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One end of the red cord—thirteen ells long, to match his age—they tied around the boy's narrow waist. The other end they tied around his mother's.

Now, several hours later, they're both starting to go a little crazy.

Everyone gathers to witness what comes next.

Boys are born, men are made, says the hobman. N, are you ready to leave your boyhood behind and begin the training that will end with your Man-Making?

Everyone laughs at the vehemence of the boy's reply.

With the knife that the hobman has placed in his hand, the boy cuts the cord.

After the cheers and applause, he knees before his mother.

There's been much making of words down the years over the question of self-initiation into the Craft, and whether or not such a thing is even possible.

Well, I'm here to tell you that not only is self-initiation possible, but that you cannot be a witch without it.

Life is a series of initiations, but no matter how many rituals you've undergone at Lady Such-and-so's hands, you cannot truly count yourself a witch until the moment when you look yourself plain in the face and say: I am a witch.

That is your deepest, truest initiation.

Witchdom is not so much conferred, as claimed. Someone who has undergone every ritual initiation from Azarak to Zamelak, but has never said to herself, I am a witch, is no witch.

What is written in Earth, endures.

What the Lake receives, she keeps.

At 14, he climbed down the cliff. On the beach, he built a fire.

He stripped off his clothes.

I AM A WITCH, he wrote, in capitals: in the wet sand between shore and water, for the Lake to take.

He swam out, into the wind, as far as he could. Then he turned and swam back to shore.

He dried himself at the fire. He dressed and climbed back up.

He went back home.

 What no man may tell, nor woman know.

My father once said, What do you want for your children? You want them to have what you never did.

I had presided at G's Naming, so when it came time for his Man-Making, it was natural that his foster father should give me a call. We got together with G's godfather, and together the three of us planned a nice, tight little ritual, the rite that we all wished we'd had for ourselves.

Later that night, as I was writing up the outline that we'd crafted, I realized that we'd left out something important. Actually, what we had left out was the single most important thing of all.

It's 1966. A little tow-headed boy is sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, reading the Sunday supplement of the Pittsburgh Press.

He doesn't know that his life is about to change forever.

There are real witches! There are real witches right here in Pittsburgh! Real witches doing real magic!

One detail from the article hit hard enough to stay with me 50-some years later.

Dear readers I hope you'll forgive me for not posting as frequently to this blog as I would like to. I'm in the midst of finishing my next book, and have a heavy teaching and ritual schedule for the next several months. The blog post after this one will return to the topic of the mechanics of how rituals can be done from a distance. I did feel moved by a third degree initiation that just occurred this past weekend to quickly share a few thoughts.