Midwest Bramble

I would say yes, others might disagree, but I can't speak for them :')))

My post is less a commentary on what a grimoire is and more a commentary on doing the work of having a practice to document. You know what to put in your grimoire as you develop your path and as you see which things you go back to reference, as you create things you want to remember, as you make changes you think are worth noting.

Worrying about "what do I put in my grimoire??" before you have those things is silly. So don't worry about that. Just put things into notebooks or obsidian vaults or whatever works for you. Whatever things you want.

"Should I document my every ritual in my grimoire?" Put it in a notebook and see if it's useful to you.

"Should I include information on the astrological signs in my grimoire?" Put them in a notebook and see if they're useful to you. Do you go back and reference them ever or are they just pages in a book?

You'll put things in you eventually won't use anymore or like anymore or even completely disagree with. You'll add things that you'll reference a lot to your notebook. Over time you'll wish you had specific information in there and then you'll add it too.

It's also easy to fall into the trap of getting a special fancy book that you plan on using for your grimoire, but then it is so special and fancy that you become afraid of writing in it.

If this sounds like you, all the more reason to start with a cheap notebook. This will be your lab notebook as you experiment and get your hands dirty. Cross shit out, tear pages out, spill tea on it. It's fine. This is a rough draft.

Witchfather is a title, generally referring to any male/masc entity who will initiate (or at the very least, become a primary tutelary spirit) for a person who wants to become a Witch.

Because Witchcraft is not a generic term for any kind of magic, Witchfathers therefore are not any male/masc initiatory spirits: they are initiators into Witchcraft. And this lends to there being a specific archetype.

Of this, I assume when people speak of The Witchfather they are referring to the broader archetype, but you will also see many people referring to My Witchfather to clarify they mean only a single entity and not the archetype.

Of any particular entity who can be categorized this way as a Witchfather, they may have multiple aspects or facets which are not easy to untangle, and a major part of this is IMO the preconceptions and filters of the individual practitioner.

For example, people who generally regard the Witchfather as just being 'what if Cernunnos was an emo daddy dom' may have an easier time connecting to his primeval wilderness aspects as a haunter of forlorn places, but may wholly reject that other strands such as Azazel-Cain lore are connected to the entity they are working with.

Even if a single, individual entity fits into the archetype of Witchfather, which aspects they exemplify or express will be unique to them. And of those expressions, the practicing witch may be able to see and accept them, or not.

Writing about astrology is my dedication to the skies, and photographing cemeteries and other deathly things is my dedication to the Earth. I can't fly too high without coming back to ground. I suppose now that I mention it, growing things is my dedication to the Sun.

They are sacred because they are mundane. They are mundane because they are sacred.

But it's not a demand, it is a sweet return. I don't do things every Thursday, and I don't beat myself up over the exact things somebody has recreated from their idea of a text written hundreds of years ago.

You can usually find books on witchcraft, yes, but there’s also field guides on local foraging and wildlife, cookbooks, books that teach you how to craft and DIY, books about environmental protection and stewardship, books on how to use herbs medicinally, books about other religions, cultures, and spiritual practices. My favorite local library even has a seed swapping program and fantastic resources to research your own family history!

Pretty much every claim of Christians stealing pagan holidays comes from sloppy scholarship and conspiracy theories. Please get your information from modern scholars instead of trusting random witch blogs/videos/infographics.

The witch hunts were driven by the early modern equivalent of QAnon, not by any credible evidence that a bunch of cryptopagans were out doing rituals in the woods at night. Most of the accusations were repurposed from accusations made against Jews for hundreds of years at that point.

Christianity and monotheism aren't the reasons you have to deal with patriarchy. It existed in polytheistic cultures long before either one existed, and it would still be here without them.

I wonder sometimes if what we experience now in terms of everything being over-applied and flattened to the extent of meaninglessness is an indirect result of the hyper-individualizing of witchcraft spaces that happened in the 2010's where it was relatively common to know five different people with all the same practice but with five very specific labels for what type of witch they were. I wonder if, because of the way social media works, when people started to abandon the use of their personalized terminologies and huddle into pockets of hashtaggable community, did the terminology that existed pre-2000's almost unchanged for decades all collectively get a rebrand?

This is true in witchcraft spaces too. If someone looks up, for example, "why is it okay for wiccans to do smudging in their practice" they're going to find a different set of sources than if they were do look like "what is the history and significance of smudging". If someone looks for "witches don't believe in satan", they are going to find sources that support that belief; whereas the research will yield more balanced results with a less leading query.