Witchiversary!

⛤ It's my 22nd Witchiversary! ⛤

I don't remember exactly when I started reading about, studying, and then practicing Witchcraft as a kid. I did journal, but not RIGHT at the start, or at least not about Witchcraft. I didn't start writing about my practice until I was setting up full altars and doing my self-dedication ritual, but that's another story.

In the very beginning, especially since I was so young, there is a lot of time spent in studying and reading, so it's hard to say when my practice actually began. I was trying out the things I was reading about, the things that I didn't already do before, anyway. But I was very concerned about making sure that I REALLY knew my shit (at least my first few years basics type of shit lol) before I even started calling myself a Pagan or Witch. Because I wanted to be able to represent it well and not perpetuate misinformation.

So I count how many years I've been practicing starting from the sabbat that I first celebrated with a group of other people -- Vernal Equinox 2003 (which I called Ostara then, as the Wiccan name of it), when I was 12. I know for sure that by then I felt comfortable enough sharing what I knew with other people, because I gave a little mini presentation about the history of the festival to a bunch of family friends... so it makes sense to me as an easy time to count from!

★ When I started out, I feel like the author bio in basically every book I was reading on Witchcraft said so-and-so "has been practicing the Craft for over twenty years." Well, I'm there! ★

I celebrated my 20th Witchiversary two years ago in a slightly bigger way, going out, doing a little celebration for myself and all my progress, and getting items that I could wear and add to things that will always be a reminder of that milestone. I have a two-pin set that are a small, gold Sun and Star, connected to each other by a chain. I bought some other things that I'm still playing with to decide where and how they will best serve me, but I have those pins on a jacket that I wear often. It's a nice, personal reminder. Plus it is nice when people notice them and compliment them, even if they don't know what they mean for me. I also got a tattoo that year. It was for a few reasons, but one reason was 20 years of Witchery.

What's your Witchiversary? Or Paganversary? Or Druidversary?

Do you know exactly when you would consider the start of your practice? Or do you, like me, have a sort of nebulous, general idea, and prefer to pick the closest major date like a sabbat or something else?

Are there other anniversaries related to your practice that you celebrate?

I do! This autumn (I'm in the northern hemisphere, so several months away from now) will be ten years since my very first Reclaiming Witchcamp. That's nearly half of my entire practice at this point, and almost a third of my life. It took me about five years to take all of the Core Classes, and then I started teaching them. So half the time I've been in Reclaiming, I've been part of facilitating core classes. Considering what a huge part of my life the tradition has become... yeah, I celebrate that anniversary, too.

⛤

So, okay. I pulled up this post to tell you about my Witchiversary. But if you follow my content online, you'll be aware that things are pretty quiet right now. I'm working on finishing up the edit for my 2024 Year in Review video a little at a time between meetings, classes, community discussions, and more. I was out of town for a week last month, and then got extremely sick for multiple weeks (worst sinus pain I've EVER had in my life -- I couldn't do much of anything for a while), and I'm trying to catch up with so, so many things on my plate. But video stuff is getting done slowly.

Aside from that stuff slowing me down, though, I'm also in a really difficult stage of my personal life. It's been a dark phase, a long period. I've also been working with Silence. So. Less writing, less vlogging. I didn't set out to do that; I've never really planned to take extended breaks from my content, it just happens because it needs to in that moment. So I didn't plan for it, but that's often what happens when you begin a new magical journey -- it moves through you in ways you don't expect. I didn't know that I would have so many moments of realizing that, you know, I actually don't want to share XYZ with the entire internet public. So I didn't. And it's taken me a long time to get to this point, where I'm beginning to feel more clarity around what, and how, and where, and why I want to share. Beginning to. It's definitely not done yet. I have a ways to go. But things are shifting a bit.

I mean, hell. I'm writing a blog post. Look at that.

Thanks for reading,

Blessings~
-C-

⛤ P.S. I recently updated my Book Recs. page here on the blog, too! Go check it out! ⛤

Devotion, One Season In

 

Hello, dear readers!

The equinox has passed, which means that I am into the second quarter of my personal theme of the year. I have shared a little bit of detail about my work in the first quarter in the Discord associated with my Patreon (if you support my Patreon, you have the option of also joining the discord server through that, by linking your Discord and Patreon accounts), for those who may be interested. For this second quarter, however, I probably won't share as much in the way of specifics.

Deity relationships are quite personal, and I have found so far that I am most comfortable talking about them with folks who I am close to in community, and not so much on the general internet. I am someone who has various circles of community - followers online who I might not know at all; Patreon supporters who I have a chance to get to know a little more personally through more regular chatting, but still might not know well; community in my tradition, who I work with regularly online or in person and know quite well; and close friends. As such, there are different groups of people with whom I share different things. As this is a general internet space, I will stick to general practice, as I always have.

