I 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 of showing up and doing boring stuff that is the bulk of the job.  No, at sixteen, when I called to the Goddess Ceridwen and asked to be accepted into service as her priestess, I didn’t know what I was getting into or what I would be asked to sacrifice, and I didn’t have the good sense to stop and contemplate that for a while before making life-changing vows to the Divine.  Luckily, I had good and patient teachers who disabused me of the notion that priestessing was all about making custom-blended oils and specialty candles and writing engaging teaching materials.

Don’t get me wrong, I learned to do those things too, but for longer than I care to admit, I thought priestesshood was all about being the leader, the rescuer, and the martyr.  I had a long way to go before all of my reading and practice would turn from knowledge and wisdom into understanding.  And it wasn’t until I was thirty-six that I was initiated to the third degree and bestowed the mantle of High Priestess.

My spirit-mama of beloved memory, Susan, told me early on in my time living and working with her that priestesses in their thirties were the ones who had enough life experience to truly begin to be in the role.  At that time, I felt like I was the exception to that rule and thought that surely she’d come to see that in a short period of time.  I am thankful that she had a keen bullshit detector, because I was in no position in 2007 to be anything more than a studious and hardworking apprentice.  I had a long journey through my own healing to embark on – and almost no insight into the emotional and spiritual depth of the healing that I needed.  Even though I was granted provisional status as clergy in 2011, I was all about talking the talk and less about walking the walk.

In 2013, I took a sabbatical of necessity to attend to my very real struggles with bipolar disorder.  I moved home, took a year off from anything that had to do with the Craft, slept, went to therapy, took my tablets, and intensely reflected on my life.  I finished my bachelor’s degree, received initiation to the second degree on a visit to my spirit-family back in mid-Missouri, returned to Arkansas for grad school, earned my master’s degree, and returned once more to Columbia with renewed fire in my spirit and a solid plan for moving forward.  Only then was I initiated to the third degree – and by the time I had my candidacy discussion with Taz, I wasn’t sure I even wanted the initiation anymore.

And that, she told me, is when you know you’re truly ready for a lifetime commitment to the Goddess.

So that’s the CliffsNotes version of my twenty-year journey from dedication to enduring vows of service.  It is meant to be both a cautionary tale and an inspirational retrospective.  And if I had to do it again, I would do it with a lot more humility and forethought.  While I understand that sometimes the only way to learn something is through difficult and painful experience, I’d prefer it if the up-and-coming priestesses and priests that I train and mentor didn’t have to learn it all the hard way.  With that in mind, I’ve made a rough sketch of a map through the Winding Path for those who are called to serve.

Affirmation

• Reflect on what draws you to Paganism.  What is this calling that you feel, and is it to be a practitioner or a future clergyperson?  Don’t assume that just because you’re interested in Paganism that means you must become a leader or authority of any type.  You don’t.  It’s not required.
• Read about and experience a wide variety of possible traditions.  Even if it’s not your cup of tea, you’ll have gained insight into the depth and breadth of contemporary Paganism and developed an experiential literacy in the different ways of conducting ritual, worshiping deities, and celebrating times of change.
• Figure out what you want to get out of your spirituality – and what you have to offer to the community and the Divine.  Wicca in particular is a reciprocal yet self-limiting spirituality: you will only get out of it what you are willing to put into it.

Dedication

• Apply yourself to learning one tradition of Paganism really well.  This will be the foundation you fall back on in times of challenge and the framework you build upon during times of joy.  If you are a solitary practitioner, please know that you do not have to be initiated by another practitioner in order to be Initiated by the Divine.  One Initiate knows another by the indelible mark that Initiation leaves on your soul.
• Hold yourself accountable for completing assignments given by your teachers, whether those teachers are in-person, online, or teaching through their published materials.  After all, these exercises are for your benefit, not theirs.  Actually practice the Craft.  Don’t think about practicing.  Don’t read the books and not work through the exercises.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.  You will make mistakes.  That is part of the process.  Practice.
• Figure out what your particular skill set can do both for the Pagan community in your area and your local community at large.  Then volunteer your time and skill.  But remember, quality of output is always more enriching than number of hours logged, and for every person who is a visible leader, there are ten people who work behind the scenes to make things a success.  You don’t have to be in the spotlight, and honestly, when you’re just starting out, it’s better to be in the shadows.

