Jason Mankey, a third-degree initiate in the Gardnerian tradition and author of 10 witchcraft books, including The Horned God of the Witches, has been living in Sunnyvale in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley for over 15 years. There, he and his wife are part of two covens, one rooted in the Gardnerian tradition and the other as a more eclectic coven called “The Oak Court.”
Mankey says that California’s Bay Area has traditionally been “a hotbed of paganism and witchcraft,” and while that’s still the case near Berkeley and north of the Golden Gate Bridge, “things are a lot quieter in the South Bay’s Silicon Valley.” This is due in part to the affordability crisis, which has driven away a lot of practitioners. Although theirs aren’t the only covens around, since “the area has become more and more dominated by software engineers and tech bros, there are less and less Witches living and working in Silicon Valley,” Mankey says.
Similarly, Jesamyn Angelica, a high priestess and founder of the Sisterhood of the Moon Tradition, also considers San Francisco a center for witchcraft, calling it “one of the biggest and most diverse in the world.” After moving from the East Coast in 2001, Angelica found a welcoming, queer, pagan community there, which makes a lot of sense considering the Bay Area’s history in counterculture and spirituality. “I find it to be a true ‘let your freak flag fly’ kind of place. In many spaces here, authenticity is valued far more than attempts to ‘fit in,’” she says. “There’s not a real need to hide in the metaphorical broom closet unless one wants or needs to for whatever reason.”
Angelica highlights how much of the women’s spirituality movement of the early ‘70s was born in California, specifically practices with a Goddess-centered perspective with figures like Starhawk, Shekhinah Mountainwater, and Luisah Teish at the helm. Not only has their presence “deeply influenced the vibe” in the Bay Area, Angelica, who holds regular Goddess-centric rituals in nearby Hayward, says that Cali’s general counterculture energies have made the area a welcoming place for alternative spiritual practices.
“You can find practitioners of pretty much any tradition that interests you, and even discover ones you may not have heard of before,” she adds.
One drawback though, is the climate takes some getting used to, especially for those who celebrate Sabbats and Equinoxes. “Most of the lore and traditions associated with the eight sabbats (sabbats being the ‘high holidays’ in many Pagan traditions) revolve around agricultural cycles found in England and the Northeastern United States, and not the ones that exist in my own backyard,” says Mankey. “That has required some adjustment by those of us who live out here.”
TRAVEL ETIQUETTEWitchcraft is a very broad term that represents many individual practices and traditions across the United States and abroad. One thing to remember is to never bring bias or prejudice to a region when you travel: “When it comes to Witchcraft, there are often very regional flavors. Different areas of the country have their own chants, rituals, traditions, and even pronunciations of Witchcraft-specific words,” says Mankey. So even if you may want to “correct a pronunciation or a misconception, it’s best to mostly be quiet until you really know the people in a community.”
