Episode 3: Tava Explains Which Witch is Which

Mystical Musings Episode 3: Understanding Witchcraft, Wicca, and Paganism

In this episode of the Mystical Musings podcast, hosts Tava Baird and Jennifer Taylor delve into the definitions and key differences between Witchcraft, Wicca, and Paganism. They also explore the historical roots of these practices, focusing on figures like Gerald Gardner and Raymond Buckland. The episode discusses the nature of magic, spells, and the divine feminine and masculine, clarifying common misconceptions. The hosts emphasize the importance of terminology and respect within the community, and introduce an invocation to set a sacred space for the discussion. A closing blessing integrating all of the concepts covered and a message from spirit guide Samael is shared towards the end, adding a personal touch to this enlightening episode on mystical traditions.

Resources:

From Tava: This is a great (if somewhat overly dramatic) British show on the history of modern witchcraft and Gerald Gardner. Good information, but also gives you an idea of how the general public often views Pagans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M56-6XA3h2M

From Tava: I mentioned both Raymond Buckland and Scott Cunningham. Here is a link to a short Youtube video (Part 1) with both of them in it many years ago explaining Wicca to a television audience. Feel free to view Part 2 as well if you are so inclined!

​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMpoS_Vczbg

Thank you joining us today, remember to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to keep up to date with your tribe.

Connect with your Hosts!

Tava Baird: tavabaird.com or https://darkflowerbooks.etsy.com.

Jennifer Taylor: Willow Ridge Reiki and Healing Arts https://www.willowridgereiki.com/

Transcript

Tava Baird: Hello, we are back with episode three of the Mystical Musings podcast. 

And we are going to actually try to stay on topic today. we are going to talk about witchcraft and magic and just get some definitions down.

But before we do that, we have a JennTay here to sing us in for our invocation. 

Jennifer Taylor: Thank 

Tava Baird: you, 

Jennifer Taylor: Tava. So, as usual, I'll just ask us to, if you're not driving, close your eyes and begin by taking three deep breaths.

I invite you to set aside all of your to do lists and all of the things that have been cluttering your mind for Who knows how long, and we're just going to set them aside for now, and we're declaring this moment, this time as sacred. It is a special time for you to be able to receive divine information, little nuggets of truth and hope and joy.

information that may be just exactly the thing that you are needing at this point in your life.

And I invite the divine in all of its many beautiful forms to surround us, to be here with us in this moment and throughout this podcast and throughout our lives. Support Tava and I as we open our mouths and use our voices and all of us to become a hollow reed for the messages of the divine to flow through to support all those who open themselves to receiving.

I invite. The divine guides of this work that we are doing here to assist everyone in listening and opening your hearts and minds and spirits to receive new information, to be receptive and just open to whatever spirit has for you today. And I invite the divine to use my voice and sing us into a sacred space. 

Tava Baird: Sometimes music really helps bring things through. I have a question for you after the podcast from my lovely spirit guide, but we'll save that a little bit for later. We spoke in the last, I think it was our last podcast, a little bit about the history of Reiki.

And since we are a Reiki master and a witch sitting here in a room together, what I wanted to talk about, and what Jen also thought would be good to talk about, is a little bit of the history of witchcraft and what we mean by the term witchcraft.

Which and what's the difference between a pagan, a witch, and a Wiccan? I teach classes all over the area and this is one of the very first lessons that I do because if you are on social media, the words are often used interchangeably. Which makes it really confusing and hard for people who are interested in exploring this path to know who, what exactly is going on.

And so, getting some of these sort of common terms down will make listening to us talk about these topics a little bit more clear. on the podcast so that, you don't think I'm talking about one thing when I'm talking about something entirely different. 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. 

Tava Baird: So, one of the things is you hear the term pagan a lot and, the term pagan literally just means someone from the country. But what it is used, according to anthropologists and religious studies experts today, is someone who does not belong to one of the major world religions.

So they're not Christian, they're not Muslim, they're not Jewish, we're not one of those large organized religions. Pagans are generally polytheistic as well, they don't take the divine as being one entity. They often will talk to ancestors, will talk to spirits in nature, will have multiple gods and goddesses that they work with, different spirit guides.

So they really have a different worldview. a lot of times in major world religions, you have this idea that the divine is sort of up here and that, you are praying sort of upwards to the divine. Pagans instead invoke, meaning that they have much more of, a business relationship with the divine.

You'll see a lot of pagans who, invite energies and certain beings and entities in to work with them. But if things don't seem to be working out in that relationship, they will move on to someone else who does, which is very different from, say, Christianity, where you've got One God, right?

There isn't anybody else that you're, you're not going to be like, Sorry, God, I don't think things are really working out between us. The stuff I'm asking for isn't really happening. And so I'm going to move on to Aphrodite. That is just a different way of looking at things. So you will often hear pagans use the term invoke rather than pray because what they are doing is they are inviting energies.

rather than necessarily, having this relationship where, the divine is somehow in a higher realm than they are. Now, I also want to say before I continue on this path, there are millions of people out there who practice paganism, who practice witchcraft, and the definitions that I am using today, really stem from my roots as an archaeologist and my study of anthropology, because archaeology is a subset of anthropology.

