#OcculTea: A Video and More Thoughts

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.

Remember blogs? Me too.

Are blogs still a thing? Heck, are websites still a thing? Do we want them to be a thing?

I spent most of 2023 not being very active on the internet. At least, not in the way that I have been in the past. I spend a lot of time on Discord, where I’ve got a server tied to my Patreon account, and I’ve gotten comfortable on TikTok, but my presence on other platforms has dwindled. In fact–maybe you noticed–I lost my Facebook account in Meta’s last round of “you need to operate under your legal name or else.” It turns out that “or else” is having your account disabled, with no recourse for getting it back. Except they leave it up, and I guess they own it now? I don’t know. There literally is no one to contact about it (there was an appeal period, but that’s long passed), and honestly I’m not overly concerned since I was never particularly engaged anyway. It was only ever a landing page for automatic sharing from my other platforms. No need to send advice–let’s just let it fade into the distance.

Honestly, I’ve barely had the energy for social media at all. The last time I posted, I was wrapping up my first semester of PhD work, and here I am closing in on the end of my second year. The way my program is structured, I have two years of coursework, a year or so to focus on a series of comprehensive exams and a dissertation proposal, and then two or so years to focus on research and actually writing and then defending that dissertation. All along the way, every single semester, I’m working in the classroom as either a TA or a teaching fellow to earn my tuition and a stipend. That stipend is (um) adorable, even for a humanities PhD program in one of the cheapest states in the country, so that means that I still have to work full time (yep, I’m still a corporate girlie).

That upside of that is that I’m really firmly grounded in “the real world,” as both a scholar and as a witch and magician. People hate university professors for some of the same reasons that they think witches are unhinged. The former are “out of touch elites” and the latter are “out of touch with reality.” Either way, the critique lies in the separation from working, mundane life. I’m embedded whether I like it or not, and that absolutely impacts both my scholarship and my magic.

But writer brain is still a thing, and the words have to go somewhere! Ever pragmatic, I spent last year writing a book that I’ve needed my whole life: a smart, critical, short guide to witchcraft and Wicca to give to outsiders I respect. The closest thing to it on the market might be Cunningham’s old classic The Truth About Witchcraft Today, but even that’s a stretch since Cunningham really wasn’t writing for outsiders, either. His work is full of how-to info and magical advice, and I’ve never been comfortable suggesting it to a parent, a journalist, a therapist, or someone I was trying to persuade that I’m reasonable (even if it weren’t woefully outdated). I wanted something that wasn’t trying to teach readers to do witchcraft, or even to persuade them that we’re “just like regular people” or “practicing a safe, benign nature religion so you don’t need to be scared of us we promise.” Those things aren’t necessarily true, after all. I wanted something that would be just as comfortable in a seminar with university students as it would be in a therapist’s office. Some history, some context, some vocabulary, and some analysis, but not so much that it would overwhelm readers or require you to spend $40 with an academic publisher. So here it is!

And, yes, I still think it’ll be awesome for practiting witches, too, especially if you’re curious about other traditions, what those kids are doing on WitchTok, or you want to know more about history without being bored by really dense text full of jargon:

I’m super stoked about this one because I get to put my scholar hat on. You’ll find that the tone is a little different from my previous books, since my audience is different. This is the one to give to your curious partner, your skeptical mother, that coworker who keeps asking you questions, or that student who’s trying to learn but is getting frustrated by all of the conflicting information out there. It doesn’t matter what style of witchcraft you’re into, although my focus is exclusively on the contemporary. I write about what people are up to today, not what anyone says happened in previous centuries. Wicca and witchcraft are treated separately, and whatever emphasis exists on Wicca is within the context of “look how influential this one group is and how it’s shaped wider conversations…and P.S. other witches are sometimes mad about it and here’s why.” Plus it’s short! This isn’t going to bog anyone down…although if you really want to go nuts there are dozens of suggested resources, both by scholars of various kinds and by other witches. And I don’t play favorites–books were chosen to present alternate perspectives, conflicting perspectives, and additional nuance, not to further my personal preferences or beliefs.

Ronald Hutton was one of my first readers, and he wrote me an endorsement that literally made me cry in my car:

“This is the most thoughtful, intelligent, and sophisticated survey of contemporary witchcraft on both sides of the Atlantic available at present and also wonderfully concise. Newcomers will be perfectly served, and practitioners understand themselves and their fellows better.”