First Degree

• Read.  Read everything, especially if you don’t agree with it.  Go back to the primary texts and soak up the lore of decades past.  But do so critically, with an eye for underlying assumptions, biases, and prejudices.  Figure out what resonates with you and why.  This also applies to Reddit, YouTube, TikTok, Patreon, Tumblr, and other internet and social media outlets where Paganism has a presence.
• Begin the difficult work of examining your own assumptions, biases, and prejudices.  Look to your past and identify the root of old wounds in need of healing.  Engage the services of a therapist, even if you don’t think you need one.  Remember that unless your spiritual mentor is also a mental health practitioner, they are not qualified to diagnose, treat, or support you beyond the well-defined boundaries of spiritual care – and even if they are a mental health practitioner, their professional code of ethics may prohibit or limit the ways that they can interact with you in their professional capacity.  It’s best to find a Pagan-friendly therapist that you can work through unpacking your baggage with.
• Start to think about the road ahead of you.  Daydream about the sort of witch you’d like to one day become.  What inspired you to become a witch in the first place?  What knowledge and skills do you want to have?  How do you want to view the world?  What do you stand for?  What do you want to contribute to the community, both the Pagan community and the community at large?  Write down your answers.  Then make a plan to help you become this witch.
• Identify your devotional deities – and be aware that the Divine may come to you individually in a very different way than They come to you during group worship and work.  The deities that I work with in coven are not the same deities that I say my personal prayers to and do my individual soul-exploring work with.  That’s because in coven, we as a group are working together toward an understanding of the Mysteries, and each of us individually are working alone toward an understanding of our Higher Selves.  These are related endeavors, but each journey has its own guides.
• In many traditions of Wicca, a first-degree practitioner is consecrated a sacerdotal clergyperson, empowered to work all of the rites up to first-degree initiation and to lead worship services to the Divine.  They may also be empowered to teach all that they have learned in their own dedicancy to less experienced practitioners who are currently dedicated.  Check with your spiritual mentor and see if you can assist with seeker- or dedicant-level teaching or with open circles if such rituals are held by the group.  This will help you gain full mastery of your skills, as the experience of teaching will help you identify your own weaknesses in learning/training.

Second Degree

• Go back and look at your “daydream witch” plan.  Note what you have accomplished and what still remains to be done.  Reassess your plan to incorporate the natural changes that have occurred in your spiritual needs and interests.  Then retool the plan and continue to work to carry it out.
• Continue your shadow work.  Address your own toxic traits, traumas, and character flaws.  You aren’t looking to become perfect.  You’re trying to heal old hurts, break cycles of abuse, and become more compassionate and spiritually grounded.  Don’t make the mistake of partitioning off parts of yourself – self-acceptance is key to this work.  Only by accepting what is can you progress to what could be.
• Define your particular “magickal major” and design a plan of study to educate yourself about it.  For some people, it’s divination or a specific type of divination such as Tarot or astrology.  For others, it’s history or mythology.  For still others, it’s the intricacies of ritual.  Don’t be afraid to dive into something and then decide it’s not for you.  That’s the beauty of learning – your interests define your experience.
• In some traditions of Wicca, a second-degree practitioner is considered a pastoral clergyperson, meaning that – in addition to being qualified to teach intermediate classes and to elevate initiates to the second degree – they are empowered to give spiritual care to others and officiate marriages and other religious services that have legal implications.  Ask your spiritual mentor if there are upcoming events that you can assist with in this regard.  Exposure is a wonderful teacher, and working as a team with your mentor makes things easier for both your mentor and the people they are serving.

Third Degree

• Reflect on the witch that you’ve become.  Is it what you envisioned in your daydreams?  How has your spiritual journey shaped you?  And how can the spiritual groundedness that you have as a result of that journey be used to help others?  What lies ahead for you?  How will you continue to grow?
• In many traditions of Wicca, third-degree practitioners are fully autonomous and beholden to no one that they do not decide themselves to be beholden to.  In some traditions, there is the expectation that the practitioner, while autonomous, will stay in contact with their mother and sister covens, working together with their fellow priestesses and priests to grow the tradition in ways that strengthen all practitioners of the tradition regardless of their initiatory status.  Who are you accountable to?  Who do you hold accountable?  How will you continue to grow your tradition?
• Go back and re-read the books that you learned out of.  See them with new eyes.  See them as products of their time.  And consider updating your go-to teaching tomes to new, fresh, in-date material.  You would be surprised how much the kids have grown while you were still clinging to Buckland and Cunningham.
• Third-degree practitioners are very often recognized by their communities as leaders, even if they don’t have an active leadership role such as leading open circles, teaching seekers classes, and the like.  Word-of-mouth is still alive and well as a way of finding teachers and spiritual service providers.  Keep this in mind as you navigate through life in your community.  Are you setting a good example for those who look to you?  Have you made enemies for the right reasons: speaking up for the oppressed, defending the innocent, and living by a strong ethical code?  If you have, keep getting in good trouble.  If you haven’t, ask yourself why and seriously examine what that reveals about you.  It is very easy to become the enemy you once stood against.
• Feed your soul by maintaining a daily practice, regardless of whether you’re teaching or serving the public.  If your routine has gotten stale, then try new things.  Remember that you haven’t stopped growing just because you’ve achieved an understanding of the Mysteries.

