History of Witchschool

Witch School was founded on 4 September, 2001, with a goal of providing an “anyone, anytime, anyplace Magical education”. However the history of Witch School actually goes back well before it was founded, in the personal history of Ed Hubbard and Don Lewis and their experiences with many previous projects. It was these experiences that convinced Hubbard and Lewis that an “anyone, anytime, anyplace Magical education” was not only a good thing but something the Magical community really needed.

Ed and Don met in Chicago in 1990 at the J and M Psychic Fairs through the efforts of the famous Spiritualist medium Eleanor Royce. Ed and Don became friends and found that they shared both a similar vision for the future, and similar visions of the future which both had experienced since childhood. They became involved in a number of ventures, notably Psychic Services Chicago which is just what it sounds like, The Church of Gaia (later Holy City Temple), and a number of media projects including Psychic Chicago Magazine, and Psychic Chicago Radio. Through these media projects, as well as many guest appearances on area programs such as the Mike Kurbin Show, Ed and Don came to meet and in many cases interview most of the local fixtures of Chicago’s psychic and Pagan communities. Ed and Don were joined in many of these projects by the dramatic and beautiful Traci Logan, then Chicago’s youngest professional psychic reader.

In 1993 the Parliament of the World’s Religions met in Chicago for the first time in one hundred years. Ed was very much involved in this as one of the event staff. At this event Ed met international leaders of the Pagan community such as Angie Buchanan and Selena Fox, as well as world leaders such as the Dalai Lama and Olivia Robertson of the FOI. Charged by Olivia Robertson to create an ambassadorial mission to help build ties between the various Pagan Traditions, Ed founded the Pagan Interfaith Embassy, which would transform the face of Pagan Chicago in succeeding years.

In 1994 the Pagan Interfaith Embassy sponsored the first Chicago Pagan Leadership Conference, which brought together almost all of the Chicago area groups with unexpected success. The Pagan Interfaith Embassy would hold two more extremely successful Pagan Leadership Conferences before allowing the Chicago Pagan Leadership Conference to form up as a group in its own right. Sadly, once it became a group free from the Pagan Interfaith Embassy the Pagan Leadership Conference did not do so well, falling prey to internal political squabbled. But the Chicago community had been re-energized by the original PLC events and this energy would carry on for years to come, promoting the birth of dozens of new groups and a variety of social events.

In the wake of the Chicago Pagan Leadership Conferences Ed and Don founded The Round Table magazine, which was a local community magazine for the Chicago Pagan community. The magazine featured real-world news stories, reports on local Pagan events, articles, and cartoons. The Round Table magazine would continue to publish throughout the 90s.

Ed also launched a new project at this time: Telepathic Radio. Telepathic Radio was a more polished version of the earlier Psychic Chicago Radio, featuring interviews with metaphysical authors and celebrities, commentaries, and music.

By 1997 Ed had seen the mounting importance of the internet, and decided to augment his media offerings with online offerings. A number of daily e-zines were created including Daily Astrology with Sarolta deFaltay and Daily Tarot with Dawn Williams, but by far the most successful was Daily Spell –which is still in existence today.

Initially Daily Spell carried stories and items of interest to the Pagan community, but Ed found he wanted something more focused. He turned to Don who had been writing a series of lessons in Correllian Wicca for Holy City Temple and the decision was made to serialize these through Daily Spell.

Don had been a Correllian Wiccan Priest since the age of 13, his mother a Correllian Wiccan Priestess who had authored “The Five Mystic Secrets”. For a number of years he had been being urged to write down the Correllian take on Wicca, which was in some ways very unique. Serialized in the Daily Spell the lessons proved to be an immense success. Many people who had studied Wicca for years felt that they found in these lessons the clearest explanation of the Wiccan world view that they had yet seen. Most notably the lessons offered a self-contained and coherent system that addressed ultimate questions with practical answers.

In this new format the Daily Spell became even more successful and soon had over a thousand students. Ed realized that to serve this student body he required a better platform. So he turned to Lisa Tuit to build that new platform which took shape as Witch School. Meanwhile, overwhelmed with essay tests from twelve hundred students, Don was creating the basis for what would become the Witch School Mentoring system, recruiting assistants from his most advanced online students. The first two Mentors were Green Owl of Missouri and Richard Lunn of Pennsylvania.

