Wiccan mythology (or at least, one strand of it) features a very specific kind of Goddess and God, and a particular understanding of the relationship between them. In this video, I talk about how this mythos is really modern in origin, how much of it can be traced back to James Frazer’s book “The Golden […]
Read more "Video: James Frazer and the Modernity of Wiccan Myth"I share some thoughts about the relationship between Wicca and sex, and the role that sex does and does not play in Wicca. The three main points I make: Sex is never, ever a requirement in the Gardnerian Tradition. Anyone who says differently is a predator. Our bodies are holy, and so are the things […]
Read more "Video: Wicca and Sex"In this video, I talk through the recommended reading list I give to seekers interested in Gardnerian Wicca. Different groups will have different recommendations, and some groups won’t have any suggested reading at all, but these are the texts that I, personally, think are the most helpful and informative for someone seeking traditional Wicca. The […]
Read more "Video: 13 Books for Gardnerian Seekers"In my previous post, I talked a bit about Erich Neumann’s book The Great Mother and how, despite the various problems with it and the need for context-sensitive critical reading, it can provide a great theoretical framework in which to understand the Wiccan Goddess. Wicca is about experience, not theory, and a theoretical perspective like […]
Read more "The Horned God, Schematized"Erich Neumann’s book The Great Mother is fascinating and maddening. Neumann was a Jungian psychoanalyst, and his book is subtitled An Analysis of the Archetype; understandably, then, it presents a Jungian approach to world mythology in the aim to establish an overarching cross-cultural archetype of the Great Mother. As a work of comparative mythology, the […]
Read more "Erich Neumann and the Wiccan Goddess"A few days ago, I announced the title and cover for my first book, “Qabalah for Wiccans,” which is coming out from Llewellyn in December of 2021. The title generated quite a lot of controversy, and many people voiced concerns about cultural appropriation, feeling that it was disrespectful and inappropriate for me, a non-Jewish white […]
Read more "Video: Qabalah, Wicca, and Appropriation"I talk about studying the history of Wicca and Witchcraft, ideas that are now outdated, and why I think it’s still worth reading the books those ideas came from so long as we contextualize them as primary sources. The five books I mention in this video: The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky The Golden Bough, […]
Read more "Video: Primary Sources for Witchcraft"It’s so funny to think that I used to be non-Wiccan. Moreover, that I used to be actively turned off by Wicca–as a Tarot reader, I found myself constantly distancing myself from Wicca and everything that smelled like it. I insisted, and continue to insist, that Tarot and Wicca have absolutely nothing to do with […]
Read more "Woohoo, I’m a Witch!"I miss Tarot. That’s a bit of a weird thing to say, considering that I’m a Tarot reader and a regular Tarot blogger. I have more Tarot decks than any reasonable person should (yet still, I covet more). It’s not like I have a dearth of Tarot in my life. But this summer, my Tarot […]
Read more "Rediscovering Tarot"This is going to be a Wicca post. If that turns you off, I completely understand, seeing as how this is actually not a Wicca blog, and I promise my next post will be 100% Tarot.* For anyone who’s relatively new to my blog and doesn’t know this about me, I am a onetime atheist […]
Read more "Magic and Mental Causation"
Jack Chanek 