Hedge Druid’s Craft

by

The Veil Between the Worlds will be here soon!

No, I know, Samhain has come and gone. But the second book in my new ficion series, Witches of the New Forest, is now available for pre-order on Amazon! This is only for the Kindle edition, but the paperback will be released the very same day. Both will be released on 1 December 2024. Order your copy now! And don’t forget, books also make wonderful holiday gifts 🙂

Synopsis

Hunter is dealing with the fallout that came from her last hedge riding ritual. Her world has been turned upside down, and now she must focus and throw herself into her studies in order avoid thinking about her relationship with Jack. She and her sister, Ryder, are currently thousands of miles away from home, in the little village of Burley deep in the New Forest of England. This quaint little tourist spot hides many magickal secrets, and is a liminal place where magick, myth and legend are very real. The sisters have already been confronted with many challenges as they learn more about their magickal heritage and legacy. However, now they have even bigger problems to hand.

   It seems that Hunter has made some powerful enemies, and she must keep her friends and family safe. As she learns even more about her heritage and what that means to her as a magickal practitioner, she grows in power. But is she using it wisely? And just what will happen when she finally does cross the veil between the worlds?

This is Book 2 of the Witches of the New Forest series, and is the second part of Hunter’s trilogy.

Praise for Hedge Witch, Book 1 of Witches of the New Forest series

“I have really enjoyed all of Joanna’s books and couldn’t wait to start this fiction one. Wow I wasn’t disappointed, I couldn’t put it down and escaped to the beautiful New forest with the wonderful characters with great dynamics. Her knowledge of witchcraft makes it one of the best and believable witchy books I have ever read. Can’t wait for the next instalment.” Amazon 5 star review (UK)

“The story is absolutely enchanting while also being quite educational. Trust me when I say that this book is entirely worth every cent it costs. I can’t wait for the next installment to come out.” – Amazon 5 star review (US)

“Highly recommended. A contemporary story about witchcraft [benign] set in The New Forest, England. Very readable, strong story line, a good sense of geographical place and interesting characters. A love story develops between two of the central characters, which features some intense erotic writing! When you have finished, you will definitely want to read the sequel!” Amazon 5 star review (UK)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D39L2TJT/ UK link

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D39L2TJT US link

by

The Struggle is Real

Pagan books sales have gone down radically in the last year and a half, despite the increasing number of books being made available. It seems to reflect what many of us authors have been worried about for several years now. The sales aren’t even made up with e-books, as those have dropped significantly as well. Audiobooks for non-fiction still aren’t that popular either, and the revenue from them has always been minimal. So why is there this sudden and sharp decline in books sales?

When I first started learning about and practicing various forms of Paganism in the early 1990’s, books and events were the go-to places to gather the information that I sought out. The choice of books available in the bookstores was only a handful stuffed somewhere in the “New Age” section. The internet didn’t exist, but you could order books from glossy catalogues that companies such as Llewellyn provided, which wasn’t too bad if you lived in the US but if you lived anywhere else, the shipping fees were astronomical. And so you just had to make do with what your local bookstore provided. If you were lucky to have a witchy type shop near you, the selection was a little better, but shelf space was always at a premium. And we didn’t even bother much with libraries back then, because they would never stock those sorts of books in the first place. Finding books to read was a real struggle, but such a joy when you did find one that resonated with you.

The coming of the internet was a huge blessing for the Pagan community who wanted to connect with others, talk about authors and books and find solace with others when the community was so small and so widespread. Books began to be marketed online, which was a real boon to the publishing industry. And yet, with more people online than ever before, what has happened to book sales lately? Surely they should still be increasing?

Nope. I’ve talked to my publishers, I’ve talked to other authors and everyone is seeing a real downturn in books sales. We’ve been scratching our heads, trying to figure out why. As book lovers ourselves, it’s difficult to fathom how this downturn has come about so suddenly. So here is my take on what’s going on, and how it could very well spell the end of non-fiction books in the coming future.

