Building A Fairy Witch Community that Respects Everyone
And Other Thoughts
about Being a Fairy Witch Teacher
Earning my living as a Fairy Witch is a dream come true. Not that my work week is perfect. Pretending that my career is always as smooth as butter, la la la la la, would do readers a disservice. Mind you, my students are never the problem. Marketing my unusual services is challenging. I discuss this below, but only the tip of the iceberg. Running an eccentric business as a woman has other large, ongoing problems too. They would be a blog unto themselves. If not a book. However, teaching and doing spells for my wonderful tribe are worth it. And my work week is definitely an adventure. I hope this article shares at least some sense of my adventure and the joy it brings me. I am grateful beyond words to be a professional Fairy Witch.
If you’re new to my work:
*I use Witch and Shaman synonymously because they are synonymous in my tradition.
* Ditto spells, rituals, meditations, contemplations, etc.
* I usually use different spellings of Fairy (Faerie, Faery, etc.,) as synonymous. I love all the spellings. Ditto related words, such as fae, fey, fay, etc.
* Everything I teach is Fey magic. The cells of my body are Fey magic. The curriculums I create come from my cells.
How to Find the Right Fairy WitchCraft Teacher
Finding the right Witchcraft teacher is vital.
Everyone who travels through the Mysteries of Fey magic is different. Each mystical traveler has their own needs.
Here’s my article on how to find the right teacher: https://outlawbunny.com/2015/04/29/how-to-choose-a-teacher/
And how does a teacher find the right student?
After all, each Witchcraft teacher is a mystical traveler who is different with different needs. For me, I need to devote myself to my students. Here are four reasons:
1) Strong connections with other humans is everything! And what a joy!
2) My students deserve respect and devotion. Witch spirituality, for me, includes the understanding that we are all sacred. My students are not faceless numbers. They are my mystical traveling companions with whom I build personal connections.
3) This authentic connection is required to teach oral traditional Shamanism, at least for me. I commit my time to a student and to building a relationship with them.
4) A commitment gives us both more magical and worldly power. Together, we can achieve our life goals.
For Some Reason, I Get the Best Possible Students
I have the best people in my life. But I’m not the right teacher for everyone. Not everyone wants my devotion, LOL. I dedicate my life to you if you:
* Dedicate yourself to the inner and outer work needed to live free, in beauty, joy, and service. This includes fostering material success and the ability to serve well.
* Know there’s always room to grow instead of resting on your laurels. Continuing to change is the name of life. Life is not static. You want your spirituality and magical ability to keep growing because you believe the opposite of growth is death.
* Strive toward freedom, joy, and beauty for all.
* Have sophisticated concerns about life and Shamanism.
* Yet also respect the basics of spirituality and magic instead of thinking you’ve gotten too advanced for them.
* Want to learn the most powerful magical possible to help achieve everything in this list and all your heart’s goals. (Please note: The word possible in that sentence is important. For example, maybe you don’t have time to study magic as much as someone else does. Study as much as is possible in your circumstances. It’ll be powerful enough!)
If that’s you or who you want to be, I open my heart to you as a teacher. I pour the magic that’s in my cells into your lap. I journey next to you as your fellow seeker and support.
Magic is the Weave of the Entire Cosmos
Magic is all of the Universe’s connections.
I love casting spells by myself. But I also need to do magic with other Witches. When our energy combines during a rite, there is more power, wisdom, joy, and beauty. We become the weave of life and the weavers of life. This profound magic could not happen with just anyone. Remarkable individuals participate in my classes. … Some of them don’t see their own incredibleness, but they do after they work with me for a while.
Without such free spirits in a class, I would not receive the full power of its rituals, even though I channel most of them. I cannot be whole as a completely solitary traveler.
Also, the presence of people who want to keep growing, showing up for life, and serving as much as possible encourages me to keep growing, showing up, and serving as much as possible.
Dedication to Happiness and Service
Here is a story about a student dedicated to showing up for life. She started studying with me when she began college. Mentoring this dynamic, young woman was a joy. I watched her grow through her college years, then become a professional herbalist, then start a business. Now she runs a successful national herbal resource center and store. I am good at empowering my students, but it is up to them to take the ball and run with it. She did that and accomplished a lot!
Anyone can take the ball and run with it. If they don’t recognize that power in themselves, I help them find it.
Head in the Clouds, Feet on the Ground
New ideas,
inspiring poems,
uplifting rituals,
evocative paintings,
wild myths,
and high ideals
are not enough.
They are only one step.
The best rites, ideas, poems, paintings, myths, and ideals
can be forgotten and unused
unless they are followed by the work needed for
significant inner change.
Those rites, ideas, poems, paintings, myths, and ideals
can fool one into believing significant lasting transformation
has occurred.
