Category: Articles
-
Tradition and Path: Where You’re Walking and Who You’re Walking With
Categories: ArticlesTags: personal practiceTradition and Path are words that get tossed around a lot in the discussion of Paganism and Wicca. Young traditions are sometimes scoffed at as being ‘really just a path’, as if a path is somehow less important than a tradition. There’s the implication that paths are eclectic or made up and thus less authentic…
-
The Nine Sacred Woods of Wicca: Unlocking the Secrets of the Sacred Fire
“Nine woods in the Cauldron go — burn them quick an’ burn them slow.” Thus goes the couplet from “The Rede of the Wiccae” by Lady Gwen Thompson. In this poem, originally published in Green Egg in 1975, Lady Gwen doesn’t specify which woods are the nine that should go in the ritual fire, only…
-
Building a Personal Practice: A Month-by-Month Guidebook
Categories: ArticlesTags: personal practiceAs the wheel turns to Samhain, the Witches’ New Year, you may feel the pull toward making some witchy new year’s resolutions. To do more witchy stuff. To be more witchy. To enhance your personal practice and live the witchy life. Yes! You can do it! Harness the power of the season of the witch…
-
Witchcraft: The Recourse of the Oppressed
Categories: ArticlesTags: personal experienceWitchcraft is the recourse of the oppressed, and it always has been. It is subversive, countercultural, revolutionary. It breaks unjust bonds. It uplifts the downtrodden. It punishes the wicked. And the real danger for the Craft in the 21st Century is that mainstreaming it and becoming respectable in the eyes of the overculture — which…
-
Calling the Quarters: Unlocking the Power of the Elements
Some people regard the quarter calling ritual as rote memorization to get through before the ‘real’ part of the ritual begins. Nothing could be further from the truth. In a quarters-cast circle, inviting the Mighty Forces of Air, Fire, Water, and Earth into the circle builds power for both the circle itself and the power…