  1. People can get information for free online. As people are online more and more and there are so many different channels to get information from, why buy a book? You could watch a video, read a blog and receive a ton of information anywhere for free. I know that if I was a youngster just starting out, the majority of my information would be garnered from this form of transmission simply because it is free.
  • People don’t have spare cash to buy books right now. Everyone I know is hurting more and more financially, and if it comes down to buying your groceries for the week or buying a book, you will buy the food. I hope.
  • You can find pirated copies of pretty much anything online. Need I say more?
  • Attention spans are waning. It’s a fact. “In the early 2000s, she and her team tracked people while they used an electronic device and noted each time their focus shifted to something new—roughly every 2.5 minutes, on average. In recent repeats of that experiment, she says, the average has gone down to about 47 seconds.” https://time.com/6302294/why-you-cant-focus-anymore-and-what-to-do-about-it/ (I actually had trouble reading this article, not because of attention span but because four different pop-ups kept interrupting my reading. Oh, the irony.)
  • When a book is released, it is competing will millions of other books these days. With so much choice, it’s wonderful for the reader out there. But for the author? It seriously dilutes the sales. Unless you have a slick marketing team that works for you.
  • Authors can’t afford slick marketing teams. The shift in lots of publishing has been to place the onus of marketing up on the author, as the publishers have to make cuts somewhere just to stay competitive. Most authors aren’t marketers. I spent nearly a decade in marketing for a world-famous music venue here in England. That has seen me in good stead for the last ten years, but even now I’m struggling against a tide of everything that I’ve mentioned above.

The struggle is real, folks. I hope one day that books will have a resurgence, that cosying up with a book on a rainy day will replace hiding under your duvet with your smartphone. There is just something about a book, something that feels like an old friend you can turn to, something that you can hold in your hands, that ages even as you age, the feel of something material rather than something immaterial.

 Go analogue for a while. Slow down. Smell the books along the way. Because who knows how long they’ll be here?

by

The Season of Change

The Autumn Equinox is a brief moment in time where we are poised on the knife’s edge, about to tumble from summer into winter. It is a liminal time, where the transition from the long summer days to the long winter nights is keenly felt. The winds blow differently and stronger, the evenings are creeping in, the sun is not as high in the sky and offers a golden slant in the afternoons. The leaves are changing, the green is melting into golds and the riotous season of growth has ended. The deer have shed the velvet from their antlers and are fattening up, preparing for the rut. Acorns begin to ripen and fall from the oaks; beech nuts and hazelnuts too. Jays and squirrels are caching their nuts and badgers delight in the longer shadows and plentiful food.

For us humans, it is also a time of harvest. The apples are ripe and ready, the potatoes and onions form the second harvest after the cereal crops were gathered in August. Tractors rumble through the tiny village streets with loaded wagons full of produce, taking them to large storehouses or shipping trucks to dispense throughout the country. It is a busy time, with lots of dust in the air and the moon and sun often rising red in the lower atmosphere.

In an age when we can get almost any fruit and veg from a large superstore at any time of year, the importance of harvest is often lost to many. Why celebrate a harvest festival when we have supermarkets on our doorsteps? What need do we have to honour this important time of our ancestors? We live in the here and now, some may say. But all the food that is available in the supermarkets and stores comes from somewhere, from a place that had to work with the elements and seasons in order to grow the food, to take in the energy of that land to produce something that will sustain us. This is what is important, and why it is also important to remember this time for our ancestors of the not so distant past. It has only been in the last twenty or thirty years that all sorts of produce has become readily available throughout the year. When we forget the hardships of our ancestors, we forget a large part of their stories and where we came from, taking for granted many of the liberties that we live with today.

There’s a joy to be found in remembrance. There is also a joy in the turning of the seasons, from the light to the dark, from the harvest to the hunt, from summer to winter. Celebrating these turning points helps us to keep moving with the flow instead of getting stuck wishing that it was still summer. We allow the energy of the season to move freely through out bodies, as we should in any earth-based religion or spirituality. Nothing stays the same, and acceptance of that is perhaps the greatest gift that we can give to ourselves.

So honour this wonderful time. Celebrate the shift from shorts to jeans, drink all the pumpkin spice coffee you desire, wear hats and scarves and kick up autumn leaves on the path. Drink in the scent of woodsmoke and decay, feel the fresh breezes on your face. Settle in with a good book on the longer nights, light a candle and let your imagination roam. Think of the ancestors as you bite into that freshly picked apple, and honour all the changes that you yourself have undertaken.

Blessings of the Autumn Equinox, Mabon and Alban Elfed to you all.

by

The Mabon Debate

There is some debate in the Pagan community about using the word ‘Mabon’ to refer to the Autumn Equinox. In 1974, Aiden Kelly was looking for a name to put to the Autumn Equinox that had similarities to the descent of Kore or Persephone. He chose Mabon from Welsh literature, the son who was stolen away from his mother and which Culhwch was tasked to find to win the hand of the beautiful Olwen. With the aid of King Arthur he did indeed free Mabon from his imprisonment, as told in the Tale of Culhwch and Olwen in the Mabinogi.

