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In the last few months I’ve gotten a higher than usual number of messages from people interested in starting a Pagan, Witchcraft, or spirituality group, and wanting to know if I had any advice.

How long do you have?

Perhaps it’s the hope that the pandemic will end and we can resume social and spiritual gatherings that has people planning ahead and seeking deeper connection and the commitment and camaraderie that a group can create. People seek the mystery experience of a circle, coven, order, or temple. Despite all the wonderful bonds of friendship and magick, groups always pose risks and challenges, and sadly, we often enter into them totally ignorant of group dynamics, assuming the best possible experiences are the only possible experiences. Groups are extended relationships, and like all relationships, there are cycles, seasons, and times when things are smooth and when things get rough. How you navigate those times is the true measure of both the group and the individuals in it. Thankfully, some awareness upfront can help in the long term.

My own path in leadership within community evolved organically, without a lot of early awareness, as I had no real desire to be in anything beyond my immediate peers. My first coven was formed from peers who all graduated from a training program at the same time, consisting of my mother and my spiritual sister. We would gather for the Moons and do spells. I like to plan, and they were happy to let me plan, but they often led the ceremonies themselves. The “coven” had no structure, and it was easy to get along with each other since we all knew each other well.

Then friends who were interested in what we were doing wanted to know more. We would have “guests” to some rituals. A group who hosted sabbats that we were often guests of ourselves decided to withdraw, and turned over their semi-public Samhain to us, and then came as our guests. A book club was formed for those simply wanting to explore—dinner and discussion that turned more into dinner and less discussion. That turned into a study and meditation group that turned into a formal class that graduated into a new, larger coven. Years went by, and suddenly I was forming a nonprofit Temple with core people from that time. Looking back, there was a lot I wished I had known before embarking on any of these things, but I didn’t, as there were few resources. Covencraft by Amber K was my main guide, and I was thankful to have it and still recommend it highly, but I could have used more mentoring and guidance.

So here are some simple thoughts if you are thinking about starting or co-founding any kind of group, even if you think it will be only “fun” and super casual. Casual things often evolve into something else quickly when people feel the intense energy of magick and are touched deeply.

Defined Purpose – What is the purpose of the group, and does everyone agree? It’s easy to assume everyone has the same unvoiced idea, but usually, they don’t. We all bring expectations and assumptions to the table. The biggest problem with groups is that everyone thinks they think the same thing, but everyone has their own definition of what the group actually is and their role within it. You can do it however you want as long as people have clearly agreed. “Circle” and “coven” mean different things to different people, and we come with unvoiced expectations from reading, movies, and our projections about what we want, so it is easy to be disappointed and then blame others. Determining how formal or informal the group is and having some sort of mission statement is good. Is it social, educational, celebratory, or to provide moral support? All those things?

Defined Roles – What is everyone’s role in the group, in light of the defined purpose? What are the responsibilities we each hold? Are they the same? Are they different? Are they equivalent? Simple things can go unnoticed; for example, if you are all meeting at one person’s house, there is a burden for that person to “host” by cleaning, preparing the space, and even having food. Will that burden be shared? What are the time commitments and schedule? How much notice do people need? What happens if you miss a meeting? Is there magickal and/or mundane prep work? In larger groups, are there written “job descriptions” that can be passed on when someone steps down?

Leadership – Is someone in charge? Multiple someones? What does “in charge” mean? What is their responsibility to the group? What is the group’s responsibility to them as a leader? How do they step down? How are they removed? Often the most well-read member becomes the leader in occult groups, but well-read doesn’t always equate with wise. Sometimes the most public and personable person becomes the leader, but personality also doesn’t equate with leadership skills. Thrust into a new role, new leaders can be insecure and make mistakes, or present as what they think a “leader” is, and people will accept that…until they don’t. Make sure you are really clear in what you are doing and presenting, and when you don’t know something, be clear that you don’t. A lot of new leaders of groups assume, unintentionally, an air of mystique because they do know more, but present themselves, without realizing it, as more advanced than they really are. Even if they are “advanced” in comparison to the group, all leaders of groups have clay feet, so be prepared for the process of people putting a leader on a pedestal and knocking the leader off the pedestal. How you handle that is the mark of a wise leader. I was taught that while we are responsible for ourselves, if we take on a leadership position, we have to be prepared to be responsible for the whole, the container of it all. When someone fails to do their agreed-upon part, it’s up to you to make it work.

Dealing with Mess – While physical clean-up after a meeting is important, the bigger concern is the emotional-social mess that can be created. No matter how clear you are, be prepared for the group to be messy. People are messy, and it’s a part of life. I’d be more worried if there were never a problem rising up because that means there probably is a problem, but you don’t know about it. There will be misunderstandings, some that can’t easily be resolved. There will be drama, and if people are social outside the group, their social relationships will impact the dynamic of the group. Is there any thought to conflict resolution? Decision making? It can be as formal or informal as you’d like, as long as everyone knows what they are agreeing to when they join. Often someone assumes it’s absolute consensus or majority democratic, and when it’s not, or a leader makes a final call autocratically, people get upset. How do new people join? How do members leave in good graces?

