Advice For Newbies

If someone walked up to me randomly in the street and asked how to become a pagan, the first thing I would advise them to do is the rule of the three r's: READ, READ, READ!!!  It is traditional to study for a year and a day before taking up this path, so use that time to soak up knowledge like a sponge and read anything you can get your paws on.  Read material from many different points of view to make sure that you aren't getting a biased view and to further open up the many different paths of the Craft.  No, the movie doesn't count, but I recommend it anyways just to see Hollywood's exploitation of our faith so you know what we're dealing with.

After you've read everything that you could possibly read, you will have heard a lot about traditions.  Many think that it is essential to belong to a trad and a coven, but that decision is up to you.  You can be a solitary eclectic (working alone and with original material), join an eclectic coven (working with a group of individuals who don't follow a specific trad), or join a traditional coven (working with a group who do follow a specific trad).  Heck, you can even make your own trad.  There are many different paths to diety, and each is niether better nor worse than the next.

Now, let's discuss tools.  Common ritual tools include altars, wands, athames (pronounced a-tem-ay or a-THAW-may), cauldrons, etc.  There are many places to buy your tools, but I recommend that, if time and resources allow, you make your own.  This increases the level of personal energy present in the tool.  If you are buying, the best way to choose a tool is to chose the one that feels right for you.

Moving on to the subject of ethics, you need to follow the Wiccan Rede (an it harm none do what you will) and the Law of Three (any energy you send out will come back to you threefold).  This means that you can do a spell if it doesn't harm yourself or another or remove another person's free will.  If you send out good energies, good energies will return to you three times over, but if you send out evil energies, evil energies will return to you three times over, and you do not want that. 

Love spells are a touchy subject with pagans.  Some say that they are against the Rede, others say that they are fine as long as they don't encroach upon the target person's free will, and still others say that all love spells are fine.  When doing love magick, follow your conscience and keep the Rede in mind.