Greetings, my lovelies.

So apparently finishing Supernatural didn’t just reopen the theological investigation department in my brain. It also made me think about what I actually believe.

That’s a considerably harder question than asking who cleaned up all the poop on Noah’s Ark, although I’m still waiting for an answer to that one.

For most of my life, belief was presented to me as something you were supposed to be certain about. You believed in God. You believed in Heaven and Hell. You believed Jesus was the only way. You believed the Bible was true. You followed the rules, stayed on the straight and narrow, and tried not to ask too many inconvenient questions.

We already established how well that last part worked out for me.

I asked questions as a child, questioned as a teenager, and kept right on questioning as an adult. I tried Christianity more than once, and each time I ran into the same problem: I couldn’t make myself believe something simply because I was told I was supposed to.

Believe me, I tried.

There were times when I wanted the certainty other people seemed to have. It looked comforting from the outside. Imagine waking up every morning absolutely convinced you know who created the universe, why you’re here, what happens when you die, where your loved ones went, and exactly what you’re supposed to do while you’re alive.

Meanwhile, I’m over here going, Okay, but how do you know?

Eventually, I stopped trying to force myself into someone else’s certainty and found my way back to witchcraft. Not because witchcraft handed me all the answers Christianity couldn’t.

Quite the opposite.

It gave me permission not to have them.

The Sweet Spot Is Not Knowing

That’s one of the things I love about witchcraft and Paganism: there is no single universally accepted answer to what any of this means. Ask ten witches what they believe and you’ll probably get twelve answers, three book recommendations, an argument about correspondences, somebody telling you Mercury is retrograde when it isn’t, and at least one person trying to sell you a crystal.

We’re an interesting bunch.

• Some witches believe the gods and goddesses are individual divine beings with their own personalities and consciousness.
• Some see them as archetypes.
• Some believe different deities are faces of a greater divine energy.
• Others don’t work with deities at all.
• Some believe in reincarnation or an afterlife.
• Others believe we return to the earth or become part of something larger.
• Some work closely with ancestors and spirits.

And some shrug and say, I don’t know.

I like that answer. Actually, at 56, I respect “I don’t know” more than I respect somebody pretending to know something they couldn’t possibly prove.

That doesn’t mean I’ve stopped believing. It means I’ve stopped confusing belief with fact.

There are things I believe because I’ve experienced them, things I feel deeply, things that make sense to me spiritually, and things I’ve read about that I want to explore further. I don’t have to declare every one of those things an indisputable truth before they can have meaning in my life.

Belief doesn’t require me to slap a period at the end of every sentence.

Sometimes I can leave a question mark.

My Relationship With the Divine Has Changed Too

I’ve worked with Hekate. She became an important part of my path, particularly during a darker and more difficult period of my life. There was something about her—the crossroads, the torches, transformation, moving through darkness—that met me where I was.

And I was in the dark for a while.

There was grief, anger, resentment, hurt, and the weight of trying to understand myself after some very difficult years. There were things I needed to confront instead of pretending they weren’t there, and I don’t regret walking through that darkness. It taught me things about myself I probably couldn’t have learned anywhere else.

But lately, something has shifted.

I’ve been feeling pulled toward the hearth. Home. Warmth. Light. Seasons. Simpler rituals. Taking care of the place where I live and the people and animals within it. Finding sacredness in ordinary life instead of always looking for it in the shadows.

And Hestia entered that conversation.

I’m not replacing one goddess with another like I’m changing internet providers. That’s not how I see it. Maybe different energies—or different deities, depending on what they ultimately are—meet us during different seasons of our lives. Maybe what we need from our spirituality changes because we change.

Actually, scratch the maybe. I’m definitely changing.

At 56, I’m discovering that I don’t want to live permanently in darkness just because darkness once taught me something. I want candles and autumn leaves. I want music playing while I’m cooking. I want my home to feel warm and lived in. I want to notice the seasons instead of watching another year fly past me. I want to honor the Wheel of the Year without turning every sabbat into another item on a spiritual to-do list.

