Virtues of the Heretic - Honour Part 2/2
The Witch cannot be a heretic and cast about oaths with spirits and not follow through. Just as we cannot, by virtue of being a heretic, to make pact and or oaths to a force we lack a whole, integral understanding of. The consequences could be dire, cause undue damage to integril relationships and set one up for failure. And what is it to stand for honour and defend honesty all the whilst a few with influence provide deceptive storytelling and festering dogma that poisons the people? To what aspect does the oath and intention become action?
The history of Witch-kind is filled with the fear we evoke in the hearts of the people, further nurtured into festering conflict by the tropes and spiel of figures that seemingly hold the keys to salvation. Perhaps the most popular point of fear is that a curse may be spun anywhere and anytime. Yes, it absolutely can. It matters not what tower, church, castle, or throne one may acquire or be represented by. If the cunning one, the witch or the weaver finds an action, deed or deal unjust, a curse may be made upon you. It’s not a matter of good and evil, or right and wrong. The line is, as we have found, rather up for debate by opinion. The nuance isn’t the Witch in the details, it is the humanity and where it exists and where it ceases. This isn’t to say every curse is justified. The human aspect of this kind of debate talks of justice as a universal term, as though all people agree on the exact definitions, parameters, ethics and rules. The colonial agenda enforced this illusion and continues to, as it moves about the world. The concept is that one way is more “godly” without truly examining the value and nature of what a Godd is. More commonly than not, we see prejudice spread about the popular opinion or by systems of authority, seeking to coerce the general public into submission due to whimsical notions of title and inheritance.
Honour, before its allocation in modern terms - to simply point towards the follow-through of one’s promise and representation of one’s worth within society, was allocated as a sort of title, as given by formal decree. You would have honour assigned to you, that if deemed by your actions or loyalty to said entity, demarcated from general society by title and position of authority. It could just as easily be removed if you were to abandon the value of the word of one who is supposed to have inherent honour or exemption. Titles, epithets, rank and status all made up concepts and archetypes, which acted as the pillars within society. Even then, the status of honour was rare. The issue with such systems is that it isolates value from the individual and it becomes a judgment by the hands of power, corrupt or not. It marks it as a commodity, something that can be purchased by name or political stature.
Such terms as “betrayor”, “oath-breaker or warlock and so on, stem from a range of terms that, although meant one thing during a time in say, Scotland and old British terms of Woer meaning faith, covenant or pledge and further then conflated during Christian domination and overhall with German etymology of wahr meaning liar, have since melted over into the popular dialecticon of liberal use to define a gender role to witchcraft, a rather outdated and unnecessary misconstruing of the word witch and warlock. You see in the heart of the heretic, honour is something you live, break and withdraw if necessary; it is an action of integrity.
We know that one milligram of a healing agent can quickly turn to poison, that one blessing can be a curse for many more. We cannot forgo accountability in favour of the old definition of honour, a word once used by authority as a way to absolve said accountability in order to save face on a mere deal, if at large, the action or agreement is in honour of corrupt power. Some agreements lean into mandatory honour with dire consequences. It shouldn’t be surprising to the heretic that if we enter blindly into things and the intentions of the conspirator is willfully ignorant of our needs, or we willfully enter with ignorance of definable factors that directly affect our life, then we stand to lose a great deal more than a title, i.e we dont sign without knowing all the details and with whom we are dealing.
This is why the Witch will rise again and again. You cannot plant a spoiled field of power and not expect nature to wrap it in a fig-like egregore of decomposition. It is never surprising that the demiurgic force would be confused at the rise of the witch. They believe power is cultivated by corrupt power. They have afforded themselves with a belief in their hypocrisy and its effectiveness. They speak to an idea of control because they are born into a world with nothing, made to be afraid of everything. Often led into the fields of death and life by the abrasive reality of their lost childhoods, forced to cultivate a following of people into the same loop, lest they be confronted by their deception.
