Crafting A Legacy of Magic
Introduction to

Family Coven™: Creating Hereditary Witchcraft

As my son grew in stature and developed from toddler to child, the conflict grew in urgency and frequency. When I met, handfasted and, later, legally married my husband, the struggle rose to a clamoring clash that shrouding my learning in a milky haze, leaving my path unclear.
Searching for my path, I did what I love to do, I wrote. First I wrote about what I knew: Traditional Wicca. At least the traditions of Wicca I had been exposed to, all four of them. I recalled all the training and teaching. The discipline of making grown adults return to infancy to become spiritual children ready for the molding. The careful explanation that covens should be like a family, the High Priestess acting as the Coven Mother and the High Priest acting as the Coven Father.

I searched further during long talks with my supportive pagan husband, fleshing out a perspective and then comparing it to our friends, pagan and non-pagan alike. Still no answer came.

Overwhelmed and frustrated in my attempts to write down what I was feeling, thinking and experiencing, I tried instead to tend my family. I put my son to bed, made dinners, prepared lunches, helped with dishes and folded laundry while the question was my constant companion.

Hands in soapy water wringing a sponge, I turned to my husband who waited on the next dish to dry and said in a moment of defeat, “If it takes a Mother or a Father to run a coven, then we qualify.”

“I can think of lots of moms and dads who qualify.”

The suds pounded off the keyboard as my fingers flew down the revelation. Suddenly, my study of the history of The Craft came into focus and the thing grossly overlooked took shape. What if Gardner’s ‘scribbled Book of Shadows,’ had actually been a book of generational magic transcribed? What if the future generations talked of generational magic, not generational curses? Could it be possible that my son, Tree Bear, would have a great granddaughter who had generations of training and magic behind her, helping her lead a charmed life? What if I am reincarnated into my own family after the foundation had been laid and the family tradition had grown and developed and changed as each person added their wisdom and knowledge to it?

Leaving this time, my flying fingers became unfocused and years of the future of my line passed by me. One Hundred years later, I am dead and my body is less than dust. My descendants are now part of a long line of practicing witches and pagans of the modern age. I can see an altar and in front of it, there she is. She has red hair and a small line of silver frames the left side of her face. I noticed with pride, she has not colored it even though she is young, only in her twenties.

She is tall, not like me but like Tree Bear. She seems to tower over the substantial altar in front of her. I gasp as I realize it is the same altar I had used, the same chest of drawers I had found and kept when I was in my twenties. I used it as my altar because it was so well made, made to last.
On the altar is a book, it looks like a strange scrapbook with pictures and mementoes carefully preserved in it. I approach this Amazon to peer around her lithe body and she is stroking one of the opening pages. It is a drawing of a tree and near the roots to my amazement I am able to make out some writing:

Adialawyddan ‘Dia’ Dragonstone (1971- ~~~~)and Stone Dragonstone (1969 – ~~~~)
Bound by handfasting 2001 and by state 2002.
Founded Dragonstone Family Coven™,

Winter Solstice, 2002
‘She was the Dragon, He was the Stone’

And above the somewhat obscured account of my husband and I, it continues:

Tree Bear Dragonstone (1998-2***) and

Yannu Dragonstone (2001-2***)
Bound by handfasting 2021 and by state 2022
 

The inscriptions are imbedded in the picture of my winding family tree. As my eyes make

old pentacle ring, the stone of our family set in it’s center reflects the candlelight.

With a heavy sigh, she begins to flip through the Dragonstone Family Book of Shadows until she finds what she is looking for. She begins to read a section and I recognize it as my love story, the story of how my husband and I met all those years ago. At the bottom of the story, there is a diagram of the spell I had used and the agreement I had made with the gods before I met my mate. She studies it carefully before turning the page.

On the next page, she reads again, only this time there is a story about Tree Bear meeting Joy Dawn and at the bottom of that story is a diagram of his spell and agreement with the gods. It is different than mine and has some changes.

I chuckle. I had always said that height wasn’t in my original spell and it should have been. Considering how tall Tree Bear must have ended up being, he had chosen to include a height requirement. I look at the face of this beauty, no wonder she is so tall! I want to reach out and touch her. She stops, looks toward me, so I can study her face fully. She looks through me as if I am not even an apparition to her mind, yet she searches anyway. Her heart knows her ancestors have come. Eventually she shivers and shakes the feelings off, turning back to her task.

I sit there and watch as she reads through how each generation had changed the spell and added or taken things away. Eventually she pulls out a paper and begins to take notes. She uses some of my spell and the height portion of Tree Bear’s and then flips forward to some of the last pages for ancestors closer to her memory. She sketches the spell out and spends lots of time with the wording of her chosen chant.

When she is finished she flips carefully through the family Book of Shadows and I see glimpses of old photos and new, spells, symbols and familiar words of the religion I love fly past me as the pages fan my face. Then she closes the book and upon it I see the symbol of Dragonstone Family Coven™ in green and surrounded by a thin yellow line etched upon the blue leather binder.

"I will continue,” she speaks suddenly reminding me of my own grandmother’s voice, now hundred of years away from this future I am visiting. “I am going to call him to me and we are going to continue. Help me, Dia and Stone, Tree Bear and Yannu and all the ancestors who have found love, happiness. I feel you here; help me recreate the magic of these spells.”

I am filled with the need to continue my journey in space and time and find him for her. Without control, I swiftly rise to begin the search and begin to hear clicking and tapping that slows as I return to my own time, my own office, my own keyboard, my own year. She is gone. She isn’t even a whisper of a thought in my line of lineage.

Visions of the future can shape the present for it is the past that shapes the future. The confusion lifted as the answer descended upon me.
Where is the tradition of Wicca to help raise families? In every mother and father who is practicing Wicca today.

You and I are building a legacy of magic. In fact, without deliberately going about giving legacy, our children are getting legacy from us. In how you treat your partner and children, the legacy of understanding the nature of God and Goddess is being received. In how you keep your word or do not, the legacy of parenting is instilled in a child’s heart. In how you love yourself and your friends, the legacy of being a true Priest or Priestess to community is being passed on. All of this and so much more is the legacy of magic the children of the future will pick up.
Being witches and Neo-Pagans, legacy and myth of days gone by are an integral part of worship. The opportunity is here to re-create those legacies and myth and do something for future generations that the dark ages and persecution eliminated from us.