2019
Originally published as Solitary Wicca for Life in 2005
This is the only Wicca-focused book I’ve written; everything else is general witchcraft and eclectic nature-based spirituality.
While working in the metaphysical bookshop and teaching, I always wished there was a book for people who’d worked through a couple of introductory Wicca books and who wanted something intermediate to expand on the basics was available. When my editor asked if I would write the Wicca title in the For Life series, even before the spellcraft book had been released, I agreed.
At the time, the market was absolutely flooded with 101 books, and there was a dearth of 102-level texts. There’s a reason for this: it’s very easy to address the basics for someone who’s starting from scratch, but in a personal experiential mystery religion like Wicca, it’s hard to know what different people will require as the next step to further clarify what they’ve encountered in introductory books. The biggest problem with a concept like “intermediate” is that everyone defines it differently, based on their own needs or experience. I thought about the questions lots of people have asked me over the years after they’ve worked through a few 101 books on their own, the common obstacles that people encounter, and went from there. I really didn’t want to repeat the very basics that are easily found in other books, so apart from doing a review of what Wicca is, and a necessary brief restatement of the basics in a couple of places before further developing the topic, I looked at things that weren’t usually addressed at the time: how to write your own invocations, how to break down a published ritual into different sections, how to aspect, how to enrich ritual, and so forth. I wrote something to help them get a handle on how to truly make their solitary practice their own.
In addition, I wanted to create a book that explored the “why” we do certain things. So often a 101 book tells the reader “we do this step in ritual” but rarely does it add the second half of the thought, “because it serves this purpose.” The 2019 rerelease removed the focus on solitary practice and made it more accessible to people who wanted to practice alone and in groups.