So, I'm looking at the terms the way that most of the, people who practice witchcraft practice. I would say academic community uses them. but it is really important to get these terms because if you were to jump on TikTok or something like that, you have people going, I'm a witch, and there's so many different things that people are using that term to mean that it can be really, really confusing.

So a pagan is generally someone who does not, subscribe to one of the major organized faiths. And they are often polytheistic, and often nature based. then let's look at the term Wicca and witch. Okay, so Wicca is actually in the United States a federally licensed recognized religion. if you are a soldier and you get buried in Arlington National Cemetery, you can get a Wiccan pentagram on your tombstone.

there are associations of Wiccan brotherhoods in the police force in the UK. it is considered a religion with religious status. And I'm going to go into the history of it just a little bit here. if you look back in England, and I believe it was around the 1940s. You had a lot of interest in, metaphysical, and there's, by the way, some really good documentaries on this, not to plug my website, but if you go to tavabear.

com, I have, a link to a really good, video under community resources that will go a little bit more into the history of Wicca. So, What you had was you had this man named Gerald Gardner, and you've probably heard of Gardnerian witches before. Gerald Gardner was, let's just get this off our chest, he was a nudist, okay, which is one of the reasons why a lot of people think that witches practice, their magic naked, and a lot of them do.

But Gerald Gardner really thought that if you wanted to get back to nature, you had to go on Natural. That choice is really surprising to me because of how cold it can often be in England. But these guys apparently were very, very strong. Gerald Gardner came out and he's a really neat guy. If you ever see photos of him, he's got kind of this white, nutty professor hair going on and this white goatee and he came out and said, I've been initiated into a coven of witches.

They have been, underground for hundreds of years. and it's amazing. It's fantastic. And of course he immediately starts getting picked up. People are very curious about what he means by this. So he starts writing books, and there was also, and please forgive me because I can't remember this off the top of my head, there was a bookstore, I believe in London at the time, that had kind of become a nexus for people who were interested in metaphysics.

Gerald Gardner gets his book published, they start carrying it, he starts hanging around the bookstore a little bit and having these conversations. Kind of like when you think about beat poets, but metaphysical, right? And, everybody kind of knew everybody.

And interest in, what he was doing and what he was saying started to grow. And the next thing he knows, he's got a coven. And yes, I believe, the first coven was a group of the nudists that he hung out with. But he starts writing books about what they do and their practices. And as a matter of fact, there's a really famous incident that you can look up on the internet, where during World War II, he got a huge group of witches together to do a ritual outside.

that, and the upshot of the ritual was that Hitler should not be able to cross the English Channel. And they would chant over and over. You know, you cannot cross the water, you cannot cross the water, as a way of trying to keep the Nazis from actually being able to invade England. And now, if we look back on history, we know they didn't get in, so maybe we can say thank you to Gerald Gardner and his big coven of witches.

Gerald Gardner started really getting famous. And he formed what he called Wicca. the root word for the term witch or Wiccan, it means wise one. And the idea is, behind Wicca is that there's basically two big rules you're going to follow. One of them 

The Wiccan read is, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone, including yourself. So the idea is that when you make your choices, you're not doing it because of the concept of sin. You're doing it going, is this a good thing to put out there?

I don't want to cause harm, including to myself. And then you have something called the rule of three. The rule of three is the idea that whatever energy you put out into the universe, it will come back to you. three times over. So if you are a nasty numpty to people, eventually that is, the concept of karma is very much like this.

It will circle around and come back to you. If, on the other hand, you reach out and do good works, then karma good blessings will flow back to you. Now we know that energy can never be created or destroyed from science now, so we have to say that this energy is probably always shifting and moving around, and at times you're picking up energy from other places.

so we're looking at when people say that they are Wiccan, it means they are interested in following the rule of three and the Wiccan read. They're intending to do no harm. Now, Gerald Gardner eventually got famous enough, there is a story that says when Alistair Crowley, now Alistair Crowley practices a different brand of magic, and I'm not going to go into Alistair Crowley on this podcast because this is already going to be long enough, but when he was getting older in years, he actually became very interested in Gerald Gardner taking over his group of followers.

And Gerald Gardner politely turned him down and said, I'm sorry, I'm not interested in the sort of magic that you do. we have very different moral backgrounds. He continued on. He eventually had his own students, and one of them was named Raymond Buckland, and Raymond Buckland moved to California.

if any of you have ever been in a well stocked metaphysical bookstore, you have probably seen books by Raymond Buckland. Practical Candle Burning Magic, Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft. There's a whole lot of them. Llewellyn Publications. Published so many of his things. Buckland also did a lot of, speaking engagements, with an herbalist named Scott Cunningham, who wrote a lot of books about how to be a solitary Wicca practitioner.

