When Do You Assume The Role?

​I was skimming my facebook feed this morning as I do each day to catch up on what went on with my online friends the night before and I caught a status by a friend, Avalon Cameron, (Bruxa, Seer, Cardslinger, Tarot Creator, Writer), who posed an interesting question to her facebook audience, which I feel is something worth contemplation. She asked:

At what point do you assume a role?
​At what point to you claim a title?​​
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​Her shared thoughts dealt with her passion for writing and embracing the title or label of writer, which as someone who identifies as a writer I found intriguing, but I also think this is an idea that many individuals traveling a pagan or Witchy path consider and a question that has been presented to me numerous times by my students and fellow Witches, “When am I a Witch? When can someone use that label to identify his or her self by without being presumptuous?”
 
Honestly there are no set guidelines, though I wouldn’t be surprised if in doing a Google search you would find websites that claim they have the formula for becoming a Witch. Personally I believe it is different for each individual and the timing is dependent upon that person’s knowledge and practice. Someone who grew up in a pagan household with practicing Witches as parents may have always “been” a Witch and freely and comfortably identify as such, using the label to describe themselves, while another may have been born into a Christian household and had parents who were devote Fundamentalist Christians who believe that such things are “sinister” and “evil” so that person may take a longer time to embrace their “calling” and even longer, perhaps even into adulthood to comfortably and openly self-identify as Witch. I don’t believe that every Witch’s journey is the same because each of us has experienced life from a unique perspective though it has brought us individually to this same conclusion; I am Witch.
 
I do think and believe that there are common markers in our lives that can aid us in intuiting when we are ready to assume the role of Witch and help us to identify when we might be comfortable with claiming the title. 

At the point when we:

• Recognize the interconnectedness of all life (including our own) and the consequences of such a profound union.
• Honor the sacredness of the planet and our impact on the environment in which we live.
• Acknowledge and accept personal autonomy, including our accountability and responsibility for our thoughts, words, behaviors, and actions.
• Possess a willingness for deep self-reflection, which includes a passion for continued. learning about; ourselves, our practice, and the world into which we have incarnated.
• Accept the existence of impermanence and mortality of all physical life.
• Embrace the existence of the spirit / other realms and have begun to cultivate a personal relationship with those that reside therein.
• Understand magick and how it is used to create change within reality.
• Established our Craft; a personal magickal practice in whatever form that takes.

​Though this is not an official or strict set of guidelines I’ve listed here, I do believe it touches on many of the points that define what I view as qualities a Witch would possess, whether they were things that the individual intuitively learned on their own or whether they were taught to that individual by a Mentor, teacher, or family member. If I were to meet someone who possesses these, I wouldn’t hesitate to call them Witch, unless of course this is a label they reject for themselves, because it is sole dependent on each of us to know when and if we decide to assume the role and claim the title.