One of the things that’s always fascinated me is how we learn to become Wiccans and witches. I don’t mean reading books on Wicca or conducting rituals. That’s “head” or “brain” stuff. I mean how be “become” Wiccans with our heart, our cells and our very souls.

Trying to be humble here, I finished a PhD research topic in 2008 in which I studied how Wiccans and Witches learn to be Wiccans and Witches and the very clear result was that we learn with more than our heads; we learn with our souls. Academia has argued up until recently that all adults learn in three major ways, cognitively (brains and heads), behaviourally (hands and behaviours) and in a humanistic fashion (with our whole beings) but none of them considered that adults also learn with their intuition or with their souls.

Think about a time when you heard the phone ring or the door bell chime and you instinctively knew who was ringing or visiting you. Maybe think about a time when you had a premonition that something was going to happen and whamo, it happened. How did you learn to do that? Did you read a book that taught you how to do it? I don’t think so. Did you take a class at college, “Premonitions 101”, read a text book, write an essay or two and complete and exam? Probably not. The chances are that this skill developed, or more likely was present at birth, got squashed as you went through childhood and then slowly developed again when you gave it credence and supported it. But you probably didn’t use your brain to learn it by reading a book. I’d suggest you learnt it instinctively with your soul.

The research showed that when learning how to do ritual for example, Wiccans and Witches learnt to “feel” ritual as much as they learnt about how to do the ritual. In other words, there was brain stuff that taught us to use candles, to do this bit before that bit and so on, but we also learn to “feel” or “sense” the ritual, and we did so with our intuition and soul. The research also showed that when we first experienced these “feelings”, we very often poo-poohed them thinking we’d auto suggested it, made it up or something like that. We had to have several events where what we felt, the premonitions we had, the messages we received from deity were confirmed by events that actually occurred later on. In other words, we learnt with our instinct or soul, then we had to have that learning affirmed and then we beloved we could do and went full steam into learning more.

For me, this was fascinating because my job as an HR and Training Manager means I develop learning programs and systems for adults and it was wonderful to think that instead of just curriculums, systems, essays, tests, competencies and all the red tape of adult education, I could actually teach and engage with students through their hearts, through their instincts, through their soul.

So next time you have a premonition or you “feel” and “sense” a ritual, know that you’re on the right track. Learning with your soul is now as credible as learning with your brain.

Smiles and blessings, Amethyst.

P.S. For anyone who is interested, the book (How and What Witches learn) of this research is available at Amazon here or via the Oak and Mistletoe Bookshop.