Once again, I’m in an introspective mood as I contemplate my history in the Craft.
It’s been forty-three years since I took out a copy of Real Magic from the reserved stacks of the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Without that book, I never would have engaged with paganism in my later years.
It’s been twenty-eight years since a friend of mine loaned me her copy of The Spiral Dance. Without that book, I would never have started searching for a Wiccan group.
It’s been twenty-seven years since Deborah Lipp allowed me to come into her home to attend classes on Wicca.
It’s been nineteen years since my High Priestess kissed me on the forehead and gave me permission to start teaching my own Wiccan Grove.
Over the past nineteen years, Acorn Garden has been a continuously functioning group (with the exception of a six-month sabbatical I took in 2005). People have come and gone, and a few have come and stayed. I did my best to teach them what I could.
It’s only now, after nineteen years of effort, that I’m just starting to work with my students on the magical issues for which I started my own group in the first place.
In some ways, it feels like I’m not even half-way towards teaching what I want to share. Do I have another nineteen years of teaching in me? I’m sure I’ll know by 2037.
Or perhaps it’s not a matter of teaching everything. It may be enough to prepare my students to move forward, learning for themselves, teaching their own students, hopefully not repeating my mistakes, and making some new and interesting mistakes of their own.
In the meantime, I give thanks for the blessings of Hecate and Hermes, and for allowing me to walk in their footsteps. Blessed Be!