In the Circle: Crafting a Witches' Path

Daffodils dance in a chilly spring breeze . . . a butterfly alights on a sunny marigold . . . sleepy autumn energy moves through an apple tree . . . in a winter garden, a redstart greedily strips berries from holly. And so the seasons rise and fall, the wheel of the year turns, and the sacred circle of birth, death, and regeneration goes on.

This simple and beautiful guide combines author Elen Hawke's personal accounts of sabbats and moon rites with clear, common sense instruction that makes witchcraft accessible to anyone who wishes to enter the circle.

Journey through the Moon's phases and the eight seasonal festivals; gain an understanding of Goddess and God; learn how to build a shrine, perform ritual, and collect or make magical tools. Evocative and poetic, In the Circle will take you deeper into your inner core, the place where you can connect to the spirit of Nature and to your own innate knowledge.

Tree and bird, stone and star

The spirituality of witchcraft is experienced through the world around us, through Nature and through the bodies in which we live. The sense of the divine is not remote from the world, but is part of one's own being.

To be a witch means living in harmony with the ebb and flow of the seasonal tides and the cycles of Sun, Moon, and weather; to have a love of everything that lives, a respect for and sympathy with tree and bird, stone and star, as well as our fellow humans.

This is expressed through aligning oneself with the unfolding patterns of the ritual year, and the monthly waxing and waning of the moon. Witches believe that working in harmony with these cycles will nourish the spirit of the land while aligning their own spiritual development with the soul of Nature.

-Elen Hawke

Elen Hawke is a practicing witch who lives in Oxford  with her husband and a house full of animals.  She also has two grown children.  Elen is a photographer and illustrator, and has been doing professional astrology for 27 years and tarot reading for 10.  She divides her time between healing and teaching witchcraft, meditation, and chakra work.  She is Wiccan initiate in the Gardnerian tradition, a Circlework graduate from the House of the Goddess, and a member of the Pagan Federation.

Elen is of Irish, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and Jewish ancestry.  She remembers having psychic experiences since youth, and feeling an intense connection to the natural world.  Her love for reading began early with her grandmother's books on natural history and Greek mythology.

Elen has traveled through and lived in many other lands, including Iran, Afghanistan, and Brittany.  She believes that this cultural exposure and appreciation made the transition to Paganism easier for her than many.  She describes her spirituality as "eclectic," having explored Spiritualism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Druidry as well as Wicca.  She has achieved both the Bardic and Ovate grades in the Druid path.

Elen runs the email discussion group witchcraft_uk on behalf of the Children of Artemis.