Category: Articles
-
Adjective Witch: Words of Wisdom from the Non-Adjective Witch
Categories: ArticlesTags: personal experienceI see it all the time on Tumblr. I’m a storm witch. I’m a death witch. I’m a forest witch. I’m a crystal witch. And for the inexperienced ones, I’m a baby witch. And it seems like there’s the expectation that if you draw your power from a certain major source or if you have…
-
In Her Service: Walking the Goddess Walk
Categories: ArticlesTags: priestesshoodI was a month shy of my seventeenth birthday when I decided I wanted to be a priestess. I envisioned leading rituals, working magick to heal people, and teaching starry-eyed seekers about the Mysteries of the Craft. What I did not envision – not at sixteen and not at twenty-six – was the massive amount…
-
A Tale of Two Prides: Why I Needed Pagan Pride More Than Gay Pride
Categories: ArticlesTags: queer witcheryMy parents were very observant of the Episcopal faith when I was growing up. My father was a lay minister, my mother was a leader in our congregation’s St. Anne’s Guild, I was an acolyte and later a crucifer. The kids all went to Sunday School and Children’s Chapel. As we got older, we took…
-
Wiccan Belief: One Tradition’s Teachings
I can hear the detractors already: “Wicca doesn’t have beliefs!” Well, that’s true and it’s also not. Wicca doesn’t have a single, unified set of beliefs that practitioners are required to adhere to in order to practice. Attempts have been made for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with codifying the…
-
The Agency of Spirits: Getting Uncomfortable About Noncorporeal Beings
Categories: ArticlesOne of the questions that I am routinely asked is whether or not a practitioner can be called to the service of a deity outside their cultural context. There’s a lot of concern in the Pagan world these days about cultural appropriation and the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation, and it is an…