Holy shit, friends, this has been a year. I feel like I haven’t kept up with anything, and it’s all just gotten away from me. When that happens, I have to resort to lists: I started my PhD in August, and am going to school full time, working as a TA, and continuing to work my full time WFH publishing job. I’m also still working on writing project, managing a Patreon community, and trying to just…

When I was in my first year of graduate school, I took a class in atheism. An unusual offering in American religious studies programs, I was interested in the treatment of atheism as a (non)religious category. Most of my friends at the time were atheists (as is common amongst academics who study religion) and I grew up in starkly secular spaces. It seemed worthwhile to visit the subject formally,…

“I would have approached you sooner, but I was a little freaked out about the skyclad thing,” Erin says to me self-consciously. “I’ve got some body issues.” Erin was just invited to circle with Foxfire’s outer court, after hanging out with us in open Pagan spaces for about the last year. I figured she would ask me about my coven eventually—her personality just fits—but some seekers have to spend…

My pile of old witch books, spanning Teen Witch to Gardnerian third. I was taught to keep a journal beginning in the first grade. Every morning, Mrs. West handed out fresh sheets of lined newsprint and we were instructed to write about the day before, how we were feeling, a dream we had, or about something we were looking forward to that week. We were also encouraged to draw pictures to…

Do you ever think about how little we actually know about each other? Like, how telling you I’m a witch doesn’t actually give you much information at all about what I’m actually up to? And how even words like “Wiccan” and “Gardnerian” don’t actually tell you very much, because lots of people use them differently?

I think about that all the time. When someone tells me they’re a witch, I have to…

The second book is complete and in the hands of the good folks at Llewellyn! The tentative release is September 2021, and I hope to see the first round of feedback in a few weeks. I confess to being a little nervous about this one. Will they like it?

People always ask me how I go about researching my books, and it’s kind of an awkward question because, well…I don’t. There’s zero research…

ALT

I’ve made a lot of blog posts and videos in the past about favorite books: advanced books, beginner books, books for people interested in taking things in a new direction, classics I think everyone should read, and books that I’ve got in my personal to-be-read pile. But I was recently asked to share my thoughts on which recent releases were important, or would have an impact for people exploring…

ALT

One of my thesis advisors in graduate school told me, as I was working up my proposal and trying to figure out exactly what I was going to focus on, that building a new argument is a lot harder than tearing down someone else’s. In other words, don’t use this opportunity to only dismantle something. Say something new.

That struck me hard and has stuck with me into other parts of my life. I’ve…

ALT

My friend and initiate, Corvus, is in the process of starting a coven, and the other night we got to chatting about what it will mean for her to go forward, both as part of a community and as an autonomous high priestess. What if she does something that pisses off her upline? What if she gets out into the community and decides she doesn’t fit in? What if she has genuine encounters with the gods…

ALT

Moving teaches you a lot about yourself.

I don’t know if this is real, or what sort of metric you could even scientifically apply here, but I’ve read several times that in terms of stress moving is on par with a death in the family. I suppose that depends on who’s dead and on how far you’re going. In any case, it’s fucking stressful.

I’m feeling very unmoored, for many reasons.

Seeing all of your…

Hi readers! This popular tag has been floating around YouTube and Instagram for a few weeks now, and I wanted to leave you all with something before I run off to Free Spirit Gathering. Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/LdxiZlb64Ao

I’ve learned that, like the Wheel of the Year itself, my life moves in cycles. I can remember being a Blue Star Dedicant years and years ago and realizing—courtesy of my very astute teacher who told me I needed to keep track of these things, which sounds obvious now but totally was not at the time—that my interests, moods, relationship with my body, and connection to the gods all ebbed and flowed…

I turned in my first short story to my writing workshop last week. I’m new to fiction, and I had a blast writing thirteen pages (haha) about a Wiccan shopkeeper who’s lost his belief in magic.

Mostly, I wrote it to amuse myself and my friends. I knew going in that the biggest challenge would be writing a story that felt authentic without excluding my non-witch audience. How to work in community…

I don’t know how many people are aware of this, but I got my start as a writer and Internet witch (that’s a thing, right?) on YouTube.

I was studying French in Paris in preparation for beginning graduate work in religious studies, and I was miserable. Not because I was in Paris—Paris is amazing and this was a highlight of my life—but because I’d just escaped an abusive relationship with a dude…