The month of March certainly was a wild ride for me. Paganicon was a great experience and also one that was personally very meaningful to me. While I was exposed to a very hostile winter like Spring, I enjoyed the warmth of meeting old friends and making new ones. I met a few people who would play a key roles in my changing fortunes as a writer. Things that I had thought were reliably set turned out to be capriciously overturned. It seemed that I had been inspired while at the convention to try to write a beginner’s book on Witchcraft magic, but I had doubts that Llewellyn would want to publish such a book.
I returned to Richmond resolved to get my fourth book in the “For Witches” series, “Sacramental Theurgy for Witches” into the production with Llewellyn and fulfill my contractual obligations. Folks at the Llewellyn HQ seemed to love the print out copies of the illustrations, so I thought that everything was all set. I just needed to hear back from my acquisitions editor about any revisions or fixes that would be required for the manuscript. Little did I realize that things were about to abruptly change.
Ten days after I had returned home from the convention, and still touched by the glow of what had happened to me there, I received notification from my Llewellyn acquisitions editor that Llewellyn staff had met in their vision meeting and decided that they didn’t want to publish my book “Sacramental Theurgy for Witches.” They got the impression that I was trying to urge the Witchcraft community to adopt my own idiosyncratic practices and drop their tried and true ones, and I was trying to sell revised practices that they already had been using. In their opinion, this was very different from the previous three books, and they just couldn’t see any profit in publishing this book.
While it is true that I had sought to reform the basic traditional coven practice where the High Priestess ran the coven and also channeled the covenstead Deity, because I saw it as a conflict of interests and a means of giving too much power to her over the other members of the coven, the rest of the book contained nothing but new practices, many of them cutting edge for the Witchcraft community. It almost seemed as if the staff at Llewellyn was talking about another book than the one I had written. It was a surprising superficial judgement on a book that I had felt the Gods and my spirit muse inspired me to write. Llewellyn, therefore canceled my contract, which also halted the publication of any of the other books in that series.
Needless to say, I was devastated. Not only had I written that book, but another one had not even been pitched yet because I was ordered to slow-go presenting new manuscripts to Llewellyn. I would not likely be able to pitch the last book in the series, which was titled “Transformative Initiation for Witches.” Now, I had talked about these two manuscripts with friends and interested parties at the convention, and they were keen on seeing them in print. Same is true with my fan base on Face Book. Many people were looking forward to seeing these two books published. I was briefly at a loss about what course of action I should take to continue to move forward.
One thing that I want to point out is that Llewellyn is in the business of publishing books and making a profit. They have been publishing occult books for a very long time, and they are successful enough to have their own building and adjoining warehouse, and a large staff of editors, marketing folk, artists, clerks, and warehouse workers. They are a friendly group of people and I liked everyone that I met at the HQ meeting in March. Still, they are a business, and in canceling my contract, they made a business decision. I had been one of their authors for over ten years, so that is a long time for a business relationship to last. Publishing companies typically drop and add new authors at a frightening frequency, so my relationship was unique in that regard. While my acquisitions editor may have rejected my current selection of books to publish, she did not close the door on our relationship. The fact that I don’t agree with the marketing decision that Llewellyn made in regards to the books I wanted to publish doesn’t mean that I am at crossed purposes with them. It’s just business as usual. Who knows, maybe they are correct about my books, but I kind of doubt it. Only time will tell who is correct.
However, in my experience, when one door closes another always opens. In fact, I had met two really amazing men at the convention who had their own publishing company. They were at the convention to help promote one of their authors (Alaric Albertsson), and I happened to meet them just before my book signing was to start. They knew about my work and they were impressed enough to tell me that if I ever wanted to publish a book, they would be happy to talk to me about it. At the time, I felt I had obligations as an author to Llewellyn, and I was expecting to write a few more books for them in the future. Still, I chatted with them for a bit, got their business cards and said that we might consider doing business in the near future. They discussed with me the possibility of picking up the book Mastering the Art of Ritual Magic from Immanion Press and adding it to their publishing company catalog. These two gentlemen were Blake and Wycke Malliway, and their publishing company was Crossed Crow Books. I liked them a lot, but I never thought that I would be doing business with them so soon.
