Traditional Wicca is centered on coven-based practice, but a coven isn’t just a group of strangers who meet every full moon. It’s an intimate, tight-knit community. In this video, I talk through some of the implications of traditional Wicca’s emphasis on covens, ranging from initiating new members to the relationship a witch has with the […]
Read more "Video: Covens and Community"Anton Mesmer was a weird dude in the late 18th century who put forward a (now thoroughly debunked) theory of “animal magnetism.” In this video, I talk through a little bit of what Mesmer thought and how I think it’s connected to the way early Wiccans understood their magic.
Read more "Video: Animal Magnetism and Wiccan Magic"Wicca—at least, Wicca as I understand it—is a deeply feminist religion. One of the core values upon which it’s founded is the creation of a religious community in which women are empowered. This feminist value works its way into Wiccan ritual and theology, but the resulting politico-theological narratives sometimes go unacknowledged as political. Here, I […]
Read more "Video: Wiccan Politico-Theology"I’ve previously discussed novels about witchcraft on this channel–but what about novels specifically written about traditional Wicca? Here, I discuss five novels that take traditional (initiatory, lineaged, coven-based) Wicca as a setting for their characters and plots. Although I’m critical of them, I try to pull out the things I find significant in each book, […]
Read more "Video: Novels About Traditional Wicca"What is the ethical underpinning of Wicca, if there is one at all? Most often, you’ll hear people answer this question by pointing to the Wiccan Rede or the Threefold Law of Return. Personally, though, I think that Wicca–at least, the version of Wicca I practice–doesn’t teach ethics. Rather, there’s an expectation that people come […]
Read more "Video: Wiccan Ethics"IT’S SOAPBOX TIME! One of the most common things you’ll hear about Gardnerian Wicca is that it has strict gender roles: Covens are run by a High Priestess and High Priest, and the whole affair is very cisheteronormative. But actually, there’s a great deal of diversity in the way that covens in traditional Wicca approach […]
Read more "Video: Gender Roles in Wicca"In my previous “13 Books for Gardnerian Seekers” video, I shared reading recommendations for people interested in traditional Wicca, but many of the books I recommended are old, out of date, or no longer representative of what can be expected from Wiccan training. In this video, I share an updated reading list. Here are eight […]
Read more "Video: 8 Recent Books for Gardnerian Seekers"We’re often used to thinking about religion as imposing a top-down cohesion in theology, myth, and ritual: A religion has a fixed pantheon of gods, shared myths, and certain beliefs and practices that all of its adherents adopt. In reality, this is a very narrow idea of religion that doesn’t map onto the ancient world–nor […]
Read more "Video: The Gods of Right Here"The word “witch” is a complicated one, and there’s a lot of disagreement over who can and should use it to describe themselves. (The honest answer is probably “Anyone who damn well pleases,” but that video would be too short.) In a lot of contemporary discourse, there’s emphasis on the notion that witchcraft is a […]
Read more "Video: Are Wiccans Really Witches?"One of the hallmarks of traditional Wicca is that initiates take an oath of secrecy: There are certain things they agree not to discuss with non-initiates. But why? From the outside, this can feel like a snobbish and exclusionary practice. In this video, I talk through some of the motivations for magical secrecy, not as […]
Read more "Video: The Point of Initiatory Secrecy"
Jack Chanek 