And if you go to my website, there's actually video there from like the 1980s of Buckland and Gerald Gardner on a talk show in front of a, curious, yet slightly horrified audience who realizes they're talking to two actual witches, right? So, Wicca, is a structured, there are lots of different types of Wicca now.

There's Gardnerian Wicca, which are people who follow Gerald Gardner's, original path. there are Dianic Wiccans, there are Alexandrian Wiccans, and each has their own history. Most of them, say that if you are in a coven, you need to be initiated into a coven. But Buckland, for example, and Cunningham both said, no, being solitary is fine.

We know looking at history that most practitioners of magic, weren't initiated into any sort of group, and so they publish a lot of books on how to get started on your own. 

Jennifer Taylor: Actually, I want to stop you right there because I realized that a couple of the word that you were just using the word practitioners of magic.

Yes. What is magic in, in your, your perspective? 

Tava Baird: All right. So magic is basically if you magic is energy and a spell is moving energy with intention. So, You don't have to have a big circle and a whole bunch of candles and something that somebody else wrote for you that's 200 years old. You are already moving magic and doing what are technically spells.

Probably every day without realizing it. Imagine that you showed up to work and one of your co workers was sitting there crying. And you went over and you said, you know, are you okay? And they said, oh, I'm having this really bad day, and they tell you the whole story. And you think, I need to change the energy of this situation for them.

I need to lighten the mood. So maybe what you do is you come up with a plan of attack. I'm going to take her downstairs and get her a coffee. I'm going to talk about the TV show that we both watch that she loves to talk about. I might give her a hug, right? All of these are little things that you are doing to change and alter the mood.

The energy around this person with intention, that right there is the basis of magic. Now you can either send out good intentions, or you can send out malevolent intentions, and we see that all the time in the world around us. But becoming conscious of it, and learning how to work with and move those energies, and raise and lower energy, are the foundations of magic.

So, there's nothing like super secret and weird about it. Unfortunately, witchcraft has really bad PR. and as you know, historically, we had lots and lots of people who probably weren't practicing witches who lost their lives over this. So it's really interesting. In one of my novels, I have a Roman Catholic talking to a witch and they walk into a church together.

And there is, if you've ever been in a Catholic church, there are these little, things up on your way to the altar, onto the right and left side of the nave, where people can go and light candles for the healing of others. And my Catholic character and my witch character look at them. And the witch says, can you explain what that is to me?

And he says, well, people go up there and they have an intention to send good thoughts and prayers to help heal someone. And they light a candle and the witch says, oh, magic. And he says, no, it's a prayer. And she says, no, it's magic. And he says, no, it's a prayer. So the things that we're talking about are not actually that different, but we're using different terminology.

So, you know, a Reiki master might talk about moving energy, whereas I might say I'm erasing or lowering magic, right? And it's, we've got different terms there. When we talk about witch, so the term witch can be used a lot of different ways, and there are people, for example, who say, oh, I'm a Christian witch, or I'm a Jewish witch, basically in this day and age, you have the Wiccans who wanted to reclaim the word witch and say, You know, this was used as a dirty word for so long, we want to, you know, we're wearing it with a badge of pride that we're following the traditions of our ancestors, we're going to reclaim this, but pretty much a witch can be applied to anyone who's moving energy, and so you have people of all different faiths, of all different backgrounds, who are essentially practicing folk magic, and a lot of them choose to use the term witch.

A lot of them choose not to. 

But if you were to walk up to a lot of these older healers who are practicing folk tradition for healing, or for, you know, moving energy among people in these mountains, some of them are going to say, yes, I'm a witch, and some of them are going to say they're not. So it's really a choice of what you're You are choosing to identify yourself as.

I use the term witch because I am Wiccan and I like the idea of reclaiming it. And it also gives a really clear snapshot to people of what I do. But, you know, in this day and age, you can still, I mean, I've been protested at places that I taught because, I used the term witch and a lot of people think it means devil worshipper.

that's not what it means. the devil is a Christian concept. So, I'm not going to be, that's from a different faith than mine, right? And so that's something to keep in mind. So when you are encountering people online or in person and they say to you, I'm a witch, you're really going to have to say to them, can you tell me what you mean by that?

Because, it doesn't, it's definitely not a term that just covers a few things. This person may, be practicing folkloric craft. They may be, a Wiccan, they may be undecided and they're some other different type of pagan and they're using the word for right now. So, witches are pagan, but a pagan is not necessarily a witch.

So, unfortunately, you're going to have to ask people, can you tell me what your actual practice is? And it's, a good thing to have, right in the beginning of any discussion. 

Jennifer Taylor: And I'm so glad to be covering this because there is so much. Misunderstanding and misrepresentation, and I think then, you know, in media and in, all of these different types of books and people that are creating, exciting fiction and things like that, the terms witch and spell and magic have been warped so much that when I heard I was really shocked at the idea that a spell was really just moving energy and that magic Was really like your word for energy.

