About

My name is Essie. For a long time I was using my magical name "Ivyanna" but I have since shed that. I currently live in Texas, but before that I was in Southern California. I am originally from the Mid-West as that's where I was born and my family originated but I've lived in several different areas and because I had a gypsy mother and am thus part gypsy I am sure I'll pick up and move in the future. I'm not one to sit around somewhere for too long.

I enjoy hikes, picking flowers (when mother nature permits), going to the beach just to hear the waves crash against the Earth and to hear the birds calling as they sail through the air and adventures that only require one tank of gas to achieve. When I am not out photographing the world in all her beauty I'm usually indoors, working on some type of craft (scrapbooking, painting, drawing, collaging and other things using craft like materials), making soap or I'm working on one of my two Books of Shadows. If I'm on the internet I'm typically on Pinterest wasting away or pinning things to either my BoS Board or my Art Journaling Board, sometimes the DIY board but that gets dangerous. If I'm not wasting my time on Pinterest or Etsy I'm probably on Twitter harassing celebrities or Instagram posting photos of crafty things.

My Path

My journey with Wicca The Craft is still on-going, as is everyone's. I found Wicca in a strange way. I was raised Catholic and to believe in God and Jesus, so when I began to watch the shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed as a little girl (about 7 or 8) and then made my own spells in a notebook my parents were very concerned. Mainly because my first spell was how to stop people from hurting me and my second was how to take someone's voice. Yeah, like Ursala from the Little Mermaid. But it involved the removal of their tongue and that raised some red flags.

Upon discovering my Book of Shadows (a purple one subject notebook filled with my drawings and those two spells at this point)  my mother said to me:

1. You do not harm anyone for any reason religious or not
2. You need to stop watching so much TV
3. This is not the way of Jesus. 
4. You are not to do anything like this again.

And that was the end of that. Or so she thought. She was right on 3 of the 4. But I would do something like that again and so would she.

My father died in December 1999 and left my mother and I completely bankrupt, homeless and hungry. We begged, stole and borrowed to survive and eventually found our footing. For me, there was no Jesus and no God in that. We had found that my dad had cancer just before the Thanksgiving previous to his death. I asked God for one thing; that my dad might see me graduate high school. He was heavily invested in my schooling, always rewarding me for good grades. He also enjoyed that I sang and played in the school band. I quit band but kept up the singing when he died and I kept going in school. So I abandoned my God for taking both my dad and my grandmother two weeks apart. Christmas has never been the same, not that I celebrated much because we were often too poor to afford presents.

I am not sure the timeline on these next events that led me to Wicca The Craft but I do know that my mom became friends with a co-worker of hers when we moved to New Hampshire in 2000 (but it could have possibly been 2001) who practiced Wicca with his partner. His partner's name was Mykeal (his magical name) and my mom became increasingly more attached to him than her co-worker. We discovered the Craft through him and continue to learn thanks to this experience. We are still in close contact even though after almost 12 years we spent a majority of that time in different states and on different sides of the country.

I am a solitary practitioner as is my mother and as is Mykeal even though we are regularly together (my mother and I often live together and apart). We do not have a coven and I, myself, am not particularly interested in joining a coven. I would like to see how one operates but I am very selective and usually so are covens. I consider myself more of Eclectic as does my mother. Mykeal however follows the Alexandrian / Gardnerian traditions (see Traditions below).

Want to learn more? The following links take you away from this site to learn more about Wicca, The Craft, ect:
A Wiccan Overview
Different Traditions of Wicca
Becoming Wiccan
Wicca.com FAQ


Editor's Note (09/09/13): After much debate and a heated discussion with someone about the differences of being Wiccan, a Witch, Pagan, of The Craft, ect I do not identify myself as being "Wiccan." If someone asks I say Witch and/or Pagan. I'm not going to go into the details of what lead me to this at present but I did want to clarify that for anyone who may be reading this and discovers that it does not align with some of the things I have been talking about recently. 

Much Love,