Sometimes You Get the Call

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: I’ve got nothing in my family that prepared me to be witching around. No grand family tradition, no secret society, no deep family ties to serving the spirits that I know of.

Nobody pulled me aside, recognized the symptoms—mind you, they recognized something they didn’t like—and told me about any of this.

The only real instruction I got on witchery, other than the fantasy books I was reading as a kid, was a whole lot of accusations of being possessed by devils or willfully evil.

It’s really common for people to quiz you in vodou. What are you doing in this religion? Who do you think you are (whitey, American)?

Shit, that’s an easy answer: I joke that someone left a window open and I crawled in. Actually, an invitation was issued and I accepted.

I don’t need to justify myself, but I think it’s worth pointing out that I am a walking demonstration that the divine is for everyone. The spirits didn’t need me to have generations of practice, didn’t need me to call on some long family tradition, didn’t need me to have a particular ethnic background, income level, or nationality. The divine does not need you to justify anything.

They just needed me to be willing.

I was.