Ronald Hutton said that. About my book. I don’t have a lot of heroes, but goddamn he’s one of them.

Witches Among Us will be available in October, which feels like an eternity away, but the preorder is already up! And I’m already booking appearances. The time will fly by! And I’ll be really excited to have a Halloween with a new book to talk about!

I hope you, dear readers, have been well! I’m still alive, and still on the internet, but not in the same capacity. I miss blogging, but I don’t miss the trolls or the community drama. Maybe this year I’ll pretend it’s 2004 and I’m still writing on LiveJournal, just casually sharing my life. That was when it was fun. But look for more as October approaches!

Goodbye, 2022!

Holy shit, friends, this has been a year. I feel like I haven’t kept up with anything, and it’s all just gotten away from me. When that happens, I have to resort to lists:

• I started my PhD in August, and am going to school full time, working as a TA, and continuing to work my full time WFH publishing job. I’m also still working on writing project, managing a Patreon community, and trying to just be a normal person who also happens to practice witchcraft (sometimes hopefully with a coven, albeit that coven is made up of equally busy people who are living in the same unhinged timeline I am). Any one of these things is floundering at any given point in time.
• I wrote a third book! Well, part of one. Llewellyn’s Sun Sign series drops this summer, and I worked with Ivo Dominguez, Jr. to write Taurus Witch. This is a fun, short book that’s perfect for folks who are interested in getting into astrology, or for more experienced folks wanting to connect their understanding of astrology more directly to a practice of witchcraft.
• I’m working on an as-of-yet-undisclosed fourth book, which is also co-written. It’s a massive project that I’ve been itching to undertake for several years now. I’m excited, I’m nervous, I don’t know how exactly it’s going to happen. But it will! More on that when *I* know more.
• I’ve had some big interviews this year! We kicked off August by flying to L.A. to shoot a video with Anthony Padilla (which I still have lots of thoughts about, and might end up being a follow-up YouTube video or a blog…suffice it to say that Anthony is lovely, this was so fun, and I said what I said, regardless of some of the feedback I got, which was overwhelmingly positive but had its moments). I’m also booked with the Religion for Breakfast team in 2023, which is going to be so fun because you’ll get to meet me wearing my scholar hat! My worlds are about to collide, which is both scary and exciting.
• I had a blast at November’s annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, where I presented on a panel about witchcraft and social media. The other scholars I got to exchange with were rad as hell, I got to reconnect with folks I hadn’t seen in a long time, and it was kind of wild to actually have a university affiliation this year instead of just roaming as a feral independent scholar.
• I’m so sorry to everyone I owe an email or a phone call. I know that’s a lot of people.
• Oh my god did I mention I’m finally doing a PhD? I wasn’t sure that was ever going to happen, but here we are. Obsessed with my cohort, obsessed with my advisors, and *real glad* I had an extra decade to establish solid personal boundaries, develop some teaching skills, build a professional network, and go in knowing exactly what I want to do. Grad school is hard, but I tell you what: it’s way easier after years of therapy and working successfully in other career fields. It’s also just objectively a million times easier than being a Title I classroom teacher, so that bit of perspective has helped a lot. It takes a lot to rattle me these days.

I’m still posting on YouTube, but lately I’ve been most active on TikTok. I know, I know, TikTok has a bad rep. But honestly, I’ve been having a lot of fun. It’s a different crowd of people, a different medium, and it’s been cool and challenging to do something different. I get that there’s a lot of crap out there, but I really don’t believe it’s any worse than anything we see on every other platform. So if you’re curious, find me @thornthewitch!

Here’s the Anthony Padilla interview, in case you missed it! Yes, the title is clickbait, but, well, that’s the nature of the beast sometimes. I’m not mad about it. And this man was delightful. I hope you’ll be pleased with his compassionate, open approach!

And here! Have my latest YouTube video!

So hello to a new year! Lots of good things up ahead (that hopefully I’ll decide to blog about). I hope you all are well!

Learning and Unlearning Witchcraft: Can Bad Info Ruin Your Practice?

My book, The Witch’s Path: Advancing Your Craft at Every Level, is out on Wednesday! Written during a period of personal burnout, it’s a book about taking next steps as a witch (but really, could apply to magicians and occultists more broadly). Whether you’re an exhausted group leader, an armchair occultist who needs a shove, or an overwhelmed beginner trying to figure out how to create something meaningful for yourself, The Witch’s Path has you covered. I draw on my background as a classroom teacher to discuss core concepts that apply regardless of tradition, differentiating exercises to challenge readers at all levels of practice and experience.