When that happens, they are mere “merchandise”
—like drugs that create delusions,
pills that supposedly “fix” us
without our having to work at change.
It’s unbridled capitalism
appropriating beauty, ideals, and magic
to quiet our sacred wildness
and still our holy longings.
I call to seekers who want
to be the living embodiment of
revelatory magic, ideas, poems, paintings, myths, and ideals.
Study with me
to learn magic that helps you embody
everything you think is important,
everything you dream,
everything that sings to you,
everything that mirrors your truths.
We can’t achieve this ideal perfectly,
but we can do a great job.
I will be your personal guide
to inner and outer transformations that free your wild spirit.
I’m not anyone’s guru.
I am their Shamanically-talented support.
I teach my peers, mentor mentors,
and guide those committed to making a positive difference.
For information about my next class,
subscribe to my newsletter, here.
Teaching Witchcraft in a Personal Way
Here are more of my experiences with personal connections in Shamanism. I’ve lived many years like a Pagan monastic hermit. In other words, I live alone, have a tiny social life, and spend a lot of time in ritual, prayer, and community service. I feel very connected to people and the Gods when I am serving. I am in ritual and prayer as part of my work. The community work and the meditative life meld together—for me. Book tours, which I once did, didn’t allow that lifestyle.
When the Goddess told me to enter corporate media by writing books, giving interviews, etc., I said no at first. All I wanted was to continue to rock in my rocking chair, in my living room, as I taught and did healings and other spells for people. But I don’t argue with the Goddess, not for very long, so I wrote books, got a literary agent, and so on.
Eventually, She told me I could stop being in corporate media. Aside from the rare book that I self-publish, now I sit in my living room, where I teach and do healings. The classes are mostly group telephone calls. Enrollment is usually limited to a small group. We walk between the world together. The healings I do are usually long-distance. And I don’t know if I’ll ever self-publish more books.
Beginner Witch Classes
that Respect Beginners
Pagans tearing down each other’s approaches is a common problem. It crushes people. For example, perhaps someone’s heartfelt beliefs are invalidated by so-called Pagan experts. Or an unusual psychic experience is met with disdain. There are many other ways that cruel Pagans dim a free spirit, discourage an ardent seeker, or turn away a Witch with a beautiful spirit. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ll tell you a story that shows an alternative.
I often teach newbies and adepts in the same group. When a newcomer attends, there’s a joke I often make. Let’s pretend the newcomer’s name is Linda. I say to the class,
“Okay, everyone, this is Linda’s first time studying with me. So, everyone who has worked with me for a while, your job is to invalidate everything Linda says, make her feel like she couldn’t possibly have wisdom to share, and tell her any magical success or visions she has are mere delusions because she couldn’t possibly have real visions or good magic until she’s worked with us.”
The newcomer always laughs, obviously relieved. My longtime students have heard the joke a million times, but a newcomer needs to hear that we honor them as a unique treasure.
I don’t think there’s any such thing as a beginner Witchcraft student. Yes, they may need to study magical techniques from the ground up or study other parts of Witchcraft from the ground up. So I teach classes with easy-to-understand, step-by-step Witchcraft instructions.
However, no matter how much they might need beginning Witchcraft lessons, they come into my class with a lifetime of experience, and the wisdom gained from that. Also, many new Witches were Witches in past lifetimes, and the power and wisdom of those lifetimes remain.
Furthermore, they might have been Fairies their whole lives without knowing that Fairy might describe them, their feelings, and their actions.
They come into my classes with a lot of wisdom and power. Part of my job is to help them see it. And help them use it to the max.
They have a lot to contribute to the group and the world.
I hope my story shows you how much I appreciate beginners. And that, instead of a hierarchy that crushes power, a humorous welcome gives power to us all.
Joining the Pagan Community
Most of my students are not in the “Pagan community.” They’re too wonderfully weird and independent. I’m not even sure I’m a member of it. My students and other friends fill my heart and schedule and give me the support I need. And being a part of the “Pagan community” does not give me enough opportunities to be of service anymore.
When I teach, I experience joy, safety, magic, and opportunities to serve. This is precious to me.
Being a Fairy, I can’t get enough of it. I’m always looking forward to the next class.
Usually, the only famous Pagans with whom I am willing to collaborate on projects anymore are individuals I consider personal friends. Why? Because I know they are ethical and focused on service. When leaders I don’t know approach me, it has become easy to suss them out and, if they don’t seem upright, decline.
Famous Pagans
I wrote bestselling books and received a lot of media coverage once upon a time. So I am invited to Pagan leadership events. I usually refrain nowadays, after years of experience with those gatherings. Most of them do not focus on effective leadership, such as defining leadership in egalitarian ways. The tendency is a focus on protecting the attendees’ personal interests and no one else’s. Classism, racism, and all the other ‘isms are as prevalent in Paganism as in any other part of society.
