The history of almost every modern witchcraft tradition I am familiar with is never straight-forward. There are twists and bends, curve-balls, and strange encounters; there are inheritances and red threads, ecstatic vision and visionaries, poets and liturgists; and those who do the midwifing, who are midwifed. Those who conjure and are conjured by the Spirits and the Powers and forge – and are forged by – the Tradition.

Some Traditions have clear markers in time and space. This year, in this city; the publication of that book in that country; this person did this, then. 

There are some key and clear events for what would later become the Wildwood Tradition.

December, 2005: An e-mail I sent to various witches I knew in Brisbane called Witch Call as a 17-year-old about to move to Brisbane from Toowoomba, Queensland.

30th April, 2006: The initiation of the Coven of the Wildwood on Mt Coot-tha, Jagera and Turrbal Country, Brisbane, Australia.

August-October 2008: The branching of the second Wildwood coven – the Anthesterion Circle on Mt Olympos in Greece by Ana James and witnessed by another initiate (me) and an aspirant – and therefore the affirmation of an emergent witchcraft tradition that the Inner Court of Initiates agreed to name Wildwood after many meetings. This happened at the culmination of a two month pilgrimage throughout Cornwall, the West Country, the South of England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and Greece… much was collected magically in this journey.

September-December 2010: My first 11-week journey through the United States and the beginnings of relationships and magical friendships that would both corroborate and cross/pollinate the Tradition. Meetings with priestesses and kin in New York City, journeys in Salem, Massachusetts, Magisters in Chicago, or Reclaiming and Feri folk in the Bay. Oh you do that? We have this… we call it this, have you thought of this? Talk to this person about that. 

There are many others, and these are less outward, and not for me to write about. Other stories, belonging to other people.

It has been ten full years since the branching of the second coven. Over fifty witches have been initiated into the inner court of the Wildwood. Initiations have happened in San Francisco, in Ohio, in Amsterdam, in Glastonbury, in Melbourne, in the Gold Coast, on Mt Tamborine, throughout Brisbane, in New Hampshire, on Springbrook Plateau, in the Otways, in the Sunshine Coast… and places I may have forgotten or misplaced. Covens have been birthed, remain, and some have dissolved and gone to the wind and the wave. Many initiates have never been in covens in our Tradition, and are Wanderers. Truly, we are all wandering, and not all who wander are lost (Tolkein).

The origins of our Tradition, like many others that have emerged in the past 100 years, are mysterious in essence and highly private in detail. They also concern the lives and friendships of human people, of witches. Suffice it to say, it’s a story that involves, well – witchcraft and spirits, covens and break-ups, friendships and interpersonal conflict, unnamed shadows, powerful catharsis, and the drawings of boundaries.

I can attest to the deep well of lore and magic the Wildwood drinks from in and of itself – it has always awed me – and from the vantage point of initiation in four traditions of witchcraft. The lore of the Wildwood, the Witch’s Forest itself – that Primal Other Place – is a mighty labyrinth. There are parallels between our lore and various traditions I have encountered and worked within… there are obvious and pivotal intersections, there have been potent conversations between initiates of various Orders and Houses that have helped to contextualise each others’ cosmologies, understandings, techniques. And there are those precious places, as in every family or group, that are specific to us, beautiful and bizarre in its uniqueness.

Wildwood people come from dreams and are kin with the Otherworlds… we honour and exalt the Mighty Dead and those-to-come. Several families of sorcerous skill and integrity, magical virtue, superstition and folklore have influenced some of the original midwives of the Tradition… by influenced, I mean those families forged of immigration, of islands in archipelagoes, of convicts and empire, of madness and healing, and of islands far into the North-West – conceived us, birthed us, carried us, emboldened us…

We are one of the few vital modern witchcraft traditions that has emerged in Australia. Just as Anderson Feri is sometimes referred to as American Traditional Witchcraft, so Wildwood could be called Australian Traditional Witchcraft, Australian Wild Magic, Australian Folkloric Sorcery… and many of the things that have been Australia* has affected our Tradition. And Wildwood is a vine that grows in other landscapes, other countries, meeting – mixing -mingling – marrying with the elements and spirits in those places.

Our mythic and deeply poetic- profoundly real – history is in Ara, the First Witch, whom we honour as our Living Lineage and Legacy. And this is perhaps one of our most profound Mysteries and is therefore better left to Her to give.

Magical virtue has poured in and been woven with deep care, catalysed by the harrowing and beauty-filled awe of the practice and mysticism of initiation. Excellence, playfulness, intuition, rigorous research, appreciation for the past and for folklore, for the language of insects and coral, and the journeys of rivers and the movements of mountains… these have been our Firebrands.

And at this point in our history, there are various named and unnamed threads and covenants… there are those that enshrine very particular lore and mysteries and pass it for posterity, for poetry, for effect and wonder… covens that live on the winds and through the dreams of initiates… there are those situated in specific bio-regions drinking in from the wealth and breadth of the living histories of those places, many things left better unsaid.

Our Tradition is also married to the Sacred Four~, the Witching Gods, and so that too, is our history. They are the Powers who sponsor us and grant us inspiration, insight, and initiation.

The Wildwood Tradition of Witchcraft is a strong, strange, and syncretic House of Craft. I am honoured to be among its lore-keepers and historians, I know the task will increase with weight as time goes on. And, beyond all else – may it flourish!

*Though we are not and do not claim to be an Indigenous Australian-inspired or based Tradition. With deep respect we, non-Aboriginal Wildwood witches (the vast majority of us), acknowledge the continued and devastating effects of invasion, colonisation, and empire in these lands, and seek to participate in repair, deep listening, and justice.

Our bodies are varied as they are holy. Mystery takes infinite forms, and so do we. We are women, men, genderqueer, non-binary, genderless of various histories; we are brown, mixed, white, settlers, and indigenous; we are queer, heterosexual, pansexual, bisexual, gay, asexual; we are of all socio-economic backgrounds; we have mixed ability and welcome neurodiversity. Diversity is essential for a healthy and vital ecosystem. We recognise that these differences create intersections of oppression and power, and our witchcraft reflects this and is consciously engaged with it. – From our Manifesto (Now the Greening seeks the Grove…)

~Grandmother Weaver, Grandfather Green One, Our Lady of the Crescent Crown and the Rose, and the Prince of Paradise, Horned and Cloaked, Master of the Art.

 Fio Aengus/Gede Parma - 9 November 2018