My shock and sadness at Llewellyn canceling my book contract was only a brief ordeal, since I reached out the very next day to Blake and asked him if he would be interested in picking up the rest of the “For Witches” series, since Llewellyn had already rejected the latest one in that series. To my surprise, Blake was immediately interested, but wanted to know why Llewellyn had canceled my contract. After reviewing the brief email that my acquisitions editor had sent me explaining the reason for the rejection, and meeting with Blake and his acquisitions editor Becca, they decided to not only pick up the last two books in the “For Witches” series, but also wanted me to write a beginner’s book as well. Just a mere five days after receiving the cancellation from Llewellyn, I had signed a contract with Crossed Crow Books to write and publish three books. So, I was quite amazed and happy with the results.
Now, as you know, I never wanted to write a beginner’s book on Witchcraft. I felt that there were a large volume of media available to the public in the form of books, web pages, YouTube lectures, ritual presentations, and a plethora of people wanting to sell tools, robes, candles, incense, perfumes, witchy garb, talismans and amulets, and other materials too numerous to mention. Yet when I perused many of these offerings in my researches, I saw that nearly all of the educational offerings were limited or incomplete in one manner or another. None of these books, lectures or presentations would prepare someone to be able to pick up my five-book series unless or until they had spent years going over this material and experimenting with it, or by chance, if they got initiated by a coven and spent a few years in that traditional organization. Indeed, there wasn’t a convenient bridge to the “For Witches” series for a beginner to cross.
So, the question proposed to me at the convention by more than a couple of individuals was if I wrote a beginners book, what should I write into a book that would get someone efficiently to the point where they could start working with the “For Witches” series of books. That was the challenge presented to me, and when I got home from the convention and was diddling around with ideas for this book, the entire table of contents for it seemed to manifest out of thin air. My muse was once again active! This occurrence happened before my contract with Llewellyn was canceled, so I was seeking a way to pitch this book to them until I had the rug pulled out from under my feet. The Malliway brothers helped me to solve this conundrum, and that is when the book “Mastering the Art of Witchcraft” or MAW for short, was born.
It seemed as if I was destined to write this book. What I wanted to do was to present both the liturgical and magical sides of Witchcraft for someone who was practicing as a solitary practitioner. That is the path that I presented in my “For Witches” series, which are magical practices that should be done by the independent Witch, whether in a coven or functioning as a solitary Witch. I also wanted to establish the basic practices, tools, meditation techniques and promote to the beginner the idea of building their own lunar and solar calendar, mapping out the full moon esbats and eight sabbats. As for the magic, a simplistic version of the energy model of magic was a good place to start, and I also threw in simple negative and positive vortex ritual patterns to use along with a slightly more complex cone of power. I also added in the basic binding rite, poppet magic rite and the rite to evoke the four elements combined within the flesh, blood and bones of the operator for an enhanced ritual of self-empowerment. These three rites had been in my Book of Shadows for decades, although they were not oath-bound material.
What I had determined is that if someone were to take this book, copy and embellish the rituals and practices written in it, and then armed with the lunar and solar calendar, practice these for a two year period, then that person would be prepared to study and use the “For Witches” series of books. In the final chapter, I included a list of books and topical areas of study that a person would need to round out and deepen their abilities and understanding. Everything that I wanted to say in this book just fell together, and writing it was almost effortless. I completed writing the book in around three weeks. That has to be a record for the amount of time it took for me to write a book, and the whole process was very inspired and magical. At 44K words, it is not a large book, but it is, in my opinion, substantive.
I also had a meeting with Crossed Crow Books staff and my manuscript “Sacrmental Theurgy for Witches” should be in print and available in February 2024. The other two books will follow, and hopefully, by the late autumn next year, all three will be in print. With the five books in the “For Witches” series in print, and this new book “Mastering the Art of Witchcraft” I will have the means of training a Witch and a practicing ritual magician from the perspective of a beginner to acclaimed mastery. I think, although I might be wrong, that no other author can make such a claim to fame. What I will need to do is put together a series of classes and maybe record them and put them on a YouTube channel. However, I also have other book writing projects that I would like to explore, such as my ideas for the book “Liber Nephilim,” which I will likely explore either later this year or early next year. I will definitely keep you posted.
Frater Barrabbas