Launched on 4 September, 2001, Witch School proved even more popular than Daily Spell had been and the student body expanded by thousands. The Mentoring system was refined and enlarged to accommodate these students –though the Mentoring system dealt only with the Priesthood classes. In addition there were dozens of additional classes that students could take, as well as books and other items offered for sale.

In 2003 the Witch School shipping department had outgrown Ed’s kitchen, and it had become clear that we needed more help. But building a shipping department in metropolitan Chicago was far beyond our means. So Witch School began to look for a new headquarters in downstate Illinois, where the Correllian Tradition had several groups and the school expected it to be easy to recruit help.

Ed and Don found a lovely building in Hoopeston Illinois that met all of their needs –a former school house. They set about the process of buying the building, and announced the planned move little expecting what would follow. Local conservative Christians were horrified and mounted and anti-Witch School campaign: There were prayer meetings, petition drives, door-to-door campaigns. Events culminated in a highly charged city council meeting in which Ed, Don, and friends were confronted by hundreds of angry Christians –many of whom had been bused in from other areas for the occasion. As the meeting verged toward violence, Ed finally said that if any of them felt strongly enough to write a check for the amount of our down payment, we would not buy the building. We then left Hoopeston intending never to return.

In the fullness of time we did in fact receive a check from a local church that would have covered the down payment we had lost –but a stop payment had been placed upon it even before it was mailed. It was only for show on the Churches’ part. But by then the local Police Chief had contacted us and asked us to consider moving forward. Chief Drollinger explained that most of the people at the meeting were not even from Hoopeston, and that the opposition was much more limited than it was trying to appear.

Don returned to Hoopeston to address the local Town Watch group and found that indeed most local people were much more open minded just as Chief Drollinger had said. Ed decided to open a smaller headquarters in Hoopeston and see what happened: so he opened The Broom Closet bookstore and went on a charm offensive. By the close of 2003 the new Witch School headquarters was set up in the Elephant Building, and ancient warehouse and office complex where it would remain for the next four years.

For the first couple of years Ed, Don, Lisa, and Jason would live in the storeroom, being unable to find an apartment –for local opposition was, if not as widespread as it first appeared, still considerable. Eventually Don, Lisa, and Jason would move into an apartment, but Ed would remain in the Elephant Building for the duration.

It was during this time that we were joined by MaryAnn Kaufmann, who tremendously improved our efficiency in all areas, and by Mike Farrell, who would eventually become our lead programmer. It is important to note that both MaryAnn and Mike are non-Pagans; MaryAnn is a Lutheran while Mike is an Episcopalian. We are am equal opportunity Witch School.

During these years the school grew and expanded. Magick TV was created and the production of video classes began.

However the local opposition was still there, and growing more virulent. It was only a minority of people, but they were influential people and it was becoming more and more obvious that the school could not expand as it wished to in Hoopeston. The Elephant Building was old and in poor repair. Attempts at repair only made clear how serious the structural damage was. A new building was needed –but it could not be found in Hoopeston.

In part because of this situation Ed put Witch School Incorporated up for sale. Eventually Don and a group of investors, most all students of the school, purchased the old schools assets and founded Witch School International, Inc. A new headquarters building was immediately sought, and eventually found in nearby Rossville. The new building was smaller but in much better repair than the Elephant Building.

Unfortunately here too there was opposition. Almost immediately the local Church of Christ attempted to mount a campaign against the school, buying a huge billboard. Then they brought in an anti-Wiccan speaker for a rally. Don and a few other Wiccans decided to attend the rally themselves, and as luck would have it that same day a reporter from the Sun Times happened to be doing an unrelated story of the school. The result was front page news.

After this the Church of Christ became a bit more circumspect, but continued to protest our presence with weekly anti-Pagan prayer circles and occasional anti-Pagan speakers, but their opposition has become much quieter.

Today Witch School is busily adapting to the changing technology of the internet with the creation of our new WitchSchoolInternational.ning site, which will serve as a single portal to all of the school’s many services including the main classes, the yahoo groups through which the Mentor system operates, the clubs, and of course Magick TV. We are, as we always have, actively building the future we desire –for after all, if we don’t, who will?

History of Witchschool
 

Witchschool Pdf Booklets
 

What is Wicca Pdf

The Path to Clergy Pdf

Harry Potter V The Real Witches pdf