In the book The Mists of Avalon, the concept of the Mother, maiden, and Crone was explored beautifully. But have you ever known anyone who actually lived the Maiden Mother Crone concept in our more modern times? I am one of the lucky few.
In a family of six, I was taken in by my mother and Grandmother to be taught the “Family Craft. I was told it was because I showed skills the other siblings did not demonstrate or have an interest in. My Witch life was Grandma, the Crone, Mom the Mother, and I, the Maiden. The hierarchy was a way of life and an integral part of how our family craft was taught.
I was chosen around the age of eight and told not to tell anyone, not even the other members of the family. Mom and Grandma were my elders, teachers, and mentors. What I did not have was a peer group of other Witches my own age. That did not happen until I was fifty years old. Up to that time, I had been sworn to secrecy and instructed not to look outside of what they were teaching me until I was permitted to do so.
This made growing up interesting, to say the least. When we would visit Grandma, my siblings thought it was just “visiting Grandma.” For me, the youngest, it was something quite different. Grandma always had some lesson or task for me that related to “The Family Craft.”
Not being able to talk about it to anyone taught me what it meant to be a solitary witch as well. When I was younger, this made it more difficult and made me feel even more like an outsider, an oddity, and unsure of how to make friends while leaving out such a huge part of my life. There was no instruction or discussion about being a secretive, solitary witch either. But I eventually figured it out on my own.
In 2010, I went on a date to a nearby town and together we found a “Witch Shop.’ Grandma was long passed, and my mom lay in her deathbed. I told her about the shop and that they had classes. She released me from my vow of secrecy and encouraged me to go.
Those classes are where I heard the word Pagan for the first time at the age of fifty. That’s when I learned there was a whole Pagan movement that occurred when I was younger, with a Witch School and all! What! I missed Witch School? I admit at first, I was not pleased by this.
I resolved my frustration by consuming everything I was now being taught like a spoon-fed baby. And there were conflicts, too. Mom, now passed, I was on my own for magical guidance and who to trust. My new teacher wanted me to talk to her about witchcraft and magic, but I had a fifty-year habit of not doing so. However, she eventually got me out of the broom closet and talking, and I have not stopped since.
My first public teacher taught me what “Public Paganism” was and how the greater communities did ritual, held holidays, the role of deity, and all the first-level book of shadows stuff. My second teacher taught me many of the same things, but from a more advanced experience, and took me to higher levels.
Yet inside, I was ever the solitary. I can only go so far in engaging with what others teach me, then I pull back to my solitary ways. While I am adept as a Public Priestess and performing my duties, my heart and soul remain solitary. When I attend gatherings or rituals with others, it is for the sense of fellowship. The comfort of knowing there are like minds out there, then I retreat to my solitary ways. I think many practitioners are this way, too. We gather for fellowship, then we retreat to the quiet of our soul and spirit and practice in the ways that give us comfort as a solitary. I struggled with that, thinking one had to be one or the other. And could not be both a solitary and gather or practice with a group.
Later, when I was High Priestess of my own group, my Christian sister and I were talking about how many different types of belief-sets I had in our group. We had Buddhist, Norse, Alexandrian, Wiccan, and traditional practitioners. She asked, “What brings you together then if you have so many different beliefs?” “Oh, that is simple,” I replied, the agreement to practice and focus on the beliefs we have in common. The agreement is that this is what we do when we are together, and that we are all free to practice as we choose when we are not together.”
I had not realized how interfaith and beautiful Witchcraft and Paganism were until those words fell out of my mouth. This truth settled any struggle I was having about being both a group and a solitary practitioner. This is because being solitary does not mean being a recluse, as I had felt in my own personification of the Mother, Maiden, and Crone tradition I had grown up in.
In 2022, at the Eugene Pagan Pride, the universe saw fit to drop all fifty years of the Pagan movement I had missed out on in my lap. It came in the form of a donation of Pagan newspapers, newsletters, and magazines that had been collected by Laura Wood, who had passed, and her partner, Siena, donated them all to Oberon Zell, who was at the Pride with me.
He was about to move across country, so it all came home with me. I was lost in my office for months. I absorbed all the documents and the fifty years of Pagan history they represented. As I read the documents, thoughts of Mom, Why didn’t you tell me about all this, surfaced again.
Then I had the occasion to have a phone call with Lori Bruno about the Dr Leo Martello newsletters. In that conversation, I told Lori that Mom had kept so much from me over the years. Her reply was priceless, “And I bet there is plenty you wish you did not know since you came out of the closet, right? They were right to keep you there for so long. Your practice is pure and incorruptible, and now only you get to choose what you want to add, right?” Yes, I replied, then she went on to give me a bit of a scolding along with some praise, in classic Lori Bruno style.
It was that call with Lori Bruno that made me more comfortable with being my own version of solitary. I am good at doing the public stuff, but it is not what I want to be doing, and Lori reminded me that I get to choose. I do not have to do what the public expects of me because I am a priestess, trained by so and so or an author.
For example, the way I grew up living the triple concept of Maiden, Mother, and Crone (a phrase I knew nothing about until much later) gives me a very different perspective of what it and the divine feminine mean, in contrast to what others might get on the topic from public Paganism. To me, it is not a spiritual concept. It is a way of living, a way the family is constructed, and the way the tradition is taught.
In the end, as I explore my path, I can say I grew up in a closed, initiatory, and solitary path, which, as the youngest, I am now the matriarch of. There are several among the nephews and nieces that I have chosen to teach the family craft, and even a couple that are not family because they are like family.
As a solitary, I get to choose to stand genuinely and proudly, well-educated and experienced Witch who teaches. Being a solitary does not require being secret or becoming a recluse as it was when I was young. It means you choose what path you walk, who you want to share it with, and how much you want to share. It means that your group participation does not define the path you walk, unless it is a closed group or an initiatory path. Solitary does not mean alone. It is the freedom to choose and create the path you want to live.
