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Potentially of interest, in the novel A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive baking the young main character is a young woman with baking-related powers and her familiar is a sourdough starter named Bob who has a small but mighty in the story.

One of the most difficult things as a Jewish person trying to access deeper mystical and occult knowledge, it is difficult to continue to study without having to engage with this violent erasure of my people, and many white people I have encountered in the Occult community are not knowledgeable about this history or don’t seem to care. It sometimes is just as simple as people mispronouncing Hebrew words or letters. I would love to have you write more books or see more creators present alternate histories or modalities that can serve as alternatives to having to engage with Crawley stuff that feels like nails on a chalkboard and makes me hear my ancestors weep. It’s like…I don’t think people should stop studying those texts, or that they aren’t “true” paths because they use stolen ideas. I just know because of my spiritual traditions and upbringing and trauma that I will never be able to connect with them.

I really enjoyed this video! It gives a whole new dimension to the concept of familiars. I was just posting it on our coven Discord and at the exact same time, one of the coven posted a photo of a sticker on the rear of a car which read “Proud parent of a sourdough starter”. Synchronicity or what? I’m curious how you got your sourdough starter from your former abode to your new one, though. And, unrelated question, as it’s been bugging me for a couple of videos-what is the thing on your left with the white plastic handle?

I love how your mind and soul work in relation to the seen and unseen worlds. I am an animist, and feel that all living but also some non-organic elements have a soul, or may develop one. I remember in one of your talks how you explained your bonding with a lake? (If I remember correctly) in that you visited and acknowledged and interacted with the body of water. Yeasts are extremely powerful organism and I don''t know if they are a subset of fungi or just a different class entirely, but fungi are behind life creation and communication between species, I learnt that fungi flund at the roots of trees create a symbiotic relationship with them and "wire" trees to one another at root level, so that chemical information is conveyed from one individual to the others through them. Fungi live and thrive thanks to the nutrients provided by the trees and in exchange they link trees together, they expand the biological possibilities of trees. I think you tapped into real magical energy yourself, and that you have a truly excepcional relationship with a life form with whom it is extremely rare to bond. That tells a lot about you and your core. Beautiful. Modern humans within a Western culture are very disconnected with Nature, not only physically but also espiritually. Spirits often explain that they are flexible in how they relate with other beings, with us. No two humans have the same approach and interaction with them. There are no right or wrong ways, apparently, as long as you approach them with respect and not for selfish reasons (one thing is mutual profit, an exchange, a healthy bond, and another, an uneven self-serving approach). You really explore possibilities others have never thought of. Thanks for sharing!

Hope, my sourdough starter and kitchen pet, will be 7 years come Mabon. She was born of gratitude and grief. She's been split, shared across the country and even helped open a restraunt for a time. This year on the farm we are taking the Mystery a but farther and grew the wheat. Harvesting at Lammas and gonna make bread with Her.

Love this kind of craft/magical practice/relationship. We see the sourdough starter in our house as a spirit as well. Just like giving the ancestors coffee in the morning, and Domowik the first bit of bread, our starter gets fed once a week and I say a nice prayer for her as I stir in the new flour and water.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing! ✨

czcams.com/video/7uDQn5dnJ8M/video.htmlsi=dcleIi8Tu6vfX_9u

"Sometimes this story is complicated." *laughs in I'm my own Grandpa*

I have learned and believe the best route to manifesting anything through magic is going toward what you want instead of concentrating on what one is not happy with

Great, oft-needed information and reminder. Thank you.

Ken, You're adorable in candy-colors.

"If there are seven out of 12 criteria, we can diagnose you with Gardnerian Wicca" I so needed this laugh today, thank you! Blessed be from Germany :)

Solitary Wiccan who really enjoys your content, and seeing things from another perspective here. Thank you for both sets of reading lists. I'll be adding some from each to my own reading list.

I'm glad I discovered you, I like the style of your channel

Hecate is the three-faced triple-formed Goddess, Maid, Mother, and Crone.

Hey, interesting overlap with my own preferences. We have a few replicas from museum gift shops (easy in Europe with some kind of Roman history museum on every sevond larger city), but also little metal cut-outs on a sandstone stand of cave paintings from Lascaux: a deer for the God and a cow for the Goddess, yeah, again from the gift shop. It really feels like a special gift to Pagans here, having such easy access to really beautiful stuff. Apart from that, there are quite abstract limestone figurines I made myself, and a couple more if my patron deity, some I made from clay some I bought from a Pagan artist who does tin casting, all rather abstract and definitely non-Barbieesque.

Excellent video Jack! Liked, and subscribed!! Personally I am as I tend to term it a Syncretic Eclectic Practitioner who spans the scope of pretty much any magick system I can get into as well as a busker/street stage magician. It's fascinating though unsurprising both the differences, and commonalities across the pond. I like yourself am an American, and as you pointed out on our side there tend to be more solitary eclectic practitions than covens. Though I don't think any should be seen as any less valid than others in any case.

Wicca is what happens when you have a bunch of bored, wealthy retirees living in a wealthy british seaside village, so they all get together and start having orgies in their new neighbors backyard. Im not even joking. This is how wicca started. So im gonna go with not celtic, more like freaky old people just trying to enjoy retirement. And you know what? Good for them.