Relationship Dynamics – Be prepared for family dynamics to play out in a group. Sometimes it can help, but sometimes it’s a big problem. People will work out their parental issues with perceived authority figures and sibling issues with other members. If you don’t personally have those same issues, it will all look foreign to you until you get to know their story. As an only child, I was often bewildered at group dynamics. Even once you do understand, pointing it out to those doing these unconscious behaviors is not always successful because it’s unconscious, and people don’t want it pointed out. Age, in relationship to you, doesn’t always matter. I found myself often taking a parental role to people chronologically older than me. Traditional covens often have structures and agreements that hold the container of these processes. Modern covens and informal groups do not. One of the most destabilizing things for a community, not often clearly taught, is when the group leaders look to the members in a training process for support and friendship or come to rely on them for personal support. While a student is in process, there is always a period of challenge where everything related to the work is a test of the work. Some members get tribal, framing everything in terms of personal loyalty to the group or leader, or the opposite, and rebel against the group and leader and stir problems with other members that were not there previously. It’s easy to take it personally when you think they are your friends who happen to be taking a class, rather than initiates in process in a mystery tradition.

Neglecting Personal Practice – For many, the group becomes everything, and any personal practice or development gets sidelined for the work in the group. Even if doing personal work is part of the group—say, homework or individual parts to prepare before the group meeting—for some people, if it’s not happening at a group meeting, it’s not happening. Don’t neglect your own personal practice and digging deeply into yourself in exchange for helping others. You have to do your own work continuously, often outside of the group. Leading others through a sabbat is not the same as experiencing the sabbat yourself. Guiding others in meditation, when you are responsible for the psychic safety of a group, is not the same type of gnosis you will personally receive when meditating alone.

Isolation – Some formal groups require you focus entirely on them. There is nothing wrong with that as long as you know that, and you know how long that process lasts. For some, you can’t go to other groups or teachers until you finish your first degree, or even third degree, but there should be a clear process and container; it shouldn’t be an indefinite amount of time with a “you can only speak to us” commandment from the group or tradition. When you are able, keep studying with other elders and teachers. Find support in other groups. If you are a leader in your group, develop a peer group outside of any group you lead. Despite any personal relationships you have, if you are in a formal leadership position, it is quite difficult to be personal friends with people in the magickal group who are not also leaders. Having outside support creates perspective.

Ulterior Motives – Ulterior motives makes it sound like someone in the group is truly sinister, and while that can happen, most often it is unconsciousness that makes a motive ulterior, and as it slowly rises to consciousness, the member doesn’t know how to address it. Some might be issues of power, authority, and self-esteem, but the most common is when a group turns into a therapy group, blurring the line between sharing, support, friendship, and co-dependence. If that is what everyone wants, it can work for a time, but it’s worse when it turns into a therapy group for one person alone. How does that get addressed if it’s not what the majority wants? Having clearly defined purpose and responsibilities helps. It doesn’t mean you don’t help a person in need, but determining what you can and cannot do, and what happens in and outside of the group, is an important step.

Identity – Once a group is formed, people will strongly identify with it, often sharing with others that they are members of the group, for a variety of reasons. Some are simply proud of the work being done, or feel excitement about the new adventure and want to share that feeling. Others will have a strong need to do so, to bolster their own esteem and identity, borrowing more strongly from the group’s collective esteem, identity, and energy, often without realizing it. People often come to Witchcraft seeking belonging and will compromise themselves to fit in, even when not asked to do so, because that is what they do in many other social groups. There is healthy compromise for the collective focus and unhealthy compromise. In our early days, we had many members exploring Witchcraft who were obviously not a good fit for it, but they had to come to that determination themselves. They just wanted to be doing what their friends were doing. The process of embracing and rejecting an identity can be rough on the individual, and on the group, and graceful ways to navigate it should be explored.

Contemplation of these nine points can be helpful when thinking about group work and starting new groups. Even if you are informal and dismiss most of this, at least you have given it thought, and if the issues arise, that forethought, rather than surprise, will aid you in the process of navigating what’s next. Despite being a tradition of psychic practitioners, the dynamics of groups will often lead us into realms we did not expect, and part of our magick is to be properly prepared. Deep thought about community dynamics is one of the ways we embody the love and respect we have for our fellow practitioners on the path.

Photo by Christopher Penczak

The practice of magick—or of any spirituality really—is often described as a path. We walk the path. There are many paths up a mountain. Witches walk the crooked path. There is a well-worn path and a hidden path. There is a road less traveled.

