LESSON 3: Pages 10-13

When I wrote about a crooked path I was clearly taking advantage of the fact that the origin of the Old English words "wicca" and "wicce" is uncertain.  One possibility does relate it to the words "wit" and "wisdom," so to talk about the Craft of the Wise is reasonable enough.  But I did like the alternate link to the word used to describe something crooked or bent (as in "witch hazel"), maybe in part because of the advice I was once given to "look at the silence and listen to the shadows."

In my own imagination I envision a crooked path as the side path off the main road, shadowed by the overhanging trees (and you are free to go ahead and think about all the mythology of trees linking them with knowledge).  You cannot see that far ahead or even that far behind, so you must relate to where you are just at the moment.  If it is a good place to rest, then that is what you do.  If there is a spring of free water and if there is ripe fruit, you may want to stay quite a while.

In the section I played up a contrast with the familiar religious imagery by which our  mortal lives are interpreted as being a pilgrimage to some holy destination.  Pilgrims are to keep the main road, typically traveling in a very penitential mode.  To go off this road, especially to enjoy the natural pleasures that might be waiting, is seen as something wrong.   This, for many, is what is evil about us: we relate to nature and not to something "supernatural."  It's as though we fail to recognize that we have been evicted from Eden.

One of the things you may want to do as you are going through these lessons is to start a new journal for yourself.  At times I am setting these lessons less as extra information than as a basis for personal meditation.  I've mentioned what is in my own imaginings, but I strongly encourage you to now go off on your own.  For some additional material (or points) for such a  meditation, you might take a look at some of the following websites that take us back to ancient Druid imagery:  Celtic tree calendar(1)  and  Celtic tree calendar(2).