The following is an excerpt from my chapter about literacy, research, and how we go about learning and teaching witchcraft. Enjoy!

Unlearning

It can be tricky hunting for advice from other Witches, especially on social media. There are a lot of cynics out there who paint a dire picture of the quality of information circulating in Witchcraft spaces. Maybe you’ve heard from them about all the dangerously bad books that are supposedly out there. There are even more bad blogs, bad channels, and bad social media posts, they say. There’s just badness all around, making it impossible for anyone to really learn anything genuine. False teachings, and incorrect history, and shoddy magical techniques, and misinterpretations of traditional material, and goodness knows what else. How on earth can anyone be expected to get off on the right foot and learn things correctly when they have to wade through a cesspool of misinformation, both online and on bookstore shelves? If only everything was peer reviewed, or curated by experts. If only publishers would stop appealing to the lowest common denominator, come the angry cries. If only beginner witches would get off social media, get serious, and do the work. Am I right, or am I right?

It sounds kind of silly when I actually write it down like that, and it should. This is a lot of melodrama and fearmongering. Still, these are some very common anxieties in Witchcraft communities. They often leave beginners to worry that they’re going to read a book that’s full of misinformation and that it’s going to hobble their progress in the Craft. Meanwhile, covenleaders and Witchcraft teachers worry that they’re going to wind up with students who’ve been exposed to that misinformation, and then they’re going to have to help them “unlearn” something. Practically everywhere you look there are Witches in public spaces complaining about how damaging the wrong book can be. We talk about authors leading people astray, or social media influencers ruining the next generation of practitioners, but it’s time to chill out and put things in perspective.

When I first came to the Craft, I read books that more experienced practitioners told me were going to ruin my later experiences as a Witch. I was told that I wasn’t serious because I was learning from Witchcraft books that were aimed at young people, and that made Witchcraft seem easy and approachable (lots of people seem to think Witchcraft is only authentic when it’s difficult and painful). This wasn’t serious Witchcraft, people said to me. I read histories online that I later found out were untrue, and I experimented with magical philosophies and systems that weren’t very effective. I met a lot of people over the years that gave me advice that turned out to be wrong or unhelpful. I also made a ton of mistakes when it came to my public behavior, how I interacted with my elders and fellow seekers and, later, how I ran a coven and taught within my own tradition.

It was all part of a process. Learning takes time, and it’s not simply a matter of reading the “correct” books, getting the “real” training, or knowing the “right” people. It’s a mixed bag, pretty much anywhere you look.

The fear that you (or your students) will read a problematic book and it will create more work later in the form of “unlearning” may seem like a reasonable concern, but it’s not a helpful place to dwell. You’re going to read problematic books! You just will. You’re going to consume media that ends up not serving you in the long run, or that you’ll enjoy at the time and then question as you gain more experience. You’ll think some piece of history is one-hundred percent factual, and then new research will come out that will totally raze your worldview. Learn to be excited when this happens, and not discouraged.

When I was in the ninth grade, another kid in my chemistry class asked our teacher how he would feel if some new scientific knowledge came out that rendered the periodic table of elements obsolete. My chemistry teacher—who was the best, by the way—said, “That would be incredible! It would mean that humanity was making progress. And wouldn’t it be exciting to get to learn something brand new?”

That’s exactly how I felt when I graduated from my beginner Wicca books and began reading scholarly works on Witchcraft, books of ceremonial magic, and books on Wiccan theology and tradition. Everyone needs to start somewhere, and what seems “bad” to you may be exactly what someone else needs to take the next step forward. Does that mean that every book and blog post gets a free pass from critique? No, of course not! But critique the content, not the person who is consuming it without another point of reference. It’s perfectly possible to read something questionable and not be “ruined” by it (and reading only really great books, by the way, is not an assurance of wisdom or moral character).

If you’re in a position of authority, consume widely and disseminate those materials that you feel are the most accurate and helpful, and do so without allowing your ego to lead you to believe that you already know everything and can’t learn from contemporary voices. If you’re a newcomer, read with discernment and apply the same kinds of tests that you might use when evaluating other sources outside of the Witchcraft community (whether teachers, courses, social media pages, or books). You might be new to Witchcraft, but you’re probably not new to figuring out when someone has an agenda that doesn’t align with yours, when it’s time to look for a second opinion, and when a text is inherently problematic (racist, sexist, transphobic, or otherwise worthy of the dumpster out back). Use those skills you’ve already developed elsewhere just by being a thinking person out in the world.

