Preventing Burnout In the High Priest and Priestess The wear and tear on the leaders of Wiccan Covens and communities can be tough but it is also a very hidden problem. A High Priest (HP) or a High Priestess (HPS) has spent many years working on his or her spiritual path, learning how to meditate, connecting with the Divine and have learned many coping skills for dealing with stress and burnout so they may be able to keep the burnout at bay for a long time, inching toward it so slowly even they don’t see it coming. Also many beginners in the Craft tend to put the HP/S on a…

Witches Soul Work: The High Priestess is Not Your Girlfriend (Picture is Gardnerian HPS Doreen Valiente. For more about Doreen see: http://www.doreenvaliente.com/) When I first met my High Priestess (HPS) Lady Rhiannon we were taking a course on-line together and sometimes got together for lunch. We became friends and later co-taught a class together. About a year later she invited me to join her Coven. I had studied Wicca for ten years at that point; a lot of reading and studying on line or by correspondence. I had also joined a Reclaiming women’s circle for a while and an Eclectic Witches Circle that was really a peer study group. I…

Witches Soul Work: Surviving Mercury Retrograde   There is a superstition bounding around the Wiccan, Pagan and New Age communities that communication will somehow be horribly affected when mercury goes retrograde within the astrological chart and all hell will break loose. The fear it invokes in some is truly surprising! People believe that because Mercury rules communication, clear thinking, truth and travel when the planet goes retrograde things to do with communication and travel seem to be difficult, problematic and messy. (1) Sometimes this is just a self-fulfilling prophecy; we believe communication will get screwed up so it does. If we are looking for validation that it’s real, we find…

We started out completely captivated by the dance of the Lady and the Horned God. Our hearts beat faster, life spinning with colours! A homecoming! Then as the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months and years we tried to go deeper into the Mysteries of our awakening. The Divine is immanent; God and Goddess are alive intertwined within the Sacred Earth. The question we asked ourselves was how can we go deeper? First we studied the books, any books, excited by the smell of incense in the Occult Book stores. We learned how to cast a circle, how to connect with the Elements, how to call them…

Dream Magick and Healing at Yule   My thoughts on Yule are comforting, family together and sharing what we have, eating together and exchanging gifts. The Winter Solstice is a powerful doorway into magick and we can connect to this energy through dreams. Here’s an idea for a gift of dream healing. Make a home-made card for your dearest friend and offer her a dream healing as a gift for Yule. In the days leading up to the Solstice dress a green candle in Yuletide scents such cinnamon, cloves, orange and pine. You can also put a few drops on the card so when she opens it the smell of…

Bright Blessings. Allow me to introduce myself. I am a bisexual woman who is married to a heterosexual man. I am a Neo-Pagan, specifically a Traditional Wiccan. I am a female. I am deaf. I am plus sized. I suffer from anxiety disorder. More than these things, I am simply a human being. As are you. As are members of majority groups. And I want to tell you how I feel about the divisions we, as minorities are put into, and how I feel we further isolate ourselves from people who are different from us. The Pagan in me says we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. I believe…

Witch’s Soul Work: Community People join community for many reasons, maybe as many reasons as there are people. I joined the Pagan community many years ago because I had a child and wanted him to grow up identifying with and belonging to a community. Some people join community to be part of something, or to have social interaction with others, because they are lonely, looking to connect with people of like mind, searching for support and healing, or many other things. When Witches or Pagans join the Sacred Cauldron community what are they looking for? If they don’t find what they are looking for do they verbalize it, ask for…

Witches Soul Work: RITUAL FOR THE JOURNEY “Death exists in the Universe with the same levels of joy and reality as does birth. For the soul which dies free from fear, death is a spreading of one’s spiritual wings, the ability to merge into the Dreaming and find rest and recreation before entering the womb.”( Beyrl 1990, p.119) “It is our belief that Death is a time of spiritual wonder, an opportunity to seek union with the Divine.” (Beyrl 1990, p. 124) Although there is no ‘bible’ for Witches because it is a non-dogmatic spiritual path, there are common beliefs that are held by most practitioners of the Craft. Most…

Witches Soul Work: Laughter and Ritual                       Usually when we think of ritual or ceremony we think of serious prayer led by serious officiates. We can’t imagine a church ceremony where the priest and the congregation laugh uproariously in lieu of prayer! Yet there are many good reasons why humour and laughter can be used successfully in ritual and many examples from around the world where it does. In Nepal the Gaijatra ceremony, also known as the festival of holy cows (!) featured a parade of participants who had lost loved ones during the previous year. These sad people brought…