I wanted to share here the list of associations I've come up with for myself to work toward figuring out or creating for myself with each deity. I may not check every box for each one, but this has been a fun way for me to explore these relationships. When we search online we might commonly find information about deities such as the animals, plants, food and beverages, and areas of influence associated with each one. Some of the things on my list are those types of things, and others go beyond that. I can look up some of these things online as a starting point, but there is also the step of actually utilizing them, or, or finding substitutions and alternatives where the info online might not work for my personal practice and what I have available.

Let's get to the list, and then I'll share more of my thoughts about the process so far!

2024 Personal Practice Theme: Devotion

Hello, dear readers,

Reclaiming Tradition communities often work with an annual theme or story, around which to structure the work of the year in ritual, skill shares, and so on. Not everything has to fit the theme, but it's a way to help guide things and explore a certain area over a given time period. Years ago, I also began working with a personal intention for the year, based on ideas shared by T. Thorn Coyle, who wrote about choosing intentions rather than making new year "resolutions." I have done a yearly intention on and off for about eight years now -- about as long as I've been involved in Reclaiming.

Now I'm part of multiple Reclaiming communities, which will have different themes and intentions for 2024. But aside from all this, I have gotten a nudge from the Universe to have a personal theme. It is kind of also an intention, but it is a broader theme for my work of the year. And, it is a sneaky one for my indecisive and ADHD focus issues, because it is a theme that gets to change focus every few months!

The theme is...

Deepening Devotion to Deities

If you've been following all of my content that I've ever shared, anywhere, over the past few years (I really doubt most people fall into this category lol), then you might know that the topic of devotion has been a big question for me for a while.

Read on to hear more about the path that lead me here, and what I'm planning for this themed work. Maybe you want to do something similar, maybe not for the year, but in general at any point in your practice!

Charm School Update: Week 12 ?!

Dear Readers,

As you may recall, Week 6 of this project overlapped with a regional camp that Stella and I attended, and for which I had an organizing role. It took a lot out of me, as well as energizing and sustaining me, as it always does, and while I knew camp week would be a lot -- that's why I made it a "grace week" in my estimated schedule of how to get through this project -- I very much underestimated the time it would take me after camp to get back into any semblance of "normal routine". It could be argued that I didn't have any such "normal routine" before camp, anyway. Regardless, I was... optimistic.

I actually thought that this was probably only Week 10 or so, but according to the calendar, nope lol. This is indeed week 12, when we originally anticipated wrapping this all up. Well I can tell you, we are not doing that just yet.

After camp, I was still in Ohio for a few days before flying back to the southwest, so getting back to routine was already delayed. Then my flight got delayed 18 hours, putting me back at an altogether different time of day than expected. Then began the just... processing and recovery time. I am already not the best at judging the passing of linear time (if that even really exists), so weeks went by with no progress on Charm School. Then I started getting back into it a little at a time, but my focus is pretty shot once again. (Also, the return of insomnia! Huzzah! /sarcasm)

I've been struggling with my focus when reading since 2020. Audio books have helped a lot, because I can listen and read along at the same time and that helps, but not all books I'm reading have an audio version! Anyway, here is where we are now.

Charm School Update: Week 5

Hey, all! Checking in from nearly the end of Week 5 of this 12-week Charm School challenge / fun self study time.

In my general scheduled plan, I wanted to ideally be finished with Twelve Wild Swans by now (doing a path per week, a section per day, for three weeks total) and finishing up What Witches Do this week. Next week, Week 6, Stella and I will be away at camp with lots of other magical things going on so I had planned for it to be a week "off" or grace period. If we wanna do more of this and have time, cool, but it wasn't being counted as necessary time.

That was the ideal plan, but I know myself, and I knew that traveling during this time and prepping for camp would take up time, space, and energy for me. There have also been other, unexpected things that came up this past month because, you know, life is like that. So as I expected, I am a bit behind where I wanted to be "ideally", but that's okay! The plan is not rigid, it's there to help keep me from getting totally lost as I lose track of linear time. It happens.

So here's where I am at this point...

Charm School Begins Soon...

Hey, Readers! More news for you!

I'm uploading a new public channel video right now that is a conversation with my friend Stella about our new personal project for the next few months.

We're calling it...

Charm School

This is a three-month project where Stella and I will be working together through Silver Ravenwolf's 1995 title, "To Stir a Magick Cauldron", and completing the tasks given as the requirements for the first degree of the fictionalized "Mist Tradition."

