been having a lot of thoughts about spirituality lately. after talking with others recently about feeling like i'm being called back to -- of all things-- witchcraft again, i felt compelled to write a bit about my journey and complicated relationship with spirituality. (thread)

some of you might know i was raised Catholic, and i participated in the church quite a bit when i was a young kid -- i was in the choir for my local church, went to catechism for years, and was even an altar server for a time. idk if i understood it all, but it made my mom happy.

when my parents got divorced and moved to different cities, it got more difficult to participate in the church as regularly, so i kind of fell out of practice. as i came to learn the kind of person my mother really is, i spent more and more time with my dad instead.

my dad is about as atheist as they come: a deeply jaded cynic who honestly has kind of a hard time believing in much of anything at all, let alone any kind of higher power. the more time i spent with him (and the more i associated church with my mother), the more i felt the same.

as i got older, moved through middle school and entered high school, i became jaded and cynical too, and began to reject anything that felt "church-y" to me -- i couldn't fathom believing in things like prayer, to the point where i began to reject anyone who *did* believe in it.

around this time i, of course, made friends with the goths at my high school, and some of them introduced me to Wicca. catechism had taught me that "witchcraft is ungodly and sinful" and was rejected by the church... so it felt perfect for me to reject the church by being Wiccan.

so i called myself Wiccan. i read and read and read, and developed an adoration for the Greek pantheon, a deep love of crystals, and a desire to be seen as "esoteric". yet i never once actually attempted to practice the craft. at that time i only cared about being "not-church".

high school came and went, my life got flipped turned upside down, and during all the upheaval and trauma i lost faith in pretty much everything, even the idea of witchcraft. i doubled-down hard into cynical atheism, and quite frankly i'm fucking mortified at how far i took it.

a few years ago, after i stopped having the energy to even care about what people did with their spirituality anymore, i happened upon someone online talking about the concept of "thoughts and prayers" (which is frequently used as kind of a meme phrase these days).

this person said that they felt someone saying "i'll pray for you" wasn't laziness or uncaring, but was actually the highest order of kindness: they're doing what they believe to be the most powerful thing they can possibly do for you -- asking their god to help you in some way.

something about this got stuck in my brain, and completely changed how i saw religion and spirituality. regardless of how i personally experienced or felt about the church, if someone believes, that's theirs to own. what gives someone power and peace is none of my business.

that's stayed my general philosophy ever since, though i personally have never returned to organized religion or the church myself. but something -- i truly can't even remember what -- something a few days ago planted the idea of witchcraft and magick back into my mind.

so of course i read and read and read again, but this time much less from a perspective of "what will make me everything the church hates?", and much more from a perspective of "how can i use this? what can i accomplish?" -- and where i've landed on that kind of surprises me.

the placebo effect ("i believe i am taking something therapeutic, therefore it will provide therapeutic results") has been scientifically proven to exist and actually produce measurable physical changes in the body. if you believe strongly enough that it will work, it will work.

but how can that apply to witchcraft? well, if i tell myself that sweeping the house will help cleanse it and attract positive energy, and that makes it easier for me to work up the ability to sweep the house, why shouldn't i do so? the end result is the same: i swept the house.

if sealing a jar of herbs with some wax helps me believe i'm safer and lowers my anxiety, why shouldn't i do so? if writing something that's making me upset on a piece of paper, and then burning the paper with intent, helps me let go of that thing, why shouldn't i do so?

tl;dr i've come to understand that if you believe prayer has power, it does. if you believe magick has power, it does. if you believe something gives you power, it does. if you believe you have power, you do. and i think i've finally rediscovered my own ability to believe.