Witch Way? Advice To Baby Witches On How To Find Your Path And Develop A Personal Witchcraft Practice

One of the most rewarding parts of being an “Out Witch” with an open shop and a public persona has been the welcoming of Baby Witches (thanks to Otter for this term!) into the craft. 

Beginning Pagans, Witches, Magicians, Warlocks, Druids, Wizards, Practitioners, - whatever self-identification term they eventually decide to adopt - each of them express a wash of gratitude, relief and joy to have found themselves at the start of their Path…FINALLY!!! “I thought I was the only one,” “I didn’t think anyone would understand,” “I felt so alone,” and “Now I know I’m not crazy!” are all common statements they tell me. Then I get to hug them and whisper, “Welcome Home.” Because what they are feeling is so widespread that it has been given the name, the “Coming Home Phenomenon” by author Kathryn Rountree. Experiencing my baby witches’ coming home allows me the privilege to re-experience the joyful satisfaction of my own coming home.

After the endorphins peak out, the next question is invariably, “Now where do I go?” No matter what we call ourselves, we are all Seekers!

 There are certainly very good resources for you to begin a solitary practice or a small group study, bookwise:

Ancient Ways by Paula Campanelli has a year's worth of pagan practice from a very artsy/craftsy nature perspective. It is very hands-on, and you will find fun stuff to do with your kids in this book, outdoors and at the kitchen table.

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Spiral Dance by Starhawk is one of the best guides for developing your magickal skills, with an especial focus on raising, channeling and directing magickal energy  and developing the powers of visualization. It is written from a feminist, activist, self empowerment perspective, which is a voice and energy that can activate the Spirit of a Witch in any tradition.

My first coven began as a working group. We worked our way through these two books for a year and a day, then initiated ourselves/each other. The material in these two volumes is very different but complimentary.

Many of my customers and friends found Scott Cunningham's Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner to be the only introduction to a solitary practice that they needed.

A lot of beginning material is very feminine and Goddess oriented in nature, and while this is good training for all of us, injured as we are by the Patriarchy, an excellent masculine perspective on the beginning/intermediate level is Full Contact Magick: A Book of Shadows for the Wiccan Warrior by Kerr Cuhulain.

Additionally The Triumph of the Moon: a History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft by Ron Hutton provides a solid, fact-checked history of our NeoPagan ways. There is a LOT of misinformation out there, like 9 million women were killed in the Burning Times, witches back then were healers and midwives, and Gerald Gardner's coven held an unbroken tradition of a pan-European Goddess religion that had been stomped out by Christianity. Go ahead and read it, (Drawing Down the Moon and Aradia: Gospel of the Witches, and The White Goddess, for example) but most of the early material on our traditions lacks historical and scholarly rigor. Ron Hutton has distinguished historical fact from early guesswork and outright fabrication for us.

Whatever your source material may be, working your way through the eight Sabbats over the course of a year and a day is a truly transformative process. Grounding yourself deeply into the cycles of the Earth's seasons transcends differing traditions, liturgies, etc. Here is the real stuff with no personalities, politics or rules, just you and the seasons and elements. This is making contact with the Solar year, the masculine cycle in most practioner’s worldview. Likewise, the observance of the Lunar cycle as a devotion for at least a year and a day serves to attune your body mind and spirit to the feminine cycles of our closest Celestial guardian. Your observances could be as simple as a white wine toast to the Full Moon and red wine toast to the Dark Moon, and a drive down a country road on the day of or close to each of the eight Sabbats, or full-on participation in Full Moon and Sabbat ceremonies led by a respected priestess, grove or coven.

As far as online connections, I need point you only to The Witches Voice. You will have ongoing years worth of romp and play in there, with inspiring and challenging articles, as well as contact opportunities for pagans near you, and juicy festivals worldwide that you might want to attend.

Which leads me to...covens. I generally advise beginning pathworkers to avoid covens, until you know the parties involved and the nature and culture of the group. Covens, especially closed covens, are structures easily abused by power/over controlling personality types, bullies and codependent operators. Not that all covens are like this, but it is the closed nature and hierarchical structure that engenders these human frailties. I definitely recommend utilizing the Advanced Bonewitz Cult Danger Evaluation Form to evaluate any coven or group you choose to associate with.

Open groups, like Reclaiming have less for the narcissist to feed upon. I also like the non-hierarchical structure of this tradition, and it is where I learned my own priestess skills, and it would be an excellent foundation no matter what tradition you eventually end up settling on. Reclaiming holds Witch Camps across the country, which are a week long magickal training usually in a wild/rural place of beauty and bliss. I highly recommend a Witch Camp for beginners and advanced practitioners. It is really a great way to progress very rapidly, and then...have no obligations beyond that to the group! Some camps have provisions for children, others are adult-only.

If you can find three, four, or five friends or acquaintances who are more or less on the same level of exploration, I highly recommend the “Working Group” structure. This could be just a group organized though social media like MeetUp who want to do Full Moon circles where everybody trades off leading the group, or it could be advanced to intermediate practitioners who are normally solitary or from different traditions who want to explore a specific area of Magick. For example, my first coven developed as a working group that committed to a year and a day of Full Moon and Sabbat observances and spell work. Our goal was to establish a coven that would continue a developing tradition indefinitely. After our year and a day, we initiated each other into the coven (self-initiated coven). The group did not last long after that, but it certainly had satisfied our goal of becoming initiated Witches with a firm foundation! For another of my most successful examples of the Working Group structure is The Cult of the Faery Star. This group explored Faery lore, mysticism, and was obsessed with the seven pointed star. We were at times an open group, then closed, and eventually went our separate ways, leaving a large volume of fascinating unpublished material and a seven week course of study which one day we may publish.

No matter what direction you go, keep a broad spectrum of either formal or self-directed education into classic studies of logic, literature, history, mythology, natural sciences. If you develop curiosities into these areas, they will lead you to your power paths that develop your Will, and the Magick you need will always be along the way.

Cedar Stevens

2012
Photo and baby witch creation with permission from Dawn M Schiller. Thanks Dawn!