Well, for one thing, it helped me have a much richer experience of my relationships with my grandmother and my mother. They were both practitioners. They helped me learn a lot of the Craft and instructed me when, back in the '60's and '70's males were considered to be incapable of being witches. As much good as the Women's Revolution did for many things, it certainly also had its drawbacks when it came to attitudes towards males, even if that male was an incredibly gifted boy!
Witchcraft also helped me to enrich my relationship with Nature. You can't go out gathering herbs and stones etc without actually getting in touch with the sentience of Nature. I don't think a person can actually even go on a general hike through Nature without getting in touch with that consciousness in some way, shape or form. But for me it also included communicating with plants, stones, animals, birds etc. I just expanded my repertoire of languages!
It also has helped me to develop an ethical code of conduct. This code I have also brought forth into Shamanism. I know a lot of people try to create in their minds a clear distinction between Shamanism and Witchcraft. But being both a Witch and a Shaman, I can testify to the fact that they can be very harmoniously interchangeable. I don't think that I would be as good as I am at either if it wasn't for the other.
Witchcraft also has taught me how to meditate properly to go deep within and access my own inner strength, power and inner peace. This is probably the most important gift of all. One cannot cast a proper healing spell, for example, if one is constantly worried that it won't work. Once the mind and heart are focused on the one goal, any spell will work. It is about being completely congruent with the intent, while at the same time being able to get out of the way and allow the Universe to also participate and create that which you are manifesting....or to create even BETTER than what you have in mind!
I have, for many of my 50 years, been a solitary practitioner of both Witchcraft and Shamanism. Over the last 20 years I have begun to develop a community around myself of fellow practitioners, each on their own path and each able to contribute to the whole. I am not solely responsible for this. I think that each of us has become open to "coming out" of the Witchy/Shaman closet and therefore have also been open to connecting with others of like mind. The better we connect, the stronger we become both individually and as a group. Circles of people entwine with other circles of people and before you know it, there are a LOT of people in each Circle! The community as a whole begins to benefit from our interconnectedness and the positive ripples flow outward to enhance the lives of all whom we meet and touch. That is probably the biggest benefit of all, not just for me, but also for the entire world.
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