Teaching Witchcraft Online

A while back, I advertised my services for teaching witchcraft on the Witchvox site. I maintain contact with a coven in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but for a number of years I have been a solitary. Currently I live in Norway, a retired witchcraft elder.
The witchcraft I teach is the tradition my HPS, Wendy, and I have developed over the years. As she is still active as high priestess of the coven we founded, our approaches have somewhat diverged, though I think we still agree on most issues.
At this time I have three active students. One is in Norway, and I see her in person from time to time. We have cast a circle together and have good energy with each other. Another is in Texas and is a very serious, dedicated student. I conducted a Dedication rite with her over Skype a few months back. In our tradition, Dedication is a preliminary to a period of intensive study and practice which culminates in an Initiation to the first degree. For that rite, she will have to contact the coven in Colorado. I can’t think of a way of initiating her over Skype. Besides, in reality one initiates oneself; the ceremony simply recognizes the fact that the candidate witch is already initiated, and helps to integrate her/him into the coven society. As she lives in Texas, not Colorado, she will continue to be a solitary witch until such time as she finds a local coven congenial to her.
The third student is recent and lives in India. We have communicated via email so far. I had another interested student, a young man related to one of the Colorado witches, but I haven’t heard from him in some time.
That is often how it is in the Craft; students come and go. As teaching is a form of paying forward, it is immaterial whether students stay the course or not. I receive and accept no payment for what I offer. I am merely discharging a debt to those who helped me in the past, by helping others now and in the future.
I am also casual about ‘secret knowledge’. In my opinion, there is no need to keep knowledge secret from others (except our inner inner names). When someone is capable of understanding subtle things, he or she will understand them. Until then, hidden knowledge may as well be displayed in 50-foot neon signs for all the difference it will make. Those who are ready to self-initiate will do so. Others will pass such knowledge by without even knowing they have missed anything.
In the Craft we say that once a witch has been initiated to the second degree, he or she has a duty to initiate at least one witch to the first degree. I did so in California in 2006. So my debt to the Craft is discharged. I could quit teaching now and just practice privately for the rest of my life. So this squib is a way of telling would-be students, past, present and future, that I am easy about whether they stay the course or not. I have paid forward, and that is enough.