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 in the nineties (a lot, for sure).
Recently, I was telling Mat Auryn that I wish those of us who have been around for a while would recommend different books. After all, the community has changed, people’s values and interests have shifted, and there are generational differences that we should respect. We know more about the history of Wicca and witchcraft, we have different ideas about what it means to be Pagan, and we have myriad more paths and traditions available for newcomers.
So why are Scott Cunningham, Ray Buckland, and other oldies still at the top of most of the reading lists floating around?
Some fights just aren’t worth having. As I get older, I appreciate how finite time is and how quickly it passes. I started my course with Tarot School, just as an example, in 2012. I bought it for myself as a present for winning a graduate fellowship at my university. I was in my first year of an MA program in religious studies, on my way to a PhD, by anyone’s account. But that didn’t happen. Life stuff came up, I got deeper into the academic life, and I realized that it wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I finished the MA and left. In the years that followed, I wrote and published my first book, worked as a professional tarot reader, went back to school, got a teaching certificate, started teaching high school, and put more and more energy toward writing. I also went back to school, this time for English, concentrating in creative writing. I’m about to be 35. Most of my friends are married, have children, and are a decade into their careers. Their lives are more conventional, and I’m often left feeling like mine has just been a string of false starts and bad choices. I’ve done plenty I’m proud of, but I always think, “Man, what if I’d known what I wanted from the beginning and had just gone for it? How much more could I have done by now?”
But it’s also about choice. Imagine the 7 of Cups—often taken to indicate the need to make a decision without getting lost in fantasy—except instead of resting gently on a fluffy cloud, someone’s beating that guy with all of those goblets while everything goes flying, making a giant mess. That’s the 7 of Wands. This guy, swinging his wand around on that cliff, is trying to take on all of his battles at once, and he’s about to get his ass kicked. Not because he’s deficient in any way, but because he’s not focusing on what actually matters.
It’s out! It’s out!
