Oh, skepticism. We have such a love/hate relationship, don't we? I need you in my life and yet there are times when you bully me with your arrogance.
But I get it. Without you, we would have nothing but snake oil and homeopathy. You help me wade through the ocean of antivaxers and charlatans with confidence and security. You have taught me so much and made me a better person for it. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I thank the people who have taught me to be critical; Sagan, deGrasse Tyson, Randy and so many more. Reading books like Demon Haunted World and Billions & Billions were life changing. They helped snap me into a comfortable place of rational thinking like a snug little Lego. For once in my life, I felt smart. I am smart.
And yet, there was still something missing. I tried to make you enough. For a while I was confident that you were all I needed and, thanks to Sagan, you were romantic. You will always be a part of me. You will always be there. You are my voice of reason, perched upon my right shoulder, whispering mathematics and science to keep me on the ground, where it is safe.
My true nature is more dualistic than you will allow as a singular label and there is a being on my opposite shoulder that speaks to me just as loudly, and just as lovingly. It is no more a demon than you are an angel, but it is there and as much as I have fought over the years, I can not deny their existence.
Dawkins, for as much as I loath the individual, has said some interesting things. One of those being that "Pantheism is sexed up atheism." I can agree with this. As much as one can say I am an atheist (and I am) I feel like it's not the best term for myself. Pantheism implies more of a spiritual feeling surrounding the Universe more than atheist does at this point which is why I prefer the former over the latter. Skepticism seems to go hand in hand with atheism, especially within non-believer circles and it makes sense. Agnostic atheist, is a great term for me, but again -- it describes what I don't believe, but not what I feel.
This is where the word witch becomes important to me. "Witch" is what I feel inside. "Witch" combines my agnosticism and pantheism and throws in my romanticism for nature and my need for magick/ritual as a form of meditation.
For far too long I fought it. It's easy to be skeptic and agnostic and hard to find a point in embracing spellwork even on a mental level. Why waste the time lighting a candle and focusing intention if it was all coming from me anyway and not some outside divine source?
That's when it just recently hit me. Skepticism and it's parents science and mathematics explain to us how the natural world works. It slowly unlocks the mysteries of our Universe and helps us cure disease, invent technology and explore space, but it can't feed the artistic parts of my brain. Much like art is subjective and there are people inspired more by Escher than by Pollock, my brain is inspired my mythology and parables more than history. My brain needs a story to focus. I need to activate my senses. If poetry, storytelling, incense and candle flame strikes a match under my ass, than that is what I need to do--not because I think it is necessary for the outside world, but it is most definitely necessary for my inside world.
And if there is any truth to magick and it's power to change, isn't it the power to change your perspective and your mind? Changing minds can change the world. In that way, I believe in magick and always have.
So I have finally broken the chains that I put upon myself years ago. I now have the permission to explore. These chains were merely my ego taking control of what I really desire. It was the fear of looking crazy. The fear of looking like I had fallen off of the metaphysical deep end, but in turn I fell off the secular one. I haven't lost either, but had to figure out how to reconcile them both in my heart and my head. For once, I feel like I finally have.
Maybe there is a part of me that will always wonder. I will always entertain the ideas of ghosts, aliens and magick in an outside sense, but there is a difference between wondering and knowing. I know very little and I don't expect to convince anybody else without legitimate evidence, and that's ok. I don't need to convince. I just need to wonder.
And wondering is enough for me.
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