The Green Man, the Wildwood, Twenty Years of a Wild Craft
I live on a street with several Green Men. By the looks of the pillars upon which Their faces are engraved and the houses that link them and with a little research into this area I’d say they have been there since the late 19th century. Seeing Green Men out in the wilds of colonial Australia is genuinely remarkable. It’s rare. Of course it makes sense some of them are around because the Victorians were obsessed with folklore and ‘pagan’ superstition. When I moved into this house I noticed several uncanny synchronicities that linked together for me a web of specific meaning. Not only were there at least three distinct pillars upon which several Green Man foliate masks can be easily found guarding this hilly street, but one street over from me was a van with ‘Brigid’s Magical Cleaning Service’ emblazoned on it and right next to me an old-for-the-colony English Oak Tree. To live between a Silky Oak (Grevillea robusta) and an English Oak (Quercus robur) is - for me - a powerful place. Here I am, a witch on this hill, in Gadigal Wangal Country. At the entrance to my apartment is a dark-brown Green Man face I found in an antique store. Before I open the door to my home I press my forehead to Their face and I bless my connection with the Old One, the Grandfather. I look up and notice the dried oak branch I placed over the doorway a year ago when we moved in. Sometimes I sing particular songs for Him.
Why do I mention the Green Man, Brigid, the Oak Tree, the Silky Oak, this Hill? This cluster of powerful beings means a lot to me. As an initiate of the Wildwood Tradition of Witchcraft they all weave together. The Green Man who gave us our original coven name and is part of the Sacred Four of Great Ones we venerate. Brigid who has an especial role in our cosmology and mysteries as midwife and lover to Our Lady and foster-mother of the Young Devil, as Seer and Witness between Realms, Kin, and Cauldrons. And these mighty Trees who are also the Wildwood Tree, the Trysting Tree, around which the Woods spiral, around which we all do… a Tradition which arose from multiple rivers and roots. A Witchcraft Tradition that arises out of friendship, covens, conflicts, families, trance possession, the God and Spirits of the Wildwood themselves, and a series of uncanny connections and fatefulnesses that weave together red and white threads of virtue. A Tradition that remembered hirself as we remember(ed) ourselves.
Twenty years and one month ago I moved from the house I grew up in to Yuggerah, Jagera, and Turrbal Country - so-called Brisbane - because I was called to help form a Coven there. The previous year - 2005 - I had been receiving vision after vision, going through journey after journey, impelling me towards a fateful crossroads. I felt the Wyrd pulling me down the range and into the valley and that’s where I found my first share-house on the day of the Lunar New Year - 29th of January - in Fortitude Valley. The year of the Fire Dog had begun in earnest and I moved into this three-storey heritage-listed haunted house on a distinctive crossroads on Brunswick Street right across from Avalon. I had also already sent a Witch Call in both e-mail and etheric form through the web to various witches around my own age - the youngest was 16 and the oldest was 21 - in December, 2005. Something big was about to happen. All I knew was that I wanted to help to co-found a coven of witches around my age who were dedicated to the Craft and wanted to refine our magic and deepen into the Mysteries.
And after three months of what I still call ‘the preliminary meetings’ and connections with a variety of witches, mystics, and spirit-workers it ended up being four of us who gathered at Mount Coot-tha at Samhain to gather around the green fire and pass through the Rite of Dedication. Coven of the Wildwood was born and we were initiated into its mysteries. We had no idea then what was about to unfold.
Twenty years later I am still in awe. The same awe that entered my life that rainy night on my own initiation into the Wildwood has never left, never dimmed - only deepened. In the last two decades over 80 witches have come through the Rite of Dedication - which is our initiation into the Inner Court/Rose House of our beloved covenant - and I have been personally present at over 50 of those initiations and a member of four Wildwood covens to date. For the last five years however I have been a Wanderer in the Tradition, which means I am tied to no particular coven or group, though I still live and express my Craft in the extended Wildwood community and I have still mentored and initiated a handful of witches in the Tradition up until now.
I have continuously taught the Tradition I inadvertently helped to midwife for the last two decades. Before we knew we had stumbled upon a tradition with its own spirits and mysteries we were being directly saturated in it. We were being directed. In that first year - once through the gates of initiation - we began to be utterly haunted and harrowed by the Powers of the Wildwood. Great Cosmic Serpents helped us find our Tradition Sigil before our initiations. The Green Man - the Old God, Grandfather, Bones of the Earth, Face and Form of the Weaver’s Mystery - gave us our Name. Then the Grandmother Weaver, then the Guardian Beasts, then the Younger Gods we may call by various names and titles (the Lady and the Prince), and several other Mysteries it would not be fit to write about here. Labyrinths upon labyrinths. We were being drenched in mythos and lore. As I had grown up in a family with generations of culturally-held and socially-recognised spirit-workers, mediums, priestesses, and what my Balinese father calls ‘medicine people’ that red river of unbroken magical virtue poured into the Tradition in extremely helpful ways. Mediumship, spirit-flight, trance possession, divination, shapeshifting, and other deep trance states flow through my father’s family and that river joined others as the Tradition re-awoke. Consequently these are some of the hallmarks of our distinctive Craft.
