In second grade, I co-founded an onion grass-themed cult. The schoolyard was overrun with tufts of the tall, curly-topped, subtly bluish grass, which were obviously much more appealing playthings than the surrounding swings, slides, and monkey bars. Who could resist plucking out the bulbs and smelling the pungent onion on your fingertips?
We centered a loose religion around the harvesting of the grass. We spoke a simplified, arguably racist language based on dropping out certain sounds and cutting unnecessary words, resulting in chants of "onee-gas, onee-gas" and quick, chirrupy gibberish. As a priest of this order, I officiated worm funerals and encouraged the construction of onion grass bracelets. Using dandelions, we painted personalized patterns on our faces. Our God of Onee-Gas smiled upon us for at least a couple weeks, until our religious fervor was overpowered by the arrival of Pokemon cards on the playground.
Sometimes, after a mower shreds a patch of onion grass and releases that green scent into the air, I reflect on the bizarre peace that my first cult experience granted me.
Most of the time, I feel out of control. Lots of folks probably share that feeling, especially those who suffer from anxiety or depression. It's like life keeps dropping plates out of the sky, and I'm supposed to catch them before they shatter, except I'm on a unicycle and there are live bears chasing me and someone is shouting "BOO, YOU SUCK" from the ringside and that someone is also me. It's a one person disaster circus out there.
Inevitably, human that I am, I drop plates (and wine glasses, and Christmas ornaments, and text conversations because I'm a Pretty Bad Friend sometimes). There's a thing that happens when you drop a lot of plates, or even think you're dropping a lot of plates. You can develop "learned helplessness," which is the perception that you have no way of escaping an adverse situation, so you shouldn't even try. Fail enough, and your brain gives up on finding ways to avoid failure, since it seems that nothing you do has an impact on the final result. Things are bad, and will always be bad, and you have no control over that, so why bother?
Logically, you really should bother. One of the early experiments in learned helplessness (conducted by Dr. Martin Seligman, known for his impact on the field of positive psychology) featured administering electric shocks to dogs (yeah, I know). By jumping over a barrier in an experimental box, dogs could avoid the painful shock. After a few rounds of this, the dogs learned they could jump over the barrier to safety before receiving the jolt in the first place.
However, if the dogs had previously received inescapable, unpredictable shocks (YEAH, I KNOW), they didn't even bother with the barrier. They might run around a little, but then lie down and give up. And they'd do this over and over, until the dogs made no motion to escape when the shocks started, even though there was the option of hopping over the barrier.
Even on the occasion that a dog so conditioned did jump the barrier, and discovered safety on the other side, it would go back to its passive acceptance of the shock in future trials. That's how tightly the sense of helplessness locks to the brain.
And if that isn't the saddest thing, then you can get right the heck out.
There's a reason the concept of learned helplessness is tied to mental illnesses like depression. The real or perceived absence of control hinders your ability to get that control back. How unfair is that?
My relationship with onee-gas gave me a sense of control in a chaotic world. Like I've mentioned once or a thousand times, I was(am) a super weird kid. Making friends could be difficult. Reading situations was even worse. A more socially savvy kid might have seen some downturns in friendships coming, but I was blindsided every time. I was dangerously blunt, and hurt people's feelings without realizing it, and that created complicated, painful friendships full of pranks gone too far and unintentionally mean behavior. Plus, unabashed weirdo that I was, I was ripe for mocking, and it took me too long to even know the extent of my ridicule.
As an acolyte of schoolyard weeds, though, I had a specific role, and the authority to be weird, and a set of rituals that calmed me.
I've always liked rituals. I used to have a specific order for saying prayers, and compulsively finished with a song I'd learned in Vacation Bible School (composed of saying "hello" in about 10 languages, which I added to all the way through college). I tapped a specific rhythm when shutting down my laptop. I counted sidewalk lines on my way to classes. I ate certain meals in a complicated order, originally for luck, but eventually just to avoid inevitable bad luck.
I don't have the same rituals any more, and they never interfered much with my life. I've learned other ways of overcoming my sense of being out of control. It took a lot of trial and error and for a while, those errors were ridiculously unhealthy.
But I've found a weird way of reintroducing that calming control, and all it took was revamping my dusty and long-disused spirituality.
Of course, I'm not the type to take a yoga retreat or revisit the Good Book. Oh no. I'm getting in touch with my spiritual side by declaring myself a witch, and here are a few reasons why:
- I already have a crooked nose and unladylike hairs on my chinny-chin-chin
- I've been called a witch before, in that you-know-what-I-really-mean-when-I-say-witch kind of way women (and those who appear womanly) are called sometimes, and I sort of liked the image of me cackling in the woods somewhere, surrounded by cats and the bones of my enemies
- I look suave in a pointy hat (by the way, the tall hat and iconic broom were actually taken from beer brewers in the Middle Ages. Making beer was "women's work," and one of the few ways a woman could be an entrepreneur. So of course the Catholic church took notice of these women making moolah, got all pouty, and started demonizing them. Like, full-on bringing back the idea of witches specifically to weaponize the concept against all women. Having filled society with the notion that women are corrupt and prone to devil-worship and unfit for business, the men of the church moved in on the market and claimed it for themselves, cutting women out of one of their only means of accruing independent economic power. The repercussions of stripping women out of their pre-1300s healing and brewing roles continue to this day. Isn't that heckin' interesting, and by interesting, I mean infuriating.)
Alright, fine, I'll get a little more serious. I realize that there is a practice of modern witchcraft, and while I'm borrowing some ideas from that, I'm making this my own thing, all about positivity, spreading kindness, and gently correcting my own negative behaviors.
Some tenets of my witchhood:
- Creating sigils as meditation and self-affirmation: Sigils are symbols created to embody an idea, like, "I am smart and capable." You turn that into a drawing, repeating it until it's completely comfortable, a visual mantra. You can discard it, set it in motion through a ritual, or keep it as a reminder.
- Conducting rituals to assist with visualization: Mental rehearsal leads to improved performance in both mental and physical tasks. However, I can find it difficult to focus my intent, so creating a ritual as simple as lighting a candle and speaking a phrase can help get me in the right mindset.
- Being mindful of my environment and my fellow creatures: I can often get lost in my own head. I'm making an effort to notice my world, both the good things within it and the parts I can improve. I must direct goodness out into the world through acts of kindness and compassionate corrections of my negative impulses.
What has scared me off of spirituality in the past is a focus on organized religion or a specific supernatural belief. For where I am in life right now, I simply don't know if there is a world beyond the physical one. I like the idea that there is, but I don't know that I believe it. My spiritual practice, however, is one based in positive psychology more than actual spiritual belief. Even the bits that border on mumbo-jumbo have the placebo affect going for them (and placebos can work even when you know they're placebos).
Ideal. Source
Maybe I won't be riding around on a broom (or a Hoover) any time soon, but I do like the idea of calling myself a witch. It's sort of the spiritual equivalent of saying I'm a "nasty woman." It's restoring the strength of something broken, and that's the sort of effort that my heart is here for.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a worm eulogy to deliver.