Have you been looking for the deeper lessons of Modern Witchcraft? Seeking a mentor? or a course of instruction you could trust? Perhaps, you’re seeking friends of like-mind with whom you can share this trip of spiritual awakening you’ve been on. I looked for these mythical guides for nigh on 15 years before I found them. Even then my way was fraught with disappointments. My search began way back in 1991, before the internet existed. So long, and so lonely was my search, that I later made it one of my vows as a priestess to provide the responsible, ethical witchcraft training that I once sought so desperately. But I vowed to provide it openly to all seekers, and make it easy to find. Here we are 33 years later, and I’m pleased to invite anyone in the world to enroll in my new online course: The Pentacle Path of Elemental Witchcraft.
Teaching Modern Witchcraft since 2009
Teaching Modern Witchcraft has been a very long and twisty road for me. I started way back in 2009, inviting relative strangers to join me on Thursday nights in the little classroom at the back of my metaphysical shop, The Sojourner Whole Earth Provisions. Back then I didn’t so much “teach” as much as I organized and facilitated a 48 week course to folks in person. What I lacked in ‘official’ witching credentials, I made up for by being a good researcher, syncretizer, and presenter. I called that course Modern Witchcraft 366: A Year and a Day in the Art, Science and Spirituality of Earth-Based Religion.
I based those 48 lessons on several self-guided books from Llewellyn Worldwide Publishing that were new at the time: The “Inner” and “Outer Temple of Witchcraft” books by Christopher Penczak, “Wicca: a Year and a Day” by Timothy Roderick, and “Paganism” by Joyce and River Higginbotham. Like shuffling four different oracle decks together, I collated their lessons by topic and presented them in an order that made more sense to me – a structure based on the tides of the seasons as we were experiencing them. I led their meditation scripts and exercises, and provided the materials necessary to demonstrate their spells and rituals.
For a decade I turned the Wheel of this Year this way; teach forty-eight weeks of classes, lead 8 open sabbats, host self-initiations around Yule, then start all over again before New Years day with a new batch of seekers. Repeat. repeat…repeat…. From those initiates who hung around to help, a coven of independent witches eventually formed. I was proud to serve as the founding High Priestess for five of those early years.
With each year’s teaching, I would upgrade the materials handed out to students to incorporate new resources and perspectives. Each year, the material better reflected my own evolving understanding and personal methods. The program changed a lot over that decade, in large part to all that I learned from the many diverse students who joined us in that little classroom. By 2019, I’d passed the teaching torch to one of my early students, Webweaver, who’d by then also made vows as a priestess, and with her husband they’d taken the helm of leadership in our coven as well.
Divine Intervention
For a long time, I felt called to write my own textbook to accompany that Modern Witchcraft 366 course, and seek a publisher. Year after year, I’d step up to the Imbolc altar and promise Hermes and Aphrodite that I’d finally pull together that manuscript and shop it out, but I never got very far. In 2018, they took matters into their own hands, I presume, because an acquisitions editor at Llewellyn reached out to me! They were familiar with this “Witch on Fire,” blog, and asked me to write a book for them!
I pitched the three-book series of my dreams, called The Pentacle Path. It laid out the Wheel of the Year system I’d been developing with the coven in three layers: Elemental, Lunar and Solar. Lo and behold, Llewellyn sent me a contract! I could define my own methods of Modern Witchcraft, and completely over-haul and refocus that original class. Thanks to the magick of personal sovereignty, I’d finally found my own witching voice and style.
Then in March of 2020, COVID shut it all down. All the in-person classes, and public gatherings just stopped. For me, it was like hitting a giant reset button. We all needed a break, I think. The newly available time, solitude and head-space allowed me to produce that first manuscript at long last.
Vol. 1: Elemental Witchcraft is born
Vol. 1: Elemental Witchcraft was eventually born in December 2021, weighing in at a whopping 445 pages. I’m currently working on Vol. 2: Lunar Witchcraft and am very excited by the juicy new magick coming into form there. Eventually, Vol. 3: Solar Witchcraft will explore the eight solar sabbats in depth. At least, that is the plan.
