How I make content

How to read the labels Historical what the old sources say. Later tradition what later writers added. Modern modern practice and my own notes.

This page explains how every guide on The Esoteric Witch is made: where the information comes from, how I label it, how I pick images, and what happens when I get something wrong. If you ever wonder why a page says what it says, the answer should be here.

Where my information comes from

I use three kinds of sources, and I try to be clear about which one I am leaning on.

Primary sources

These are the old things themselves: a printed book, a manuscript, a deck, an inscription, a painting. My reference shelf includes:

• Tarot: the surviving 15th century Italian cards, such as the Visconti-Sforza deck, and the 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith deck with A. E. Waite’s The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (1910).
• Witchcraft: trial records and early printed books, including Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584).
• The Ars Goetia: Johann Weyer’s list of demons (1577), Scot’s English version, the Sloane and Harley manuscripts in the British Library, and the 1904 edition by S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley.
• Runes: the inscriptions themselves and the medieval rune poems from England, Norway and Iceland.
• Art: museum records and open-access collections, where the date, maker and materials of a work are recorded.

Scholarship

Historians and specialists who have spent their lives on these sources: Ronald Hutton on modern pagan witchcraft, Michael Dummett on the history of tarot, R. I. Page and Terje Spurkland on runes, Owen Davies on grimoires. When historians disagree, I say so and tell you both sides.

Modern practice

What readers, witches and teachers do today, including what I do myself. I write this from my own practice and my own books. Modern practice is real and valuable, but it is not evidence about the past, so I keep it separate.

The three layers and their labels

Every longer guide uses three small labels so you can see at a glance where a claim comes from:

• Historical: what the sources show, with the source named. Example: the oldest surviving tarot cards were painted in northern Italy in the 15th century.
• Later tradition: what writers and groups built on the sources, usually between the 18th and the early 20th century. Example: the Golden Dawn’s links between tarot cards, Hebrew letters and planets.
• Modern: today’s practice. Example: drawing a card of the day and writing about it in a journal.

A label is not a judgement. Many beautiful practices are modern. I only want you to know what you are holding.

How I choose images

I use four kinds of images, and every image on the site has a credit line:

1. Public-domain art, such as the 1909 tarot cards by Pamela Colman Smith, old engravings and paintings whose creators died long ago. I check the license on each file page.
2. Open-access museum images, released by museums under CC0 or a similar open license.
3. Free stock photos from Pexels or Pixabay, for things like candles and herbs.
4. Simple drawings made for this site, in my brand colors. I use these when a public-domain image is not right for a page.

I also follow two rules of my own. I never crop a tarot card, because the whole picture is part of its meaning. And I do not show nudity, with one exception: the original 1909 Rider-Waite-Smith tarot cards by Pamela Colman Smith. They are in the public domain, and I show all 78 as she drew them, including the few with nude figures.

Only books that are already published appear on this site, with their real covers. A new book gets its page on the day it is published.

Review before publishing

Nothing goes live until I have read it from start to finish and approved it. When I review a page I check that:

• every date, name and title matches a source I can point to,
• the three layers are labelled honestly,
• the safety notes are in place where a practice involves fire, plants, mental health or other people,
• there are no promises about money, love, health or results,
• the links work and lead somewhere useful.

Each page shows the date it was last updated. When I review a page again, that date changes.

Corrections policy and changelog

I will make mistakes. When I do, I want to fix them quickly and openly.

• Small fixes, such as a typo or a broken link, are corrected without a note.
• Factual corrections, such as a wrong date or a misattributed quote, are corrected and noted at the end of the page with the date of the change.
• Bigger changes, such as a rewritten section, update the “Updated” date on the page.

If you spot something that looks wrong, please tell me on the contact page. Include the page address and, if you can, the source you are looking at. I read every message, and I am grateful for each correction.

Sources

• Reginald Scot, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1584).
• S. L. MacGregor Mathers and Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Goetia of Solomon the King (1904).
• A. E. Waite, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (London: Rider, 1910).
• R. I. Page, Runes (London: British Museum Press, 1987).
• Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford University Press, 1999).