These are all ways of describing movement, often but not always progress, and change. How things look at one point on a path can be radically different when you hike further along. The path can have peaks and valleys, the equivalent of high and low points for us. Sometimes it’s easy to walk. Other times the terrain is quite rough on our spiritual feet, causing pain or stress to us and requiring more effort.

We each have an individual path, but that path may coincide with that of a tradition. The techniques of a tradition are the tools and skills to better help navigate that path. Someone has gone up ahead and left information for you to help you traverse it better. As more people go in the same general direction, the path becomes more obvious, though Witches often seek the adventure of stepping off the path and into the wilds, it’s nice to be able to find your way back to common cause. And sometimes your adventures weave onto other paths, and you take those skills, symbols, and ideas back to your crooked path of the Witch.

In the process of creating an individual practice, something I’ve noticed among the practitioners whom I admire and respect the most is the transition. Their path changes, grows, and evolves. It keeps its roots. It’s not flitting from one thing to another, disconnected, but there is a continual synthesis.

As a path, I often describe it following a trail of breadcrumbs. In 2019 I wrote about it specifically here. It’s a key to understanding how to really craft your own practice. There is a belief that once you make communion, or union, with your Holy Guardian Angel—your Higher Self, Bornless One, or Watcher—you do not need any other teacher, that the HGA will teach you. Yes and no. When your connection is clear and direct, your HGA will certainly be a primary source, but often its role is to guide you to the next piece. You might not easily hear linear information from it, though you might. But what I have consistently found is that the HGA will guide you to the next step in the spiritual path, be it direct instructions, connections to other spirits and gods, the right book or course or other physical teacher who will help you in the process. While your HGA becomes the primary tour director of your personal path of evolution, you don’t have to do it all alone or create it out of nothing. Everything you experience nudges you to the next experience, the next bit of information, insight, relationship, healing, or challenge. All are part of the path, not just what you read about or do at the altar. Yet the altar is a visible manifestation of the process.

For me, the personal altar is key to my own unique path. Today many keep shrines to a multitude of deities, which is wonderful. Home spirit shrines, ancestral shrines, patron deity shrines, faery shrines, guardian shrines, elemental altars, prosperity altars, romance altars, healing altars…. our homes become fully functional temples, and I highly encourage it. There is a lot to learn and do at all those altars. Yet the most important is the personal altar, the working altar of the Witch, often, in days past, the only altar, where all these other altars would partake in a piece of the main altar, if at all. The working altar is the microcosm of the Witch’s world, their life, and the most subtle and powerful form of magick is the placing of something on the altar to bring it into your world, and the taking of something off the altar, to remove it from your world.

While we might keep a specific altar to a tradition we are dedicated in and working in, at some point, we have to bring together our own vision of our own world, on our own altar. We might dedicate a second altar to that specific tradition, but the primary altar is where the deep work on the path is made manifest.

Those magickal practitioners I most admire have their altars change, not often, but often enough. Of course there are the seasonal changes of the Witch’s altar. You might move things around and decorate for the eight sabbats or highlight a particular seasonal full or new Moon. But there are the broader changes that reflect your current work. As you practice a new pattern or work with a new tool, or a new spirit or deity relationship manifests, this should be reflected in your altar.

For a time, I was deeply invested in planetary magick, and my altar had a seven-candle brass holder, with tapers for each of the seven planets used in my work. I went through a long process of deepening my relationship with the seven wandering star gods, and then when that was complete, my altar changed. In a period of deep plant spirit healing and education, my mortar and pestle became centered on my altar, with many bottles of oils and tinctures of the plants I was working with at the time. My HGA brought me through a guide series of working on the “Crown of Witches” using imagery of both the north star and the zodiac, and the center pentacle of my altar was ringed with twelve stones for the zodiac. I would turn the ring for each visionary ritual, placing the stone of that sign, that point of the crown, in the center before me for the rite. In doing deeper elemental work, I would have various cards of the tarot out from the appropriate elemental suit, and have the court cards prominently displayed, asking the court to be inner world teachers. For a time I was building a better relationship with a familiar god of my youth, Ganesha, and had my Ganesha statue centered on my altar. Currently I’m completing work with seven goddesses who are in some way aligned with Venus’ powers, and have seven goddess statues upon my green cloth at the “top shelf” of my altar, along with copper, emerald, rose quartz, and various Venusian oils, incenses, and talismans.

The basics of my altar always remain, as they are fundamental to my worldview. The four elemental hallows are there; the black and white pillar candles for Goddess and God are there, as well as my cauldron, my pentacle, my scrying bowl, my stones, tarot cards, my incense burner and ash pot and offering bowl. But the change indicates an addition to my practice, a particular focus at this time, a request to the universe about what I want to experience or learn or the direction in which I have chosen to grow. And the universe—and those powers embodied by the altar—respond. When the work is mutually agreed to be complete, the altar is reset—sometimes to a ‘neutral’ position of just the basics, sometimes to a new direction—with many of the same fundamental elements.