At first glance, it would appear that Mabon’s disappearance and rescue has very little to do with the equinox, and the similarities between his story and that of Kore can appear tenuous at best. However, there are other aspects to Mabon that do very much relate to the Autumn Equinox, which I haven’t seen discussed anywhere (but that may just be because I live in a cave deep in the woods).

I think the most important aspect of Mabon is that it was said that he was the greatest hunter of all time. And when does hunting season begin? For the majority of hunted animals which here in the UK are birds, it is around the Autumn Equinox when the season really gets underway. Deer hunting technically starts at the beginning of August, but the deer are hard to find as they are still hiding away from the summer’s heat until it gets dark. It is around the Autumn Equinox when you are able to see them out again during the day, from late afternoon onwards.

It is also when the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) becomes more visible in the night sky, albeit still in the east before dawn but slowly awakening and becoming more ‘upright’ so that he can stride across our skies followed by his hound during the winter months. As well, it’s when the temperature shifts, and the warmth leaves us as the cold northerly winds begin to blow, hinting at the Wild Hunt and winter’s reign to come. So yes, for me the honouring Mabon as the hunter does make sense at this time of year, though that may not have been the original intention.

Some argue that our ancient ancestors did not care about the autumn or spring equinox. To that, I would say look to our ancient megaliths.  In 1966, C. A. ‘Steve’ Newham found an alignment for the equinoxes at Stonehenge by drawing a line between one of the Station Stones with a posthole next to the Heel Stone. The equinox sunrise is beautifully framed by the Gossan Stones in the Wicklow Mountains, Ireland. Callanish in Scotland has an alignment with the equinox, and so does Newgrange in Ireland. Most of these places are famed for their solstice alignments, but they also do have other alignments which are not only solar, but lunar as well.

At the Autumn Equinox here in the rural British countryside we are also in the thick of harvest season, which begins at the start of August and runs through to the end of October. As such, some people argue that we should be celebrating Harvest Home. I love that name, but the origins are unclear. It may have been derived from Germanic Pagan traditions that have since been co-opted by the Christian Church, but we can’t quite be sure of its Pagan roots. Harvest Home services are held in many local, rural churches including the one in my own little village on the Suffolk Coast in the East of England. Today Harvest Home is now very much associated with Christianity. That’s not to say that we can’t incorporate it into our own festivals, because it’s what traditions from all over the world have done and still do over time. We learn, borrow and make stuff our own all the time. The Romans were masters at it. But that leads us to the argument of cultural appropriation.

The cultural appropriation argument against Mabon is that it is using a Welsh word/cultural hero and throwing it into ritual without awareness or regard for where it came from. And this is a wholly important thing to consider. However after you’ve done the research, and you find Mabon is known as the greatest hunter then the correlations to this time of hunting and harvesting make more sense, and seem less tenuous. As well, if we believe that we shouldn’t be using Welsh words in our Wiccan, Witchcraft, Druid [insert name of Pagan tradition here] then we really shouldn’t be using Samhain, or Beltane, or Imbolc, should we? We are using the words that have lasted through the years, but if we are not Irish or Scottish for instance, should we even be using these words in our traditions? I think of how many people today still say that Samhain is the Celtic New Year. On the flipside of that, I wonder how many people honour the god Belenus at Beltane? These are all Gaelic words that have been co-opted and given a different flair for various rituals in different Pagan traditions today that sometimes retain very little of the original source.

So should we rewrite all our traditions’ rituals and give them all new names?

Maybe.

But I still like Mabon.

by

The Three Realms of Druidry: The Land

A new video is now up on my YouTube channel, the first of a three-part series on the The Realms of Druidry (Land, Sea and Sky). I hope you like it!

by

July Musings

The hot summer sun beats down, and the humid air lies heavy all around. To go into the forest during the day would be to invite all the biting insects to a feast, and to sit indoor feels almost like sacrilege on these summer days. But it is so hot. The kind of heat where just moving makes you break out in a sweat. Sitting still seems to be the best thing to do. The cat knows and understands this, and so I take my cue from her wisdom of being.


