Writing Reflections
I started writing down outlines in notebooks for what would become my first published book when I was 15-years-old, in 2003. I sent in a full draft manuscript to Llewellyn in 2006-2007. Spirited: Taking Paganism Beyond the Circle came out through Llewellyn in March 2009. In the same year and month an Australian-focused anthology weaving together Pagan and Witchcraft voices I compiled and edited came out through an independent press. This was called Crafting the Community. I had already been teaching and leading rituals in my local community for a few years before these books came out, but I never looked back after their publication. In September 2010 By Land, Sky & Sea was released, and then Ecstatic Witchcraft in June 2012. These books are now out of print. They ran their course in a way, though I still receive praise and acknowledgement every now and again for these books. These books also came out before the advent of newer forms of social media. It’s a different publishing world out there, these days.
Essentially these three books had three different intentions.
My intention with Spirited was to break apart an idea at the time that younger Pagans and Witches weren’t that serious about their spirituality and may just be passing through… This was an idea I encountered frequently in the mid-2000s and there was a lot of talking down to teen and younger witches and pagans. Spirited offered in-depth chapters on Ritual, Theology, Ethics, Community, and Magic that aided younger folks in examining contemporary Pagan and Witchcraft themes and concepts. The whole book basically said investigate, enquire, deepen, experiment, find out! This book won the COVR (Coalition of Visionary Resources) award for best Pagan/Wiccan book of that year. I was exceptionally proud of what I managed to conjure up from the magical practice and journeying of my late teen years. This book would not have been able to be written without the events surrounding the founding of the Coven of the Wildwood and my initiation therein. The immense support from my coven-mates - and the Spirits and Gods of our emergent Tradition - in 2006-2007-2008 aided me in getting Spirited out there. The support and provocations of my acquisitions editor - the wondrous Elysia Gallo - were pivotal!
By Land, Sky & Sea came together during my first pilgrimage through Britain and Ireland with two of my Wildwood beloveds who ended up moving to Britain just before and just after that trip. They both still live there today. Many of the core concepts and practices of this book are still completely a part of my practice. The Land, Sky and Sea - the Middleworld, Upperworld, and Underworld - form the crux of my cosmology… omen-walking, shrine-creation, dancing and meditation, shadow-stalking, descent in to the Underworld, re-emergence, and so-calling channelling and astral travel are still major threads of my Craft. Much of By Land, Sky & Sea was inspired by my experimentation with and integration of the workings of the Coven of the Wildwood.
By Land, Sky & Sea and the following Ecstatic Witchcraft also formed the structure of the Shamanic Craft Apprenticeship I ran from 2011-2014. Two in-person groups moved through two-years of structured mentorship guiding folks through six months of Land/Middleworld work, then six months of Sky/Upperworld work, followed by a full year of Sea/Underworld work… rituals of alignment with each of these realms were undertaken by these apprentices and then some who asked for initiation were brought through a special all-day into the evening ritual that initiated the witch into their own charge as a spirit-worker. In early 2012 I also began to engage long-distance one-to-one apprentices. I ended up supporting 11 witches through that Shamanic Craft apprenticeship journey up to and through the initiation experience. And the last initiation ritual I helped to facilitate in this vein was in December, 2017. There were quite a few others who started the journey but spiralled into other directions before completing.
Ecstatic Witchcraft (my original title for this was The Wild Witch) is a book I am deeply proud of as well. In hir pages are deep-dives into cultivating allies, divination and oracular work, trance possession, spellcraft, healing, soul retrieval… Part of the agenda of this book was to help people understand witchcraft within so-called shamanistic contexts. Initiation via the spirits, the gaining of and working with helpers and familiars, shapeshifting and trance-journeying, This is work that I later discovered scholars like Emma Wilby had been incisively engaged in. Today it is unpopular in some western witchcraft circles to use the either too-broad or academically-appropriated terms of ‘shaman’ and ‘shamanic’ to speak about witchcraft and witches and yet for those of us who belong to cultures whose magical, spirit-led, and traditional healing cultures and traditions are called shamanism it is still a sometimes useful lens to begin to think about witchcraft magic and traditions in contrasting and illuminating ways. Would I write this book differently today? Of course I would, but I would have even more scholarly substance to draw upon today to help extrapolate on the central themes of that book. The amount of traditional witches and Wiccan witches I know who have in the past or might (discreetly) still use these terms to help explain central themes is substantial. Of course we all reach slightly different conclusions about this.
Many of these ‘conclusions’ or core magical and cosmological principles and teaching-stories will be obvious in my coming book The Witch Belongs to the World. This is the first full book I have written in a decade and I am extremely happy that it will be released into the world in August, 2023 through Llewellyn.
My journey in the Craft includes apprenticeship and teaching within several threads and branches of Witchcraft. When I realised I was a witch at age 11 - and threw myself head to heel into hir depths - I knew I would one day be asked to teach the Craft. I had experimented with this early on in small sharing circles in my teens, but it wasn’t until aspirants of the Coven of the Wildwood asked for training in the Craft that the initiates of this coven were faced with a deeper philosophical and magical question. Before this we considered a person for initiation if we knew them to be a witch who already possessed competence and skill in the Craft. After a probationary period and a display of commitment we sometimes initiated them into our inner court. That has evolved dramatically as have the ways I participate in teaching and mentorship. As has my writing. My last two published works - Magic of the Iron Pentacle and Elements of Magic - were co-authored and co-edited respectively with my beloved and colleague Jane Meredith. I credit Jane Meredith and my dear friend Abel R. Gomez with bringing me into Reclaiming Witchcraft back in 2010. The influences of Reclaiming on my work and teaching are immense, as is the deep magical friendship with Lee Morgan, and my seven years crooked road of training and initiation into the Anderson Feri Tradition. Core and within and through all of this is the throbbing and wondrous witchery of the Wildwood Tradition and the Wildwood witches I have had the deep pleasure of making magic with since 2006. The core sensual, poetic, an
My writing about Paganism, Witchcraft, and Magic began as a provocation to myself, it then spiralled out to become a provocation and invitation to my community, and then to a wider series of connected networks.
Now my writing is simply in praise of the Craft and emerges out of deep love and holy dread for the Spirit of the Witch. Naturally there are always thorns too when dancing round the Rose.
I have spent the past decade mainly engaged in teaching, mentoring, facilitation, and supporting initiation journeys. I hope that in the next decade I can bring more passion and time to my writing arts as well.
