Covens, Circles and Solitaries
There is no church of the witches, no building on the corner with the times of services on a board. So one of the first questions a new witch asks is: where are the others? The answer is that we are in covens, in circles, and very often alone, and each of those is a real way to walk.
The coven
The coven is the traditional unit of the Craft: a small, closed group, classically thirteen but usually fewer, who work together regularly, train together, keep oaths to one another, and over years become something like a family. A traditional Wiccan coven is led by a High Priestess and often a High Priest, follows a particular tradition, admits members only by initiation after study, and keeps its inner workings private. The intimacy is the point. You cannot raise power with strangers the way you can with people who know your sorrows.
The gifts are depth, training, lineage and belonging. The costs are commitment, since a coven that meets at every full moon and Sabbat needs you there; patience, since a year and a day of study before initiation is the norm; and the ordinary risks of any small intense human group. A good coven is one of the best things that can happen to a witch. A bad one can take years to recover from, and we have written about how to tell the difference.
The circle
A circle, or open circle, or grove, or study group, is looser. People gather to learn, to celebrate the Sabbats, to practise, and to find each other, without oaths, degrees or a fixed membership. Attendance is as you can. Beginners are welcome and experience is mixed, which is the point and the charm. Many covens began as circles whose members grew close enough to want more. Many witches stay happily in circles for life.
The gifts are accessibility, variety and low stakes. The costs are shallowness if nobody tends the depth, and the drift that comes when nobody is responsible. A circle needs at least one person who will book the room and send the email, and that person deserves cake.
The solitary
Most witches in the world are solitary, practising alone, by choice or by circumstance, learning from books and the land and their own experiment. Doreen Valiente, Scott Cunningham and Rae Beth wrote the books that made this a respected path, and the internet made it a crowded one. A solitary casts the circle alone, keeps the Sabbats alone, and is answerable to no one but the gods and the Rede. Many of us at the Hearth were solitary for years before we found each other, and all of us still are, some of the time.
The gifts are freedom, self-reliance, and a practice shaped exactly to you. The costs are loneliness, the lack of anyone to say "that is not quite how I would do it," and the particular difficulty of raising power on your own. None of these are fatal. All of them are eased by an occasional evening with other witches, which is where the Hearth comes in.
Where the Hearth fits
The Hearth of Brighid is not a coven, though a coven has grown inside it. It is an open hearth: a circle in the sense above, with public gatherings anyone may attend, a study group, a flamekeeping cell, and a small core of Hearthkeepers who have made a dedication and carry the work. You may come to one Sabbat a year and never speak to anyone, and be as welcome as the person who lights the fire. You may come for a year and a day and ask to join the core. Or you may never come at all and simply use this website as a solitary's shelf, which is also what it is for.
See Gatherings for when and where, and Joining the Hearth for how the deeper path works.
Finding others
- Open rituals. Many groups hold public Sabbat rituals, especially at the solstices and equinoxes. Go. Stand at the back. See how it feels.
- Pagan moots and meetups. Informal gatherings in pubs and cafés, often listed on community sites. The Pagan Federation and Children of Artemis both run them in Britain; in North America, coven-finder sites and local pagan pride days do the same work.
- The occult shop noticeboard. Still, in our experience, the best technology for this purpose ever devised.
- Online covens and circles. Real community is possible at a distance; several on our Kindred Hearths page prove it.
- Patience. Witches do not advertise and do not recruit. Make yourself quietly visible, keep practising, and the right people tend to appear. The old saying is that when the student is ready the teacher shows up. We have found it to be roughly true, allowing for the postal service.