Often I am met with the assumption that I am a witch and I feel the need to own how I identify, as a mystic. The difference is that a witch, from my understanding wishes to shape their reality through will, while the mystic wishes to be shaped by ultimate reality. There is a fine line, yet there remains a distinction. Both paths lend themselves into an internal understanding of their innate nature through practice, as well as their role in the ultimate of reality. They both lend themselves to personal power and limits, to spiritual awareness with crevasses of darkness. The mystic does not reach its sense of reality through development of will as the witch does but through surrender of the will.
The truth and reality works through me but I am only a piece of the whole. Reality is multi-faceted and I only contain the tiniest nugget. My ego, emotions and will wants to believe in its importance but is limited and narrow in scope and possibility. Through the wrangling of the “I” and by making myself healthy I allow for greater experience, that which connects me to the whole, the divine. This is my mystical practice in summation.
The benefits of such practice allow for a greater sense of peace, perspective heightened intuition and compassion. Individuation surprisingly occurs as one sees one as part of the whole, the uniqueness of personal experience and talents as a collection becomes apparent. The idea to act upon your personal truth seems like a no brainer as the ego drops the conditioning of the mundane. Magick is a side-effect as a conscious understanding but not as a tool of the will but as a means of energy exchange.
My first foray into the mystical was through art, namely dance. It was through much hard work, study and eventually surrender. Through the performance I was able to pull the audience into my experience of movement, the music and emotion. I felt liberated from the mundane, my ego. This wasn’t a conscious exercise, it just happened, at once my experience wasn’t my own but that of everyone, fueled by the meditative exercise of dance. Yet there were other inclinations of the mystical earlier in life. Nature and imagination as well as love all contain the seeds of the mystical, they take us beyond the veil. Connecting one to greater energy than one of autonomy.
Now I have many practices in my daily life to foster my connection to mystical experience. My favorite is through my tarot and astrology practice, divination. Not only does it help me personally understand the nature of my personal reality in divine terms but that of those that I read. Gaining perspective is key and the perspective we share in the reading can be profound or mundane but the practice is its own reward. The multi faceted truth of personal experience and how it relates to the whole is the story told through both astrology and tarot. Yes it is witchy, but for me it is mystical.
