Always Asking "Why?"

If there is only one piece of advice I can give to religious seekers, it would be this: never stop asking yourself why you do what you and believe what you believe. Why do I cast a circle? Why do I face the four cardinal points when I do so? Why does my altar face east? (Or north, or whatever.)

Any ritual without purpose is pointless. Oftentimes we don't even realize we're trivializing a ritual. We study and practice and everything seems to be fitting together well, so it must be "right," right?

The question of "why?" has brought me up short before. I know why I follow the gods that I do, and why I generally practice the way I practice, but there have been times when I have tried explaining the purpose of a ritual and suddenly realized that the only reasons I actually have is because someone I respect said that's how it should be done.

Realizing you don't have an answer doesn't make you a bad person. It just makes you imperfect, which we all are. More importantly, it offers us an opportunity to be more perfect, to seek out reason for our rituals or altar our behavior according something something that does have meaning.

Identifying our shortcomings is how we progress. It's also how we can avoid merely acting like Wiccans and instead actually be Wiccans.