Written by I’ve been thinking about this question for a while, and I want to be honest about why.
Building CraftTalk means I am, in some capacity, a person who teaches things. I write about practice. I frame how topics are approached. I make editorial decisions about what gets covered and how. Whether I call myself a teacher or not, the function is there, and that means the question applies to me too. I’m not writing this from a comfortable distance.
So. Who gets to teach witchcraft?
The Gatekeeping Problem and Its Mirror
The traditional answer, in certain corners of the craft, has been lineage. You teach because you were taught by someone who was taught by someone, and the chain of transmission is what authorizes you. This matters in traditions where lineage is genuinely central, where initiation confers something real and the passing of specific knowledge requires the specific container of that relationship.
But lineage has also been used as a bludgeon. A way of telling people their practice doesn’t count, their experience isn’t valid, their path is lesser because they don’t have the right name behind them. That version of lineage isn’t protecting the tradition. It’s protecting the people who happen to have access to it.
Here’s the thing though, and this is where it gets complicated, the reaction against gatekeeping can create its own problem. The position that anyone can teach anything as long as they’re sincere and enthusiastic is also not quite right. Sincerity is necessary. It is not sufficient. I have encountered genuinely sincere teachers who caused real harm because they didn’t know what they didn’t know, and didn’t think they needed to.
So we’re between two failure modes: the gatekeeping that hoards access, and the open door that doesn’t ask enough questions. What does the space between them actually look like?
What I Actually Look For
I’ve learned from a lot of different people over the years. Some in person, some through writing, some through traditions I’ve moved in and out of. Looking back, the ones I trusted, really trusted, in a way that held up over time, shared a handful of qualities that had nothing to do with their credentials.
They were honest about their sources.
Not in a defensive, citation-heavy way. But when something they taught came from a specific tradition, they said so. When they’d adapted something or developed it themselves, they said that too. They didn’t present their own synthesis as received ancient wisdom. This sounds simple and is apparently quite rare.
They could say “I don’t know.”
Three words. Incredibly hard for some people in positions of authority to produce. The teacher who can say I don’t know, but here’s how I’d investigate it or I don’t know, that’s outside my experience is telling you something important: that their certainty, when it comes, is worth something. The teacher who always has an answer should make you nervous.
They were clear about where their knowledge ended.
Related to the above but distinct. It’s one thing to say you don’t know the answer to a specific question. It’s another to be clear about the edges of your expertise as a whole. To say I work primarily in this tradition, I’m less familiar with that one, I’d point you elsewhere for that. Teachers who present themselves as comprehensive authorities on the entire craft are either extraordinarily experienced or not being straight with you.
They didn’t need you to need them.
This one took me a while to identify because it operates quietly. But there’s a specific dynamic that develops around certain teachers where the goal, consciously or not, seems to be the creation of dependency. Students who keep coming back, who feel they couldn’t practice without the teacher’s guidance, who have been subtly persuaded that their own instincts aren’t to be trusted without verification from above. The teacher who is genuinely oriented toward your development wants you to eventually not need them. The teacher who is oriented toward their own position wants the opposite.
Their pricing was transparent.
I’m going to say this plainly because it sometimes gets treated as crass to bring up: money is part of this conversation. Teachers deserve to be compensated for their time and knowledge. That is not the issue. The issue is the pricing that appears only after you’re already emotionally invested, the escalating tiers of access that always seem to have another level above the one you just paid for, the courses that promise transformation in a way that makes the price feel like a test of how serious you are. Transparent pricing, stated clearly before you commit, is a baseline of respect.
What Would Make Me Walk Away
The circle question underneath this topic is: what would make you feel safe learning from someone, and what would make you quietly walk away?
Here’s my honest answer to the second part.
I would walk away from someone who claimed unverifiable authority. Whose lineage or initiation or direct transmission from a deity couldn’t be questioned without that questioning being framed as spiritual immaturity on my part.
I would walk away from someone who discouraged outside learning. Any teacher who suggests that reading other sources, exploring other traditions, or developing your own independent practice is a threat to your development is telling you something important about what they actually want from the relationship.
I would walk away from someone who made me feel stupid for not knowing things. There is a version of teaching that uses the student’s gaps as a way of establishing the teacher’s superiority rather than filling the gaps with any real care. It produces shame rather than understanding. I have sat in rooms with this kind of teacher and left knowing less than when I arrived, in the sense that I left with my confidence diminished and my curiosity subdued.
I would walk away from someone who didn’t practice what they taught. Not because teachers need to be perfect at everything – no one is. But there’s a specific hollowness to instruction from someone who is clearly performing knowledge rather than living it. You can usually feel the difference, even when you can’t immediately name it.
And I would walk away from someone who positioned themselves as necessary. Who suggested, in whatever framing, that without their specific guidance, the path wasn’t properly navigable. This craft has been practiced for centuries by people with no formal teacher at all. Access to a good teacher is a gift. It is not a prerequisite.
What I’m Trying to Do Here
Building CraftTalk means I’ve had to sit with these questions about myself.
Am I honest about my sources? I try to be, and I note it when I’m synthesizing from multiple places or when something is my own interpretation rather than established tradition.
Can I say I don’t know? Yes. I find it easier in writing than in real-time conversation, but yes.
Am I clear about where my knowledge ends? This is the one I have to keep actively working on. The scope of what CraftTalk covers is broad, and it’s easy to drift into writing about things at the edge of my actual experience. I try to signal when that’s happening.
Do I want you to need me? No. I genuinely want you to leave this site with a richer practice that you own fully, that doesn’t require CraftTalk to sustain it. If what we’ve built here is useful to you, that’s wonderful. But the goal was never dependency.
The question of who gets to teach isn’t really about credentials. It’s about orientation. Whether the teacher is pointed toward the student’s growth or toward their own authority. Whether the knowledge is offered as a gift or as a lever.
Lived practice matters. Honesty about sources matters. Transparency about limits matters. The willingness to say I don’t know and this is where my expertise ends and you don’t need my permission to trust yourself – these matter more than any lineage, any initiation, any letters after a name.
That’s the bar I’m trying to hold myself to. It’s the bar I’d encourage you to hold your teachers to as well.