Another hallmark of Our Craft is synchronous links and kinship with various individuals and groups identifying as Traditional or Old Craft. Twenty years of personal experience in being right there in the WOAH moments of it all is upon reflection - holy and ineffable. At the very ‘beginning’ we decided on the name of the Mother Coven in the presence of visiting witches initiated into Old Craft, specifically the Brotherhood of Janicot. My friend who carried that Virtue gave his assent and excitement to the naming of the Coven and blessed the whole endeavour. Along the way, that collegial recognition and in some cases cross-pollination and re-weaving has happened in ever meaningful and profound ways.
At this point those witches I have taught and initiated in the Tradition have taught and initiated others and they have more recently taught and initiated other witches. One of my lineages for example began twelve years ago when I began to mentor a marvellous witch living in New Hampshire who then brought in a beloved Californian witch in 2022, and this witch is about to bring in an initiate of mine in a different tradition. The Wildwood began to move through the so-called United States from 2010 onwards after my first three-month journey there. There are initiates and aspirants in multiple bioregions in Turtle Island and on both coasts. They are some of the most skilful, fun, brave, and wild witches I know. This process is not quick, it sometimes takes as much as 3 or 5 years from the beginning of aspiring to the Dedication Rite - the only initiation into the Tradition itself. Sometimes when the witch is an initiate of other traditions the training takes less time and if the signs point to yes - and if one’s heart is fully in it - I have brought people in within a year or two. In the first few years of the Coven of the Wildwood of course things happened much more quickly and we were meeting for ritual and magic every weekend and living with each other - doused in the magic - in each others’ pockets.
Our Tradition does not have degrees so to speak, but we do acknowledge and practice rites of passage as essential in engaging our branch of Initiatory Witchcraft. What some other Craft traditions might call dedication or neophyte, we call Aspiring. The witch - for we do not make witches, we recognise them - breathes in and is breathed in by the Wildwood, the Witch’s Primal Forest, and our Covenant calls to them. The witch makes a decision to aspire by finding a willing mentor or coven and it can only be them, we can not lead them or suggest it for them. From the initiate side we must also be willing as these kinds of relationships are usually incredibly intimate. It is an agreement and agreements also form a container for that mentorship and learning. If indeed initiation happens then we are bound together in magical ways. This is not to be taken lightly. When people witness and are taken in by the Mysteries together this is something very special that joins us between the worlds, in all the worlds. Something is marked, a mark is made.
I have described initiation into the tradition as the creation of a boat that is filled with what is most needful. You build your own boat with the help of your mentors and the spirits. The experience of initiation itself catalyses a pushing out of the boat into the mists and into the lakes and rivers and seas and you are now being tested in the relationships you have forged and been forged by. The Wildwood may have belonged to you before, but now YOU belong to the Wildwood; how will this unfold? What happens depends on how you turn up and relate. Yes, sometimes we use endearing or jokey terms such as witch-mother or witch-daddy, as do many kinds of kinship based group and lineages, but in truth the initiator is not a parent. We are kin and fellow Crafters. A good initiator remains present in connection, but in those first couple of years it is important for the initiate to remember that they are undergoing a great unravelling and returning-becoming. Sometimes this happens before the Dedication Rite itself, but these kinds of transformations don’t end or wrap up because we chose the road of initiation. In my experience they continue BECAUSE we choose this road.
In Our Tradition we have another initiation that Wildwood witches may choose or be chosen by. It begins by the taking of the Firebrand witnessed by at least one witch in the Tradition who has already gone through this initiation. One finds a willing (a) mentor(s) and then often undertakes several more years of deepening within the mysteries of the Tradition, leading to a ceremony that consecrates the witch as a Priestex/Priest/Priestess of the Tradition in which specific vows are made. That priestex path of service will look and feel different through each person. Our primary initiation however is not linked to a concept of priesthood. Those who undergo this initiation in our tradition often experience an intense and ecstatic harrowing or deepening that weds us to the Tradition in a profound way. We speak of this as marrying the Wildwood. Whereas before we are initiated into the Mysteries and become dedicated in relationship to these Spirits and Powers, now we have become living doorways to the Wildwood. At least this is how it is for me. Each of us would describe it a little differently. Many witches who undergo Dedication in the Wildwood have never chosen Firebrand Initiation. As well as this, undergoing Firebrand Initiation does not necessarily equal the quality of commitment to the Tradition - not at all. Several folks who have undergone this form of Initiation have completely disappeared from community and many who were dedicated years ago are some of the stalwarts of the Tradition!
A couple of years ago I made the decision to no longer take on aspirants or candidates for initiation in any of the Traditions I work within. I underwent my first Wildwood initiation twenty years ago this April and I have undergone initiation in three other traditions since then. I have helped initiate many witches collectively into Wildwood, Reclaiming, and Anderson Feri and I take all those relationships very seriously. And all of these relationships are magical friendships at best and they endure the same kinds of inevitable tensions, conflicts, pleasures, and wonders as all kinds of friendships do, and at times are even more so belaboured by all manner of projections, expectations, hopes and fears. When one adopts someone into their lineage, it is a big deal. Family is complex.
