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.
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Stella has read this book before, many times, but I have not! This is the second book in what I call the "Silver Series", which consists of the following books, published in the 90s:
- To Ride a Silver Broomstick (1993)
- To Stir a Magick Cauldron (1995)
- To Light a Sacred Flame (1999)
Two of Ravenwolf's other popular books are Teen Witch (1998) and Solitary Witch (2003), though she has published many more titles over the years. Solitary Witch was one of my very first books on Witchcraft. Cauldron was Stella's first. So both of us are reaching back to the beginning of our practices with this one!
"It's a gift to our Younger Selves."
To prepare for this project, I wanted to read Broomstick first, which I have been doing! I started earlier this year. My previous blog post here, from just a couple days ago, is a list of the journaling/writing prompts from the first two sections of Broomstick. I will be doing another, similar post when I finish the whole book. So you should be able to expect that sometime this June, since I want to wrap up that book and move into the reading for Charm School!
Stella and I got together earlier this month to record a "before" conversation about this project. You can check that out on my YouTube channel in video form, or soon on Stella's podcast in audio form. (You can listen to the Stella Speaks podcast on multiple platforms, so search your favorite!)
The conversation was super fun to have, and also for me to edit! We talk about the project and each of our personal history with this book, interspersed with side conversations about what our names mean, solitary and coven experiences, and whether or not we're Wiccans.
But since it is a long video, and some people prefer or need to read rather than listen, I wanted to toss this blog post up with a basic rundown of the project. Again, this is covered in the video / podcast if you want to listen instead!
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What is this project?
We're doing the First Degree of the Mist Tradition from To Stir a Magick Cauldron, which is on page 256 in the first edition version of the book. Or, in Chapter Nine (the last chapter) if you're accessing a different version or audio book. It's in the section titled "Goals to Work Toward."
We're giving ourselves a time structure of twelve weeks to work within, and we've broken up the tasks into a personal schedule to help us keep track. Each of us will be posting updates on our personal Patreon accounts for our supporters there, as well as some public updates, like this one, on our respective blogs, my YouTube channel, Stella's podcast... you get the idea!
We started with the "before" conversation mentioned above, and are planning to do a mid-term check-in around the six-week mark (mid-to-late July), as well as a final wrap-up conversation when we finish at the end of August (so that content will likely happen in September).
What does the project entail?
There are 11 listed things to do for the imaginary First Degree, plus one thing we're doing that is actually on the Second Degree list: completing (and passing!) the "Wicca 101 Test" given in Appendix III of the book.
Let me tell you, I have looked over the Wicca 101 Test, and although I've been on this path for 20 years, I DO NOT know all the answers coming into this. I know many of them, but some of them are specific to the way Silver teaches, and since I haven't read this series, I'm lost! But in reading Broomstick and then reading Cauldron as we do this project, I should come away at the end able to pass that test with flying colors. So Unofficial Lesson One, my dear Witches... don't let years of experience fool you into thinking you know it all! We learn different things from different teachers, traditions, and all kinds of sources. I am far from being a beginner, and yet, I don't know all the things Silver expected beginners to know after reading her books. What fun to go back and learn it now!
Stella and I are doing some tasks as written, in our understanding of the spirit in which they are written. Other tasks, we are adapting.
For example, we will be memorizing three different circle castings and quarter calls, which are the first two tasks. But since we are Reclaiming Witches and our tradition does a lot of things improvisationally and differently each time, I already know several circle castings and quarter calls! So we had to talk about what this part of the project would look like. We decided that Silver intended for people to learn and memorize essentially scripted pieces. So we will be either learning some that already exist in other books, or writing our own, but writing them down and learning them just as written. Probably we'll do a bit of both.
Task 3 is to know and be able to demonstrate an altar devotion. This is not a term I've come across outside of these books, so I actually don't know for sure what Silver means by this until I read about it! I can certainly guess from context clues, and what I think it is, is also something I would normally do pretty off the cuff, not memorizing a scripted version. So it will likely be a similar challenge to tasks 1 and 2 as far as that goes.
Task 4 is to "pass the testing of all your lessons", for which she suggests using her book To Ride a Silver Broomstick and Raymond Buckland's The Complete Book of Witchcraft (aka the Big Blue Book) for the lessons and exercises we need to complete. I am already reading and working through Broomstick, and I've been working with Big Blue for a while. We could have done those. But since we are doing this work further on in our practices, we wanted to challenge ourselves further by choosing different books. The thumbnail for the video, inserted above, shows off the covers of the books we're using: What Witches Do by Stewart Farrar, and The Twelve Wild Swans by Starhawk and Hilary Valentine. Neither of us have read What Witches Do, so it will be a new area of knowledge, and a new author's perspective. And while I have worked through Twelve Wild Swans on my own once before in its entirety, it was years ago, and I want to do so again because I've also been teaching with it and facilitating book club for our local Reclaiming community. Plus, it is another work with many exercises and things to do, that builds on itself in a more or less "beginner, intermediate, advanced" format.
