This is the #OcculTea tag started by Ella Harrison, Joanna the Polish folk witch, and Leah the redheaded witch. I’m not terribly online and don’t inhabit a lot of the Internet spaces that this tag is largely focused on, so I come at it from a bit of a different perspective. I think a lot […]
Read more "Video: OcculTea – Algorithmic Social Media and Internet Witchcraft"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"I’ve talked before about how I consider some form of necromancy integral to my experience of Wicca. Wicca centers on mysteries of death and rebirth, and part of what that means magically is that I am often engaging with the spirits of the dead. This sounds spooky, but really it looks pretty simple, especially when […]
Read more "Asking Dead People for Advice"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"Familiars are a defining element of folklore surrounding witches and witchcraft—but in Wicca, they’re often treated almost as an afterthought. Why is that? Here, I talk through a few thoughts about what familiars are, why we think of them the way we do, and a potential reason that they’re not considered central to Wicca.
Read more "Video: Familiars in Wicca"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"As a witch, I believe and do things that most people would consider ludicrous. From the outside, people generally don’t make much distinction between witchcraft and a range of other beliefs–including lots of things that I consider absolute nonsense. How, then, do I make the distinction between the beliefs I do and do not consider […]
Read more "Video: A Witch’s Guide to Spotting Nonsense"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"I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the connection between religion and values. In some respects, this connection is so obvious that it doesn’t bear articulating. Patriarchal societies have patriarchal religions; in agrarian societies we see religions structured around the symbols of sowing and harvest. The gods of the steppes are cavaliers and the gods […]
Read more "What You Worship Is What You Value"
Jack Chanek 