Even the birds have stilled their song in the midday heat. Earlier, the cardinal sang his heart out to his love, who is always nearby. The crows still caw occasionally, but apart from that, all is still except for the long, drawn out trill of the cicadas cooling off. The mosquitoes are all hiding in the woods from the heat, and the black flies have mostly died off. It’s the heat of an August day, in the middle of July, and we have been in this heat wave for two weeks now. Everyone is tired.


Still, my love for nature calls to me. I seek out the shade, and listen and watch the life that exists all around me. It’s in my nature, and was a big part of my Druid training. Be still. Watch. Listen. Learn.


When we still the voices in our minds, those stories of the humans that are part of our lives, we are then open to receive the stories of the other than human world. Whether we are in a city or on a remote hillside overlooking a vast plain of grasses shimmering in the breeze, there are stories all around us. In the flora and fauna, we learn of the countless ecosystems, micro and macro, and how we fit into them as living beings. And hopefully how to do so with love and respect.


The cycle of the seasons is shifting, from the height of midsummer and the ectastic, dancing energy of the tide of highest light, to the slower, more thoughtful tread of the harvest. The wheat is ripening in the fields, the seeds hanging in the trees and the late summer flowers are blooming. The greening is no longer vibrant, but heavy with the responsibility of continuing the legacy of growth, death and rebirth.


What lessons can I take from this oppressive heat, this heavy time, this long outbreath after the days of midsummer? Lammas or Lughnasadh is fast approaching: the first harvest. But we are still in an in-between state; the calm before the storm. It feels like a time to rest, recoup and prepare for the heavy labour that lies ahead when we collect in our dreams of the winter and spring, and which we have brought out into the world and into the light of summer. It’s that morning cup of coffee before the kids awake, or that few minutes in the bathroom of the office where you just need to be alone and regroup. It’s a stroll along a lakefront, the heavy stormclouds gathering overhead.


And so I rest, here with my family, as best I can in the 30+ degree celsius heat. I have just under two weeks remaining to gather up my strength again and reap the harvest that I had planned and worked for all this year. The books are coming along nicely, and the fiction has been especially rewarding. Finalsing that text in August and September will be a joy, and in readiness possibly for a Samhain release.


The breeze blows softly through the leaves of the oak tree my grandfather planted in the backyard. Now huge, its overhang shades the house from the relentless southerly sunshine, as well as standing as a proud reminder of our heritage and our life here in this part of Canada. Many other trees that I grew up with have long since gone, having lived out their life span or destroyed by storms or harsh winters. But the tall oak tree still stands, its large green leaves and developing acorns towering over this end of the village, and looking out towards the great expanse of the valley that is hidden from us humans by a large cedar hedge. This oak tree is part of both worlds: that of the human family that has lived under its boughs for over 50 years, and also that of the surrounding landscape, with the forest and valley, the hills and clouds, the rain and sunshine, sleet and snow that has blessed this landscape since it was formed.


Settling into my roots, deep like the oak tree, I can find the sustenance I need to carry me through.

by

New Video!

by

New Video: Self Belief

Between downpours I finally managed to get some filming done for a new video! Here you go 🙂 To see behind-the-scenes footage of all my videos, please consider joining my Patreon page 🙂

by

New Video: When No One Is Watching

What does your spiritual practice look like when no one is watching? 🙂

by

Wicca Bashing

Okay, this is perhaps the longest blog post I’ve ever made! Here goes…

I’m noticing a growing trend of Wicca bashing on social media. I don’t have a lot of contact with other Pagans in the flesh out here on the rural coast of the North Sea, so I can’t really say what people are talking about face to face, if at all, about this phenomenon. But what I’m seeing online does make me uneasy.

Many people who are now in their forties and fifties started out on the path of Wicca. Some stayed, some moved to traditions and practices that better suited them. But at that time when Wicca was really starting to boom (late 80’s early 90’s) the majority of Pagan reading material centred around Wicca. And so, for the next twenty years, Wicca had the loudest voice in the Pagan community. With the arrival of the internet, things began to change, as information about other traditions spread more freely. You weren’t limited to what you could find at your local bookstore. More and more books were being published on other Pagan paths, and you could now buy them online without having to leave the comfort of your home. A whole generation of Pagans now had a ton of information literally at their fingertips.

And so the backlash begins.

The history of Wicca becomes widely known. The history of its founders. The misinformation that they had taken as gospel to use in the creation of their traditions. Their blinding mistakes became convoluted into something that was planned, exploitative even. They were liars and willing to create a false history to authenticate their claims. It was all bullshit.

