Justin Michael interviewed me for his YouTube channel tonight; we had a great time chatting about how I got into Tarot, different reading styles and systems, and how we challenge ourselves and grow as readers. Check out the interview and give him a subscribe!
Read more "Tarot for Real Life: Interview With Justin Michael"One of the hallmarks of traditional Wicca is that initiates take an oath of secrecy: There are certain things they agree not to discuss with non-initiates. But why? From the outside, this can feel like a snobbish and exclusionary practice. In this video, I talk through some of the motivations for magical secrecy, not as […]
Read more "Video: The Point of Initiatory Secrecy"When seekers ask about what Gardnerian Wiccans believe, they’re often told that Wicca is an orthopraxy, not an orthodoxy. Unfortunately, those terms carry connotations that may give people a misleading impression of Wicca. In this video, I explore why I dislike the “orthopraxy, not orthodoxy” line.
Read more "Video: Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy in Wicca"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"
Jack Chanek 