Teen Witch

www.weavings.co.uk

The moon right now

Teen Witch

By WyldWytch

Previously published in Cauldrons and Broomsticks

That’s right I said it, Teen Witch, I said it again, and I meant it! They are all around us, like locus waiting to swarm – just kidding! Seriously though guys and gals, teens have taken to Wicca like celebrities have taken to fad diets, and the publishers have taken notice. The influx in publications dedicated entirely to the teen genre is noticeable, even within the constantly swelling selection of New Age titles in general – teen books are everywhere! But what do we… Why are they… How should we… there are so many questions that you can ask yourself about this teen phenomena, and so many things they ask themselves. As I sit here at my ripe old age, typing away at my desk, watching the (monotonous) snowfall for the ninetieth time this winter, I drift back… back to when I started thinking about religion. I was confused. One of the most vivid memories I have of my grandmother, who as long since moved on from this world, is the time she told me a large hawk would swoop down and pick me up if I didn’t go to church. I still to this day, decades later, sometimes look up when I leave my house on Sunday mornings in fear of the slight chance that an oversized Alice In Wonderland-like hawk is on it’s way, finally finding me, after all these years. I remember wondering what clothes I should be wearing, and what labels were at all. I wondered what girls were going through, and more curiously, what guys were too. It was a time of discovery, complete and utter innocence – shattered.

Once I started investigating various things and figuring out life (so to speak), I realized many things that I now take for granted. However, we all went through this process. I’ll tell you how I figured my way out, briefly of course! It started with religion for me. I always had a bone to pick with the spoon fed style rhetoric that was being served up to me, and I didn’t want to take it anymore. No, that’s not being entirely honest. I wanted to rebel against my parents in any way I could, so I decided to do it mildly and attack religion. They were not religious themselves, but encouraged my sister and I to attend whenever possible. So, there it was, I took on religion.

What religion though, oh there was so many to choose from. After a long search I picked, Witchcraft. What fun! I get to be like Samantha Stevens from my most beloved syndicated sitcom of all time (including Seinfeld and Friends). This took care of a number of things for me; it was nature based, it would be utterly different as no one else was doing it at the time, and it let me do what I wanted to do – whatever I wanted to do (ok, and I of course fantasized about twitching my nose and having everything be fixed, but I still do that!).

Now that I had chosen the method, the way, I need to know more. I wanted to meet people, ask questions, do the fun thing and find out who all the other witches in the world were, and why. So, I did just that, I started networking (totally online), meeting people, chatting, and asking as much as I could. I was deemed the annoying little bitch of the internet – and damn proud of it to this day! My questions were, well, not very thought out. They were annoying, intrusive, and I would get into attack mode the first time some elder would tell me I was wrong – after all this is a religion where you can do anything you want, there are no rules to adhere to, so who are these people telling me what to do anyway.

Fast forward – I hate flashbacks, to be certain I despise them, I wanted to digress for a while though to make a point, there are some things in this world that we tend to forget, and the most forgettable thing is where we came from and who we were. Of course we want to forget these things, because we develop a fiercely proud quality of our accomplishments. I never wanted to be considered under educated; I have several degrees to back that up. How I would laugh is someone thought me uninformed about my religion, hah, as if. I find that I have actually caught myself, in the midst of describing Paganism to others of all ages, looking at them with an almost contempt when they say “Isn’t that satan worship?” But, we all asked those questions – we did man, I promise you. Somewhere, sometime in your path you thought for a second, and you figured it out…

So where am I going – I’m not sure; I’ll see if I can drive it home quickly though for your sake. I was just sent an advance copy of my friend’s new book on Teenage Paganism to review for our wonderful newsletter here and the publisher, while reading it through (look for the review in the next issue!) I got irritated at times with the topics. I think I even said “DUH” a few times in a really condescending tone (yes I talk to myself while I read). Then I popped into our wonderful forums called Weavings, and saw a teenage issue develop, then be resolved. To top it off the co-guru here Garnet asked me to write a Teen Witch essay for what you are reading now, C&B. All this teen topic stuff was totally agitating me, after all, I’m not a teen, and I never was…oh right, I was. I’m twenty-three now, I started doing this paganism thing over a decade ago (pre-teen! Oh my!). I got involved, I built my knowledge base up, and here I am… a crotchety old cyber pagan who gets irritated at the idea of someone reaching out for help (and they do, regardless of age!) in their religious quest. Well frankly I say, we should all take a step back and remember when, we were all there, and tomorrow we could be doing it all over again in a different area of life. So when it comes to teens, teen books, and so forth, yes they are a little different, a little finicky, a little defensive, talk a little different, but – they are teens, and, now lets never forget this, so were we.