At least, this is what people’s opinions on the internet seem to say.

There are several problems and issues at play here. The first is that people are far more inclined to listen to other people’s opinions on stuff rather than do the research for themselves. Yes, I realise the hypocrisy of this statement while writing this blog. But hear me out, and disagree with me if you feel like it.

Yes, there are problems with the founders of Wicca and what they created. There are issues of cultural appropriation, of discrimination and also of the sheer gullibility of some of these people who were willing to believe everything that they were told.

Is that so different to what is happening with social media today?

Those who are involved in Wicca are now questioning their past, and looking critically at these very issues. Wicca today has changed, has evolved. It’s just not the same as it was 30, 40, 50, and most definitely not 70 years ago. New writers are coming out every year, pointing out the difficulties and the way that they are dealing with and overcoming these issues to make the tradition appropriate for the modern day. And thank goodness for that! Because a religion or spiritual tradition that does not evolve with the times is one that creates dogma that quickly becomes outdated and which doesn’t appeal to modern folk.

We are now in a situation where we are told what to think, mainly through the avenues of social media. We are not told or taught how to think critically. If we do so, we can avoid the muck-splashing that results from (mostly older) authors (or AI bots) still circulating a lot of nonsense about Wicca and concentrate on the brilliant Wiccan authors who are currently addressing these issues today. I know, I know. I just wrote a review that stated that Raven Grimassi’s Wiccan Mysteries should never have been re-published. I stand by my opinion. That book needed to remain in the past, to allow for more modern authors to talk about what Wicca actually is today, correct historical inaccuracies and to discuss their various traditions, whether solitary, Gardnerian, Alexandrian, green, whatever.

This poses another problem. There are newer books out there (or old books that have gone out of print being re-released through different publishers) that only compound the difficulty around the debate. Some of these new books are simply AI written, rehashing the older books and making it appear new and available for all beginners to pick up and start their Wiccan journey. With the re-publication of older books, you have to look very carefully to see if this is a re-print from another title that was released 30 years ago, for example. Just buying a book these days requires a lot of research, to find out if the author is really a human being, or whether the work is old pretending to be new. The information at the beginning of the book (you know, where all that copyright stuff and ISBN details is on the left-hand side of a physical book?) can really help you out here. And then go and check to see if it’s a real author. Do they have a website? Click on the link to check that it’s an actual, working website. I was nearly fooled a couple of days ago. It’s not unknown for people to steal the identities of others to create Facebook pages to make themselves appear as real people. I came across an “author” doing just that a recently. Check on Amazon and look at their paperback books. When you look at the paperback versions, the release date is right there next to the title. Check out several of their books. Did they release six books last month? Chances are, it’s an AI programme writing the books, or a team of people who really have very little to do with the actual spiritual path they are currently writing about.

Then we come to the issue of what is real Witchcraft and what isn’t. I see Wicca as one of many traditions of Witchcraft. Because, well, the word Wicca means Witch. When I see people fighting over what is “real Witchcraft” I just have to sigh and go make a cup of tea. Because all this really is, deep down, is an ego issue. Wicca isn’t the cool kid anymore. Wicca isn’t edgy. It’s not dark, or dangerous, or even modern. It’s fluffy bunny crap, right?

I know plenty of bad-ass Wiccans out there.

Just because someone isn’t creating YouTube videos or Instagram posts with dark filters, skulls surrounded by roses and peeing in witch bottles doesn’t mean that their tradition isn’t real, valid or meaningful. The responses to Wicca as being white-lighter fluffy bunny New Age nonsense comes from those who are most likely feeling threatened because others are practicing differently. It’s easy to put someone else’ practice down to make yours feel better, edgier, whatever. But it serves no purpose whatsoever except to inflate one’s own ego. It has more to do with that person’s own issues of self-worth than it does with anything anyone else is doing in their own spiritual tradition.

There are so many misconceptions about Wicca. That it’s all about harming none. That what you do comes back to you threefold. Yes, there are some Wiccans who believe this, but then there are many, many traditions who don’t. It isn’t writ or ancient lore. I myself have been guilty of conflating these ideas with Wicca, but after doing a little research finding it to be false. The Wiccan Rede, for example, is not part of the first strands of Wicca that came out in the 1950’s.

