Normal is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Witchcraft is a huge part of my life, and lately more and more people I know have been discovering my involvement in it. I usually don't just come right out and tell people, since I don't think it's a "need to know" detail, but I don't make any effort to hide it.
I get the same response often from people who find out: "Oh wow, you seem so normal!"
To me, this statement implies two things: that one who practices witchcraft is not normal, and that I do a pretty good job at pretending to conform.
I'm sure that this statement is meant as a compliment. I know that it comes from a place of well-meaning ignorance. After all, most people are only exposed to "witchcraft" when they accidentally bump into a teenage girl at the mall who's wearing black lipstick and has smeared mascara down her cheeks. She yells something in gibberish and threatens to curse you using the voodoo doll she's got in her purse.
Still, I find the word 'normal' a little unsettling. Being normal never gets anyone anywhere. Being normal doesn't allow for change, or progress, or growth. Normal is stagnant, repetitive, and limiting. In order to truly learn anything or get anywhere, you have to break away from what everyone else is doing and experiment for yourself.
Just as this is true for everyone else, it's true for witches as well. Are you going to discover anything new if you only do the spells everyone else is doing, or if you only study the topics everyone else is studying? Of course not! Branch out and learn something new. Study the world for yourself. Read books that don't have the word witchcraft on the cover and make the connections yourself.
It's nice that my non-witch friends think I'm so normal. It allows them to relate to me easily. But I definitely don't strive for normal. I strive to strike out and discover things that others haven't, and then spread that information around like the plague! Where would we be without people who did things like that?
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