Gifts from other practitioners can often be a sign from your HGA as to what is next. Several gifts of the same theme are a cosmic 2 x 4 to get your attention. A gift of a set of mala beads from one and a mantra book from another within a week of each other began for me a now lifelong fascination with mantra practice, and eventually a friendship and travels with someone who was deeply trained to be a mantra teacher, having great insight beyond the books to share with me. I have had significant gifts come to me from elders in the community, including a key and my first amber and jet necklace, unknowingly confirming a period of significant magickal work I had been doing.  

Readings from other practitioners when questioning your life can open a new door. I had an astrology reading that mentioned alchemy, and it opened the door to a whole exploration of something I was fascinated with in my younger years, now with the context to understand it better and put it to use.

I was always a Witch, even when working with foreign gods or the grimoire techniques. I considered broadly what I was doing as my Witchcraft, and as I gained experience, much of what I learned was folded into my daily understanding, worldview, and way of doing things. While I encourage people to fully engage in the trainings that are before them when studying in a school, tradition, or with a teacher, there is that point of adepthood where you have to synthesize all those pieces yourself, with your HGA, but it’s up to you, no one else outside of you.

Get your foundation. Learn a way deeply so you don’t flounder and fail to recognize what actually works and what does not, but then it is up to you. This is the key to the mature practitioner. In Part 1, we asked ourselves questions about setting up our practice. In Part 2, we looked at all the pieces we had and how they do or do not work together. And at this third step, we progress forward in our own unique way.

Photo by Matheus Bertelli from Pexels

Not too long ago we received a question, or possible concern, about the frequency in the Temple of Witchcraft’s offerings of the name “Lucifer” and asked if this was always a part of the Temple’s teachings or a new direction towards which we were all heading. In a class on one of the beloved dead taught by a High Priestess and teacher in our school, Karen Ainsworth, the fallen star of Lucifer’s emerald in an Arthurian myth was used as a symbol in comparing the loss of a bright personality, in the form of Freddie Mercury. While it might seem strange for a bunch of Witches to honor the singer of the rock band Queen, I can tell you with great certainty that since the late 1990s, Freddie Mercury has been one of the pop culture figures to show up repeatedly in people’s meditations as a guide or teacher. I’ve lost track of how many people have said something like, “This is going to sound strange, but my spirit guide was Freddie Mercury from Queen!” 

We had another concern from the public when our Aquarius Lead Minister, J.T. Mouradian, offered a class on Jesus of Nazareth. Aquarius is our ministry of rebellion and public service, and will often offer things that surprise some. Similar concerns popped up in 2018 when I did a class on the Morning Star principle, and later, through a year of what I affectionately referred to as my “Heretical Sabbat” series of classes and meditations. We explored the Christian folklore and holidays near the popular and familiar Neopagan sabbats in an effort to claim some deeper mysticism, looking at what was originally borrowed by the Christians from the Pagans, and what was distorted in folklore as being demonic or evil.

Often the question is, “Are you secretly Satanic?” Or sometimes, “Are you secretly Christian?” The answer to both is no. We are occultists at heart. We are open to all kinds of wisdom. We look to see where all wisdoms intersect and draw from that point of light. 

If the question was, “Are you secretly Luciferian?” I would have to ask the questioner what they mean by that word, but depending on my mood, I might say yes, and not so secretly, but also probably not in the way you think. We don’t have rituals that venerate or worship Lucifer, but we have no rules against it either. Sometimes, to get around the obvious implications that some hold with the word, I might answer with “We are very Promethean” which will often force the questioner to have to follow up and ask what “Promethean” means, and that can start a fruitful conversation. 

The Temple of Witchcraft has always been about the light bearer in its ethos. In our first-degree mysteries, we learn the magick of psychic light, sending and receiving light as energy for healing and manifestation and information for divination and answers. Light is at the heart of our magickal correspondences, the power of visualization to manifest our intentions, and to experience true vision and prophetic sight. Even when we think we are not visualizing something, we are still receiving the vibrations of the unseen light of the astral. 

We are also devoted to the light bearer in terms of illuminating gnosis, of bearing information, knowledge, wisdom, healing, and hope into the darkness, as many of our most sacred images are of light bearers and torch wielders acting as guides and guardians. But collectively, we are not devoted to any one entity or moving in any one religious direction as a community.