Learning is an ongoing process. You don’t “unlearn” things—you analyze why they were meaningful at the time, what should change, and then you take the next step forward. That’s all any of us can do.

Like it so far? You can order it here, or look for it at your favorite indie bookstore this week!

Talking to Gods

You may consult the oracle by searching for The Poetry Fox, and giving him a follow on Instagram @thepoetryfox. He does parties and public events, but I’m sure would consider your next sabbat gathering for the right price.

How do you know if the gods are talking to you?

This is something I really struggled with as a new Pagan. In devotional spaces (as well as in witchcraft spaces generally, where we’re talking about spirit contact of all kinds, beyond gods), it’s common to hear extraordinary stories about divine encounters.

I’ve been privy to a number of these conversations. Sitting next to newcomers at a Pagan meetup, cocktail in hand, while some local teacher regales everyone with tales that invariably end with something like, “And that’s when the Goddess came to me!”

And everyone is wide-eyed until someone breathes, “That’s amazing,” with the sort of longing that tells you they’re looking for that experience themselves. That’s why they came, in fact.

Sometimes the tales we hear are a bit more explicit and sensory:

“The Horned God made an appearance in circle last night.”

“I could see Athena before me in ritual.”

“I can hear Herne when I walk through the forest.”

“And that’s when Loki told me to try out for the musical.”

We tell stories like these all the time. People claim to see, hear, and speak directly with gods and spirits.

This talk intimidated me as a newcomer because I didn’t have comparable experiences. And I tend to be very literal (not always helpful in magical spaces). So I was always the quiet person at the open ritual, watching other people have these profound experiences and claim direct contact with things I was desperately trying to believe in. I didn’t grow up in a religious household, and had never had devotion modeled for me. As much baggage as many Pagans and witches carry about the (usually) Christianity of their childhoods, at least they had a vocabulary and a framework that served as a foundation. They knew what people who claimed to have a personal relationship with a deity looked and behaved like from direct experience. I had never seen such a thing, and was really unmoored at my first rituals.

When I didn’t have the same experiences, I wondered if I might just be broken somehow. I had profound experiences, and my magic worked—I had inklings that pushed me onwards, and a deep sense that there was something out there I was missing—but I had no idea what people meant when they said that they “saw” or “heard” gods and spirits.

But in twenty something years of being out in the community, here’s what I’ve learned:

First, part of what we’re doing is, truthfully, art. We don’t have good language for a lot of the experiences we have, so people often speak in metaphors and poetry. Sometimes people are being literal, yes. I’m not here to tell you that there aren’t people out there who physically see entities before them when they do ritual. It’s never happened to me, but you do you. However, most people are not being literal. When asked to elaborate, most people will talk about other kinds of metaphysical sensory experiences. They’ll describe the “mind’s eye,” dreams, or a kind of internal knowing, similar to intuition. They’ll hear a voice “in their head” or have what we would think of as a gut reaction. You’ll also notice that meaning often develops with retelling. In the same way that Christians engage in testimony to reinforce the experience of the sacred, Pagans tell their own stories, over and over. And if you listen at the local meetup to the same stories from the same people from month to month, you will see patterns, development, and the building of a story. It’s not because people are lying. It’s because narrative by itself is sacred. We are performing and creating meaning in the telling. Sometimes meaning happens after the fact, and that’s no less significant. One of the weirdest paradoxes in magic is that a thing doesn’t have to have literally happened for it to be truth.

And all of the above are no less communications from gods and spirits. Which brings me to my second point:

Often, the gods don’t communicate with fireworks. One of the difficult things about learning witchcraft (that “work” we’re always hearing about) is learning to be quiet, to observe patterns, and to appreciate subtlety. Like developing the palate to appreciate really good wine or coffee—to distinguish flavors—or else learning to hear individual instruments in an orchestra, or harmonies below a melody, discerning signs requires attention. If you’re only ever looking for apparitions and trumpets, you’ll miss the counterpoint of being alive.

Today I received a message from my gods at a street carnival, from a man dressed in a fox costume. It was only meaningful because I have spent years building meaning around certain symbols. Particular words appearing by chance, corresponding with things already going on in my head. But for everyone else it was a dude in a fursuit.

The unusual bird perched on the fence. The song that comes on the radio that you were just thinking about. The random page you opened to. The dream you had when you dozed off in front of the TV. Whatever.

