There’s an annoying thing in the witchcraft community where every new idea or trend gets cast as an “ancient” practice even if it’s just a few years old. Time and time again, we see people constructing false narratives about the supposed historicity of ideas, spells, and rituals in witchcraft spaces, and all of it is bad for us. Why do people feel the need to lie? Why does something being a new idea make it less credible in people’s eyes? Why have we been doing this as a community from the start?

So I thought about calling this “Older Doesn’t Mean Better Part 2” or “Older Doesn’t Mean Better Redux” since this is some of the same territory we covered back in episode 17, but I think I’ve gotten more surly on the topic over the last six years, and wanted to talk about it again. Also, I kind of forgot I’d recorded an episode on this when I was prepping the episode, but I like this version better.

Read Trae’s new Novel Buried Memories!

Also check out the rest of Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “So I Said It, “Putz and Pulse,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

I’m getting a bit contemplative at the end of the year, and this month we’re talking about the importance of the mystery of the night. Everything feels just a little more magical in the dark, and why that just feels right as a witch. That’s right, we’re talking about an aesthetic this time around. Who would have guessed?

Read Trae’s new Novel Buried Memories!

Also check out the rest of Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “So I Said It, “Putz and Pulse,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

One of the biggest things I think a lot of older witches take for granted is that people understand what makes Wicca, well, Wicca. While we’ve discussed the history before, and last month talked about the weird anti-Wicca backlash, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about how this incredibly diverse religion is practiced. Frankly, just the fact that it is largely an orthopraxic religion and not an orthodoxic one is a concept a lot of folks raised in predominantly Christian frameworks struggle with.

So let’s talk about it.

(I know this is two months in a row talking about Wicca, but I think this is important)

Pre-order Trae’s new Novel Buried Memories – out December 15th!

Also check out the rest of Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “So I Said It, “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

If you spend any amount of time on social media these days, especially TikTok, you’ll find a surprising amount of anti-Wiccan sentiment… and a lot of it’s pretty weird. Thumper Forge, Gardnerian Wiccan and author of the forthcoming The Chaos Apple, joins me as we, frankly, debunk some of the worst of it and talk about why we think this has happened.

Also we end up on about twenty million tangents, but I think you probably could have guessed that would happen anyway.

Find Thumper Forge:

Pre-order Trae’s new Novel Buried Memories – out December 15th!

Also check out the rest of Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn)

This episode marks seven years of this podcast, and as we start the eighth, I decided that it was time we looked back on how much things have changed in the modern witchcraft space since then, along with how different things are since I first became a witch over twenty-five years ago. Because what is witchcraft if it’s not change?

Also, I’m standing in a park most of the episode, which is why it sounds like that.

Pre-order Trae’s new Novel Buried Memories – out December 15th!

Also check out the rest of Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “So I Said It,” “Putz and Pulse,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / “Havana,” Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

If you’re in witchcraft spaces, over the last six years or so, you’ve likely heard someone talking about “shadow work” (or more obnoxiously telling someone “they need to do some shadow work”). And while some folks seem to consider it an essential element of witchcraft, for those of us who have been in the community a long time it’s just a little bit puzzling. Likewise, a lot of the people pushing shadow work don’t seem to know where it comes from to begin with. With that in mind, this month I’m going into the origins of shadow work, what it is, and maybe why some folks need to stop pushing it so hard.

Quicklink: Critical Thinking Witches Collective

Remember you can always buy Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “So I Said It,” “Putz and Pulse,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / “Jaracanda,” Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

It’s July which means it’s time for the annual feedback/Q&A episode of the show! In this episode I sit down and answer questions that you, the audience, has been sending me over the last few months. It’s the same dance we do every summer, and this year you guys sent me some great questions. It’s a fun one.

Conventions:

Remember you can always buy Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

Apple Podcast Users – please switch to the white logo feed to find the missing episodes in the archive.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

Last month we talked about a good source new witches might want to add to their libraries, because I know how hard it is to separate the signal from the noise. But this month I thought we’d go look at some of the noise instead! I clicked on every terrible ad for witchcraft stuff I could find on Facebook for a week, and decided to inflict what I found on Hex Positive‘s Bree NicGarran.

It’s so, so bad y’all.

Important Links:

Remember you can always buy Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

The annual Q&A/Feedback episode is coming up! I need your questions — send them via my contact form by July 11th 2025 if you want me to read your question on the show!

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / “Curtain Call,” Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

One year ago I put out this podcast’s first book review. It was for Annwyn Avalon’s Celtic Goddess Grimoire, and I absolutely hated it. It was everything I despise in modern witchcraft publishing, and it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

I felt like I needed to fix that.

So I decided to make it my mission to find a new witchcraft book I might actually like — to find something I could actually talk positively about to this show’s audience. And that’s when I found Thorn Mooney’s Witches Among Us: Understanding Contemporary Witchcraft and Wicca (ISBN: ‎ 978-0738777375) last fall.

And it turns out I really like it.

Important Links:

Remember you can always buy Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

The annual Q&A/Feedback episode is coming up! I need your questions — send them via my contact form by July 11th 2025 if you want me to read your question on the show!

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “So I Said It,” “The Man With One Eye,” “Pulse,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

The 1991 Christian propaganda series the Pagan Invasion by Jeremiah Films was oddly formative for me. It’s a masterclass in propaganda, and a perfect example of the kind of misinformation that was spreading during the heights of the Satanic Panic. So in this episode we’re going to break down how “documentaries” like these work to push an agenda, and how to recognize these patterns in other places.

Remember you can always buy Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

The annual Q&A/Feedback episode is coming up! I need your questions — send them via my contact form by July 11th 2025 if you want me to read your question on the show!

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “So I Said It,” “The Man With One Eye,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / “Island,” “Peach Cobbler,” Random Loops (Apple Music Library)