Lesson Three
Lesson 3: Gratitude as Rebellion and the Magick of the Activist
Gratitude is a powerful energy that can be wielded anytime, no matter the season. During summer, the season of fruition, we might choose to work with gratitude energy because it requires we stop and pause, taking a mini-solstice for ourselves. Working with gratitude energy does not mean forcing oneself to be grateful, to transcend anger, or to frame gratitude as a superior emotion to grief, sadness, or rage. When we are met with gratitude, we are offered a rare opportunity to pause, to tend to the spirit of the moment.
Gratitude is also an invaluable tool of discernment in our magick. As Witches living in a world where our own values do not match those of the dominant over-culture, it is often difficult to know what we truly want for ourselves. Sometimes we cannot help but wonder if we honestly want that house, that job, that partner, (fill in the blank), or if we have been trained to want these things, conditioned to have dreams that aren’t ours. When we are met with gratitude, however, when we feel an authentic in-the-body thank you bubble up from our depths, we receive an embodied affirmation that yes, this thing makes my heart happy. I want this.
As a practice, keep track of the moments when you are met with gratitude in the moment. See if you can spend an entire breath, a full inhale and a full exhale, holding the tension of gratitude in the body when it meets you. This is different from sitting down with your gratitude journal and digging up the language for what you feel you should be grateful for; this is noticing when gratitude comes, holding it, and then writing down the key themes in that moment when gratitude met you and met you well.
For Reflection:
1. What are some patterns in your gratitude moments right now? If you were to allow these patterns to point to you toward what you truly want, what you might work your manifestation spells for, what would these key wants be?
2. Which of the three summer stories- The Faery-Doctor’s Daughter, The Witch and the Lightning Tree, and Biddy’s Retreat- told by the Desert Hag in Seasons of Moon and Flame, speak to you most right now? Why?
3. How do you feel about the word “gratitude”? What connotations does the word have you, and how does it feel to frame gratitude as radical, as an outlaw energy that can be wielded in witchcraft?
“Oh, my hard-loving lightning god, my dreams have been of giants
and green women of late, and I’ve waked swollen with a pulsing
desire to share stories in a language I do not speak. These nights are
too short for my haunted heart, and I am missing the dark and deep,
the cool and creeping. I am missing the ghost stories and the warmth
of wool, and I fear I’m in danger of sleeping through these brightest
days of wild delights yet again. Teach me, you old-boned and diamond-
eyed deity. Teach me how to suck that savory marrow from
these overfull days. Teach me how to heal the wounds of my grannies
just by breathing, and teach me to dig up the undead poetry even here,
even in these gardens spilling their curling and hungry vines all over
this hallowed ground, even here in this overmined place. In the deep
below, I can hear the summer stories hissing, and I know they want
to be told by a Witch so wanton as me.”