A lot of authors in the genre of what is now referred to as “traditional Witchcraft” seem to argue that somehow only those among those groups spend more time researching folklore to find elements of tradition than do those among what they call “Wicca.” As someone who has dabbled in both a folkloric style of Witchcraft and am also an initiate, I find folklore and old customs to be something most Witches of every stripe explore, including the founders of what some now call Wicca with a K. Certainly Gardner, Valiente, Crowther, Sanders, and company did their fair share of research. Moreover, to use the word “tradition” because, somehow, one group is pulling more “folklore” and “tradition” from trial records than another is a bit dubious when one considers that it’s hard to accurately discern either folklore or tradition from the cries of a woman about to have her tit lobbed off and a hot poker stuck in her eye. The word Witch comes from gender variants Witch-ah and Witch-eh in Anglo-Saxon, where the cc in that context was pronounced “ch” as in “chipotle.” Take the gender off for modern English and you are left with the word Witch.

At the end of the day, none of us really knows, not with the various striped socks of Witchcraft and not with religion in general. We pick a spiritual spot, we take a stand, we think we’re right, we cry it out, but, at the end of the full moon cycle, what the hell do we really know? Ultimately, what defines a Witch for me is talent. It’s a fuck all lot more discernible than history. 😀