I want magic that actually fits inside my life.

Some days that might mean ritual. Other days it might mean lighting a candle, drinking coffee, opening the windows when Arizona finally stops trying to cook me alive, and being grateful that I made it to another season.

Both can be sacred.

And Apparently the Internet Has Witch Rules

Of course, the moment human beings discover something beautifully individual, we apparently feel compelled to create an HOA for it.

Spend enough time around witchy spaces online and eventually someone will tell you you’re doing something wrong.

• You’re honoring the wrong deity—or you’re wrong because you aren’t working with a deity at all.
• Your altar is wrong.
• You’re cleansing incorrectly.
• You bought your tools instead of making them.
• You don’t celebrate all the sabbats—or you celebrate them, but apparently you’re doing that wrong too.
• You don’t read tarot.
• You use the wrong tarot deck.
• You’re too dark, too light, too traditional, or not traditional enough.
• You don’t look witchy enough—or you’re trying too hard to look witchy.

At some point I want to ask:

Are we practicing witchcraft or trying to get past the HOA?

Because actual witches live actual lives, and those lives don’t all look the same.

• Some witches perform elaborate rituals beneath the full moon with carefully selected candles, herbs, crystals, tools, correspondences, and timing.
• Some light a candle and call it a night.
• Some have gorgeous permanent altars that look like they belong in a magazine.
• Others practice at the kitchen table and have to move everything because dinner is ready.
• Some witches wear flowing black dresses, dramatic boots, pentacles, and enough silver jewelry to set off airport security.
• Others wear pink, leggings, an old T-shirt, or whatever the hell was clean that morning.

And I’m reasonably certain at least one witch is currently wandering around Target trying to remember whether she came in for ritual candles or toilet paper.

She’s still a witch.

Because witchcraft isn’t a costume or an aesthetic, and it sure as hell isn’t a performance for social media.

What Witchcraft Looks Like in My Life

My witchcraft doesn’t always look particularly magical from the outside. It might be:

• Noticing the moon or celebrating the changing seasons.
• Lighting candles, reading, learning about herbs or folklore, exploring my family history, and thinking about the traditions of the people who came before me.
• Tending my altar or making my home feel sacred.
• Cooking a meal, sitting quietly and listening, or talking to a goddess while I’m doing something completely ordinary.

And yes, sometimes it’s questioning whether the goddess I’m talking to exists as an independent divine being, an archetype, energy, something humans don’t have language for yet, or some combination I haven’t even considered.

Apparently, I can question the gods too.

So far, nobody has struck me with lightning. Promising.

The important part is that I don’t have to resolve that question before I’m allowed to experience something as sacred. I can honor Hestia while still wondering what Hestia is. I can appreciate what Hekate brought into my life without needing to prove she objectively exists. I can believe there is more to existence than what I can see while admitting I don’t know exactly what that “more” is.

I can believe and question at the same time.

And that feels incredibly freeing.

I Don’t Have to Witch Like You

This may be my favorite part: I don’t have to practice exactly like another witch for either of our paths to be valid. More importantly, I don’t have to believe what another witch believes.

Someone else can work with deities I don’t connect with, follow traditions I don’t practice, believe things I question, or question things I believe. Neither of us has to convince the other that we’ve discovered the One True Way to Witch Properly.

Thank Goddess. I’ve already spent enough of my life being handed somebody else’s map and told there was only one acceptable route.

I can learn from other witches without becoming them. I want to learn. I want to read about other traditions. I want someone to tell me something I’ve never considered and send me running off to research it. I want my beliefs challenged occasionally because that’s how I figure out whether they still make sense.

What I don’t want is another spiritual system telling me curiosity is acceptable only until I reach the approved answer.

Been there. No thank you.

Straight and Narrow Was Never Going to Work for Me

For most of my life, religion was presented as a straight-and-narrow path with a spiritual reward-and-punishment system attached: believe correctly, obey, stay on the path, and Heaven is the reward. Step outside those lines and Hell becomes the threat.

