I think I have lost track of the number of times I have heard someone or other say, "Oh, they can't be a real Witch, they _________ (fill in the blank). The choices are infinite. They can't be a real Witch if they..have a 9-5 job...drive a car instead of riding a bicycle.... are part of a coven/aren't part of a coven.......weren't trained by their Granny......are too tall...too short....too fat....too young/too old......or, Goddess forbid, use pink instead of blue mud in their navels!

We've got the family trad folks out there saying that they are the only true Witches because their religion was handed down unbroken from Great Granny Og, painting pictures on the wall of her cave. We have those that say that if you can't trace your initiation lineage back to Gerald Gardner himself, you can't be a real Witch. We have coven members saying that solitaries and book-trained people can't be real Witches. We have solitaries who look down on coveners as too bound up in useless ritual.

We have older Witches who turn up their noses at the young people trying to learn the Craft, forgetting how hard it was for them. And we have young folks who still think that the old are useless. I even heard a High Priestess once bewail the fact that she was going to have to step down from her position because she was no longer young and beautiful enough. What, does the Goddess only have one face? I thought she was Maiden, Mother, and Crone!

People, we're starting to sound like some folks in another religion. And we are only hurting ourselves with all this in-fighting.

Can we please stop bickering among ourselves long enough to remember that one of the central tenets of our beliefs is that we interact directly with the God/dess. Coven member, solitary, tall, short, and fat....we each stand before the Gods as we are, alone in their gaze.. If the God/dess sees each of us as her child and loves us each and every one, where is the difference between us.? I really doubt that the Goddess cares much about the blue or pink mud debate as long as it is worn as a symbol of our love for her.

And if, as we believe, each of us contains within us a bit of the Divine, if each of us is God and Goddess, how can we condemn the form or lifestyle of another? What we are is part of the sacred pattern of the Universe. It is the very diversity of the lives that make this pattern that is the great Mystery and wonder.

To borrow a teaching from a very wise man of another faith, "Love one another."

copyright © Lark 1997