We are devoted to Witchcraft, but have a pretty wide definition of Witchcraft as a science, art, and religion, as I learned first from Laurie Cabot. We are devoted to the Witch Soul, and through that, what is known as the Anima Mundi, the World Soul or Cosmic Soul which often, but not always, manifests as a Goddess in our history and folklore. When we collectively honor Hecate as Queen of Witches, we are seeking her in this form of the Soul of the World, connecting us all. 

We are a tradition of technique, and the techniques lead to experiences that often have a common foundation. We have no statement of belief, but when we teach the metaphysical foundations of the Temple, those techniques in whole, through a five-degree process experienced over seven-plus years, often lead students to what is considered to be a Hermetic, panentheistic, “soft” polytheistic, mystical view of Witchcraft. Yet no one is required to describe themselves as such, and most members have their own words and statements for their worldview and beliefs. We simply encourage those beliefs to be based on experiences, and when experiences change, being open to shifting paradigms and widening “reality tunnels” as Robert Anton Wilson wrote about. 

Our community mythos is likewise open-ended. We share common structures, terms, and poetry throughout the training, along with spirits specific to the tradition that are not directly found in folklore or history. We look to the great goddess as the function of fate, and the image of the Weaver and the Web. We look to the great god as the function of the logos, and the image of the Singer and the Song. Our occult history speaks of a pan-cultural global flood myth, the Sea People and Water City, the spark of light in matter, and the weaving of light that is also the basis of magick. These common points link greater public rituals and our initiations, but no belief or private use is required outside of the initial training. Being founded in technique, each member has the freedom to explore whatever relationships and pantheons they wish. Seek who calls to your heart and work with who shows up. Much like life, who you think you want and who wants you is different. Often who you need and who needs you is different than your first assumptions, so we don’t encourage people to pick a pantheon and stick to it only, but in this global world, to follow the unfolding strands, the trail of breadcrumbs, and see what unfolds for you. 

Teachers, ministers, and members are encouraged to share what they feel called to share. Just as currents will arise in the solitary practitioner, currents will arise in the community group, and the larger community. Ever notice how there are trends, even in our Witchcraft? For a few years, a particular goddess—or a particular technique or culture—will ascend in popularity, and then ebb a bit as a new tide comes in. When I began, everything was focused upon Isis as the great mother, and then that trend receded. Likewise we have currents in the Temple of Witchcraft, but they don’t embody the direction of the community and do not reflect changes in the Mystery School specifically, as we are based in technique. Even in my own recent classes—moving from this heretical sabbatic lore to now a more Egyptian-influenced metaphysics—does not demonstrate a shift to Egypt for the whole Temple, despite my being a co-founder. Instead, it’s just something I wish to share because the techniques are helpful to me. 

Look at the patterns that repeat, but with different nuances in different times and places to find your wisdom as a Witch. At first, many of us reject all things Christian because of past upbringing, and this is a good and necessary phase to make the break; otherwise we might still be practicing Christianity and calling it Pagan Witchcraft. But once you break away and heal, you start to realize there is a world wisdom, a perennial tradition beneath the mysticism, not dogma, of all traditions, points common to the human experience here on planet Earth, and that is where the heart and soul of wisdom can be found. We simply must struggle to find its expression in our own hearts, in our community, and in the context of our greater time and place. As occultists, look by function and force, as well as form. Look for patterns. Look at themes. Keep an open mind, but more importantly, keep an open heart and a willingness to reach out to other wisdom keepers, and in turn, accept the hand being offered to you.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

To Dare! One point in the Witch’s Pyramid. One must be daring to be a Witch, to even claim the identity of Witch, at least on some level. How could I not? It is what I am. Many people are things they cannot verbalize or accept, so this daring is an act of magick. In this sense, we can and should embrace our daring, our boldness, if we seek a magickal life. Bravery is required to step into the dark and commune with unknown gods. Bravery is required to set your will and take action, spellcraft and otherwise, to make it happen. Being a Witch is not everyone’s cup of tea. So be audacious!

Yet there is the audacity that forgets the other points of the pyramid that balance this wisdom—to know and to keep silent. To will, the last corner of our pyramid, partners well initially with daring, but audacity that is not partnered with knowledge and awareness of both self and others—especially the recognition of when to speak and act and when not to—leads to the type of audacity that is rudeness, impertinence, and impudence.

While we have our own codes that are not understood by all of the outer world, a Witch’s honor is akin to that of a chivalrous knight or samurai. It may be written uniquely on the stars or upon sacred bark or in the scarred flesh of our own hearts, but we live by a code of honor. My code is not necessarily your code, but like Witchcraft itself, we recognize the heart of this honor in another Witch.

Sometimes we think we are honoring that code, being daring and brave, when in reality we are embracing rudeness.

A friend just shared with me that at a Pagan gathering, another Witch, considered somewhat an authority as a presenter at said event, told him that something he shared from the tradition he was trained in was “wrong” and that he and they needed to stop doing it immediately or otherwise they were being harmful to everyone in the community. Spoiler alert: what they were doing was not harmful, nor was it controversial in 95% of Pagan, Witchcraft, and magickal spaces.