Many Pagan leaders espouse freedom for all but when you look past their rhetoric, you see their professional and political actions protect only their own interests.
Oppressed Students of Witchcraft
Many individuals have left mainstream religious groups in which they were expected to blindly obey abusive leaders. These leaders maintained authority by provoking fear, shame, or other unhappiness. They might’ve been ministers who dominated a congregation. Or perhaps they were parents who ran roughshod over family members.
Some people who escaped that abuse became Pagans. Some of them still surrender their rights unknowingly. For example, they might trust the opinions of Pagan leaders whose secret priority is power over other people.
Wealth and other privileges allow some Pagan leaders to dominate Pagan conversations in the media and elsewhere. They suppress Pagan views that do not align with systemic oppression. So when someone new to the conversation shares magic that, for example, uplifts working-class Pagans, the privileged sharks or their followers circle in to attack.
I know this because I have been attacked plenty. Plenty. It has been devastating. But I won’t stop speaking my truth and supporting my students to speak theirs.
Onward!
Figuring Out How to Promote My Classes Is Hard
I know the miracles that my Shamanic work can help my students create. But my work can’t help people if they don’t know it exists. And spreading the word is hard.
When I taught in the ‘80s, WitchCraft was an obscure topic, and Faerie magic was an even rarer one.
Academics were providing a theoretical Goddess spirituality, but I offered a traditional perspective on Her. This included combining a spiritual path with down-to-earth practical spells. I am a practical Witch.
Today, a zillion people teach some form of Paganism. But way back when, plenty of people must’ve thought I was crazy for talking about magic, Fairies, and the Old Gods. (I mean, have you heard my song in which I complain about being a changeling?) But plenty of other people signed up for my courses. My tribe found me.
My students are wonderfully weird like me, with their Fey-touched mystical bent. They often find me in Fey-touched weird ways. One of them told me a flyer about my class flew into her front yard. Another told me that she walked into a bookstore, and one of my books fell off a shelf onto her. The ways they find me sometimes help them choose me.
So why do I say it’s hard to spread word? Read on.
Paganism is Popular Now
But I’m a Weirdo even among Pagans
Nowadays my topic is even more obscure. As I said, I teach magic that helps highly ethical folks who keep growing, keep showing up for life, and keep serving. Many are national or international leaders in their fields, e.g., a celebrity chef or professional painter. The students who are not national or international leaders show up just as much and just as importantly, as caregivers for their families, school teachers, or in other capacities.
To make it even more obscure, the people in leadership positions are not there because they want power to dominate. They’re in leadership positions because they want to serve.
My students also tend to have a mystical bent, weird that way like me. I have my head in the clouds, living in myths, poems, ideas. I remain down to earth, so am able to teach a wild, mystical way of life that has groundedness.
It’s a very obscure and very specific niche. That’s hard to promote. However, I think the Old Gods cast spells to put big astral signs up. The signs say, “Find Francesca De Grandis. She’s your teacher.” The right people notice.
How I Serve the Faerie Queen’s Servants
I teach teachers, am a matriarch training matriarchs, and otherwise hone the skills of the Faerie Queen’s servants.
By Her servants, I don’t mean only those who teach “Fey studies,” or even identify as Fey. I mean people who are
* Fey in their heart even if they would not describe it that way
* ethical
* try to have an attitude of service in their daily activities as a writer, parent, nurse, cashier, dancer, software developer, or something else.
Those servants tend to fall into two categories, as already described:
* International leaders. I don’t mean only Pagan leaders. I mean international leaders in their specific fields, e.g., food bloggers or visual artists.
* Other individuals who show up for life big-time. They do amazing things, such as homeschooling their children wonderfully. (Though they might not realize it, they are building a better life for everyone as much as any well-known leaders are.)
The Shamanic courses I develop empower them to achieve big and keep at it. I love working with them and want more clients like them to find me online. I need to pray to the Goddess of marketing more.
Bear with me while I give a little more background to explain why it’s hard to promote my work.
My teachings constitute a specific tradition. In other words, it’s a coherent body of rituals, cosmology, etc. However, it’s not a tradition and teacher that people have to abide by. My classes are about a teacher and tradition that abide by the student. Here’s an example:
I had a student who was an excellent astrologer and traveled the world studying with the biggest astrology teachers around. She said I gave her the best astrology lesson she ever had.
I’m not an astrologer. I might not even believe in astrology. I didn’t give her an astrology lesson. Instead, I helped the amazing astrologer in her emerge more than ever. I knew how to make people bloom.
