Begin here

Not by subject, but by what is actually going on.

Tonight — waxing crescent

The moon is filling — the half of the month for calling something in.

What is closest?

All situations

The very beginning

You have read enough to be curious and not enough to start.

All situations

A hospital week

Appointments, scans, results, and the long not-knowing around them.

All situations

The first days after

Someone has died, and the days have to be got through anyway.

All situations

Something at the threshold

Doors, windows, and whatever you would rather was kept outside.

All situations

The hours you keep waking

Four in the morning, and the nights that will not close over.

All situations

A house that is not yours yet

Boxes in the hall, an unfamiliar ceiling, and the first meal cooked.

All situations

The day you must be brave

The interview, the exam, and the sentence you have to say out loud.

All situations

Something you need to put down

A grudge, a ring, a letter never sent, a life you were going to have.

All situations

A season that will not move

The work has stalled, and the calendar has gone white.

All situations

A bond gone quiet

Nobody fell out. It simply went quiet, and stayed that way.

All situations

A room that does not feel right

Nothing you could point at, and you feel it every time you go in.

All situations

When your name is in someone else’s mouth

Being talked about, looked at, or made small by somebody nearby.

Or take something in order

The situations above hand you a set. These hand you a sequence — for when the question is not “what do I do tonight” but “where does this go next”.

All sequences

Your first month

From the first candle to the first spell that does nothing, in the order the questions arrive.

  1. 1Wiccan Spells for Beginners: Where to Begin and What to Learn First
  2. 2Working Safely: Fire, Herbs, Oils and Ordinary Care in Spellcraft
  3. 3Setting Up a Wiccan Altar: Placement, Tools and the Working Surface
  4. 4Before the Candle Is Lit: Preparing Yourself for a Spell
  5. 5Kinds of Wiccan Spells: Candle, Cord, Bottle, Written, Bath and Charm
  6. 6Writing Your Own Spell: Words, Rhyme and the Shape of a Rite
  7. 7After the Spell: Closing the Working and the Days That Follow
  8. 8When a Spell Does Not Work: Reading the Silence Afterward

All sequences

Setting up a working surface

From a bare shelf to something you can leave standing.

  1. 1Setting Up a Wiccan Altar: Placement, Tools and the Working Surface
  2. 2Keeping a Working Altar: What Changes Between Rites
  3. 3The Chalice: The Cup on the Wiccan Altar
  4. 4The Cauldron: Fire, Water and What Is Made Inside It
  5. 5The Altar Pentacle: The Disc That Grounds a Working
  6. 6Making a Tool Yours: Consecration, Second Hands and Retiring
  7. 7The Altar in a Tin: A Working Kit That Travels

All sequences

Learning to read

One way of asking at a time, beginning with how to ask at all.

  1. 1Divination in Wicca: The Ways of Asking and What Each One Is For
  2. 2Asking Well: The Shape of a Question the Cards Can Answer
  3. 3Pendulum Divination: Yes, No and the Weight of the Question
  4. 4Cups, Wands, Swords and Coins: The Four Suits of the Tarot
  5. 5Casting the Runes: Spreads, Reversals and Reading the Fall
  6. 6Scrying in Wicca: Visions in Mirror, Water and Flame
  7. 7The Cards People Fear: Death, the Tower, the Devil and the Three of Swords

All sequences

Getting through a hard week

What can be done on the days when very little can be done.

  1. 1Healing Magic: What a Rite Can Hold and What It Must Not Promise
  2. 2A Week You Only Have to Get Through
  3. 3The Morning You Cannot Get Up
  4. 4The Smallest Task: A Working for When Everything Is Too Much
  5. 5Four in the Morning: The Hour You Keep Waking
  6. 6The Long Bath: Warm Water at the End of a Hard Day
  7. 7Permission to Rest: A Working for the Hours You Take Back

All sequences

Making a home yours

From boxes in the hall to a flame you keep standing.

  1. 1Boxes in the Hall: A Working for Moving-In Day
  2. 2The First Night in a New Place
  3. 3Blessing a House: A Rite for the Rooms You Live In
  4. 4Blessing the Kitchen: Bread, Salt and the First Meal Cooked
  5. 5The Doorway: Working at the Threshold of Your Own Home
  6. 6A Patch of Green: Balcony, Windowsill and the Smallest Garden
  7. 7The Standing Light: Keeping a Household Flame

All sequences

Working with a deity

Who is addressed, whether to address anyone, and what asking first actually means.

  1. 1Wiccan Gods and Goddesses: The Names Beneath the Lady and the Lord
  2. 2How to Know a God Is Calling You, and What to Do If None Is
  3. 3Whose Gods Are These: Open Traditions, Closed Ones and Asking First
  4. 4Prayer, Invocation and Evocation: Three Ways of Addressing a God
  5. 5Offerings to the Gods: What to Give, Where to Leave It, What Happens After
  6. 6Building a Shrine for One Deity: A Shelf, a Cloth and a Standing Flame