She did so under the veil of great kindness, generously offering “needed” aid by taking him aside, but her act was filled with a level of assumption and presumption, having never experienced their ritual directly, being ignorant of the deeper theology and meaning behind why they did the practice, and without an understanding of what the members of the tradition experienced when doing the ritual. It simply did not conform to what she personally felt was appropriate for her, but instead of asking further questions—or even permission—before offering authoritative, unrequested advice, she told him it had to stop.

In short, she had the audacity to not only believe she knew what was best for a group of Witches she didn’t even know, but also to voice that opinion, presuming a level of authority or responsibility under the aegis of making the world better, i.e. outwardly conforming to her virtues, assuming that her directive should and would be followed. But this wasn’t her class. He hadn’t asked a question. She was nothing more than a new acquaintance of his at social time during an event where people were informally sharing on a particular topic after hours. No one else voiced concern about the supposed “harm” he was doing.

When I first heard about his story—and that at the time, he wasn’t in a place to either engage more deeply or tell her to fuck off, since he wanted to keep this after-hours social hangout pleasant—I got mad. I personally know everyone involved and was just stunned at the audacity. I get deeply concerned when speakers, leaders, and teachers in Witchcraft act this way. I am concerned when anyone does it, but particularly when the strong voices in our magickal community do it.

While today it appears the thing for public figures to do is offer their opinion freely as what others should do, in the metaphysical world, good leaders and teachers generally eschew forcing their beliefs on others. If someone is acting illegally or causing actual direct harm, we take direct action, but in matters of metaphysical or theological opinion, it’s not our place to dominate; otherwise occultism/Paganism/Witchcraft becomes another tradition where authority figures tell you how to think, act, and be. Ours is a mystical tradition of personal unfolding on the path. We can guide those with whom we are in a sacred student-teacher relationship or those who have come to a workshop, but even then, though we can presume they have come to listen to our view, we nonetheless can’t presume or force our view on others. Right for one is not right for all, and our traditions are of multiplicity. There are many things that I disagree with in many magickal groups, but thankfully, I am not part of those groups The caveat is that those things are wrong “for me” or “for the people I work with at this time,” but everyone has the freedom to seek in their own way on their own.

It reminds me of the popular internet graphic originally from A Small Fiction by author James Mark Miller, and often erroneously attributed to the author Terry Pratchett:

“Why do the townsfolk fear you?” she said.

“Because I can do things they can’t,” the witch said.

“Like?”

“Mind my own business, for one.”

Likewise, on the other side, I recall an episode of the HBO show True Blood where Holly, a Witch, gives the shapeshifting bartender Sam a bag of herbs to ease his rage. His response, “You got anything that works for nosiness and bad boundaries?”

Those are the two sides of this. Knowing when to dare is as important as the daring itself. Am I called to take action here? Who is calling? Is it my soul, my gods, or my ego? Can I be divinely audacious and live that magickal life, doing what is necessary? Or will I confuse Divine Necessity, the weaving goddess of fate, with my own self-importance and desire to be in charge?

Most good Witches I know have been on both sides of it, myself included, because you need to experience both and become conscious of it to choose your divine audacity. Most of us go through it. It’s a natural stage of our growth, but hopefully we outgrow it before we are in a position where we could abuse any perceived authority. The trick is not getting stuck here. Choose wisely.

Torch photo by by Kelly L from Pexels | Wine Photo by Polina Tankilevitch from Pexels | Weaving Photo Nickolas Nikolic on Unsplash

Traditions evolve through the living practice of them. They adapt with the people who love them, in groups or alone, and those who fail to change will also fail to meet the needs of their people and will either calcify into dogma or wither and fade. Some traditions are recorded and revived by others at a later date, but many just disappear when the group or practitioner no longer holds to them.

Traditions are not opinions. Opinions can be rooted in traditions, but they can also be untethered from actual experience. Academic opinions carry one kind of weight. Life experience with a magickal mystery carries another. The two combined can be really helpful. If they are separated, I tend to favor the voice of wisdom and experience over the voice of knowledge alone.

There are many opinions, especially those offered from the safety of online spaces, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do, say, name, or believe. People will be quick to say “this is true or right” and forget the caveat “for me” or “true and right for me and the group with whom I practice.” Things also might not be true for you. If you are offering to show another idea or perspective—or perhaps like me, you want to know all the folklore and techniques even though you know you can’t know it all, as the true knowing is in the doing and living—you’ll never turn down a bit of lore or wisdom, adding it to your own stew to see if it congeals with something you already know and do. Different points of view can bring insight.