Yeah, because that is not the way it's portrayed And I know we were talking earlier about how you had the idea of casting a spell I think for most people has this image of I am going to bend You know, I'm going to bend circumstances and people and things to my will in order with this magic, which is, you know, could be construed in lots of different ways, but when you really look at it as what the terms, it's really just a difference in terminology.

And if I said, I'm going to, you know, just send positive energy to help improve your day at most. Well, there's still a lot of people that would freak out, but you're going to get less of a freak out than if somebody says, I'm going to send a spell or I'm going to cast a spell for you. then, you know, there are many more people are likely to go, Oh, no, no, that's okay.

I don't need any of that. it's just a matter of the difference in terminology. And I think the idea That, you know, a witch doing that. Well, if you're certainly gardenerian, you know, you're, you're not going to be going against someone's free will.

You're not going to be doing something that isn't in the good, the highest good. Of everyone involved. Because you believe that's coming back to you three fold. Yes! And you don't want that. So, Yes! You, the, by the very essence and spirit of what you're practicing, you really, you wouldn't be using it in your practice.

In that sort of way at all, because it's entirely about do no harm and put out there. it's like the golden rule, you know, put out there what you want to bring to come back. 

Tava Baird: Yes. If you were to do a Wiccan, you're pretty much in good, in good hands. because, you know, and, and it's always good to ask people, you know, where did they study or what, what things do they follow?

You know, like we said, moving energy with intention, you know, there are people who are going to move energy with good intention, and then we all know bullies who move energy with negative intention, or to cause fear, or, you know, to warp the truth, and, and that has power too.

The thing is, when you study magic, what really comes out of it for you is you learn that there are actual cause and effects to actions that you can't see. I think we talked a little bit on one of the previous podcasts about, science and magic and sort of that interaction.

So think about, if you walk into a room and yell at your dog, you are moving a harsh, negative, punitive energy towards that other creature and you can see the effects. If you walk in and call your dog to you and give them a treat and pat them on the head. you can see the effects of that. So magic is, we are definitely acknowledging that there are things we can't see, but we could definitely see the evidence of them.

I can't actually see my words traveling to that dog, but I can see the effect. And one of the things that, and I will use the term witch a lot here, but just know I'm, I'm talking about, you know, general magic users. How do I use these energies to bring about an intended result?

And of course we hope that your intended result is a good and healing one, right? 

Jennifer Taylor: And I realize, too, I'm not sure that we had covered, too, and you were using the word witch for a man earlier. Yes. And I know that was another key point that I know I didn't understand before you explained. 

Tava Baird: So if it's a woman, it's a witch. If it's a man, it's a witch. a lot of people think that the male form of a witch is warlock. Warlock actually means oath breaker. So if you walk up and go, Hey, are you a warlock? You're asking, you know, you're insulting them basically. So you want to avoid that. and you know, just ask people what they're comfortable with.

Cause there are a lot of people I know who I'm like, Oh, they are so freaking a witch, you know, like they're healers. They move energy all the time. They do spells, you know, and, and, but they don't call themselves that. So just like we ask somebody, You know, what are your preferred pronouns? Also ask them, how do you identify yourself so that I can do that?

Also, like I said before, it is still in this day and age, quite possible to get a lot of, negative feedback from people by using the word, which, so a lot of people stay in the broom closet, so to speak, because it can cause a lot of, tough situations at work, and, in public.

So you never want to. out another magic user. You never want to be like, this is my friend and they're a witch when they're introducing them to a stranger because, it can actually make things rather uncomfortable for them. It's sad that in the year 2024 we still have to put up with this thing but, you know, there are lots of hate crimes against, Wiccans and witches even, even today.

The other thing I wanted to bring up is the concept of God, right? there's, I think, you know, there's actually been books called The Witch is God and all sorts of things. And, you know, again we're looking at that monotheistic versus polytheistic, right? So most, Wiccans generally take, the concept of God and break it down into a masculine and a feminine entity.

It's very nice, women are getting represented, yeah? Isn't that great? and this has nothing really to do with gender, right? It just has, we're looking at certain attributes, basically think of it as the sun and the moon. Remember, Wicca is a nature based religion, okay? So it's, Its holidays have to deal with the, seasons of the harvest, and the waning of the sun, and the lengthening of the days, and the movements of the moon.

And so Wiccans will often talk about the Lord and Lady. Right? the lord is often personified as the sun and the lady is the moon. but that doesn't mean they're not also talking to Persephone and, you know, angel number 17 and whatever else they have going on that day.

but you'll hear a lot about the lord and lady, right? Because that is, and also you find that concept in like yin and yang. You know, that darkness, in all darkness there is light, in all light there is darkness. So, but a lot of pagans, in particular, don't just like talk, say, using the word god because it automatically seems to eliminate the concept of the feminine divine, which is often something they're trying to get away from in organized religion.

