Learning the Craft

A great deal of the Craft can be learned by anyone, without an oath and without a coven. This section sets out that part of it, as our own outer court is taught it.

The rites of a Gardnerian coven are oathbound, and nothing in these pages comes from the Book. But the rites are only the top of a tall building. Underneath them are skills that every witch must have before a rite can mean anything: the ability to be still, to hold an image in the mind, to come back to earth afterwards, to know one's own motives, to keep the moon and to keep an honest record. None of that is secret. All of it takes years.

These pages were drawn up by Tamsin, who has charge of our outer court, with the help of the rest of us. They describe what we ask of seekers in their year and a day, and they are offered to anyone who would like to begin, whether or not they ever come near a coven.

The outer court year

Our outer court meets once a month, in the kitchen, in ordinary clothes. Its year is divided among the four elements, a season to each, and the pages of this section fall naturally into the same pattern. Nobody is expected to master a season's work in a season. The point is to have tried everything once, and to know what one is weakest at.

The year of our outer court

Season	Element	The work
Spring equinox to Midsummer	Air	Study, attention and the breath. Meditation and visualisation begin here, and so does the diary.
Midsummer to the autumn equinox	Fire	Will and desire. Seekers are asked what they actually want, and to know themselves well enough to answer. Candle magic belongs to this season.
Autumn equinox to Yule	Water	Feeling, dreams and the tides. The moon is watched closely, the cards are learned, and each seeker visits a spring, a river and the sea.
Yule to the spring equinox	Earth	The body and the ground. Grounding, stillness, the household altar and the protection of a house.

The correspondences run through the whole year, and so do the manners of the Craft, which are learned mostly by practice and the occasional embarrassment.

In this section

• Meditation and Visualisation

  The two plain skills on which everything else rests: being still, and seeing what is not there.

• Grounding and Centring

  How to come back to earth after any working, with a tree or without one.

• Know Thyself

  The inner work of the Craft, some exercises in honesty, and a word about positive thinking.

• The Household Altar

  Making a small sacred place at home, laying it out, and keeping it alive through the year.

• Working with the Moon

  The phases and their uses, the dark of the moon, blue moons, and a simple rite for one.

• Correspondences

  The old tables of days, colours, plants and stones, where they came from and how to use them.

• Candle Magic

  The simplest working of all, done properly and done safely.

• Protection

  Shielding, the warding of a house, the old household customs, and when the trouble is not magical at all.

• The Magical Diary

  Why every witch keeps one, what goes in it, and how it keeps a solitary honest.

• Manners in the Craft

  Greetings, names, tools, altars, sacred sites and other people's paths.

Walk before you run

The first question most beginners ask is how soon they can do a ritual. The honest answer is that they can do one tonight, and that it will mean very little. A rite is made of skills, as a piece of music is made of scales, and a person who has not practised the scales can only make noises in the right order.

So the work on these pages comes first, and it comes slowly. Ten minutes of stillness a day, every day, will do more in a year than a library of books read in a month. Nobody falls behind. There is no timetable, no examination and no certificate at the end, and we would be wary of anyone who offered one. It is far better to take ten years and become a good witch than to hurry through one and become a poor one.

Nor is there any need to spend money. Almost everything described here can be done with a candle, a notebook, a bowl of water and a window that shows the sky. The page on the working tools has a word to say about the temptation to buy things.

Three stages of learning a rite

Whatever rite you eventually come to, whether one you have written or one you have been given, you will learn it in three stages, and it helps to know that they are stages and not failures.

1. From the page. At first everyone reads. There is no shame in a sheet of paper by the candle, and some very experienced priestesses keep one for the longer passages.
2. By heart. Then the words are learned until they no longer need thinking about, and the attention that was spent on remembering is free for the rite itself. This is when a rite begins to work.
3. From the heart. Last of all, a witch who knows the old words thoroughly may find new ones coming, in the moment, that say the same thing better. This cannot be hurried, and it cannot be skipped. Words made up by someone who never learned the old ones tend to sound like it.

What these pages cannot do

They cannot make anyone a witch. They describe exercises, and exercises have to be done. They cannot correct you, which is the thing a beginner most needs and least enjoys, and which is the chief reason that people who can find a good teacher should. And they cannot give you the gods, who belong to no tradition and do not wait on a syllabus.

If you are working alone, the page on solitary practice suggests a first year that fits well with this one. If you think you may one day want a coven, the advice for seekers explains how people find one in Britain. Either way, the work on these pages will not be wasted. It is what every High Priestess hopes a newcomer has already begun.