Those things don’t usually feel magical enough to beginners. And they can be enormously dissatisfying to advanced practitioners. We all want fireworks (and I’m not saying they aren’t out there, if comparatively rare). But we miss so much when we tell ourselves that only fireworks will do.

Cicada Magic

Photo courtesy of Sagar Vasnani and some royalty free website I closed and then promptly forgot the name of. *screams*

Create sacred space in whatever manner your tradition or intuition deems appropriate. For this ritual, an outdoor setting is ideal. If working indoors, seek out a dark space that reverberates to some degree: a stairwell, an elevator, a basement, a neighbor’s basement, etc. This is most effective when other people are within earshot.

Anoint yourself with mud, dirt, dust, and whatever earthy materials are present. The more the better.

Close your eyes and imagine your skin hardening. In your mind’s eye, feel your hard skin crack and break. Your soft insides take shape, forcing their way from your back astrally, pulling your new legs behind you, leaving only a shell.

When you feel ready, begin screaming.

Continue screaming until the transformation is complete.

So mote it be.

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This post is dedicated to everyone who has ever asked me why I don’t put more spells in my books. You’re welcome.

Secular vs. Religious: Making Distinctions as a Witch

It’s common now to assert that witchcraft is a “practice” as opposed to a religion in and of itself. You might hear this in the context of, “Wicca is a religion, but witchcraft is a practice,” or “Witchcraft is a secular craft–some people just combine it with their religions.” Many practitioners identify as “secular witches” or “non-religious witches,” and our communities are adjusting both our perspectives and our vocabularies to better include and understand the growing variety (which is awesome).

These perspective are valid and make a lot of sense to an increasing number of people, but they do assume particular definitions of what it means for things to be “religious” or “secular.” Those definitions, it turns out, aren’t universal, and they’re worth taking time to explore.

In this video I share some perspectives on secularism and religiosity that are common in the academic study of religion. In doing so, I hope that as practitioners (however we identify) we can start to approach these conversations with a little more nuance, as well as increased appreciation for how religion is understood to function in other contexts. Sometimes, when we say “witchcraft is a practice” or “I’m a secular witch,” or “Wicca is the religion, but witchcraft is a craft,” we’re not being as clear as we think we are.

Don’t Be an Expert Witch: Expertise, Advancement, and Small Ponds

How do you know when you’re an expert at something? Or when you really are “advanced” as a practitioner? For lots of us, we connect expertise to the ability to charge money for something, to when we can point to where others defer to us for our opinions, or to when we repeatedly find ourselves in situations where we seem to simply know more than other people in the room.

In this video I reflect on expertise as a moving target, and how sometimes the way we talk about “experts” is less helpful than we think it is. If expertise is about knowing more than others in the room, maybe you’re standing in the wrong room.

And here’s a second video, because apparently I had more to say:

Serious Play: Shifting Our Perspective on Ritual

My second book, The Witch’s Path, is now available for preorder. I’m very proud of it, and pleased to here be able to share a short excerpt from it.

The Witch’s Path is my love letter/pep talk to other witches as a whole. Whatever kind of witchcraft you’re into (or thinking about getting into), this is for all those people out there going, “Ugh, there’s too much to read and I’m lost,” or “I’ve been at this for years and I’m bored—what’s next?” or, “I love this but I’m afraid to actually practice,” or “I can’t believe how terrible this community can be sometimes—why do I still hang out with these people?” (or, conversely, “This community is amazing and I want to find my place in it.”)

It’s both a beginner book and an advanced book at the same time, if you can believe it. How do I manage that? Well, because I spent a few years working in classrooms full of students at completely different levels, being responsible for all of them equally, at the same time. The core concepts are the core concepts (identity, magic, ritual, community, study, devotion, ethics, and more). What makes us a beginner, an intermediate, or an advanced practitioner is our relationship with those core concepts–how we think about them, what we do with them, where we choose to take them. That’s the meat of the book. Regardless of what kind of witchcraft you practice. There’s no prerequisite to identify in any particular way, to believe in gods, or any of that. There’s room for many perspectives, even where they conflict.

I wrote it for me, when I was feeling burned out. I think there’s stuff here that hasn’t been said before within witchcraft spaces (I pull a lot from my teaching and religious studies background), and I hope that it collectively shifts some of the discourse in our community about how we learn and what practice can look like.

This following short section is from my chapter about ritual. Enjoy!