The Wildwood Tradition is my home tradition. Wildwood is how I think and relate to the Spirits and the Mysteries. Wildwood always felt like my fate and that fatedness has continued to course through the life-blood of my life. The moment I aspired I was learning and I continue to learn in this Tradition. Many of my dearest beloved friends are Wildwood witches. I share things with these witches I share with no one else in the world. Our common passion for and service and celebration of these Witchcraft Mysteries inspire me to this day. Twenty years in I am still feeling as if I am sailing in my boat through the mists and at times I return to land and dance around the Great Tree at our mighty Sabbats. In 2014 - the first year I lived in Bali as an adult - 8 years after my own Wildwood initiation I branched a specific thread of the Tradition. I have lived and served with that Sophian Thread ever since.
This thread of Wildwood Witchcraft is wholly and profoundly the essence of Wildwood Craft for me and it centres around specific core mysteries that relate to histories-myths-spirits-and-treasures Sophian Wildwood witches adore and are held by. I served as the Lucifer - a Magisterial office - of that Thread for over 7 years and then passed that mantle-office to one of my own initiates, who is soon to pass it to another. I am in awe of the initiates of the Wildwood Tradition whose expressions of this wild, primal Craft are always exceptionally poetic, exquisitely daring, and deeply lived through the body, our emotions, and our lives.
As with every group of people there will always be conflicts, clashes of personality and principle, broader systematic privilege and structures of powers manifest in various ways, and yet it remains that Wildwood is still one of the few “western” Witchcraft traditions I know of that was midwifed by younger queer and trans people and two of the four of the original coven co-founders are People of Colour. As well as this Wildwood is certainly a Tradition of Craft that is inspired by and grown forth from a syncretism of British, Irish, Nordic, Mediterranean and Balinese threads. But it is also a Tradition that emerged in stolen, occupied land. And though it has cultural-magical-mythic ties to other lands through our own mixed ancestries, Wildwood re-emerged in this time and place and therefore aspiring - as justice-oriented witches ought to - to unravel colonial ways of thinking and doing, planted in the ethos of a queer-currented, liberationist Craft. When the noise of the humans of the Tradition is too loud I feel that each of us falls back into our deep witching well and meditates on the teachings and magics of the Wildwood. I know this is the way I listen more powerfully. This is the way I renew. For it is with these Beloved Mysteries and Spirits that I find intense, intimate belonging and empowerment. It is also this that helps me to return to human community and contextualise it all.
Wildwood magic lives because of heads full of fire, hearts full of honey, and hands that know what to do. The Artfulness of the Tradition lives in in the livedness of the Tradition.
Not so long ago in the first year of Covid one of my initiate’s initiates - and someone who I then mentored through their Firebrand Initiation - who lives in France, relayed to the rest of us in Counsel that our Tradition dances around an Empty Throne. Though there are many offices and roles of leadership-service throughout our community and tradition, it is true that ultimately there is also an anarchic core. Witches are quite anarchic by nature. The Mystery that we revolve around is not a person or a human group, but something else altogether Strange. No initiate or priestess in the tradition can tell you what to do, or what to think (though they/we can try). Once you are sworn by star and stone and blood and bone… this is your crooked road, this is your labyrinthine serpent path and we dance in and out with each other over seasons and cycles, but we are linked in ways that only poetry points to.
May the thorns be as kisses to you and may the roses blossom wildly. x
Hail the Empty Throne - May, 2020 - Fio Gede Parma
(inspired by Nicholas, a Wildwood witch)
The stars set forth a secret wish
And whispered it to me
To us, to you, to every one
Beloved by land and sea
The compass rose
Of ancient winds
Whose elven tongues
Decree -
The Empty Throne
Laughs endlessly
Into infinity
Called forth by Art and Artfulness
And arrows, blades, and sighs
Brought to the ship that moves the mist
Dissolving empire’s lies
Called forth by noose, by ashen mound
By oldest covens known
Brought to the ship that sails the sea
Across the oldest bones
Bone Mother laughs
Her poetry
And grinds the bones to dust
The Empty Throne
Sings fruitfully
In perfect love and trust.
Leopard, tiger, wolf, and bear
Hawk, and serpent, cat
Otter, lion, horse, and hare
Crocodile and bat -
Gathered on the silent ship
And held in sabbat bliss
in love, and truth and wisdom,
In newest witches’ kiss
The sun, the moon
the planets
stir awake the dark
The Empty Throne
names namelessly
revealing all our marks.
Who knows which way the wind will blow?
Who knows the thoughts of lions?
Who knows the depths of oceans black?
Who drinks the reddest wine?
Tomorrow is our legacy
Today is what will be
And yesterday is what we hid
Inside infinity.
The Empty Throne
Is all our hearts
Wrapped in Their mystery.
The Empty Throne
Forgets our names
And names eternally.
The dark that wakens us to life
And dares us to Become -
The Empty Throne
That never was
And always is to Be.