Wicca has fallen out of fashion. Literally and figuratively. Check out social media spaces, channels, whatever, and you will find lots of “darker” stuff out there. The witch aesthetic, whatever that is. The filters. Don’t get me started on the filters that make everything darker. These seem to be reactions to a perceived and incorrect notion that Wicca is all love and light. So many of them are trying so hard to be edgy, cool, harder, more bad ass. The Wiccan author, Thorn Mooney, wrote in her blog post “Screw Your Aesthetic” for Patheos Pagan: “What good is infighting over authenticity when we spend more time sneering than practicing?” Too often people are spending their time bigging themselves up, rather than actually practicing a Craft.

I’m the first to admit I don’t look or act particularly witchy. My house isn’t filled with skulls and potion bottles and bones and dead flowers and lots of black. It’s more Scandi than anything else. I’m a pretty normal, well-adjusted person. In fact, I often get mistaken for a muggle in certain places because I’m not dripping with pentacles or loudly proclaiming my spiritual path through fashion. If that’s your choice, go for it, but I’ve never felt the need. But humans are visual creatures, and that’s what we respond to first and foremost. I’ve walked into Witchcraft shops in Glastonbury wearing hiking books and a good waterproof raincoat (because, well, it was raining and horrible outside!) and taken for a complete tourist who had no idea about anything, sometimes by well-intending shopkeepers and sometimes by sneering ones. Meh.

Wicca and other forms of Witchcraft do not have to compete. There is, in fact, no competition, no winners or losers. Assumptions are not helpful. We have to learn for ourselves, and develop our own opinions on things. How can we be certain that we are more knowledgeable than others, based solely on how someone looks, or what spiritual tradition they follow? Unless you really know them, it’s all about putting someone down to make yourself feel better. My facetious examples of “dark witchcraft” in this very blog post very likely should be included. But they help to make my point. That there is no “real Witchcraft” or no tradition that is more real or authentic than another. Over the last 1,000 years Witchcraft has changed, adapted and incorporated so many other traditions because it needed to in order to evolve and fit with modern times. And that process is still ongoing.

What someone thinks I do in my own Hedge Witch practice or Hedge Druid practice means absolutely nothing until they stand in ritual with me. That’s where you will get a real feel for what it is that I do, what I believe, and how I work with and communicate with the gods, the spirits of the land, the ancestors (and how they respond). You would have to spend weeks with me to see the real ins and outs of my practice, from my daily practice to how I use my spiritual path to deal with crisis, or joy, or day to day issues that arise in everyone’s lives. Making instant assumptions about someone because of the label that they use or what they look like is not helpful in the slightest.

This brings me onto the notion of those who believe that they know everything that there is to know about a tradition. If you’ve been around long enough, you’ve been there too (I did, in my 20’s. Boy, was I wrong). We’ve all been there. What we realise with time and experience is that there is always so much to learn, and that we are constant students in life. If you think you know more or know better than someone else, and feel the need to lord it over someone, then you are totally missing out on the wonders of being a student of life. We are all learning.

I think that bears repeating. We are all learning.

The person who is further along that path up the mountain isn’t better than the person who has just started out. They are just in a different place. If they are constantly turning around to shout advice or insults at the person starting out, they might not notice the loose stone under their foot until it too late, and down they tumble on their asses.

I think that a lot of the Wicca-bashing stems from inflated ego and a sense of one-upmanship. Some people think that Wicca is a starting point, and then you grow up and move on from there. If that’s your choice, fine, but that doesn’t make that correct for everyone. There are so many who have been in Wicca for absolute decades, because they have found a spiritual home there. It’s not because they have blinders on, or are ignorant, lazy, stupid or whatever. No, it’s because it is right for them. And if that upsets you, that’s your problem, not theirs. One Wiccan’s tradition or way of living in the world will vary widely from another person’s. As Wicca itself has now become an umbrella term, we need to acknowledge the wide and varied traditions and possibilities that this path holds.

Today’s Wicca is not your grandma’s Wicca.

So let’s stop coming down so hard on Wicca. Let’s stop parroting other people’s opinions simply because they make us feel cool. Let’s do the work and find out for ourselves about other people’s religious and spiritual paths before we start with the sneers. Let’s take responsibility for our opinions and our research. Let’s be sovereign in ourselves so that what we say and do comes from a place of authenticity, instead of from a place of shadow where previous experience, other’s opinions and self-denial rule. Let’s be our own judge, and use discernment wisely.

Let’s live and let live, if nothing else.