Earlier this week, Ella Harrison, Polish Folk Witch, and the Redheaded Witch asked participants in online witchcraft communities to use #occultea and share their thoughts on a series of prompts about participating in these spaces. I’ve spent the last couple of days watching folks on YouTube, Instagram, and elsewhere begin responding, and it’s been really gratifying for me. I both love and hate social media, and in those moments when I feel like I’m struggling or frustrated or failing, it’s good to hear other experiences, either to affirm my complaints or to challenge and reframe them. My relationship with what we now call social media has shifted dramatically since I became a “public witch” (i.e. more people found the blog I’d been keeping for years, and then Patheos invited me to post content there) and then an author with a suddenly much larger (and more distant) audience. Obviously, the experiences of a professional content creator or a witch author are going to be different from more casual participants. I also expected to see generational differences, regional differences, and more. The always-a-joy-to-read Benebell Wen also discusses some of the homogeny potentially resulting from the nature of the prompts and their source in her own blog response, which of course needs to be considered as we watch and read the results in the coming days.
On a base level, it was refreshing to make a video where I wasn’t concerning myself with time or format. I don’t post to YouTube very often for many of the reasons that #occultea raises, and have been really pleased by the encouraging commentary I’ve received. I’ve also found lots of new voices to follow, which is exciting because I’d pulled away from consuming content in recent years.
After I’d posted, I realized that there was a fourth part of the prompt I had missed completely. I think some of the questions were inadvertently addressed elsewhere, at least tangentially, but there are a couple of things I’d still like to touch on here:
I’m never really sure what folks mean when they say “valid.” We use it to affirm other experiences and to bear witness to each other, but I don’t think it means that those experiences should be equated. Are online communities important? Absolutely. Are they the equivalent of belonging to an intimate in-person coven? Hard no. Does that mean they aren’t magical and potentially fulfilling? Of course not. Online communities can be rich, encouraging, and enormously fulfilling. It’s also true that there’s an issue of access. Not everyone can participate in in-person community, for an infinite variety of reasons. But that doesn’t mean that we should assert that online experiences are necessarily interchangeable with in-person ones. Online communities are valid, but they are not the same. Depending on who you are and what you need, they might be better or they might be worse, but there are marked differences between them. I prefer in-person to online, and count myself extraordinarily lucky that I have such a rich in-person community. I’m grateful that I don’t have to choose, but if I had to there would be no competition.
Which leads me to my perhaps most-controversial comment on this selection of questions: I appreciate the paywall. Not because I think folks don’t deserve access to information, but because of how much a paywall has done for my own mental health as a blogger. I realize that using a subscription platform like Patreon means that not everyone will have access to everything I do. I’ve tried to mitigate that by making the cost as low as possible: $1. It’s a small thing, but it’s completely eliminated the vitriolic comments and personal attacks that eventually drove me to leave Patheos. I don’t blog much anymore on the whole, and a lot of that is because of what me and my friends now call the “fake books debacle” from a few years back, which I literally lost whole nights of sleep over and a couple of personal Craft heroes (I’m glad to see folks are back to criticizing AI and “algorithm books” openly, and I stand by most of what I said, but it wasn’t worth saying). But when I do, the paywall makes me feel better.
There’s also a difference between a writer or other type of creator charging for access to their personal life or their technical experience, and access to a priesthood or to the capital-M Mysteries. In initiatory Wicca, we don’t charge for access to the Mysteries. In our traditions, you can’t buy a connection to the gods, and it would be abhorrent to tell people that you could. If someone is doing that somewhere, then yeah–that’s shitty and disingenuous. But nobody’s internet platform is going to provide you with access to our Mysteries, paywall or no. Somebody’s time and expertise comes with a cost, but buyer beware if they’re promising you more than that. I’m not denying anyone access to witchcraft as a whole by putting some of my thoughts behind a paywall. Witchcraft is available to everyone, but I am not. The problem of accessibility is with capitalism as an oppressive system, not with the choices of individual content creators, I think. Making my books and content and appearances at festivals and conferences free (as if those things were even within my power in every case…overwhelmingly they are not) wouldn’t in turn make my own education free, let alone the cost of just being alive. Those kinds of changes need to happen at a much higher level. I don’t know how we resolve that as content creators.
As far as navigating what’s “worth it” as a financial investment…that’s tricky too. I think it starts by reflecting on exactly what it is you want, as specifically as you’re able. No course or book is going to make you a witch in and of itself. If someone is generally claiming that you’ll leave with some sort of metaphysical power, they’re full of it. Instead, they should be offering specific strategies for developing specific skills: “In this class we will work through the exercises in x book and you will have access to a discussion forum to interact with other learners” or “In this class you will learn techniques for reading the tarot in x system through an exploration of associated symbol systems and the opportunity to practice with classmates.” Look for specifics. Are they operating within a particular system? What learning strategies are they relying on (Reading books or course packets? Group discussions? Worksheets? Turning in homework and getting instructor feedback?)? Read course reviews if they’re available (and not the endorsements on the course website). Finally, evaluate the instructor’s credentials. Are they respected in your wider community (and can you ask others about them)? Is that degree they purport to have accredited and verifiable? Are they part of a particular tradition that’s meaningful to you? Most good courses will also provide you with free samples of the instructor’s work and personal style, many with the opportunity for a refund in an initial trial period if it ends up not being for you.
You should also do some comparison shopping. Sometimes a high cost is worth it, and sometimes it isn’t. The price alone isn’t always a great way to evaluate how useful something is going to be. A high cost doesn’t mean something is great, and a low cost doesn’t mean something is garbage. Ultimately, you get to decide how to spend your own money and what you can afford. I’m willing to go into debt for very few things, and magic classes isn’t one of them by a long shot. Meanwhile, some folks in my family think I’m nuts for spending gobs of money on special food for my cats (holy shit cats are so expensive *cries in cat lover*). That’s a personal choice, and about where my own values and preferences lie, and isn’t a judgment against anyone who makes different choices. (I also think a gold-nibbed fountain pen is a worthy investment but a third pair of pants or a manicure is an unjustifiable splurge, and have been wearing the same blue dress to literally all formal occasions–including my own wedding–since 2019. You do you.)
So, yeah. Lots of thoughts about all of this. I want to emphasize that none of these problems are unique to witchcraft communities. We talk about the exact same thing in all of my university classes (authenticity, access, belonging), and the nerd cons I hang out at have panels every year about all of these and more. I think it’s less about witchcraft and more about just navigating the social in the world we now live in. I wish it were easier, but here we are. I’m heartened, though, that folks are chiming in and sharing their own experiences and thoughts. Maybe together we can get somewhere, or at least learn to be kinder to each other.
thornthewitch.wordpress.com 
I think your type of paywall is the best for two reasons: it allows (almost) everyone to subscribe, and works as a deterrent against the careless use of contents. As a writer I have learned that a book given for free is a book that will never be read.