I Said Goodbye to My Surly Teenage Witch and Took the Hand of My Rainbow-Powered, Unicorn-Riding Inner Child

I look back on my long gone witchling days and I recall my own solemnity and seriousness. As a teenage witch I was pretty formal and intense when it came to my craft. Everything I learned in books or attempted in the circle was tinged with this overblown sense of ceremony. When you're a kid and you realise that you're a witch, it's serious business, am I right? Wow - everything is so deep and somber when you're an angst-ridden thirteen year old who's just discovered the intoxicating world of witchcraft. And that's appropriate. That's not wrong. I don't regret a moment of the time that I spent in that lofty state of pensive fascination. It's totally normal for teens to take things to that extreme.

I have spoken to other witches who, like me, look back and realise that they actually dropped a lot of their seriousness and formality as they left their teens. It's a strange pattern! It doesn't seem as if it should make sense, does it? One would think that a teenage practice would be more fun and less formality, yet for many of us, it's the opposite way around.

As I leaned into my mid-twenties I became acutely aware that my craft was, well - mine. Mine mine mine to do with as I liked. I realised that it could include the things which I associated with power and joy. It could be set up to serve me. I didn't need to explain it away or justify it to other people. It could make my life more interesting. I could use it to feel liberated and to inject wild amounts of intrigue and discovery into an otherwise mundane, rainy weekday. I realised that I could take my practice to the office I worked in, the bus stop I waited at for my ride home and the queue at the bank. I realised that my craft could be a permanent portal from which to draw forth all manner of weird and wonderful worlds and characters.

Understanding that my magickal practice had to serve me in order for it to be of any worth whatsoever, I awakened my inner child and invited her to get involved. As a teenager, you want to deny your childhood completely. You are trying so hard to move beyond it and sweep it under the rug. You are desperate to grow up and outrun any sense of the identity which seems so embarrassing and immature as you look back on it from puberty. This is why adulthood is such a gift for witches. Once the teenage years are over and done with, you can drop that egoic insistence that you're not a child and that you mean serious business. Let's face it - that attitude isn't conducive to the invention of badass, effective magick which smashes through all of your expectations and leaves you feeling breathless and in awe of your own power.

I have more fun in my magickal life now than I ever have. I am always experimenting and delving into random waters just to see what happens. I amuse myself endlessly with all kinds of tricks and adventures. I light up when I talk about magick, and I hope to spend some time in 2016 encouraging fellow practitioners to reach a similar point in their own journeys.

So, let me start here, by offering some musings on my belovéd chaos magick..