In the Craft, we know that speaking up, speaking out, speaking aloud, speaking confidently is an act of will, an act of magick. We create what we speak. That’s why it’s so vitally important, not only from a mundane standpoint but also a spiritual standpoint, to have the courage (which comes from the Latin cor meaning heart) to speak what’s in our hearts. Of all the things I’ve learned in my own healing process, the courage to speak is the thing that still challenges me on a daily basis. After all, I tell myself, isn’t discretion the better part of valor?
There’s truth in that adage as well. But, as is true in all spiritual paths, there is no one-size-fits-all answer and two opposing things can be paradoxically true at the same time. It’s up to each individual to examine the possibilities in each situation and make the choice that they can live with. For my part, I can handle being misunderstood or dismissed. It might piss me off initially but it’s easy for me to shrug that off. What gets me, what always gets me, is the deep sense of foreboding that tells me to keep my head down, to remain silent lest I upset a man’s temper and unleash the physically violent monster dwelling just beneath the surface, the one that yells and throws objects and hits people. I’m still working on looking someone in the eye, standing my ground, and defending my boundaries, but it’s getting easier the more I do it.
When I was beginning my apprenticeship with my spirit-mama Susan, one of the first things she had me do was read the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter From Birmingham Jail (full text here) and reflect on what Dr. King had to say about just and unjust laws, direct action, and white political moderates. To say I was challenged by the work was an understatement. I didn’t understand what any of Dr. King’s words had to do with the practice of modern pagan witchcraft, and when I asked Susan about it, she told me that the Craft is political, it is subversive, it is grabbing injustice by the balls and forcing it into a more just position because we demand that it be so. The Craft has always been the recourse of the oppressed. She also told me that the Circle is not a place for the cowardly because in the Circle we can bend reality to our will and that is not a task for the faint of heart. But when the Circle is released, we can’t just pat ourselves on the back and praise ourselves for a job well done – because the work begins in the Circle, it does not end there.
That is why now more than ever it is our duty to disobey unjust laws and to aid and abet the marginalized and oppressed as we all struggle together toward greater freedom in our nation and the world. To speak in the style of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, “First they came for the Trans people, and I did not speak out because I was not a Trans person.” We have seen where the path of obeying unjust laws for the sake of order takes us, and it is no more hospitable for Pagans than it is for Trans people, Black people, Disabled people, or any other marginalized or oppressed population on the planet. However, like Niemöller, none of us easily fits into a box of ‘good’ or ‘evil’. We are complex and dynamic individuals, but it’s the little choices we make every day – not the occasional heroic actions that we may take – which makes up our character as human beings.
As King points out in his letter, far too many of us prefer “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” I can certainly attest to the comfort it gives me to keep my head down when there’s conflict around me. But doing so is an indirect violence of its own. Inaction causes harm just as surely as action does, and as a Wiccan my primary ethical standard is to harm none.
So what can I do? What I can, when I can, with what I’ve got. One of my longtime fandom heroes is Captain Jack Sparrow of Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. (Let us not confuse the character with the actor, folks.) In the first movie, he tells the idealistic Will Turner, “The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can’t do.” And that has been a maxim of mine since the film came out in 2003. I use it as a heuristic to determine what I can do and what consequences I can live with. And right now, in the first few days of the new presidential administration, I’ve decided that I can’t save the world, but I can help people survive. So that’s what I’m going to do. Abracadabra. So mote it be.