Traditions are living things and travel from one person to another. There is a legacy passed nor just of technique or poetry, but of paradigm, orientation, and mystery. You receive an inheritance from teachers and traditions. I learned from some elders that it is a mystery of the torch and cup. You pass the light which must be tended as a living thing. It illuminates and inspires. By its light you can see and understand what is being added or changed. The oft-quoted Gustav Mahler taught, “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” Don’t mistake one for the other.

The cup is a body of knowledge we must be careful not to spill because we must pass at least some of what we were given by our teachers to the next generation; ideally the cup will get a little fuller with each pass. Some drink of the cup and do not refill it before passing it, either holding knowledge to be “better” than those who come after or keeping it as a secret. This results in each generation being more uneducated than the previous, at least to specific teachings and the quest to fill the void with other things. A true teacher should wish that their students surpass them and therefore shares generously. At times we might hold back if prerequisite knowledge or experience is not yet there, but we do so out of a sense of their safety or to encourage their ability to seek, but not to be a miser hoarding information.

Things will change. Some will be conscious decisions. Others will organically evolve. New traditions will be seeded from the past. In many ways we are not handed a torch or a cup, but a thread. Each teacher and mentor passes a thread, and we weave our own to perhaps pass to another. Ideally the thin threads re-spun from the occult and Neopagan revivals are being fortified with more academic knowledge, but they must be lived. It’s easy with new academic knowledge to want to wipe it clean, tear it down, and start fresh—and some will—but I’ve found life to be a bit too messy for that, and that’s good, as life in a “nature” religion should get down in the dirt and be messy. Today many will claim that no thread, torch, or cup was passed to them, but often there will be key books and now even online presences that do much the same today through in-person groups, teachers, and mentors.

Things of the modern era gain a momentum in the living, for even though they are recent traditions, they came about to speak to the needs of the people. Discarding them without deeper reflection disrespects our teachers of the recent past, without whom many of us would not have access to what we do today in the same way.

I think of the annual controversies of the Sabbat names, with 2021 having fierce online drama about Mabon vs. the Autumnal Equinox. We have it also around Ostara/Vernal Equinox, and Litha/Summer Solstice. It’s true the name Mabon was started by the American practitioner and author Aidan Kelly in 1974. Yet the first strands of tradition I was passed, by my first few mentors and teachers, always used Mabon for the Autumnal Equinox. I get it. Our cobbled-together Wheel of the Year has some inelegancies woven in the beauty of it, like so much organic folklore: four Gaelic names for fire festivals, though one is often traded for the Saxon Lammas; a Midsummer, but the Midwinter is more often called Yule as astronomical seasons don’t match these folkloric mid-points but start the seasons; and equinoxes that are more academic Latin than British folkloric in the words “vernal” and “autumnal.” There is an urge to make it flow better, and as a living tradition, different approaches were taken, and some grew popular. Drawing from mismatched myth, modern Witches and Neopagans crafted a meta-narrative about the wheel as a whole and illustrated it with classic mythic examples. The Goddess of Light and Spring is expressed by Bridget at Imbolc, but most versions of the Wheel don’t have Bridget specifically throughout the whole wheel. The Goddess changes faces as does the God. Modern traditions, like the Temple of Witchcraft, are redefining it in the context of new godforms and myths rooted in the old.

The name Mabon disliked by so many as having nothing to historically do with the equinoxes actually casts a powerful bit of magick upon us all who contemplate it. Mabon opens the gate to mystery, for Mabon himself is a mystery. A whole myth cycle—the Mabinogi or Latinized as The Mabinogion—is named for him, yet none of the four branches are really about him. One story exists, but the themes of that story show up throughout the Mabinogi—mothers and children; the Otherworld; being lost, hidden, or imprisoned; and growing older. In fact those themes are cross-cultural and directly speak to the greater meta-narrative of the whole wheel’s regenerative mystery. Where names of the summer solstice are often accepted as they are—the name Litha generates little other than a nod perhaps to megalithic structures believed to align with the solstices—Mabon, when seriously contemplated and studied, opens a whole world for us, even if our desire is not Welsh, or even Celtic. Complaints and ire against those who phonetically say May-bon rather than the more traditional and “correct” Ma-bin must also be apoplectic over changes in the names of figures such as Odin, Othin, Wotan, Woden, Wodan, Wuodan, Wuotan, Wōđanaz, and of course Mr. Wednesday over the span of years and regions. Or one can realize things change, and we are witnessing a living current of tradition adapting to region, dialect, and accent. The American tradition of Mabon has been imported back into the British Isles.

