~~~Bloggers Note: As usual, Kirt nailed a problem up on the wall for all to see and comment on. His post highlights a problem often seen in the forums and sadly, in real life, too, the problem with fantasy intersecting with reality in not so pretty ways.
For some reason a great many of the interesting posts seem to come from the same handful of people, one of whom is Kirt. He is not a part of SacredHandsCoven and I have never been graced to meet him IRL, but from what I have read of his posts, he strikes me as one of those guys you want to hang out with in a coffee shop all night talking over life, the universe and everything! Thanks for permission to post, Kirt!~~~
I just have to smile and nod sometimes when I see these young kids claiming this power, or that power, and all these titles. Granted some young kids are born exceptionally gifted in magic, but most aren’t. Magic is just like any other talent, it has to be uncovered and encouraged to grow or it isn’t going to work for you. And I’m sorry but the excuse that you started learning several lives ago doesn’t fly either. Most of us have been working magic for many lifetimes and you still have to work at it to recover what you used to know and learn new things. While some of the knowledge and tricks may come flooding back to, the ability to control your energy and direct your spell work is not a natural gift and needs to be practiced. Magic is hard work even for the most gifted. It is not a cure all for your social awkwardness, or a way to get back at mommy and daddy, it is a way of life that has its’ own set of guidelines and rules depending on the path you walk.
Yes, it is possible to learn things from your guardian spirits, or whatever you choose to call them but they cannot teach you everything and they cannot give you a title that will mean anything in the physical realm. If you want that kind of authority and respect, you have to go out, experience the world, and earn it with hard work and possible apprenticeship. Take what you have learned bring it into the physical, claim your power as your own and live the path that has chosen you. That doesn’t mean you have to apprentice yourself to someone. If you want to be a solitary there is nothing wrong with that, but don’t claim titles and achievements that can only earned through apprenticeship in a coven if solitary is your path. Claiming a title or status you may have earned in a previous life doesn’t cut it, being a person of importance in the past has no authority in the here and now. Sad to say, but not everyone is able to learn magic either, true the potential to learn it is in all of us but that doesn’t mean that everyone should learn it. Some people get twisted from it and others lose something.
Don’t confuse your imagination with your spiritual nature, if you “feel” something is a certain way then for god sakes do your research and ask others of similar traditions before making your grand announcement. You might just save yourself some embarrassment and learn a few things you didn’t know. When just starting out it is easy to misread the signs you’re given and start thinking things that are not necessarily accurate. Especially if you are trying to learn on your own. Don’t confuse real magical work with D&D, VtM, Final fantasy or any other game or book series, there may be some similarities in names, but that is about as far as it goes. Some authors are quite learned in their craft and that will show in their writing but a fiction story or game is still just that and if something you see or read strikes you as important, write it down and meditate on it later. Don’t assume that the whole document is divinely inspired or that it is a message just for you to earth up. That rarely happens in mass produced products.
Mythic creatures such as Dragons, the fae, angels, demons, mermaids, etc… no longer have a physical form in this realm. You cannot see one like that anymore, now occasionally you can see their spirit if you are sensitive enough, or are trained and have worked open your mind’s eye but that does not give them a physical shape and the laws of the physical world do not work the same as they do in the spiritual world. Just because your spirit, at one point in its travels, may have been born from a commingling of these energies does not make you in the here and now one of them, you are not physically going to be a genetic mix. In this life, you are human deal with it. Now I myself have spent more lives on four legs than two, my animal nature is very close to the surface, almost like a second personality, and strong enough that I would say I am otherkin. I find this human existence very limited, but this time I am human and a human life is a part of the deal so I must accept that. But I am not going to look back to what was and try to turn this life into something it is not meant to be. That is not striving toward balance and growth.
Sacred Hands Coven 