This is the first in our member bio series. We wanted to take some time to introduce you to the amazing witches who make up our tradition, and give you an opportunity to see both the differences and similarities that bring us together. Our bio series will be a monthly post, and we hope that you enjoy getting to know our members!
Our first bio takes a look at one of our founding members, an Initiate and one of the current Voices, Marijean. You can find her on twitter at @awitchbetween, as well as hosting the podcast Betwixt and Between alongside another member of our tradition (@awitchbetwixt).
Introduction
I’m a 36 year old who has practiced Witchcraft with varying dedication for 22 years. Originally from the West, I moved to the South in my 20’s and have taken root here. I love to write, read, cook, sew, knit, garden, dance and pretend like one day my house won’t be a disaster area. I work as a part-time massage therapist, and I am fiercely dedicated to my little family of a husband, a daughter and roughly one million animals.
Questions
1. When did you “know” you were a Witch?
Weirdly, this came way after I had been practicing Witchcraft and worshiping “The Goddess” for many, many years. As a teen, I was doing all of that with my best friends in addition to still participating in being an Episcopalian, because that’s how I was raised. When I moved away from those friends to go to college, and especially the year I lived in England, I moved away from my magical spirituality and focused almost exclusively on my Anglican heritage, and I found a lot of wonderful things there, but it never totally fit. After college, at a particularly difficult stage in my life, I found myself thinking, when was I the happiest? And it was obviously when I was with my high school friends. And it suddenly dawned on me that what we had being doing was modern day Witchcraft, and I bought myself some Llewellyn books and I never looked back.
So, all that to say, I think I was 24.
2. What is your favorite Witch activity?
This is going to shock some people, but it’s dancing around a fire until I fall down in a trance. 😉 But I’m also a big fan of poppet magic.
3. What made you the most excited about The Forest’s Edge?
What made me the most excited about The Forest’s Edge, since I’m a founding member, was the opportunity to be able to take time to really allow something to develop without forcing it, to let it grow organically and really listen to myself and others, transforming through experience. No one ever sat down and tried to create an entire Tradition in a weekend–The Forest’s Edge is still changing and becoming all the time, and so it is constantly inspiring and exciting, but there’s also very little pressure to KNOW EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW!!! Our most central goal is to be authentic.
4. How has being part of TFE changed your practice?
When I became a part of TFE, I truly felt like I was participating in a community that was both full of wisdom and potential but simultaneously safe and respectful at the same time. So for the first time since my innocent days with my best girlfriends when I didn’t really conceive of what it was I was doing, I felt truly free in my practice, both to define it for myself and to share myself with others. Being in TFE gave me permission to say, what is it that really resonates for me? Who do I really want to pray to? What practices really make my soul sing? And when I tried things and shared about it, always getting a constructive and supportive response.
5. What are you hoping will happen in our community in the future?
What I am most hoping will happen in our community is for individuals who have been studying with us and finding their confidence and power as Witches will begin to take a larger role in our wider community. I feel like it is time for the little pockets of TFE Witches here and there to feel comfortable connecting with each other, and tapping into the power we share, and contributing positively to each other’s lives. I love serving our community as a Voice, but I really look forward to the day with other Voices will take TFE in directions I could not have imagined.
6. What is your Witch guilty pleasure?
It is totally watching Practical Magic, Hocus Pocus, and Charmed. (It’s not that I don’t love Harry Potter, but that’s really not the same.) Oh, and Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow. Basically, dreaming about living in a creaky house with bottles of stuff and some cats and doing the Witching is my guilty pleasure. I want to be Sally Owen (I know the book is better, but from the movie), post-curse. And I think I’m sort of getting there, except my garden is a mess, and I will NEVER be jumping off of my roof. Ever.
The Forest's Edge 