So you will hear them talk a lot about goddesses. as a matter of fact, Diana Quickens focus very much on the goddess. so, you'll hear a lot more goddess talk among Wiccans and among witches than, you would in a regular organized religion. And it's nice to have the ladies represented, right? 

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, absolutely.

And I think one of the things that I wanted to highlight and that, because I know we've had all of these conversations and now I'm trying to remember what parts do we need to, did we say before that we wanted to say again? Because one of the things that we had talked about was that there's this. It's kind of misconception that, you know, if you're, if you're Wiccan, if you're a witch, that you don't believe in a sense of kind of the divine or God, you know, people are saying, Oh, you know, well, they don't believe in God.

And you correct me in here, if anything that I'm saying that's incorrect. But my understanding from our conversation was that. It's not maybe the, the God in the way that he's described in a lot of, you know, religions like Christianity, but that if we expand what we mean by God, of the idea of like the Native American, the Great Spirit, the divine, that there is a divine force that is pure and good and right and loving and made in the essence of everything.

If we kind of agree that that is something that exists and we remove the term God from it, and you had described, and in fact, I probably should just have you describe again, how you were talking about that, that, you know, the Lord and lady are really a personification to make it easier for us To comprehend and interact with.

Tava Baird: You can, you can really look at it sort of two ways. You could either say there is an actual lord and an actual lady and I commune with them directly. Or you can say, there are all these aspects of the divine, but it's really hard to pray to the entire, Sorry, Nessie, I said pray because I was raised Catholic.

So you'll also run into, old habits die hard, so you will run into Wiccans a lot of times, or witches who will say pray because that's what we're used to saying, if we grew up in an organized faith. you might run into witches who invoke, let's do this, the Lord and Lady directly and say this is an entity directly that I am, Talking to.

You also have people who say it is very hard to connect with all of the power of the universe at once. So I am distilling it down into the Lord and ladies so that I can talk to them directly and my little human brain can process this a little bit better. So, Gerald Gardner was from the UK, right?

And there is a very ancient Celtic god there named Cernunnos. And he is known as the lord of the forest, He has dominion over the wild animals and the trees. He is the god of the hunt. Remember these, pagans are, Pagan means person from the country, right? So these old ways are based around people who are hunting and farming for a living, 

So when they, illustrated or painted their god, they gave him horns. And now, what's very interesting, if you go back and you look at the Bible, and you go back and you read the passages about the devil, he's not really described as having horns anywhere.

but later on, when you had conversions going on, the church was trying to wean people off of Kiernanos, and then what do you do? Suddenly the devil has horns, just like Kiernanos does, right? So you know, when one faith comes in and takes over from the faith that was there before, you often have a change.

a lot of it just goes underground and becomes part of the new faith. historians believe That's why Christmas is where Christmas is. if you look at the descriptions of Jesus's birth in the old texts, it looks like he was probably being born in the springtime based on the age of the sheep and the lambs that the shepherds had.

As a new faith comes in and a new culture comes in, and the old one is being replaced, you often have, for lack of a better word, the demonization of the old practices. And so that's basically how the devil gets his horns, is you have this pagan tradition that is being stamped out.

And so, now the new devil looks like the old pagan god. 

Jennifer Taylor: And I, I love that you kind of incorporated all of that too. And I know one of the other things we were talking about is that when you see, you know, God as God and goddess, And not as, you know, just sort of a man up there telling you something, you know, I think that it helps to bring a little bit more.

We were talking about that balance of the feminine energies and all of the qualities of the divine feminine. And a lot of other, you know, traditions that maybe don't consider themselves, you know, witches or Wiccans, there's a lot of terms of the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And I think it's really sounds like it's, it's really essentially the same thing, but with another, again, just a different term of the Lord and Lady.

And there's a lot more discussion about the need to have the divine masculine and the divine feminine in balance because they each have such dramatically different qualities. And having both of those, that that's how we're balanced when we have a balance of the divine masculine and feminine within our own selves.

Yes. We are more whole and balanced and healthy energetically. Right. And that we also then when you are kind of expanding into working with the earth and raising energy and doing magic and spells and things with everything that's around here. 

And in essence, we're looking at There is divine in everything, you know, there's, there's divine in, in everything in nature, in the earth, in the, the plants, in the animals, in the tools that we're using, and that everything has an essence of that, you know, that divinity. And I think it's interesting how The way that, witchcraft and stuff tends to be portrayed and paganism as, you know, this like sort of godless, there's no morals, you know, nothing.

And in essence, it's actually so far the opposite because everything is sacred. everything has this divinity and this, this spark and this consciousness and everything is then revered. Right. In a very different way. Right. So far from the way that it's portrayed.

