Category: Articles
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Sybil Leek’s Six Tenets of Witchcraft: Words from the Original Witch Queen
Before Laurie Cabot was the “Official Witch of Salem”, there was Sybil Leek, “Britain’s most famous witch”. Sybil Fawcett Leek (1917-1982) was called “Dame Sybil” by some and “That Damn Sybil” by others. A colorful character by any stretch of the imagination, she was a Witch, psychic, and occultist. She grew up in the New…