Task 5 is to meet a personal challenge designed especially for you. Stella and I will be chatting more about this and deciding on a challenge for one another. We talk a bit more about the parameters for this in the video. Task 6 is to demonstrate a solitary ritual that includes raising power. We have actually planned to write this ritual ourselves, as well, so we will be completing this at the end of the 12 weeks. Again, either of us can already do this now just by getting up and doing it -- this is how our tradition works, and we've seen each other do various parts of rituals both in person and online over the last year -- but we believe that the spirit of the task is to memorize a set ritual.
Task 7 is to provide a written record of our magickal experiences to our "instructor", and typically this covers one year of your practice, since many groups want training for each degree to last at least one year (a year and a day). We're doing this for 12 weeks, so we have decided to jot down notes for that time period and either share them privately with one another for accountability, or perhaps post them online publicly. We'll see what we do! I can tell you now, I will not be posting anything daily. But I might write some notes daily and post a week or two weeks at once, or something like that. We shall see.
Task 8 is one we are counting as accomplished, because we've been working in community with one another for over a year already, and have been part of community groups for multiple years. It is, "show that you are a responsible individual who can be trusted by all members of the Craft and your tradition [siblings]." This is, of course, also an ongoing task. But in the context of a first degree situation, this is mainly about getting to know a person enough so that you know you want to welcome them into your group. Stella and I are already in community together and part of larger community that both trusts us and holds us accountable. We welcome each other, and know we are welcomed.
Task 9 is to be able to tell whether a circle has been cast or not! This is a fun one! In my first Elements of Magic class (Reclaiming trad core class), the teachers had us all practice casting circles in different ways and feeling and sensing the energy. We did a lot of fun energy sensing exercises. So I know what it feels like to be inside a circle I've cast vs outside it. And I know what it feels like to be in a ritual where a circle wasn't actually cast, and one where the container is well constructed. But I don't know what a circle cast only by Stella feels like -- we typically cast together as a group -- and it will be fun to try this together in person. We will be together at camp about mid-way through this project, so we plan to complete this task then.
Task the 10th is "be willing to take the oath of initiation and all it includes", which is not applicable for this project because we are not actually entering a tradition, so we don't need to take any oaths. But I have suggested that in place of this, we come up with a statement of completion that we can use to affirm that we have done this work, and witnessed one another doing this work. Finally, the 11th thing on the list is "know what a proper person is", which is directly from the book and is specific to certain traditional context, as well. Stella says it's basically another thing to memorize.
Plus the bonus task, pass the Wicca 101 test!
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So that is what we're actually DOING over the next few months.
How are we gonna do all that in twelve weeks?
We have a lil schedule. I don't think I'm going to share the actual one we plotted out, because I don't want people who may choose to play along to feel obligated to use the same schedule. I have a LOT of free time right now. Also, I FULLY expect things to fluctuate, so I've tried to build in wiggle room, as well as a grace period when we'll be away at camp, since we'll be engaged in a lot of other magical goodness. I will also be traveling a bit during this time, to and from camp and visiting with people, so it will be an interesting time overall.
But I can tell you how I plan to start out, and a few mile markers along the way.
Twelve Wild Swans is formatted into three paths -- I've talked about this on my channel before, so if you're a regular viewer, you might know this already -- that can be worked in different timelines. The quickest (and most intensive) one is to do a chapter per day, finishing one path a week, and the whole book in three weeks. This is how I originally did it years ago, so that's how I plan to do it again! I plan to dive back into Swans starting in June with our first week of this project (starting June 5, counting from the Mondays for ease), and get that done in the first three weeks... though I have also given myself a fourth week for breathing room. I know myself. Some days I will just NOT be able to do the things.
I'm also going to start What Witches Do right away. I looked ahead at the chapters and page counts and broke it up into what I think is doable each week. I hope to finish both of those books within the first six weeks, so they're done before camp and our "mid-term" zone.
The circle castings and quarter calls are nice and slow, with plenty of integration and practice time. Each one will be practiced for about two weeks and reviewed later on, staggering the beginning of learning a new one. I'll start learning a circle casting one week, then start learning a quarter call the next week while still practicing the same casting... the following week, I'll be practicing the same quarter call while moving on to learning the second casting, and so on. The pieces of the solitary ritual we will be creating also fit into the schedule in a similar way, with time to create and then practice each piece, beginning after the mid-term. The only ritual piece I'll try to start before that is the altar devotion. Then in the last six weeks I'll focus on writing the various pieces of my ritual.
But who knows? Given my theatre experience, I already have some pretty good strategies for learning lines, so I might learn these pieces faster and move on to other things. But I will be trying to stick to a nicely spaced out plan in order to prevent things getting too clumped together or procrastinated!
So yeah! Basic idea, I'll be focusing on the two "lessons" books for the first six weeks, focusing on creating the ritual the last six weeks, and working on circle castings, quarter calls, and reading Cauldron throughout the whole time period.
It is a lot. But it's a fun challenge! And it's so much easier to get things done with a friend working on it, too, for accountability. This has always been my biggest struggle with solitary practice -- if it's just me, I'm much more likely to just let things go.
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Thanks for reading! Keep an eye out here for any more public stuff I decide to share here. Bookmark Stella's blog, as well.
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