So when I say I train the Faerie Queen’s servants, that means, for example, a popular food blogger will write better and even more popular blogs after training with me.
Training Shamanically with me, someone is more likely to own their field, for the first time or like never before. Or at least come a lot closer.
My classes give you a magical system that helps you bloom in your life as a whole and bloom in your whole being.
I Need to Cast Another Spell on Search Engines
I’m still giving background on why it’s hard to promote my classes:
I want more people who would benefit from my classes to learn about them.
Luckily, the Old Gods do magic on the search engines for me. The sort of students who would find me a good fit often “stumble” on my site. It’s divine synchronicity.
As a responsible Witch, I need to add my spells to the ones the Gods do, and then back up my magic with mundane, plain-ol’ marketing. … I’m not saying it’s irresponsible to rely on spells that the Gods do. I’m saying that sometimes I need to add my own to be a grown-up Witch.
Being a Grown Up Weirdo Witch
But how the heck can I possibly promote my unusual courses so that the unusual right folks find me in search engines? And here we get to the heart of my dilemma:
I can’t afford the high prices for choice placement in search engines. So I studied SEO—search engine optimization. I use free SEO methods as much as my schedule allows.
It’s challenging to create SEO to draw website visitors who are highly ethical, keep growing, are international leaders or otherwise keep showing up for life big time, and keep serving. Most of them don’t know that magic classes can help them on their unusual paths. So they would not type into a search engine a combination of words like career, success, magic, ethics, classes. Or spiritual growth, joy, magic, freedom.
Even if they did, most search engines tend to ignore what you type into the search bar nowadays and show you the sites that paid to be given priority. Mind you, there are a lot of exceptions to what I’m saying in this paragraph, but nowhere near enough.
Plus my clients have sophisticated concerns when it comes to ethics, Shamanism, magic, and the rest of life. I am able to address them as a Shamanic teacher. But again, if they type those sophisticated concerns in most search engines, they usually won’t get relevant results.
Figuring out unpaid SEO for all this is challenging, labor-intensive, and nearly impossible.
But I want a good attitude, so here’s my affirmation:
I look forward to being creative
about SEO that draws remarkable people
who want Witch spirituality.
The Gods will guide me.
Advanced Magic Lessons for Advanced Witches
Many of the special individuals I have described are advanced magic practitioners. As a teacher of teachers and a trainer of powerhouses, I attract a lot of adepts.
I love discussing the complexities of magic with them.
Though I have classes only for them, they consistently enroll in my other classes. My lessons meet you where you are. If you’re a beginner, the spells are accessible and manageable, yet effective. If you are used to doing advanced magic, lessons go as deep or as high as you are traveling. They become advanced magic when an advanced Witch experiences them.
I help adepts continue to explore their mysticism and magic while keeping their feet on the ground. The further you get from the non-magical “norm,” the more you have to ground yourself in practical assessments, a healthy ego, relinquishment of the unhealthy ego, and other safeguards. … And they’re not just safeguards. They make advanced magic more powerful. The Shamanic courses I develop empower these excellent practitioners to achieve big and keep at it. I love working with them.
Everyone, including advanced magic practitioners, myself among them, needs teachers to guide them magically and spiritually. For example, we all get stuck. For one reason or another, all humans balk at necessary steps sometimes. A longterm authentic relationship with a teacher allows them to provide feedback specific to your traits and circumstances, as well as Shamanic techniques tailored to your changing needs.
A Prayer that I Be Sent Fellow Seekers
My Gods,
The people who study with me are extraordinary.
I have space in my life for more individuals like them.
Please send my cry to them out into the world:
I call to my fellow seekers—
you who are willing to do the work needed
to be the living embodiment
of thrilling rituals,
new ideas,
inspiring poems,
uplifting paintings,
wild myths,
and high ideals.
I know how to help you do it.
Study with me.
Upcoming Fairy Witchcraft Classes
For information about upcoming classes—each course’s schedule, topics, benefits, cost, etc.,—subscribe to my newsletter by clicking here.
She enjoys a good time, so does not turn up Her nose at a fun poem. She is no dour judgmental deity. After all, She is a Pagan God, reveling in pleasure and laughter. She expresses Her sense of humor in my poems, whether as an outright joke or a sly, tongue-in-cheek remark. 
Another example: My poems also appear in my books. The poems helped my texts Be a Goddess! and Goddess Initiation become best-sellers. Lovely readers confirm how much those books help them.
Here is another reason I loved Jenelle’s suggestion. Weekly poems provide you with a lot of support without costing you a lot of money or effort.
I am dedicated to crafting poems that are as embracing and uplifting as pop songs.
2) You can use the poems more actively, for example, reciting one as an affirmation to boost your power, confidence, joy, or other traits you want.