Tava Baird: and I mean the other thing that's there is if you think about it, you know, if anybody's read H. P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu is like this mass of tentacles and this unknowable being, People want to relate to the divine, but if what you're trying to relate to is so far outside your realm of influence, massive tentacles, it's hard to connect with it.

ultimately, humans generally want, To have a picture in their heads that the divine is something they can have a conversation with, which means we want it to look like us, right? And if you think about it, you know, if you are female and you never run across the concept of a goddess, when you do run across a concept of a goddess, your brain goes, Oh!

She's kind of like me. There's something in this entity that I recognize. I now feel like I can connect better. So when you have the lord and lady there, most of us were, a lord and lady at some point, we had parents. uncles, aunts, we're surrounded by people of both genders.

We had our caretakers, a lot of times of both genders, if we were lucky. one of the things that makes witchcraft very attractive to women, is that they feel like they're represented and they feel like, oh hey, there's a divine essence that looks kind of like me.

Yeah. And maybe I can start recognizing the divine in myself. And I think that's really, really important. I run into a lot of people in classes who started off in a major organized religion and just never felt like they fit in. And so they went looking and when they ran across a goddess they went, Huh!

And we point out, you know, I had this class the other day and I had a student in it and she said, I ask everybody, why are you here today? And it was my, you know, Witchcraft Wicca 101 class. And she said, I heard that there might have been a pagan in my, among my ancestors. And I said, well, of course there was.

All of us had pagan ancestors at one point. If we go back far enough, before the advent of organized religion, we're all descended from tribes. most all of them that I'm aware of in history were, Polytheistic. so if you want to be pagan, you've got pagan ancestors.

So if anybody's on the internet telling you, well, I'm a hereditary witch, and I have it passed down in an unbroken line for my last 12 generations, well, good for you. But that doesn't mean that you are More able to move energy with intention and create effective change around you than the person who just decides today that they want to start studying, how to connect with nature and how to connect with their ancestors and how to connect with the divine, if need be, by finding a deity that reminds them of themselves.

Jennifer Taylor: And there's a couple of things that thought it came to me as you were talking that. One, when we talk about the divine masculine and feminine, and we talk about having a male and female influences, we don't necessarily mean gender. Like we're really talking about the essence of that energy.

And so, you know, we're absolutely supporting, you know, whatever, however anyone identifies, but everyone has an aspect of feminine and masculine energies and the importance. of those things and that can be in any body and any, you know, in any sort of shape or, form and that also one of the things that I think is really powerful about bringing the goddess back into our lives and into our daily speech and everything is that there is so much we have in our culture gone so far down the, honoring the masculine qualities in things that as a someone who identifies more as, a female or with feminine qualities, it's very easy to think that those feminine qualities are not valuable.

They're not as important. And when you see a goddess demonstrating all of these qualities and also being powerful and effective and healing and all of these things, you start, like you were saying, you start recognizing that in yourself and saying, Oh, wow. So I mean, but I do that.

I have those qualities and those are equally as powerful. They're just different. There's just a different essence to them. so I really, I love that. You know, witchcraft incorporates that in there. 

Tava Baird: And the other thing to keep in mind is that, and this happens I think a lot of times to people who are new for witchcraft, they assume that the Divine Feminine is a mommy.

That she's just all nurturing all the time, and she's, that is, that's one aspect of the female Divine. But let's talk about the Morrigan, okay? You know, pictures of the Morrigan, you know, she's a Celtic goddess of death, And fate. She's often pictured covered in blood. She has really bad temper days. if you look back at the writings about her, she's a shapeshifter.

She, I mean, she's It's terrifying. And you know what? That sort of unbridled power, or if you, you know, the goddess Hecate is, you know, who is considered, you know, down in, like, our Greek pantheon, Greek and Roman pantheon, but they actually think she was an import from the Middle East, she is known as the goddess of witches, but she is also the goddess of strong boundaries.

and sovereignty. So we also have to make sure that we're not going, oh, just the mothering, nurturing part is the goddess. No, if you are fierce, you are a goddess too, you know? And so I think one of the things that the study of witchcraft has helped me with over the years is recognizing and honoring all the parts of myself.

Even the ones that are far off from what society expects me to be. That they always expect me to be polite and kind and organized and nurturing and sweet and always full of light and you know what? No woman is like that all the time. 

Jennifer Taylor: No human is like that. 

Tava Baird: and being able to recognize, your own sovereignty while working with and studying about these goddesses is really important. It will give you strength. It will give you power. I don't mean power in a way that's dominion over others. I mean the power to stand up for yourself, which a lot of times we put our own needs secondary to others when we're, female in Western society.

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah, and we will absolutely have to have a podcast talking about the goddess and empowerment and power and how it is that we tend to be afraid of our own power. 

Tava Baird: Absolutely, absolutely. So, yeah, there's a whole, there's so many different ways to go down, but I think getting the definition of, you know, pagan, witch, and Wiccan down, just know that when you run into someone who says they're a witch, you're going to have to ask a lot of questions.