Continuing Education

As we age, it is very easy for us to lose touch with the younger generation – the ones for whom we blazed the trail so that they could go further than we did.  Well, they are going further than we did, in a variety of ways and with a variety of tools.  When I was coming up in the Craft, we had Witchvox and Yahoo! Groups and a small selection of New Age books hidden in the corner of major booksellers like they were pornographic.  The world is different now.  There’s TikTok, YouTube, Patreon, Tumblr, independent Pagan outlets like The Wild Hunt, and more websites than you can possibly view on any number of Pagan, New Age, and occult topics.  Independent publishing houses hold their own against the old giants of Llewellyn and Weiser.  People are writing about highly focused magickal topics, everything from strengthening your subtle senses to creating custom sigils to celebrating the Sabbats.  It’s an amazing time to be learning about Paganism, so I encourage all advanced practitioners to keep abreast of current topics in the movement and who’s contributing to the discussion of those topics.

It’s also important to look beyond the Paganosphere to see what is going on in the world at large, because those things affect Paganism in ways that may be obvious or may be obscured.  For example, the anti-trans legislation currently sweeping through different state legislatures in the United States affects the Pagan population directly, as there is a thick overlap between the LGBTQ community and the Pagan community.  I recently had a discussion with a work colleague about being afraid to go all-in and buy a house with my partner here in Columbia because, even though it’s a nice little progressive bubble in Central Missouri, what’s happening in the state legislature is frightening to us.  Why put down roots (and a down payment) in a time and place where we may have to pack up and escape in a very real and literal way if things continue the way they’re trending?  What happens if we get married and federal marriage protections suddenly disappear?  What happens if our health care gets deemed ‘gender affirming’ and declared illegal because it’s all about regulating hormones?  It’s frightening and it affects our life and our spirituality and our freedom to live authentically.

That being said, there is a very famous saying in Judaism, from Pirkei Avot (Ethics of our Fathers): “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”  It means that the work of transforming the world into a more just and compassionate place is huge, spanning generations, but each generation must do its part if the work is to ever be completed.  It’s a work that transcends religion.  Don’t we all want the world to be a better place?  Aren’t we all working to make the world – even if it’s just our little corner of it – a place of love and kindness?  And if we don’t want that, then why?  The central Mystery of the Craft is Love.  It is the magick from which all other magicks arise.  It is, in all expressions, a manifestation of the benevolence of the Divine Consciousness.  If we don’t believe in that, then we need to stop and take a serious look at the core of our spirituality because the younger generation needs and deserves hope in the face of the mighty adversaries of climate change, fascism, and genocide.  As advanced practitioners, we must do our part to stay knowledgeable of what’s going on in the world so that we can do our part of the work when it’s time for us to go and do the work.  Magick is nothing without action to back it up.

As advanced practitioners, one of the most valuable things we can do is make contact with and support established direct-action networks.  We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.  We just need to know where the wheel that already exists is.  That network can be something like Women on Web or it can be the local farmers’ market.  It can be a cannabis collective or it can be a domestic violence shelter.  Whatever your network looks like, make sure you keep in regular contact so you’re up-to-date on what’s happening and what that network’s current needs are.  Support that network so when you or your students or someone in your community needs that network, it is there to support you.

Lastly, take the time to record what you know – and let other people know that you’re doing it!  It doesn’t have to be an occult bestseller or a heirloom Book of Shadows.  Blog posts and journals and even podcasts and YouTube videos work just as well.  There will come a time when you are not physically here to guide and mentor the young people in your community.  Take the time now to address their questions so that when you are in the spirit world, neither you nor they must make great efforts to communicate that knowledge after death.