This refrain, from fledgling witches, pagans, sensitives and empaths, “How do I find my psychic or spiritual Gift”, or “I’m doing this ritual or this thing and haven’t received any spiritual or psychic gifts or powers” irritates me to no end.
Isn’t Magic supposed to be, well, Magic? In a word no.
“Why can’t I have any gifts?” You aren’t entitled to them.
Well what do I have to say, what are you saying?
The only gift you have is Life.
Let that sink in.
Life, don’t take it for granted. Every blessing we have, or have had, we need to be thankful for. We need to be aware of each moment of our life that got us here this far and be thankful for. There is not one thing in your life are you allowed to be ungrateful for. This includes the bad things in our lives. Our lives are tested. We are given good instructions. We are given many bad things to learn from, to avoid, to see the negative impact they have, how to become vigilant, caring, and desirous of what is good and right.
Thankfulness and Gratitude, without them, you are not likely to have respect, integrity, the temperament to work through to receive good things with delayed gratification, the character and resolve to keep at doing what is right and correct, to be creative, resourceful to find a path, the means and the way to make life possible, better, not only for yourself but others. We are social beings, and we can’t do this by ourselves.
Magic works only if you have had an honest relationship with yourself, your community and the world around you. This is fundamental. True there are types of formulary magic and spell work, to help you make gains here and there. This isn’t real abilities or powers, it is the sheer manipulation of tools and symbols to extract something for yourself. This is why the term “witch” has negative connotations, besides millennia or so of bad propaganda and polemics. The wise women, the expellers, the cunning men, were all known to help others. And the selfish parasites that want more and manipulate and cheat magic only to destroy those who do help. The good caring people, who produce end up being a target for the parasites of our society. And when they can’t get what they want now, they make other people’s lives miserable. They have taken for granted the resources and the people in their communities for all what could be given to them. Instead of not getting what they wanted, they made it more difficult for all those others who needed those resources.
Psychic Gifts or spiritual ones, come with a price, which requires either work or conformity. Let us take the spiritual gift of Salvation or Grace. (Rarely do I see this actually work.) One must be willing to change, to accept a spiritual force to change who and what you are. You have to be willing to make the changes yourself and battle all those bad habits and everything else to align yourself to this gift made by a God. A spiritual gift, grace or (called by the Hindus) a shaktipat, is a gift of love and it has to be received with love, respect, a sense of personal honor and integrity to take care of that gift. Those who think that Grace is an eternal blank check should read Matthew 12:32 to know otherwise. One must have the ability to take care of that gift.
Most spiritual or psychic gifts, are en-trained by initiation, into levels of work or grades in magical covens, lodge, groups or practices. And you must do preparatory work to get there. And those who work that magic to expose and imprint these skills into you don’t want to waste time and their personal energy if you are not ready. In so doing, if there is a magical or spiritual egregore or built up spiritual domain, presence, heaven or common spiritual mind, temple or what have you, any parasitical behavior or poor behavior or lack of effort will diminish this sacred practice or venue. This is the very thing that Native Americans get upset with when their traditions are miss used. It diminishes them. Their very last thing they have is being destroyed by selfish people taking for granted these responsibilities. They are not gifts. They are responsibilities.
If you don’t have access to these great traditions, resources, people or gifts of God, or the responsibilities that are asked of you are too onerous or you are not going to keep up with, in thought, word and deed, you have to do this on your own.
Some people think their family may have had special talents. They are not gifts. They may be inborn talents, temperaments, or may be indeed spiritual gifts passed on to them. Again it depends on the receptacle, the sacred space in you whether or not such a gift will flourish. The culture, the folkways, the respect of the elders and a relationship with them are required for them to flourish. Try to plant a cactus in the arctic or an aspen on the equator. It won’t thrive. Many of these traditional gifts of spirit are not finding fertile ground. We have all changed, our society has changed us, and many are not respectful of their traditions, their elders, the old ways, and have taken them for granted.
So if you don’t have that, you have to work for them. The Indian culture and all the Yogas are about work. Yoga means work. Chi Gong, is about working with energy. Practice, practice and more practice, and cultivate the right attitude, the respect, the understanding, the feeling, the thinking, the behavior to develop the insight to perfect the practice more and more. These abilities are called Siddhis in India. The basics of meditations, energy awareness and cultivation and having an honest relationship with yourself, the world around you and everyone and everything in it, is absolutely necessary to begin to understand the extremely hard work, dedication, discipline to achieve these abilities. And at each step, taking nothing for granted, not one piece of information, feeling, understanding. Respect it and ruminate on it, refine it, compare all the anomalies, all the changes, the differences, building up a complex repertoire of experiences and methodologies of bringing them each to life. And remodeling all the experiences in new creative and evocative ways, to step through and practice the work with each and everything in the world. Feedback, honestly received to develop an ever better understanding to get there. And Teachers for all of this, looks to see if you have the temperament, the talent, the desire, the will, personal honor, integrity and the respect, along with a thankfulness to not take anything for granted, before they even are willing to teach you. This last bit, if one were to create an energetic spiritual form and blessing to help you along the way, you had best be able to be able to receive it and make honest use of this incredibly expensive, time consuming, crafted by decades, centuries or millenias gift.
Along with a gift there is usually a community, a guru, a master, a teacher, who have learned what it takes to receive, cherish and cultivate the gift, and how to pass it along. The “Gift”, energy, grace, shaktipat causes changes in people and those that share these gifts help people negotiate and manage these changes in the culture, help people to understand what they are experiencing and how. And in time, how to create such a thing is lost, especially if any part of it is taken for granted over any period of time.
The Elders of PEC have learned it and earned it the hard way. Their teachers made their students learn it the hard way or they have learned it on their own. And our tribe requires each one to love one another honestly, become their own authentic person, to have integrity and to honor who they are, and respect those who deserve it. The Tribe is family, a community, and a culture that encourages each other to thrive at all levels. Most importantly, we try to not take each other for granted. They are, along with my life, my children, my tribe is something I cherish.
If you learn and cultivate your spirituality from the basics on, you will have inborn temperament from your spirit vehicle, a cultivated gift passed from you to you, from life time to life time. That is worth working on. What do you think?
Asatru Nine Noble Values
People Embracing Change 