Crisis of Consciousness (Part 1)

I am undertaking this journey to experience once more the exhilaration of discovering the nuances of the elements. I have spent too long wallowing in the spiritual disillusionment that hit me hard two years ago; after studying and practicing witchcraft and the spiritual arts for twenty years, in 2015 I had a spiritual meltdown and though, deep down, I didn’t lose the core of my beliefs, my faith was shaken to the point that I stopped practicing, stopped reading, stopped evolving as a witch and as a person… my energy had stagnated and I was well and truly in a rut.

I clung to my beliefs like they were a lifeline… a raft of sturdy, fat logs saving me from my drowning in a river of my own boredom and mistrust. I thought I’d lost my mind many times and felt waves of depression over the thought of losing my love of the craft which had been the biggest joy of my life for two decades. Several times I clambered onto that raft and managed to see enough of my old self to think I was free of my struggles but those moments were fleeting and though filled with excitement, never lasted beyond a few days. You will be able to identify these times as they are chronicled by my ability to focus long enough to post on my blog… I’d like to be able to diagnose this period of my life but the extremes weren’t severe enough to be classed as manic/depression although I have thought that whatever caused my melancholy may have had a flavour of that area of imbalance.

I have explained a little of why I am writing this but the reasoning goes deeper than I have so far described… words and language are my magick; they are my creative process – an escape, a realisation, a world of expression, subtlety and prose. Writing was my first love, journaling is my constant companion and this relationship has never betrayed me; I have never felt suppressed or pressured by it; if I leave it alone for a few days, it doesn’t question me… it is always waiting to absorb my ideas and let me witter on for hours about all manner of weird and wonderful things. I am always astounded by my love for its patience and this is why I turn to it now. At this moment in time, I am feeling a connection with my spiritual self, I have completed my fourth oracle deck, I am working with runes again, I have refreshed my altar for the first time in months and the seed of magick has sprouted in my life once more. I am not going to be casting every day, I am not going to be posting to my blog every day, but I am going to write every day because nouns are foundations, verbs are actions and adjectives are the breath of my life. I will post to the blog regularly what I am writing and my intention is to re-examine my relationship with witchcraft; I am a witch who has had a severe power outage and now I am a witch in serious reflection mode as my power returns.

I’d like to explain the title of this piece of writing which is an amalgamation of shadow work, general journaling, a creative outlet and a building of self-worth… Crisis is perhaps an exaggeration but it has felt like a crisis, whether it’s truly a crisis of consciousness or faith or ego or even just confidence, I don’t really know, maybe all of the above but it feels fitting to call what I’ve experienced as a crisis, a personal one at least. By saying this I do not wish to take away from people who have experienced some of the most awful things that happen in this world; by comparison my woes are not worth mentioning. I considered adding ‘but’ and continuing that sentence but there is nothing to add after ‘but’. I am writing this as therapy and as a connection process, I am writing it to fall in love with writing again and I am writing it in the hope that it will help someone to cling onto their own raft in whatever river they are drowning in.

I’m continuing with my stream of consciousness and relaying the thoughts that are pouring through my mind to further explain what I have named this random mind babble made physical by the stringing together of letters, grammar and punctuation. Consciousness is a strange thing; it associates to so many things, memory and emotion, empathy and presence, strategy and communication… I could go on but all of these things are a part of our thought processes every day. I am a person who overthinks, I am uber-conscious and though I spend as much time with my head in the clouds as possible, I often find myself with my head buried in the sand. My consciousness is often broken and scattered; individual shards of my consciousness can be found pondering the depths of mortality or can getting completely lost while I rock out with a hairbrush to classic Bon Jovi tracks (circa 1994). There is no structure to the crazy logic my consciousness inexplicably creates; no limit to the wild ride my twisted imagination can take me on… I am a prisoner of my consciousness, completely at its mercy because for the last two years I have been incapable of letting it go.