A Life in the Craft
The Craft isn't for everyone. For many, it's a step on the Way.
But for some of us—the lifers, bred in the bone—the Way of the Wise becomes a home. Oddly, though, a life in the Craft is a matter little addressed in the current literature.
So it is with acute pleasure that I welcome today's guest blog by my friend and colleague, Frebur Hobson of Branch and Bone, a man Wise from the ground up.
"Times fallow and fertile": weigh well his words.
Seasons of the Craft
A Guest Blog by Frebur Hobson
When we first find the Craft, it fulfills a need: a need for a home, a need to live with ways that speak to our hearts. We meet the Craft, and we see in it what we don’t have in ourselves or in our community. We see magic and romance and validation, and we are in love.
First degree.
Later, we see inconsistencies in the Craft, which is human-made and imperfect. The lacking that once we felt in ourselves or around us, we now see in the Craft.
Second degree.
Some move on from the Craft at this point, in search of the next fulfillment. Others revise what they have learned from the Craft to correct earlier flaws.
Yet others see that what we saw in ourselves as lacking, and what we saw in the Craft as lacking, are merely features of a greater cycle. We come to understand that we will cycle through the seasons in our practice: times fallow and fertile, and we accept that each of the seasons lead to another.
Third degree.
And why wouldn't the Craft have seasons, like everything and everyone?