If you look at texts on Paganism from the nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, you’ll see a lot of the word “fertility.” But what does fertility really mean in this context? In the 21st century, we look at it and tend to think of human reproduction, but in historical context, it more often means something else […]
Read more "Video: Fertility and the Pagan Revival"The Gardnerian Tradition of Wicca, like any other group, is vulnerable to internal politics that can be baffling from the outside. Lately, a few transphobic Gardnerians have been making a lot of noise about wanting to institute a distinction between “traditional” and “reform” Gardnerian Wicca–and well-meaning seekers who don’t know the context may not understand […]
Read more "Video: “Traditional” versus “Reform” Gardnerians?"A lot of the conversations we have about “religion” as a general concept betray underlying assumptions that all religion resembles Christianity in key ways. In this video, I dissect some of those assumptions, focusing on the idea that the function of religion is to provide explanations–whether we’re talking about the creation of the world, what […]
Read more "Video: Is Religion Supposed to be Explanatory?"I’ve just returned from a fabulous trip to the United Kingdom. While I was there, I had the opportunity to spend time with some online friends from the British Wiccan community, and doing so got me thinking about some of the broad cultural differences in Wicca between the US and UK. The three differences I […]
Read more "Video: Wicca in America Versus Britain"With hundreds of Tarot decks on the market, what makes a deck stand out? The obvious answer is creativity and innovation: Doing something with Tarot that hasn’t been done before. But that raises a second question: How much can be changed before a deck is no longer really a Tarot deck? What are the essential […]
Read more "Video: What Makes a (Good) Tarot Deck?"Pagan and polytheist theology is a lot more complicated than just “soft polytheism” versus “hard polytheism.” In this video, I discuss the ways in which gods relate to each other: how they’re different from each other, but also how (under some circumstances) we may see them as the same.
Read more "Video: On the Schmidentity of the Gods"Let’s talk a bit about the relationship between Wicca and Thelema. How was Thelema an influence on the early days of Wicca? In what ways are the two religions alike? And–just as importantly–how do they differ? In this video, I talk through some of the history of Gerald Gardner’s meetings with Aleister Crowley and his […]
Read more "Video: Wicca, Thelema, and True Will"What is the relationship between witchcraft and astrology? Is there such a relationship at all? In this video, I talk a bit about the diverse practices under the umbrella of astrology, how they do (or don’t) relate to witchcraft, and why many witches seem to be turned off of astrology in general. I also talk […]
Read more "Video: Witchcraft and Astrology"Initiatory religio-magical traditions (including, but not limited to, traditional Wicca) face a unique problem: Initiates are sworn to secrecy about the details of their rites, which means that anyone joining one of these traditions undergoes initiation without really knowing what they’re getting themselves into. Potential initiates can’t give informed consent for the rites they’re about […]
Read more "Video: Consent and Initiation"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"
Jack Chanek 