What I do want you to start with is an initial set of associations that has always been at the core of the Pale Horse teachings.  This is a linkage between the four elements and the four cardinal directions--air with the east, fire with the south, water with the west, and earth with the north.  (To see a more full list be sure to go to the altar page on my website for the Blue Lake Doctrine.)  You are now into the Book of Air, the world of thought--and so of words, and "witch" is certainly the first word we need to discuss.

Those of you in this class are not very likely to be individuals who in any way expect that the comic-book image of the witch or the sorcerer has any foundation in fact.  (And if you are, you should be grateful that there are no fees for this course, or you'd be trying to get a refund.)  Sorry, no shazam and you are metamorphed into a guy in red tights.  No up the chimney on a broomstick.  But, as you will see later on, I certainly do think things happen in a way that science, at least as yet, cannot explain.  And I also think that some individuals are simply more prone to having such experiences happen around them.

And this is the first meaning of the word "witch" that I began working with.  Back in the early 1970s, at the tail end of the so-called counterculture, "witchcraft" had become newly fashionable.  Sybil Leek had written a best-seller,  Louise Huebner was "the official witch of Los Angeles," and the Sorcerer's Shop was a landmark along Santa Monica Boulevard while its proprietor--a highly photogenic lady who went just by the name of Babetta--was given new celebrity as a figure in the Hollywood Wax Museum.  Well, this was also the time when Carlos Castaneda had become an international figure with his account of the teachings of don Juan, a supposed Yaqui sorcerer.  Astrology and the other mantic arts were everywhere, and there were new moves to end the old laws against fortune-telling.  As one song had it, magic was in the air.

As I got more into things I did become increasingly aware of a rather different sense of the word "witch," so even in my first book I was writing about the "reconstructed believers."   However, I did not have direct personal contact with the coven tradition until after my second book (Living with Magic, brought out by Simon and Schuster when Michael Korda heard of me from Carlos Castaneda's agent), although it was one of the leading Gardnerians on the East Coast who had assured my publisher that I was not too far off base in what I was writing.

Initially I wrote about "genetic witches" and "cult witches."  It is not a distinction that I in any way want to emphasize, however, and today I wonder whether it is any longer even particularly useful.  One reason is that as "New Age" thinking has taken hold, the notion of psychic ability is much less associated with the classic image of the "cunning woman" or "white witch."  Another is that as "earth religions" have found a new acceptability, the Celtic imagery of the early days has been on the wane.  In fact, if I were to try and update the book you are using now, I would have to talk quite a bit about the newer traditions that center on the images of Isis and Demeter, just as I would have to get into some discussion of the "teen witch" idea.

For more about the current usage of "Wicca" and "witch" in the religious sense, it might be helpful to consult the sections in a book for use by military chaplains on Wicca and on Gardnerian Wicca.  For Satanism as a religious tradition the chaplains also have sections on the Church of Satan, LaVey's group, and the Temple of Set, founded by some of LaVey's original followers.  One thing that stands out is that none of these groups in any way promote the image of Satanism and witchcraft dear to Christian Fundamentalists.

So how many Witches are there?  Well, this clearly going to be a matter of definition.  If we restrict it to those who have gone through a proper coven training and inititation and still remain involved we might be lucky to talk about a few thousand nationwide.  If we include "solitaries" as well as those Pagans who have formed loosely structured groups for more study and practice, the numbers clearly increase to possibly tens of thousands.   The question gets to be where do we draw our lines?  Should we consider the overly thin and pale teenager in black (I so often find at least one around any occult shop I visit) a witch, even if her own inspiration is more likely to be Anne Rice than Gerald Gardner?  Should we use the term for anyone who is a Pagan, even if that person might not the old Celtic imagery and the classical notion of the "Old Religion"?

I usually prefer to downplay the numbers, not because I want to see "us" as among the proud and the few, a Neopagan elite (like the Marines of the spiritual world), but because realistically not that many people really want to take the time to get past an image.  In some ways it's like the time a student of mine back in the late 1960s, one of the original "freaks," decided to was time to take off her lovebeads when all the weekend "freaks" started crashing the scene.  As I'm typing this I have the book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft on the table beside me.  Denise Zimmerman and Katherine A. Gleason actually do a good job with it and I'd recommend it as a first look at our tradition, but this plain vanilla Wicca also disappoints me.  Perhaps it shouldn't.  My students a quarter-century ago at the Sorcerer's Shop all had to start with Paul Huson's Mastering Witchcraft, and the first coven I was with made good use of Stewart Farrar's What Witches Do.

At this point you might have some thoughts of your own.  One way you might share them is to pick up on the discussion board I am opening up to go with this class.  Go ahead--what do you think?