Going Deeper

Lesson 11 of 12 · 7 min

A year and a day

Historical context

Where the phrase comes from

A year and a day is an old legal and folkloric period in British and Irish usage, adopted by twentieth-century Wicca as the customary minimum between meeting a coven and initiation, and between degrees. It is a coven custom, not a rule for solitary practitioners and not a qualification.

Worth knowing

It is optional

Nothing in solitary Wicca requires it. There is no exam at the end, nobody is checking, and finishing it makes you no more Wiccan than you were in month two.

Pretty Little Wiccan suggestion

A route through this app

Not a tradition and not a course. Month 1: the free Foundations lessons, ethics first, with one daily two-minute practice. Months 2 and 3: Nature & Cycles, the elements, and What is a correspondence. Months 4 and 5: Ritual & Energy, from grounding through casting a circle, and run one ritual of your own. Months 6 and 7: Magic in Practice, beginning with what magic means and the ethics that go with it, then spellcraft and methods. Months 8 and 9: herbs, magical timing and divination, with three full moon cycles of notes. Months 10 to 12: Going Deeper, including deity work, traditional concepts, cultural borrowing and the harder ethical cases. Throughout: mark each Sabbat as it arrives, however briefly, and keep it all in your Book of Shadows.

If you fall behind

The plan is the thing that's wrong, not you. Move it, shorten it, or drop it and keep the daily two minutes.

In plain English

An old phrase, used in initiatory Wicca as a study period, and entirely optional for everyone else.

Worth knowing

Progress in solitary practice is measured by what you actually do, not by time served.

For your own notes

If you started a year today, what would you want to be true at the end of it?

Entirely optional.

Worth remembering

A year and a day is a coven custom offered here as an optional shape, with ethics at the start rather than the end.

Use this in the app

Next: Where next?

Where historians disagree, this app says so. Where traditions differ, no single one is presented as the correct Wicca. Our approach

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