But those can be wonderful, wonderful discussions. And, you know, also, men are witches too, and they are welcome. They are welcome, and a lot of times I see, you know, a lot of times when I run into, men who practice witchcraft, I see a little bit of a, oh no, am I going to be accepted here, because sometimes they will walk into a group of witches and they're the only guy, 

And I don't ever want anybody, to feel excluded, because I know what it was like to feel excluded. And so, I always make a beeline for them, and I'm like, come on in! You know, you'll also run into Druids. Druids are definitely a thing, and they're all over the UK. There are some wonderful Druid societies.

The Druids and the Witch, Wiccans and the Witches all tend to like to hang out with each other. It's actually really funny. I saw a message board one day, and somebody said, can someone explain the difference to me between a Druid and a Witch or a Druid and a Wiccan? And there were all of these Witches and Druids responding and at one point one of the Druids got on and he goes, you know what?

We're not that different. And it was so funny. It was really interesting to sort of watch because they have some different, you know, the Druids have different practices. They're very nature and tree based and, but you see a lot of that in Wicca as well because Wicca got its start in the UK, where we have, old ways that were very nature and tree based as well in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England, so.

Yeah, that's it. 

Jennifer Taylor: Alright, well thank you. it's always helpful even to have to hear this again and again. 

Tava Baird: and at some point in the future we'll have to get into Germanic Paganism, which covers the Norse and talk a little bit about, their practices, they had their own entire magical system and still do that is based in Germany and Scandinavia.

it did very much affect the culture of the British Isles as well because it's such a small area for them to bounce back and forth around. 

And I love the extent of your historical knowledge and that it adds so much. Well, I think one of the things to remember is that you're going to run into a lot of people who are magic users or who say they are magic users.

I mean, there are, witches are a dime a dozen on TikTok right now. And that's great! You know, like, I'm so excited that it's becoming more accepted and people are reaching out and looking for things that really speak to them. but You do have to do a lot of research and a lot of reading, to know, you don't want to sort of blindly follow what anybody says, knowing your history, and I find that just about everybody I run into, in the metaphysical community a lot of times who says that they're a witch doesn't know what Wicca is and the difference between Wicca and witchcraft and how the terms are being used.

And so I think knowing our history is really important, especially if what we're doing is following the old ways, which, you know, we're reconstructing out of our history. And also just to know, too, in order to protect ourselves, you will run into people online who are nasty, as you will in any place.

There are a lot of people who gatekeep and say, well, you're not doing it the authentic way. We actually know very little about the authentic way, especially because a lot of the writings that we have, a lot of these pagans didn't have a form of writing that they used much for other things other than identifying signposts and insults.

Like pretty much all of the writings that we have on the Celtic goddess Morgan were done by Christians. That we're moving into the British Isles and we're writing down these folk traditions. did these guys probably misunderstand or get some things wrong? Yeah, probably. but they're the best written evidence that we have.

So if there's anybody who rolls up to you and is like, I am a hundred percent the authority on the way things were done a thousand years ago in the British Isles. Nobody is. Archaeology can tell us a lot. folk tradition can tell us a lot. That person may be exceedingly well read, but there is not an unbroken line of somebody who dropped the book of Brigid down a thousand years ago and said, here's the spell that we used.

Now, I will tell you that a lot of witches, just like a lot of Catholics, Catholics love ceremony, man. If you've ever been to a Catholic church, there are candles and there's music and there's all kinds of stuff going on, right? They love ceremony. Witches tend to love ceremony, too. And boy, do Wiccans love ceremony.

you don't have to have all of that to move or cast a spell or to move magic or energy. but we do love it and it helps us get into the sacred mindset to do our work.

Jennifer Taylor: Yeah. And I love that you make the connection between like all of the symbolism and all of the ritual that is in. Catholicism and, so many different major organized religions. And yet when they look at a weekend ceremony or something all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh They have these terrifying, symbols and they're using all of these tools and things but if you switch that perspective and you look at somebody from some other culture walking into a Catholic Church and If you don't know what these different symbols mean, you know, a cross may look terrifying, you know, all of these different things, there are all these different symbols.

Yeah. and incense and music, and it's all the same thing where we're really just using all of these different things that we have, that we deem sacred in a way, then we're using them with reverence and with intention and we've placed on them certain meanings and we're using it to help remind us how surrounded we are by the sacred, how we are all sacred and how we have all of this around us and it helps us to tap into 

Tava Baird: that, 

Jennifer Taylor: that divine flow of energy to tap into that feeling of You know, God or the Lord and Lady or the Great Spirit or the Goddess or whatever it is that we're doing, it's not so much about the ritual.

That's not where the magic is. It's the ritual that helps put us into the framework. You know, it's like, if you want to relax, and you're like, Oh, okay. I just, I really want to do something nice for myself. And I want to get into a really relaxed place and feel like I'm really caring for myself.