The Heretical Witch sees honour as a living force. A way of nature rather than fragile ideals of what is right and wrong. The heretic is wild nature. Not wild because they have segregated themselves from control and accountability, even if by our hands of witchery we seem to harness things in a divine or powerful way- perhaps more so than the liver-spotted royal, or the failing, shrivelled man-child in “high” political standing. They move with the forces of life and death as spirits. Tied to, bound with a flow, a wyrd current of integrity. We, too, seek agency in the world, but we do so with intentional acceptance of the finite binding threads we are woven by. Some people may seek to breathe the air, and it never is until they are starved of it. The Heretic is aware they are being breathed. That this is an ecosystem. We also know it will not be without pain - this thing called existence. We hunger for all that desire can reveal and actively pursue actualised expression over pretences - we do this by fortifying honesty with ourselves and the worlds we are threaded into and through. We long for the lightning to crack open our limits, even if in the moment we tremble at the strike of our tower as presented in the tarot, a dare to be made and unmade by it. We see Godd’s in the smallest of relationships as well as in the flux and flow of the wild tempest of life and death, cloud and fire, root and moss.
What, why, how and who we honour is more important than who in the world is claiming rights over its provision or who “inherits” it on title or financial standing. We must learn to look at the stars, the cards, the bones or the vision with camaraderie in the face of the destructive spur of complacency. Forget not the foundations of evil, inconsistency, pretence, no accountability, and complacency. These are also how they move and enforce such denotations of the witch. If you are vulnerable, made so by their hand, then they can enforce fear, and if you are afraid of something that directly represents their opposite, then you will feel a natural association of safety with them.
If oaths are made on the premise of “honour”, and honour means to follow through and link this action to what it means to be “good”, then it is entirely possible to forgo the power of agency and choice to “honour” an oath that inherently is horrible, unserving to your life or that of others and serves only the evil of the one supplying the agreement.
These evils can be easily identified. All we need to do is examine what they hinge their decree on. If it is because of their title, that we must honour them then we are being lied to, as these things sit in the void of pretence. A title does not make one right, true or wise, just as being a heretic does not make one evil, a liar or a vagabond. Heresy is choice, it redirects power to each hand that willfully relates to and as a part of the ecosystem of divine threads and as such enforces accountability.
It is understandable then that even the heretic can fall into the binds and bramble of helplessness. We too can and do become subject to the misconstruing of “larger’ divine bodies of force based on the illusion of separation, or Godds and spirits and feel that those who have great alignment to the current of their being like a Godd should be in “control” but the Godds reminds us of our role on the fabric of life. It reminds us of our hand as Godds Becoming to claim agency, to claim the force of wisdom by wilful conspiracy and accountability. We are the dream being woven, but we also must weave it. We must wilfully accept the breath as opposed to assigning it as just a gift.
If you are feeling helpless, I invite you to sink into the concepts of what, who and why you honour that which you do. But do so as the Heretic. See honour as a choice, and like the Godds, gather your knitting needles, your wand and your will and become a waking thread of fate. Defy the demiurge with agency, with direct opposition to the tenets of the hypocrite.
We have to stop assessing follow-through as the point of honour alone, we also must begin to acknowledge the opposition to hypocrisy as a pillar of honour. You cannot honour your word and call it the truth if your word is lies, hate and fallacy. The heretic questions the person who hords the sword, honour is only as good as the person who wields it, as honest, as loving, as wise.
You are not helpless, you do not need to move entire mountains to contribute to the shifts of power. You are not bound to a promise of superfluous concepts of titles and public standing. Be like the vine, the fig and the Godds. Break the wheel if you must, and then when you are ready…. build, nurture and honour your heart in making a new way.
This is not to deny the state of the world, this isn’t about fault and blame. This is about truth, love and wisdom. They will try to make you forget yourself, to lose heart. Any moments of defiance to that story is a powerful win. A snap in the wheel of warped ideals, a seed of revelation in all that shall discover you, including as you will inherently discover more of yourself. Love - to see another, something else as a part of yourself - the and-ness, Honour to follow through, Heresy to choose, with full accountability despite the pretence of the systems that abuse such truth. Godds do not mark something as holy and something as tarnished, their holiness is the act of weaving itself, only made sour and wasteful by those who guise it as in fallacy, these are pretences - the division of holy from choice, this is the work of the illusioned. We bite the apple because we will forth the everbloom of divinity in the beating heart of choice and agency.
With Love for the Wild-hearted,
Ardwen Briarheart
xo
Albrecht Dürer - Witch Riding on a Goat 1500/1501