Serious Play

One of the reasons why Witchcraft is so tantalizing, I think, is because it speaks to something from childhood, be it our actual childhoods or the idyllic ones we wish we’d had (and all children deserve). Kids’ books are full of magical tropes that influence us long after we become adults. When I read my first books on Witchcraft, magic, and polytheism, I couldn’t help flashing back to my own favorites: Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Egypt Game, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, and Roald Dahl’s Matilda. All feature children living secret magical lives, apart from the drudgery of adulthood.

Being a Witch is a little like having a double life and access to a magical otherworld—a Terabithia or a Narnia—that only a lucky few even know exists. Doing ritual is like consciously plugging into this childish sense of wonder. But that feeling of childishness is also inhibiting for a lot of Witches, especially in the beginning. Does ritual seem difficult because you feel stupid? Does your spellcasting suffer because you doubt yourself? These are common concerns, especially for people who come to the Craft when they’re older. As exciting as it might sound on paper, it’s hard not to feel goofy standing alone in your bedroom casting a circle, waving a magic stick around, and reciting lots of florid poetry because you heard it can change your life and you want it to be true. I’ve got one of those professional cubicle jobs and a closet full of sensible shoes—believe me, I know how ridiculous my religion sounds to other people. I should get some kind of commission every time someone finds out I’m a Witch and says, “But you’re smart!” or “But you look normal!” People said the same kinds of things to me in graduate school (because surely only intellectually stunted people think that they’re Witches, right?).

Even if you’re not lucky enough to have people calling you silly to your face, you might have a voice inside of your head picking up that slack. I know I did. We get good at discouraging ourselves and discounting our experiences, chiding ourselves for being foolish or gullible. What if someone walked in and saw? What it someone heard you through the walls? Getting over that self-consciousness can feel like a giant hurdle. There are solutions, though, and they entail taking advantage of that voice in your head calling you childish.

There’s been plenty written in the fields of psychology and education about the role that play fills in the development of children. Aside from encouraging creativity, autonomy, and dexterity, it actually helps with brain development itself. Play is no less important as we age. When I worked as a teacher, my seventeen and eighteen-year-olds also required periods of play in the classroom to retain new knowledge, to regulate their moods, and to build relationships and cognitive connections. Play, it turns out, is serious business. Adults are often discouraged from engaging in play, unless it’s channeled into sanctioned sports and games. Dressing up and playing pretend becomes acceptable in theater, at Renaissance festivals, in cosplay, and in live action role-playing (but even these things often draw derision from onlookers who think participants are questionable). But whether it’s Halloween costumes or football, video games or tabletop games, we all need to play in order to be healthy and happy.

Ritual—as serious as it is—is also a form of play. It might involve costumes, special tools, the use of special names, unique rules, and skills that are equally at home on stage or film. Reciting memorized lines, altering the character of your voice, adopting a new persona, imagining new songs and poems, and plenty more besides, are all strategies we use equally in pretend and in magic and ritual. The skills of Witchcraft are the skills of healthy, well-adjusted children, encouraged to play as they grow up. I believe this is one of the reasons why Witchcraft feels like “coming home” for so many of us. It’s either a return to a lost childhood, or else it’s the opportunity to experience the joy our childhood should have been.

If you begin to think of your magical practice as play and you accept that play is healthy and necessary at all stages of life, then much of the anxiety surrounding respectability melts away. It becomes enough just to enjoy whatever you’re doing, be it dancing in your living room to celebrate May Day or wearing dramatic makeup to lead your coven in a full moon rite. Yes, invoking gods and summoning spirits is absolutely serious work, but it’s also fun. It’s cathartic and stimulating and empowering—exactly what play is for children. Sneaking into the woods at night, keeping secrets, waving a blade in the air, and lighting candles in the dark is fun, no matter how many exclusive initiations you’ve had or how old you get. Ask any ten-year-old. Allowing your Craft to be fun—to consciously be a form of play—will build your confidence, which in turn will make it more effective.

Free Ways to Learn Witchcraft

It’s easy to take a cursory glance at social media and leave with the impression that learning to practicing witchcraft will cost you a lot of money, and certainly there are plenty of us that enjoy formalizing courses, specialized tools, and elaborate altars. But there are actually lot of ways to begin exploring and practicing that don’t cost anything at all. In this video, I touch on five things that you can do to begin building a foundation that don’t entail spending. I encourage folks to share more suggestions in the comments, either here or over on YouTube!