So you might go and draw a bath and put, you know, some rose water. oils in it and light some candles and dim the lights and maybe have some things around some fresh flowers or things that remind you and you're doing all of those things really just get you more in that mood and set the tone for you to go into a place of honoring yourself 

Yes. It's really very much the same way. 

Tava Baird: Yes, if you think about going to a public library, especially like a really big old one, You walk in the door and what happens? Conversation ceases. Everyone lowers their voices. In a library. A library is a place of reverence for ideas and for people who are studying and reading.

It's a place of contemplation. There's a difference between how you act outside the library door and how you act inside. The same thing happens in a church. You might be outside like cursing and making jokes and talking about your butt outside in the street, but when you walk in through the front doors of a holy space, That ceases, right?

There's an expectation there that there's a different energy inside that church than there was right outside on the street. Pagans don't have, well, they have more of them over in Europe and in other places in the world, but if you think about it, we don't have a lot, and because Wicca is a nature based religion, but we don't have a lot of outdoor sacred gathering spaces in the U.

S. I can drive to my local city, and I can find tons of houses of worship. You know, I can find temples, I can find mosques, I can find tons of churches of all different things. But if I am a practicing pagan, I don't have a lot of stone circles or groves of trees here. I'm gonna have to get a permit to go to the park at night.

You know, a lot of times you have, pagan practitioners and Wiccan and witch practitioners who want to have a ceremony but don't have anywhere to have it. So what they do is they have to create their own sacred space. And sometimes this is in their living room, or somebody's basement, or somebody's backyard.

I can't tell you how many weekend ceremonies I've done in people's backyards going, Is the privacy fence high enough that they're not going to call the police, think we're sacrificing something? And you're trying to create the sacred space. So that's where the magic circle comes in, is it is literally a space that you have set aside and consecrated for religious purposes, so that you have a place to walk out of your daily life and into the headspace that you need to be in to commune with the divine.

And so when you see people going, they're doing a ritual and we're creating our own little holy place because we don't have any, you know, one of my great dreams is that someday I will win the lottery and, after I pay off my house and take my husband out for a nice dinner, I will hire a bunch of people with movers to build a big fricking stone circle in a yard and say, Hey, Pagans, come sign up to use the stone circle.

Please pack out your trash when you're done. No one's gonna bother you while you're there. I was very lucky last year, I happened to be in the UK at this time of year. And on Midsummers, I got to go to a stone circle called Long Megan Her Daughters. I believe it is the second largest stone circle in the UK, after Stonehenge.

It is on the top of this hill. You can see for miles. It's in northern England. And it is absolutely beautiful. And there are these ancient standing stones with spirals carved into them. like Stonehenge has had so many people through it that you can't get close to the stones. This one, my friend and I were the only two people up there.

And we could go up and just see. Just touch the stones, the same stones that our pagan ancestors put there on that hill. And that felt like going to church, I will tell you. That felt like, it's the closest thing, it felt like walking into a cathedral. To be on this hilltop with the crows flying overhead and the wind moving through and touching these ancient, ancient stones.

And knowing that at some point in the past, our ancestors were there celebrating. And if you ever get a chance, please go. And, if you ever get a chance, donate to my GoFundMe to set up a stone circle somewhere in the U. S. I'm just joking. There is no GoFundMe. But someday, wouldn't it be great? 

or on near Niagara Falls where you had all of that beautiful energy. there are Native American ritual sites, but a lot of times, they're already in use. so it would be great for us to be able to build more of those where everybody can come together and celebrate and we can all keep the Days of the Stones ourselves.

Jennifer Taylor: Well, thank you. So We have covered so much, and I know as Sam Iyall tells us, he's like, I have to sing. 

Tava Baird: sing, 

Jennifer Taylor: Alright, so it is time to sing. We'll see 

Tava Baird: if he shows up 

Jennifer Taylor: today.

in this moment, we'll come through and I invite you, once again, if you're not driving and you're in a safe space to do this, to close your eyes. Take three slow deep breaths and just intending to integrate all of this information. Find our center and our grounding. Feel the supportive surface beneath you.

Become aware of how each thing beneath you is slowly connecting down into the earth. And allow yourself to connect down into the earth. Feeling grounded, rooted, and stable.

As you breathe, allow the energy from the top of your head to open, allow divine energy to flow through and bring your focus into your heart space. And just breathe there and receive the energy that will be flowing through me to you.

Oh, oh,

oh.

I 

Tava Baird: I have a something that came through from Samael during that song. it's specific for someone who's listening. So it may not apply to all of our listeners. but what he said was a call and a cry.

Remember that it is all right to weep for what you have lost. It is all a circle. It will come back to you. You are a holy child and you are seen. Tears can be sacred things too. It is not something of which you should be ashamed. Rest and breathe.

This has been the third Metaphysical Musings podcast and we really appreciate you all, listening to us today. have a blessed day as you go forward. From me, Tava Baird and Jennifer Taylor. Bye.