Community, Chaos and Cringe
So this morning I was digging into an old Hotmail account, looking for an old login. A peek into the Junk folder revealed that Photobucket was holding my ancient archive hostage for $$, so I decided to click through and just delete, and THEN it let me download everything for free anyway upon deletion. Ha! The zip file revealed over 1000 photos from back when you needed to upload images to an external service to get them to show up on your blog. So today, I bring you a stroll down memory lane. (The fizzy digital camera images from this blog are brought to you by that very archive!)
Oh, my sweet summer child... almost 18 years ago now.
Necklace and corset top brought to you by eBay.
As I scrolled past Contiki Eurotour snaps and a weird amount of Mighty Boosh gifs from the early 2000s, I saw button-style graphics from the first Pagan Blog Project in 2012.
The old Pagan Blog Project button
It was started by someone who now shares too much AI art on their socials for my taste, and we don't truck with that here - so no link! I dug out the old project page, and a hunt on the Wayback Machine reveals no less than 447 blogs participating with a fortnightly blog on various topics. I mean, can you imagine that in 2025?
A small fairy ACEO artwork by me dated 2005, fate unknown.
I guess the most revealing aspect of all of this was the very nature of how we shared our spiritual paths online. Unhampered by the algorithm of social media, and instead beholden to the subtle politics of the blogroll, we waxed lyrical on all kinds of things. And there were so many of us reading each other's posts and bouncing ideas back and forth. In LONG FORM. In particular, a trip through my blog revealed hundreds of short essays about unicorns, Carl Jung, wrestling with being non-theist (lol), getting mad at the curse jars on Tumblr, and a lot of terrible vegan food pics (still vegan, just not posting my bad cooking on the Internet as much). Plenty of stuff about Chaos magic, and being a 'Chaos Witch', of course. Most of all, I reflected on the seasons, and how my locality and my unique community impacted my practice. I thought most of it was pretty cringey back then, but when I look at some of the posts, my writing and my practice developed over time. And you know what? Some of what I wrote was pretty good. Some of it was woefully misinformed and naïve, too. But mostly, it was good.
Baby witch altar. 2007-ish
Eventually my blogging career was cut short when I had a Saturn Return-ish crisis in 2016, and to give an era-specific analogy, I decided that like Jon Snow, I knew nothing, I didn't know where to put it, and maybe it was best that I disappear into obscurity forever. My YouTube channel, the spinoff, spluttered on for a few more years, until a similar cancellation happened.
My Photobucket had tonnes of these flatlay picture things... no date, but it reeks of 2008? Bowler hat crimes.
There's a few conversations happening online from some old favourites reminiscing about this era, and the blog, and what community could be if we 'went back'. But I never moved on, so maybe there is no going back. I went on a hiatus and I'm still there. The pivot to WitchTok, for example, never occurred for me. I was too busy minding my own business and applying lessons learned from the past. I became a serial lurker, and focused my efforts instead on in-person community.
A coven 'Ostara' celebration, circa 2008.
For starters, I never share altar, ritual or spell photos online anymore - but I was doing this ALL THE TIME for a solid 10 years. This Photobucket archive has 10 years of altar pics. Additionally, everyone who made magic with me was part of my blog and my YouTube channel. They were in my comments and they had their own blogs, a lot of the time. Now that feels unquestionable, too raw, too sensitive, too vulnerable. I was so very neo-pagan and everything was on the table - literally - for all to see. Not only have I learned from this experience, but I am also part of communities now where this simply is not done - and now my practice has become too nuanced and very private, so writing about it, or making a video about it, feels nearly impossible. Sometimes - I would argue, nearly always - there is more power in keeping things private.
Maybe the reason why we mostly have the young and the brash as the primary flavour of public witchcraft 'influencer' both today and even back in the 1960s and 70s when the modern witchcraft revival truly took off, is that it's simply a phase we all hit in our youth (or young at heart). We can speak on things we've barely learned ourselves with our full chest. We need these trailblazers to light the path on fire. It's how we get whole new traditions, that book that really inspired a new generation, that trend that led that person to go seeking.
Baby's first vegan baking. Much proud. Uh... yum?
Sometimes with wisdom comes grace, with time comes trauma, and sometimes we need to heal or re-evaluate in the mists of obscurity. I did a lot of re-evaluation in my time 'away'. I questioned past relationships, past covens, past teachers, and past convictions. I stepped into new roles and explored new paths. I am really excited, now, about the continued evolution that the crossroads have brought me.
While I have always had in person community to nourish my personal practice, the way I interact with community is so different now. So here it is. The letter C for the Pagan Blog Project, redux.