I was in my late twenties when I caught my first glimpse of The Web – or at least a part of it. It was during one of Taz Chance’s beautifully executed guided meditations, and it helped me see the connections between myself, the other people in the workshop, and Deity. I experienced another vision some years later, in which I rode up the energetic pathways of the World Tree from the trunk to the branches and leaves then down like rain into the ground and into the roots to emerge again in the trunk. It was like a driving tour of the different realms, and experiencing my place in The Web while seeing how the layers of The Web that is Gaia – the planet-organism that we live on – connected with other layers in other parts of both the physical world and the spiritual one gave me great insight into how to navigate to those realms when I needed to.
But The Web is more than the natural connections between all beings, be they animal, vegetable, or mineral. It also incorporates concepts of wyrd, karma, and mana. Just as ley lines are the energetic network of Gaia, functioning something like meridians do in the human body, The Web is the energetic network of the Universe. And, just as we as physical entities live on Gaia, a variety of spiritual creatures, both benevolent and otherwise, live in different areas of The Web.
Maintaining The Web – or our tiny parts of it as we exist in this place in time and space – involves shadow-work, spirit-work, and journey-work. One needs to know oneself before one goes out into The Web to help others, maintain and repair connections, and deliver messages from place to place. It sounds a great deal like a fantasy or sci-fi novel when you read it on the page or hear it spoken aloud. But so do the night-battles of the benandanti in 16th- and 17th-Century Italy to those who study it now, and that practice was no less real and meaningful to those who practiced it as The Web is to modern-day practitioners.
Those of us who work in The Web do it because it is necessary and because we are called to do it, even knowing that it sounds a little bit crazy. But I am a firm believer in the importance of this work to the overall health of the tiny spot of Gaia on which I reside as well as the people who reside there with me. In a world with so many fantastical beliefs, I no longer consider mine to be any more or less outlandish than those of other religions. And, like so many things about the Craft, in order to get the most out of it, you really just have to be there and experience it firsthand.
In my daily life, the Craft I practice bears very little resemblance to esbats, sabbats, and rites of passage. I do those things when they come around, and I feel meaning and connection when I do them, but those things, when combined with the depth of lore that we as Traditional Initiatory Wiccans have either uncovered or generated for ourselves, form the foundation of my practice and inform the way I go about my magickal mission to serve the Gods and preserve the Craft for generations yet to come.
My practice isn’t rote observance, it is dancing with the Universe. The Web is both the dancefloor and the partner and the song. And when we say that initiates are fully empowered to work directly with Deity and all manner of spirits, what we mean is that each individual’s experiences teach lessons unique to that practitioner and lay the foundation for their personal spiritual journey so that they too can dance with the Universe. The more I practice this way, the more I realize that the dance is truly the inner sanctum of the Craft.