I Am Pagan - Notes From A Solitary Eclectic Neo-Pagan Witch

Secrets Are Power

Sounds sinister, doesn't it? It isn't, not at all.

Although I know I will pay for this later - the very word "secret" is a trigger word for me, so I can look forward to a restless night or PTSD flashbacks later today, I'm sure. My childhood was full of secrets, and not the good kind, but the big scary sort - abuse, mental illness, incest.

So I understand that the word "secret" can trigger negative feelings in some people.

But secrets are power, and like any power, it can be for good or ill.

When I began putting my Pagan site back online and adding new articles and writings, I thought that a weblog might be a nice idea. Let people see into the real daily life of a Pagan, and note rituals, moon phases and spells. On further thought, I have decided that is a bad idea. Not for the public, but for me.

Say that I tell you I cast a Silver Spell to bring luck and money on such and such a night. And four people read that entry. One of them thinks, cool, I hope she gets lots of good luck. Maybe she even lights a candle, but just having those good thoughts about me and my spell increases its power to bring those very things to me; good luck and money. But just suppose the other three people who read that entry think; how ridiculous, how stupid, what an idiot, oh those never work for me. Those thoughts go out into the world and create negative energy that my spell would have to work against in order to bring the good things to fruition. In other words, my sharing could work against me, just as much as it might work for me.

Some things, spells in particular, work better in secret.

Now, there are exceptions. Say you are going to work a silver spell, and you tell your beloved coven sisters. Some of them may even offer to help or participate. Even when you are part of an online coven, amazing energy can be raised when several of you arrange to work together at a particular time on the same spell even if you are half a world apart. You should be able to trust your coven with a secret though, and they should realize that some things are best not trumpeted to the universe at large.

For hundreds of years, Pagans did all ritual and spell casting in secret. The idea was to keep the Christians from killing us all. I'm not altogether sure that's not still a viable concern. Anyway, the Christian clergy then preached that our rituals must be bad because they were secret. If it had to be secret, it must be bad. But then, it had to be secret, because some people thought it was bad and would burn you at the stake for it. Sort of a lose-lose situation. At the same time, because of their fear of what we might be up to in secret, they actually gave us, in their minds, probably far more power than most of us actually wield. Again, the secret made it powerful.

Some affirmations work best in secret. If you are affirming that something wonderful will happen for you soon, and you are affirming it constantly to yourself and out loud - that IS a great way to empower an affirmation. But what if the people you are around laugh at you or ridicule you every time you affirm this wonderful thing out loud? This can be devastating to the energy you have built up. The good thing might be standing right outside your door about to be delivered and WHAM here is this great gust of derisive laughter, your spirits deflate, and the good thing screams and runs away.

Imagine, instead, you affirm just as constantly, but only to yourself. You convince yourself this good thing is coming towards you. When the negative people around you snort and complain and groan you smile a secret smile because you know that something good is right around the corner for you. There is a knock on the door and...ta da!

Some things work better in secret.