Great video, Jack! So interesting how stuff in early Wiccan publications like the Farrars' practices get telephone-gamed out down through the years and across all the teen witch stuff into current cultural perceptions. Might just be me but this kind of content is my favorite, would love to hear more of your commentary on modern popular perspectives of witchcraft that differ from realities of praxis.

So glad you made this video. Kinda baffled by people saying that Wicca is Celtic (especially when they say that Eostre is Celtic, as it’s Germanic). The English popular celebration on May 1st was May Day. I’m barely aware of Roodmas, though I have heard of it before. Prior to the Reformation, May was the month of Mary. Totally agree with the recommendation of “The Stations of the Sun”, it’s an excellent book. The influence of “The White Goddess” was definitely important, but as you say, not hugely reflected in Wiccan liturgy and practice. Incidentally, Cochrane was very keen on Graves as well.

We need much more talks about this topic ❤️🙌🏻 Thanks Jack for this!

I'm a little late on this video (move from SLC to Olympia). I've utilized the spiral Goddess and God statues most of my time as a practitioner. Some of this stems from my time as a Catholic and learning that God is beyond human conception. It is difficult for me to limit deity (whether Goddess or God) in any sort of way. Like you, I feel the Goddess at the beach, experiencing the turning of the seasons, or simply in the expansive universe. Anthropomorphising deities can be useful for some, and I am comfortable acknowledging this. However, we (the collective) must acknowledge that these concepts are well beyond our abilities, especially within a mystery tradition/religion such as Wicca.

I broadly agree with your points. I tend to distinguish between upline (the single initiatory line that connects me back to Gardner); downline (all the initiates who fan out from me and my initiates); lineage (a group of covens / initiates who share a particular set of rituals); and egregore (the magical cohesiveness that emerges from a particular way of working). . From the perspective of the seeker, it is more important that you find a coven that you find sympatico and aligned with your values. . From a perspective within the lineage, there are differences in practice and egregore. But there are also differences between covens. . Great points about diaspora effect too.

Love your opening example- looking for Sheffield line in Gloucestershire is a non-starter since Sheffield is quite a long way from Gloucestershire 😂

As an 80's-90's era solitary eclectic, to me the "subtitle" of Wicca has always been : Wicca: It's not about you. It's about your Parents I never bought the "all gods are one God and all goddesses are one Goddess" thing, which was cribbed afterwards from Dion Fortune anyway. To me the God and Goddess are the Parents of all, loving all their children equally. It's definitely an opportunity to have a Mother and Father who understand and accept you no matter who you are or how you identify, because they made you on purpose (IMO). All the other gods are like my big brothers and sisters, and the other life on the planet are my cousins. The other gods are only "faces" of the God and Goddess in the sense that so am I and everything else. At the level of my individuality, the other gods are individuals too. So, I'm an "al dente" polytheist, not too hard, not to soft lol. It's the different people interacting with the sun, for example, that makes the understanding of the sun different for different people and cultures, just as I am the same person interacting with my wife and my father. I'm not two different people; they are. It's them being different that makes the relationship and understanding of me different. Same with the sun, etc.

I have enjoyed the few videos I've watched of your channel so far, and the word that comes to mind regarding your content is "ecumenical", which is a breath of fresh air at this point in history.

Thanks Jack! Knowing my lineage in Wicca is like knowing my Ancestry Family Tree. It tells you some history about the people that came before me, and how I connect to the past, but really nothing about how I and my family live today.

My wife never wanted children, but she still identified strongly with her womb power and her cycle, so when she had to have a hysterectomy at a young age, it really negatively affected her. I told her "now your womb is in the Underworld, so it's even more powerful for you now" and that really helped her. I'm an 80's-90's era "traditional eclectic wiccan" (is that a thing? lol). As you mentioned in your Politic-Theology video, that 2nd wave feminist influence is definitely a major feature of my practice and that of my wife. It's really important to find *your own* way of relating your wiccan tradition to your personal life. The earlier forms need to accept the later forms as just as legitimate, but likewise the later forms need to accept that the earlier forms are still legitimate for those who still practice in that way.

How do you find a coven? How would I know if there’s one close by me?

Your hair reminds me of the 11th Doctor, Matt Smith ❤

The buble craze of Utah... you're falling more and more into the mysteries of SLC :p

Sounds like they class the Bricket Wood coven - which is still extant - as 'reform'! Given that there are still people around who circled with GBG, a small group way down the lineage in another country are not exactly in a position to say what is 'traditional'. There are still two of GBG's HPSs alive and plenty of people in the UK who are much closer in terms of lineage and practice to the foundation of Gardnerian Wicca. All would be classed as 'reform' by the bigots. As for 'traditional', my branch of a UK line has a good dollop of actual traditional witchcraft passed down and traditional covens still exist outside Wicca. In international initiate meet ups with mainly people from all over Europe but some from Canada, Australia and the USA amongst others, there has never been any trans bigotry; at such a meeting, twenty five years ago in my first year as an initiate, I met my first trans HPS who had been in the Craft for many years. To us over the Pond, your 'traditionalists' seem much in the mould of your fundamentalist Christians than Gardnerian Wicca worldwide.

