Witchcraft, plurality, and the absolute fucking myth of "consistency."
So, long time no see. Again. Welcome to us attempting to write about our practice for the first time in... almost a year, now.
It's been almost a year since we realized we're plural. A quick rundown for those of you who may not know; plurality, in our case, is the experience of sharing one body, brain, and life, amongst multiple people who live within. To keep it brief, learning this about ourselves was a relief and a nightmare all at once. We love being plural, would never be any other way, but at the time the closest thing we had to direction in life was our spiritual practice. And suddenly, we had no idea what we were supposed to do with it. How are we meant to pick up a practice centered entirely around one identity we had crafted around ourselves to mask?
We really weren't. We still aren't. We're starting something new, something different. And, hopefully, using this blog as a place to write about it will help us feel more comfortable in it.
Recently we talked to our mom about consistency. Consistency is something we grew up being told we needed more of in our life. We've known our whole life that we struggle to do any work, project, any task consistently. One small task? Done. One small task, daily? Oh that's not happening, sorry, I don't make the rules my fucking brain does. School was a nightmare for that exact reason. We didn't quite realize it, but we were applying this push for consistency to our practice. Agonizing over the fact that there's no "foundation;" nothing that consistently interests the whole collective. I don't give a shit about learning to work with emotions and energies seen as negative, or working with the urge for destruction by focusing on destroying old patterns that no longer serve. That's what one of my headmates wants. I want whimsy! I want fun! The headmate in question doesn't give a shit about tarot, meanwhile someone's gonna have to stop me from eating the cards. Even in terms of deities and guides, we have differences in who we want to work with. Hermes only speaks to a few specific folks, for example, and really Loki is the only one who's seemed present for everyone.
There's nothing there all the time, meaning every long-term project, every deity, everything in our practices, would have to be constantly shifting. Constantly being set aside in favor of someone else's interests, until the person who originally started it can pick it back up again. This scared the shit out of us. Surely, there's something wrong with that. Except... is there, really, though? Why is it wrong?
I couldn't come up with an answer. If I was working with a group of witches, I wouldn't expect anyone to have the same interests. I'd except them to have different specialties, and I'd learn who to go to for what. So we paused, and thought, and realized that really the only way that there's something "wrong" is if you view us as flawed for being plural. Flawed because we don't function seamlessly as one entity.
So fuck that. Seriously, fuck that. I'm so tired of that. We all are. So, we've begun things again, for real this time. No more writing out things and trying to figure out what we all want from our practice, No more being afraid to go any one direction because the others in our collective won't follow. We're working with what we each want from our individual practices. What we each are interested in learning and doing.
I think it'll be fun to figure out.
-Malaika (mirror prns)