If you haven't read it, there is a section in the book where Silver talks about systems of Witchcraft with degree-based systems, and gives examples of the type of work one may be asked to do before receiving the first, second, or third degree, and so on. To illustrate the point, she asks the reader to imagine a made-up tradition, called the Mist Tradition, and then lists a bunch of stuff that Witches of that tradition may be asked to do for each stage of learning and progress. But then -- plot twist! -- at the end of this section she says that Witches in her own, actual tradition are expected to do all the things on those lists, and more! So the Mist Tradition isn't real -- at least, Silver made it up for this book -- but the tasks are based on actual tradition requirements. Every tradition is different, so it just depends which one you're looking into.

~

Silver Broomstick journaling & note-taking prompts!

Hello, dear readers! It has been a WHILE. I have some content for you that feels best suited to a blog form.

My copy of To Ride a Silver Broomstick

I've been reading Silver Ravenwolf's 1993 title, To Ride a Silver Broomstick, and making content about it for my Patreon. In addition to that, I've been making notes about where in the book Silver offers prompts for "stuff to journal about or copy down in your notebook", and I figured, if I'm making notes about it for personal use... why not share that info for anyone else who may be into it?

I am not completely copying pieces of the text here, so please view this as a companion to having the book in front of you. But I am summarizing the prompts in my own words, and some of them are things you could do without it having to be connected to the book, so I imagine some people might find this and use some of these prompts just because you want to explore these topics! And where I think that is most possible, I am writing this with that in mind. But for some of these, it is really connected to what she writes about in the book, so just know that not all of this will make sense outside the context of the book.

Witch Trials Memorials video resources

Hello, all!

This post is the resource list from my video about Witch Trials memorials. I will be doing another video about other witch trials I learned about this past week, so there may be some overlapping resources, but this one is just the resources I used for the Memorials video.

The resources should mostly be in the order here that I mentioned them in the video, except the statue from Virginia is in the USA section, though it wasn't mentioned until the end of the video along with the statue from Ireland.

Images in this post (same as in the video) are from the sites linked here. For ease of citing sources I only used images from these articles.

Watch my Witch Trials Memorials video here!

~

Resources and links:

USA

Salem, Massachusetts

Salem Hanging Site memorial:

"The Site of the Salem Witch Trial Hangings Finally Has a Memorial"

July 2017 - Smithsonianmag.com

Salem Hanging Site memorial, Salem, MA.
Dedicated July 2017.

Death & Dying (Pagan Resources)

Hey, Readers,

This post has been sitting in my Drafts folder here for the past year, just about. 2020 saw a lot of unnecessary death, and though I had been planning to share this beforehand, once certain events occurred last year, it no longer seemed appropriate timing to share. On the other hand, maybe some people would have considered it the perfect time to discuss death and dying and grief resources, but to me it felt like it may be construed as "using" the situation to seem relevant, get more views, or whatever. It truly just wasn't the best timing. So I've saved this post, and now, here it is.

Early last year, someone wrote to someone I work with, asking for help finding information about Pagan beliefs and practices around death and grief. The questions were forwarded on to me, and this was my response at the time. I saved it in case it could be helpful to others. Now it's been another year, and I'm sure there are other resources that can be mentioned (I think a few new books on the subject have come out more recently, though I haven't read them yet), but this was my answer as it stood at that time, early last year.

The Questions:

1. What are beliefs about death and dying?
2. What is the belief about autonomy or self-determination regarding treatment or end of life decision making? (Who makes treatment decisions, how much information does the dying person want, etc)
3. What are the death rituals? Is there a focus on burial and/or cremation?
4. How does bereavement play out -- are there expected practices after someone has died?
5. Is there anything that individuals do in order to help with the grieving or bereavement process? (Ex. therapy, community organization)

And my response was as follows:

Anti-Racism Resources

Dear Everyone, really, but especially white people,

We all have a lot of work to do in the fight against systemic oppression, racism being one of the big systems of abuse and discrimination that is currently on everyone's minds, especially where police brutality against BIPOC (black indigenous people of color) communities is concerned. I have been posting some things on my Instagram, sharing MANY things from other people in my story there to amplify other voices, and I'm working on a video that will go up on my YouTube channel tonight (31 May 2020).

I wanted to put together a post here with links to some of the anti-racism resources for white people that I've been finding thanks to other people sharing them, so I can link people to all of these more easily and have them handy for my own future reference, as well as everyone else's. I will continue updating this occasionally as I collect more. Please share any more resources you have.

~

Anti-Racism Resources for White People: bit.ly/ANTIRACISMRESOURCES

This document includes resources for parents to teach anti-racism to children, podcasts to listen to, movies or videos to watch, articles and books to read, social media of organizations to follow, and more. There is a LOT here and I recommend starting here and going through it a bit at a time.

One of the articles I found via the large compiled document above: "75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice". #38 is decolonize your bookshelf, which is one thing I've been doing -- looking up all the authors whose books I own so I can see how many are white men, as opposed to women, POC, queer, trans*, gender non-conforming authors, and so on.

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