That never sat comfortably with me, particularly when obedience was tied to an invisible being I was told I shouldn’t question. I don’t want my spirituality built around fear of punishment, and I sure as hell didn’t leave one rigid belief system just to let strangers on the internet build me another one.

I can walk my own crooked path.

I love that phrase because my path is crooked. I’ve turned corners I didn’t expect. I’ve believed things that made sense for a while and later realized they didn’t anymore. I’ve wandered away from things and found my way back with a different perspective. I’ve learned new information and had to admit, Well, shit. I may have been wrong about that.

I’ll probably do it again, and I hope I do.

That’s not failure. That’s growth.

My crooked path doesn’t have to look like another witch’s path. I don’t have to fill my house with crystals, wear black, read tarot every morning, perform spells every week, worship a particular deity, or celebrate every sabbat exactly the way somebody on the internet says I should.

I can love pink and still be a witch. I can be sarcastic and spiritual. I can question the gods and still honor them. I can change how I practice, stop doing something that no longer feels right, or discover something completely new at 56 and wonder where the hell it’s been all my life.

And tomorrow I can learn something that challenges what I believe today.

I can be whoever the fuck I want to be.

That doesn’t mean nothing matters. History matters. Knowledge matters. Research matters. Respect matters. Other cultures and closed traditions aren’t mine to claim simply because something looks interesting or mystical.

Walking my own crooked path doesn’t mean trampling through somebody else’s.

It means my spirituality belongs to me.

And Then There Is Death

This is where my beliefs become much more tender.

Mom died in May, and suddenly questions about what happens after death weren’t philosophical anymore. They were personal.

Where is she? Is she anywhere? Is Mickey with her? Are my grandparents somewhere? Do the people we love find one another again? Does consciousness continue after the body stops? Do we return to something larger than ourselves?

I don’t believe in the Christian Heaven I was taught about as a child, and I don’t believe in Hell. But I also don’t believe rejecting those answers requires me to believe there is absolutely nothing beyond this life.

I simply don’t know.

There are days when I imagine Mom somewhere beyond what I understand. I imagine Mickey finding her and my grandparents together again. Maybe that’s exactly what happened. Maybe consciousness continues in some way we don’t understand yet. Maybe we return to energy or to the earth. Maybe there’s something else entirely.

Maybe I’m wrong about all of it.

For once, I don’t need to force myself to choose an answer just so I can feel certain. I can hope. I can wonder. I can leave room for mystery.

That matters to me now.

Maybe This Is What I Believe

After all these years of asking questions, perhaps my beliefs aren’t supposed to fit neatly onto a checklist.

I believe nature matters. I believe our homes can be sacred and the changing seasons deserve our attention. I believe ritual can help us create meaning, and magic can exist in ordinary things. I believe there are things about existence we simply don’t understand.

I believe our ancestors and the people who came before us matter. I believe intention matters, but intention without action isn’t particularly useful. I believe I can honor gods and goddesses without pretending I understand exactly what they are.

I believe spirituality should help me become more fully myself, not frighten me into obedience.

And I believe I’m allowed to change my mind.

Maybe most importantly, I no longer believe uncertainty is something I need to fix. For years, I thought spirituality meant finding the right answers. Now I think mine might be about learning to live honestly with the questions.

There will be other witches whose paths run beside mine for a while. I’ll learn from them. Maybe they’ll learn something from me. Sometimes our paths will split because we believe completely different things, and that’s okay.

We don’t all have to arrive at the same place.

I don’t have to believe as another witch believes. I can walk my own crooked path.

Maybe I’ll understand more of it someday. Maybe I’ll change half of what I believe now.

Knowing me? Probably.

But wherever this crooked path takes me next, there’s one thing I know about the woman walking it: she’s still going to ask questions.

She just finally stopped believing she needs someone else’s permission to find her own answers.