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 …
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 …
Continue reading Don’t Be an Expert Witch: Expertise, Advancement, and Small Ponds
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 …
A friend recently remarked that they appreciated how, after all these years writing and creating videos online, and with all the changes that have taken place in witchcraft communities, I’ve never stopped identifying as Wiccan. It’s true that Wicca seems to be increasingly falling out of favor–for all kinds of reasons–and it’s also true that …
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in more than two decades of practicing witchcraft. Some have been silly, and others have had farther reaching consequences. I spent some time reflecting, and came up with these five that I think of as my biggest. Being too scared to try something and putting off my first rituals …
Do you ever think about how little we actually know about each other? Like, how telling you I'm a witch doesn't actually give you much information at all about what I'm actually up to? And how even words like "Wiccan" and "Gardnerian" don't actually tell you very much, because lots of people use them differently? …
It comes as a surprise to many that I have a day job. Yep–I get up every morning and go to my cubicle (well, to the other side of my house, during COVID) and clack away on a keyboard, purely for the sake of a paycheck and health insurance. It’s pretty mindless. I don’t love …
In this video I wonder about the implications of the use of the term “baby witch” to describe beginners. Maybe you’ve already been hearing this term, and if not, it’s all over many social media platforms (especially TikTok). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIsSLfNPfd4&t=5s Some takeaways, if videos aren’t your cup of tea: “Baby” can be a term of endearment, …
It’s been a long time since I’ve been a beginner, but being active on the Pagan and witch Internet means that I’m constantly in contact with newcomers. I see their questions (and sometimes have them directed at me), I check out the books they’re reading, and I watch what’s changing since I first got started …
Thorn Mooney 