Cauldron Column
Time To Begin Again
By Troy Andrews
Apr 4, 2008, 10:00

I believe that religion is both belief and action: our faith requires us to understand what our religion means and to do what our religion requires of us. I still Believe, but I don’t really Do any more. What does that make me? What do we call ourselves when we believe, but no longer practice our religion? I left a religion once, Christianity, and I know why and when I left. It was like the conversion to the religion when I came to it – I was one way, and then I was another way. This is different - another one of The Mysteries, perhaps. I was one way, and I am not exactly that way anymore, but I haven’t left my faith.

I still gather for Sabbath dinners. I used to create some elaborate project to do before dinner that went with the meaning of that Sabbath, but now we mostly talk and sit down to eat. We do discuss what that Sabbath means to us, but it is as much a dinner party as it is anything else. I still light votive candles sometimes, and I still say some prayers whenever I see the first sliver of a crescent moon. I still address the statues of the goddess that are in my house and backyard and treat them with reverence. But so much of what I did for years – much of what I consider essential parts of paganism and witchcraft – I just don’t do any more.

Since The Twins were born and started moving around, I mostly dismantled my altar. It is a low, wooden box that I took from my grandfather’s garage/workshop after he died. It has some of his things in it still – old glass doorknobs and switches and nuts and bolts. I filled it with things I have used in ritual work, round paper containers of the various types of incense needed for different spells, candles and dried things and old spells that still have some element that needs to be kept. I put my athame and anything sharp or anything that they could put in their mouths away and out of reach. All that is left is my statue of the goddess and a low, cast iron cauldron and the silver chalice. There are some seven day votives that sit beside it and every so often I will light one and place it on the high bookshelf nearby.

Before The Twins were born, I spent a year deep in ritual preparation for them. I worked a long, slow spell –first to help with the pregnancy and then to make sure Jess stayed healthy through it. Later, as we learned about them, I worked nightly rituals to welcome them and to prepare myself for fatherhood. Late at night when I had the house to myself I would start at the altar and walk a path around the various rooms of the house with candles and incense and talk to them. Once the nursery was built I spent time there each night, preparing a safe place for them to rest and grow.

But since they were born, I don’t seem to have the focus and energy for ritual work.

But suddenly, 16-month old Jackson has started his own altar work. He was curious about the altar a while ago, but in the last few weeks he started actually working with it. For his first attempt, he placed the chalice directly in the center of the cauldron and placed a votive in the middle of the chalice. He came back a few days later and added a second candle on the altar itself, then tried to balance a 9 inch loaf pan he took from the kitchen cupboards on top of both candles. (The loaf pan was a bit much for the candles to handle, unfortunately.) It is exciting to see. I think telling them of my religion suddenly became much easier.

This weekend we spent a night at the beach. A lot of things happen when you are at the beach, but one of the things that I felt was the strong pull of The Tarot. I took The Twins on a walk before we tried to put them to bed in our little motel room and walked toward the edge of town and came upon the full moon rising over the foothills that separate the coast from the inland. Reading the tarot was another thing that used to be part of my daily life that has faded into the background. I feel a need to learn it all over again – to start with the books and the deck and the memorization and the work of it. I look forward to learning it anew.

So I think now that rebirth can occur over and over. I feel it coming and swirling around me and around The Twins. I look forward to what I will become next.

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Biography – Troy lives in Sacramento with the cat Roxy and three red-headed Scorpios – Jess and The Twins, Julia and Jackson. He can be reached at citywhich@sbcglobal.net.