This was definitely not a pointless video-you knocked it out of the park. Very good indeed. There are things that are super important to me that other people don’t care about, and vice versa. But as you said, that’s okay. I think we can learn from each other - we might find an interesting new perspective on something or a new bit of ritual - but in order to do so, we have to set aside our feelings that the thing should be the same for everyone, or should be important to everyone.

What exactly is a mystery as it pertains to Wicca, and how do we determine what is or is not a valid interpretation of said mysteries? If a mystery is just a technique for understanding reality through experience, then objective reality should be the standard metric for its interpretation (not each individual's subjective experiences).

Hi, Jack. My experiences with Wicca have been far less “experiential” and far more academic than yours, however there are parallels. Up until recently, after having read many books on Wicca and Paganism and associated beliefs among more flavors of neo paganism than Baskin Robbins has of ice cream, I wondered where the center was, so to speak. It wasn’t until this past year, having stumbled on CZcams into a channel of coven of the open mind, that I found an approach that is leading me to a solid grounding in my own beliefs. While the lecture series on CZcams is excellent, her book is astonishingly complementary and far deeper than the lectures, and I highly recommend picking it up (Open Minded Wicca). The difference in the author’s approach is the level of depth behind, say, the elements, or shielding, or tools, or circle casting, and such. By understanding the “why’s” behind everything, in other words, by understanding the pieces of LEGO’s, it’s easier to understand how many shapes you can make with them. That is to say, by focusing on the details behind each practice or belief that underlies Wicca, it becomes easier to see how they can take so many shapes, and in so doing, become so many different things to different people. But like looking at a lego tree and a lego house and a lego helicopter, by realizing that these things are all coming from the same box of legos, the differences become more a matter of focus than actual differences. It becomes less of “so what are legos, a house or a helicopter,” and more of “it can be what you need it to be, to the point that its nature allows.” I’m not sure it’s an approach you haven’t focused on, but for me, this one different approach has been the Rosetta Stone that made all of the disparities fall into place, and despite their disparities, form a whole.

Clear pristine desire counts for a lot I’ve found.

I think it's funny that people are arguing over what is "traditional" in a religion that is a toddler in the field of world religions. Its essentially made up.

Hi :) What incenses are best for the spirits of springs, ponds and forests? Which are the worst choice? I bought some Mexican cigars but I'm not sure that spirits of nature (water and trees) will be happy

I love this. Thank you so much for saying this, especially about the statues that look like Barbie. I’d say it’s fine to have anthropomorphic representations of individual local goddesses (preferably not hyper-sexualized). Great point about specific appearance being applied to goddesses too. But if by The Goddess you mean the Great Goddess, the epistemologically transcendent Goddess of All That Is, then yes absolutely let’s have abstract representations.

Thank you so much for this video. I've always felt a little ~weird~ for really disliking Goddess and God statues. Humanly portraying them has always felt wrong, but so many others were utilizing them in their practice that I thought maybe I was missing something. Statues depicting them as human seem like they are being put into a box or cage. I can see the Goddess working through people, like my Grandmother for instance, but not as some sort of separate being. Her spirit is everywhere, she is everything. A statue feels like we're limiting Her power to that of a human.

I wonder how we would perceive the Greek or Egyptian pantheon today if they never made statues

❤❤❤❤❤

LOVE that you of non-figurative representation of deity. YES! People have strong different ideas about this, and it has at times felt lonely

How many of us got by with a pine cone & a seashell before we could even *think* of buying statues?

I am one of those Romantic nature people but I do agree that total rejection of modernity wouldnt work so maybe there would be a middle way. Personally i think any sexuality is natural and any gender identity or non identity is natural and pagans who think otherwise are misguided and unethical.

I have a couple of goddess statues on my altar. One is from Malta and is based on the Maltese goddesses in the prehistoric temples there. The other my mum got me and is cute and has a moon. But tbh they are just human representations of what the goddess is and I feel like the different goddesses such as Aphrodite, Freya, Kali are all faces of the goddess but the goddess is really what you said. People find it easier to relate to human depictions I guess. But she is mainly reflected in nature for me. I also have a shell on my altar. 😊

8:00 There's this one part in your Queen of all witcheries book where you talk about a ritual or an initiation and afterwards seeing the Goddess in all the people or all the women around you. I thought that was expressed very vividly and very beautifully.

Sorry for all the comments, I'm not amaaaaazing at being concise. How are you feeling about the great Mormon presence? I've found the more senior Gardnerians to be quite tolerant of most religious belief which is notable.(and makes complete sense) It must be unusual to be around some more fundamentalist Mormons. What were your thoughts on this approaching the idea of Utah? How might your practice change being in Utah? Obviously there is a big geographic change, the natural world in Utah is obviously very different, I'm not sure how much more south it is but I'm aware it's significant, would you still move deosil?

Must be so different being in America, moving such distances and essentially setting up a new life. The UK is much smaller! Quite impressed!