to those traditions is not mine. My spiritual mothers are Mary Theotokos, Mary Magdalene, the women German mystics, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Elizabeth Johnson.

I am a Catholic which, which means this about me:

I watch for the changes of the seasons and celebrate the Shabbats to mark the year. I keep an alter in my home to the goddess, as well as one to venerate my ancestors and a third to support my dear newly dead in their transition back to eternity. I read tarot and oral ale and runes and ogams. I look for and welcome the gifts that nature gives me. I honor my cycle of bleeding and use my menstrual blood to protect my home. I live in ritual. I cast spells with the sun and burn candles with intention. I do cord cutting rituals to release myself of old myths. I visit my ancestors in shamanic path-walking and hear their messages for me. I believe I am healing the wounds of my great great grandmothers down through me and forward to my great great granddaughter, should she come to be. This means that if I have not been in nature a for a while, I get distracted and distanced from myself. It means I walk barefoot most times of the year and have made friends with the cold. She soothes my nerves and puts me back into my body. I worship the maiden mother and crone in my seasons and cycles.

Living in this paradox was once unthinkable to me. It took years to bridge the gap between a spiritual practice that rests solely on autonomy while living in a religious tradition that peruses alignment and conformity at times. It also took years to bridge the gap between a spiritual practice that puts your squarely in your body and uses the energy of the earth, seasons and stars and a religious tradition that lives mostly in the mind with passing trips to embodiment and physicality.

Here are some of my guide posts

1. Veneration of the Saints and Ancestors

2. Sacramentality

3. A Trinitarian Diety who is of and in Relastioship

PUBLISHED IN DRAFT FORM TO GET IT OUT OF THE WAY.