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Spirituality and Witchcraft: Maintain Yourself in a Shadow

Foto de Andrey K en Unsplash
                            
When I think about a shadow, I imagine a space of comfort, a shelter from the blazing sun, a moment to sit and refresh myself. A shadow is a silhouette from other dimensions and time systems, a stain seen on a clean cloth of our beings. A shadow is a dark side of our face, our past and our future. We stay in a shadow to keep safe, to work on our development and talk to ourselves. A shadow is a perfect and most gentle space to work on our craft. 
To ground myself, I sit under a tree shadow, feel my roots creeping towards the center of the earth and my wishes opening their buds towards the center of my energy. There are times when we need a shadow in order to blossom. 
As in any craft, there are certain ideal circumstances and the others, not so ideal. If we are to call a spiritual path to be a sort of a craft, then indeed we should be aware that some environments are not suitable for our development. Now, why did I pull this subject out? Mainly because we usually haven't got an ideal ground for our development, therefore we try to create it, better said, we do all we can to clean the one we have and make it more fertile. 
Our life stories and our characters vary so widely that there is no possible way of considering universal rules. We also tend to dive into occult from very different backgrounds and we are lead by quite different reasons. Some of us are simply drawn into it, no other explanation there. It could be a book, a text, a friend, an idea that attracted us and the seed was planted. Sometimes, we simply say that faith wanted it that way.
When it comes to our inner development, I simply must underline the importance of our solitude. There is nothing more important in this way of living than the solitude and the possibility of spending time alone and investigating all the fields that might interest you. Real power comes from the capacity of being alone, with yourself. There is no coven, no group and no course that could ever substitute time that you spend with your own shadow. You cannot develop yourself and your power through others. If you tend to go towards this, than maybe you still haven't understood what you wish to expand in yourself.
Solitude it is. Firstly because of the time you need to invest in the investigation. Secondly, but not less important, it is because we dive into ourselves through all the angles of the craft that are attractive to us. Each time when we go deeper into ourselves, we comprehend more the people around us. There is no better way of knowing others and the universe than by knowing yourself. We are a reflection of the universe.
When it comes to people, well let me put it this way, I have always had better results when I gave myself some time and observed them from the shadow. Whatever you wish to achieve, whatever your spell is, give yourself the opportunity to cooperate with a shadow, any form of a shadow. 
There are only a few allies in the witchcraft and a shadow might be one of the strongest.

by Marina Zrnic,
Madrid 2/4/2025

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