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“So where's all this wisdom of the elders that I'm supposed to have?”

My friend shakes his head and laughs.

“Now I'm an old guy, and young people come to me looking for wisdom; what am I supposed to say? I feel like I don't have any more insight than they do.”

I smile. I've been there myself.

“You do what the elders have always done,” I tell him, reminding him of what he already knows, and what, I'm sure, he's already doing. “You speak out of your own experience. You tell stories. People aren't looking for general principles. They're looking for stories: applied wisdom.”

My friend nods.

“Do what's right,” he says. “Be just. Speak truth.”

“Nothing secret or mysterious about it. Own what you do. Don't be an asshole.”

“And when you screw up, do what you can to make it good, and remember that, sooner or later, everybody screws up, and chances are, you'll make it through anyway.”

We laugh.

“There's your starry wisdom,” I say. “'Consult precedent, and improvise.'”

          A visiting teacher who had come to a weekly yoga class I attended shared his personal mantra: "I know nothing, I want to learn." At the time this seemed a negative way to approach life. I now understand this to mean what the Buddhists intend by "beginner's mind." If I think or believe I know all about something, my mind will be closed to learning more. I have learned much from the many spiritual paths I have studied, and I appreciate what I have gained. I've stored up the most helpful teachings and incorporated them into my life, using them to live by.

Stephen and I were celebrating my birthday with my daughter and her fiancé. "Can you share some wisdom," she asked, "things you have learned over the years?" I thought about it, and nothing came to mind just then. Later that evening I realized she had given me a fine theme for my latest love note. I told her and she agreed. I began to think what I wanted to share with my readers. As I went to bed that night my mind continued to whirl with thoughts.

When first I came to the Craft years ago, we were all young in it together, so I suppose it's something to be said that we now have old farts in our midst.

I suppose.

One such was overheard at a recent event to say that by now he'd learned all that the Craft had to teach.

I don't know which is the more striking about this statement: the arrogance, or the ignorance.

Me, I've been doing this for nigh on 50 years now and, frankly, I sometimes still feel like a beginner. For me, the Craft is an endless Sea: you could swim in it forever, but you'll never come to an end. It's deep, so deep, and it goes on forever, this Craft of ours.

Oh, the years have been hard, and sure, much has been lost. Sometimes then we must look elsewhere to find what we've lost, what was taken away. Then and there, we'll recognize it when we find it, ours to us. Then it's our work to bring it home, to bring it back home to the Craft.

But that's neither to impugn the Craft, nor to steal from someone else. When you try to live in someone else's lore, that's stealing. When you learn about your own lore from someone else's, that's Wisdom.

The Craft goes on forever. It's bigger than me, it's bigger than you, and there's never an end to it.

So to any old fart (or young one, for that matter) out there who thinks to have come to the end of the Craft, I can only say:

Cats know.

People know that they know.

The wise know that they know that they know.

Witches know that they know that they know that they know.

That is to say:

I stand outside bathed in a warm glow of light and the Harvest Moon whispers to me…

I know your secrets
I know your joys
I know your sorrows
I know who you are.

         I was receiving acupuncture to address some ongoing health issues.  At one point in the treatment I had a deep visceral experience of a vortex or portal opening up around my belly and the words “Release the pain, keep the wisdom” came into my head.  Those words continued to run the next day as I had a long session with a powerful practitioner of magic who does her healing through deep body work and massage.