The Sorcerous Working Couple

For many people the first thing that comes to mind when they consider couples who work magic together is the traditional Wiccan 'working partner'. -A single, monogamous, heterosexual pairing where the dynamic polarity at work is primarily one of gender. But this is not at all what the term conjures up in my mind, and so I want to write something about working couples in traditional witchcraft.

The primary difficulty in doing so, however, just as with many topics, is that you can't make across the board statements between traditions. Some traditional crafters may have little to no lore in this area, whilst another may place significant importance on such relationships. For this reason I can only really speak as myself and from observations made within the contexts of certain traditions I've encountered. Therefore my thoughts on this are not universal and will probably not apply to working partners relationships in all occult traditions.

Most Crafters I know have admitted to me at some point in our acquaintance that their 'ideal' relationship would be with another witch. -Preferably one of their own tradition so they could freely share information and experiments. But how common are these relationships and how often do they work out? Well, from my experience they are not very common. More often than not, I have found, relationships that appear to be a 'working partnership' on the surface tend to be driven by one party's passion and knowledge, with another more passive party who is sympathetic but barely actually does anything occult yet allows their other to call them 'working partner'. Or the other type, less frequent but still more ubiquitous than the 'ideal', is the 'together but not working together' situation. Where the parties are both committed Crafters or cunning folk but for one reason or another their work doesn't gel well enough for them to be a working couple.

What I would call the true working relationship is neither of these things. It consists of people who possess equal passion for the Craft and who are naturally drawn to work it together to achieve their goals. Because they are presumably having sex, a whole extra dimension of sorcery is open to them. In general, there may be some inequality of knowledge, at least at first, but this is viewed as a temporary situation rather than a built in inequality. Both are committed not only to the mastery of their Art, but to serving and supporting the same growth of mastery in their partner. In this the love for our Art and the love for the individual are linked, and one alone will not suffice without the other.

Now I like to think that the latter are actually more common than my naturally limited sample of friends and acquaintances over my life would suggest. Yet although I have not observed many, I have been in the position to observe some, both from the inside and out. These are some points based on my observations, for efficiently co-joining traditional craft and an intimate connection


1. Working partnerships must be 'outside the box' relationships, you can't be engaged in a very average, boxed in relationship which prescribes your partner to gender or other societal norms and then expect to smash through normative thinking into states of power and oneness together. If you have jealousy issues how do you feel about spirit congress? These are all questions you should probably ask yourself before setting out. You can't explore the weird and wild and challenge each other if your relationship is the essence of constriction or normality, served up to you whole with a side helping of stereotype. If it is that it will usually implode at the first touch of witchcraft anyway.

2. I didn't want to put this first and dwell on the negative but we must mention abuse. A 'working partnership' must be entered into by two people who both have relatively equal power. It should never be part of a prerequisite condition for learning such as, 'it will be impossible for me to teach you the rest unless you sleep with me so I can show you.' Of course there will always be forms of sorcery for whom that is exactly correct and it is exceedingly difficult for any tradition that teaches sex magic to work out how to go about asserting ethical boundaries without policing their practice out of existence. Witchcraft of all forms always possesses an element of danger and when properly sanitised it ceases to be witchcraft, so these questions will no doubt reign eternal. Let it suffice for us to say here that the above example of coercion would fail to qualify for a working partnership because it is not a relationship between equals.

3. Don't work magic together when there's friction in the relationship. Might sound obvious but magical relationships are pressure cooker relationships at the best of times. Getting into a circle with someone you have unspoken problems with is troublesome enough to the ambience of a group, when you add a sexual relationship to that it becomes a powder-keg. Above all else be aware of this if your working relationship with someone is part of a wider, coven or circle. It's bad enough when friends who are couples feud in front of you, so much worse when that feud is potentially sorcerously activated! If you're going to try having a working partner you require the self awareness to know when you need to step back from a working or group while you unknot a situation.

4. It's important to pick someone with whom you have 'spark'. That means both that they excite your spiritual capacities and it also means that the sex works. It could be tempting just to go 'but he/she was the only straight/gay man/woman/other who was also a witch that I've ever damn well met! We can work on the sex! We. Will. Make. It. Work!'
-No.
I know this sounds extreme of me, but just no. If you are going to work magic together that includes sex and there is neither spark nor flow, you aren't going to be able to stir, seethe and boil the primal atavistic black fire until it kindles up into diamond clarity in your head with someone that was 'the only one you could find'. You probably won't even like each other much when you look back on this farce. -Just don't. I know there aren't many other witches whose sexuality matches yours, trust me (oh trust me I know of your pain and your search…), but let's act like there are, okay? Or lets not bother at all. Because this is serious business.

5. Don't get trapped in a polarity with someone. By this I don't just mean male and female. I mean this kind of thing: 'oh he's the healer and I'm the one who will blast you if you mess with him', 'she's darkness and I'm light', or 'he's the instinctual one and I'm the intellectual, he grounds me and I inspire him.' All magical relationships will probably start because something like this is true for you and your significant other or others, but for the partnership to remain of use to you both/all spiritually you cannot let yourself get stuck in a rut like this. And most importantly you cannot conscionable confine your partner into this expectation that they continue to provide a foil for you in some way. A true working partner should be dedicated to their beloved's dynamic expression, growth, unravelling, power and artistry. They should neither set themselves up as the one person who knows how that unravelling should look, nor submit to being told how they are expected to 'balance' the other person. A strong partnership between sorcerous people should look like a continually shifting field of force, involving regularly swapping, donning and removal of masks.

If all of that sounds a bit intense for you, or you simply doubt that there is anyone out there who could enter into it with you, well, you probably aren't alone. I, for one, believe that there is both power and extreme potential peril in such relationships. -As with all things worth having in life.