The birthplace for modern Neopaganism in the English-speaking world comes to us from the British Isles, with its fabulous mix of mystery of the Neolithic mound and megalithic builders, all of the British Isle Celts linking back across Europe to the Indus Valley, the Romans, and their ties to the Greeks and the Saxons, and their ties to all of the Teutonic, and modern England’s connections with Spiritualism and Theosophy even though both were founded in the United States, and their modern connections to—with all their issues of colonization—Egypt, India, and Asia. From here the currents passed to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, mainland Europe, Africa, and further abroad now, with practitioners of Wicca, the mystery tradition we associated with Western Occultism, in India, China, and Southeast Asia. People all over the world, with a general surface understanding of Irish Samhain and Beltane traditions, have inherited a modern Samhain thread, and are crafting their own traditions rooted in their own land and language, many through the lens of American Halloween. It’s not unlike my own celebration of Ganesh Chaturthi in a simple way, with my overall historic understanding of more traditional festivals. It shares the sentiment to celebrate the spirit of the elephant-headed god whom I love, but takes place outside of a traditional Vedic context. And Ganesh doesn’t seem to mind. I like to think he appreciates and accepts all offerings.

As these traditions are practiced, who knows how they will grow with the people in ten, fifty, and one hundred years? What we inherited in the rich and fertile proto-mix of the Paganism of the 50s, 60s, and 70s allows us to have these conversations. Are they perfect? No. Today, with access to everything, we keep expecting a perfect and congruent tradition where all the parts fit and have an internal timelessness to them. I know that speaking for myself, that was the eternal quest with each of my teachers and traditions. There must be more! The mystery must go deeper! And there is, and it did, but it was messy. I never found the perfect fit, and all that I’ve created has been wonderful, challenging, and messy to my sense of order. One need only to look at any religion or myth and find it’s messy. The Bible? A mess of stories that were not necessarily made to go together, obviously drawing upon other Mesopotamian myths now in the monotheistic context. The Egyptians? Different tales in different temples. Who created the world? Depends on when and where you are. The Greeks? Their written records, assumed to be drawn from oral traditions, all disagree in details and philosophy. Is there a difference between the outer forms of the temples and cults and the inner forms of the mystery schools? Probably. It’s easy to dismiss things as muddled or simplistic because we live outside of their original setting, life experience, and cultural context. There might be an underlying universal wisdom, and I wholeheartedly agree with that, but in manifestations, it is all about the regional influences that shift in time and space. Ideas migrate with their people, and like people, change over time. Some settle down and some keep traveling. And some just disappear. It’s hard for us to see it today, as we are in the mix of these processes now, and we’d like to look at them from the lens of a far-off time when things have settled, not when they are morphing and mutating all around us. Most won’t endure. Look to what has longevity already, even if it’s not your cup of tea.

If we take these myths as literal truth, then the mythic differences bring us into madness and dogma, something as magickal people we should seek to avoid through our ability to hold two truths, the mythic and the academic. Tibetan Buddhists can have the theology-mythology that Tibet has always been a Buddhist nation founded from antiquity by Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa, who was the earlier incarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, giving rise to the idea that Tibet has always been guided by the bodhisattva of the Buddhist tradition. Historical research reveals that Buddhism as a coherent philosophy made it to Tibet in the 6th Century. Prior to that it was the indigenous Tibetan spiritual and magical practices as found in Bon, which has been adopted into later forms of Buddhism, but still has its own individual practices. Which view of history is right? It depends on what you are seeking. All of our traditions have mythic truth and academic truth. The Dali Lama can acknowledge both and have no dissonance in understanding these two different levels of truth simultaneously. Neopagans struggle with it. There is a teaching to the mythic ideas of an ancient lineage and pedigree, to the medieval Witch and the Burning Times, that confers a connection and plays a role in the magickal initiation process. But there is also the need for academic research to correct erroneous facts while not dismissing entirely the evolution of folklore and mythos. We must work to hold the two truths individually and as part of a community that can hold them as well, weaving them together when necessary and holding them separate as needed.

If we seek any form of a greater “big tent” Pagan community for support and shared resources—and honestly, simply for fellowship with like-minded, but not same minded—we must be okay with our shared histories and webs of practice. There is a time to see the shared collective and a time to express what is specific to our practice and to be accepting of differences in those times, to see what is right “for us” and not for everyone while also not denying the collective. There are times and places where people gather from all over, and those core themes carry, and there are times for the regional variations, where you might recognize similarity, but also huge differences. Today it’s hard to see those differences as regional due to the ease of travel by car and plane. It’s not so much the differences between the counties next to you, but between groups around the world, and now, due to the internet, there are connections in every area, with particular paradigms not rooted in a regional history in the same way. The world is wide open. It’s a blessing and a curse.

There will be times when we pass a torch to a small group of people in our inner circles, and other times when we hold the light aloft to share with all. There will be times when we pass the cup at a closed circle, and other times when we pour freely for our fellows. And there are times when we are weaving for ourselves, weaving for our people, and weaving for the entire world. All are needed. All our necessary. One does not invalidate the other.