By 2022, I wanted to support my first book with a new and improved course for new students – but this time overcoming the limits of in-person gatherings (that very few local people were willing to risk, anyway.) With the help of my associates at The Sojo (especially my dear friend Capella, and my musician partner, Pranavam Das) we began producing the videos and musical meditations, and building my new author website at HeronMichelle.com to host our first online course: The Pentacle Path of Elemental Witchcraft.
That first 18 months, from August 2022 through March 2024, we tred the Pentacle Path online with marvelous students from all over the world. Witches from all over the USA, to Switzerland, Greece, and Belgium, supported each other as we explored the Pentacle Path system in my book. Their feedback throughout that first course was invaluable. Since then Capella and I have applied what we’d learned from their feedback, and polished it up for a new and improved format of self-guided study. As of August 2024, we’ve opened the virtual doors!
After 15 Years, now enrolling new students!
After 13 years of preparation, and two years of production, we are now enrolling new students! We offer over 90 hours of beautiful videos with all the instruction, rituals, demonstrations, and spells in the book. This includes the ten professionally produced guided meditations set to original music by my partner, Pranavam Das. I voiced the scripts printed in the book in his studio, then he composed the musical soundtracks to those journeys. We also provide the instrumental versions of each piece so you can listen to those any time. They’ve become the soundtrack to my magickal life!
Here’s an example of the first meditation:
With the course, I’ve included downloadable files of over 100 additional support documents curated from the original Modern Witchcraft 366 course, and the many articles I’ve written for various publications over the last decade. Best yet, I could finally put back in all the chunks of the book we had to edit out due to size restraints.
The fun part is the Discord server, where we make ourselves available for discussions with students, sharing our triumphs and concerns, and making friends who “get it.” I’ve now met many of our original students at national conferences that I attend! Most of them stayed on the server to help guide new seekers along their first trip around The Pentacle Path. I hope they’ll lend their own experiences as the new year unfolds.
Assigning Value for a Fair Exchange
You may be asking, what does something like this cost? For such a massive scope of work, many, many thousands of dollars have already been invested, and many more expenses are on-going. Every teacher must assign a monetary value to their work, and arrange for a fair exchange of resources to make that opportunity possible.
But how much is fair? Back when I taught classes in-person we charged $5 – $20 per instructional hour/per person to host them at my shop. For 18 Months worth of the old MWC366 course, $1080 would change hands over time – but that was a long time ago, and only covered rent and material costs. For this 18 month long *online* course we’re asking $693 (in three payments.) This comes roughly to $7.70 per instructional hour of video. If you’re an enthusiast of numerology, you’ll understand the significant magick of those numbers. 9 ☽, 5 ☿ IYKYK 😉
The income from the course goes to pay for it’s production and hosting, and then supports my brick’n’mortar metaphysical shop in Greenville, North Carolina. This helps to pay all her employees a living wage. In this way, our mission to support the local witches, pagans, and other magickal/spiritual people *in person* can also continue.
Please join us!
I do hope you will join us for our next journey through The Pentacle Path by registering for the course over the 2024-2026 cycle. The auspicious date for the dedication rite is when the Mourning Full Moon is in Taurus on November 15, 2024 (best celebrated the night before on November 14 if you’re in North America.) More info here. Until then, there are two modules of introductory classes in preparation for that first ritual. They start at the very beginning for witches new to Hermetic styles of witchcraft, and quickly get into deeper applications, which will appeal to witches who’ve been in practice for a long time.
The first few videos are complimentary, and there is a free downloadable .pdf of the first two chapters of the book on the website.
Here is a short video where I share my hopes and dreams for the course:
Find out more information at HeronMichelle.com. And please help me spread the word by sharing my announcement wherever seekers of witchcraft are found.
Blessed be,
~Heron Michelle
For a video/audio version of this article, check out my Youtube!
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