Among the things that you can get accused of on TikTok, “gatekeeping” is considered one of the more nefarious. Generally speaking, we define gatekeeping as acting to limit someone’s access to, or ability to be considered part of a thing. The classic oft-cited example is where people try to decide who is a “true fan” of a musical artist or band or of a sports team by asking them inane questions like, “Can you name three songs?” or “Do you remember that time that player did that thing in that game?”

Sometimes it’s withholding information about something on the basis that the person enquiring should have to prove they deserve to know based on something arbitrary and meaningless. (Oh, if you aren’t from Maryland I’m not going to tell you about my favorite place to get crab cakes...) In the most extreme cases, it’s inappropriately withholding access to something on the basis of identity. (If you’re not a guy, we’re not going to include you in our NCAA March Madness pool -- Girls just don’t understand basketball....)

This kind of exclusionary approach is understandably held in contempt for a lot of reasons, the most glaring being that it’s often used as a tactic to enforce racism, sexism, and other forms of identity-based hatred in social settings. And yeah, upholding bigotry is nefarious and contemptuous and when that’s what you’re doing with your gatekeeping, you should be called out on it.

However...

The word has developed such a negative connotation that even a whiff of accusation is a serious thing. Whatever else one may say about you on social media, you really, really don’t want to be accused of “gatekeeping.” And because of that, “gatekeeping” has unfortunately become one of those words that people will trot out in a conflict as a tactic to obtain some kind of moral upper hand. Even if the label isn’t appropriate to what’s at issue, it’s introduced into the conversation in hopes the person it is directed at will backpedal and appease rather than be subjected to the accusation.

But not everything that could be labeled as “gatekeeping” is problematic.

We live in an age where we can assert as a casual assumption of our life that we may access the whole of human knowledge through a device that fits in our back pocket. And the natural expectation that derives from that assumption is that knowledge should be available to us whenever we ask for it. Younger generations that have grown up with the Internet as a fact of their lives prize the idea of transparency, and are very vocal when they do not receive it.

I have mentioned before that this generational expectation, prompted by the Internet’s democratization of information, has had some interesting impacts on how people approach learning magic and witchcraft. It has functionally changed the way in which seekers approach learning. In the 1990’s when the Internet was still developing, and society was still shaking off the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, if you wanted to learn how to do magic or be a witch, you had to know somebody. There were only a few books you could turn to, so if you wanted to learn you needed to find a living, breathing human being to teach you.

And more often than not, that human had to know who you were before they would let you anywhere near their person or their practice. Basically, you either had to be recommended to them by someone they already knew, or you’d go through some kind of vetting process, usually consisting of calling someone you heard about at a local metaphysical shop, and scheduling an in-person meeting in coffee shop so that the teacher could get to know you and suss out whether you were there in earnest or had some kind of inappropriate agenda. Bottom line, the foundational expectation between the teacher and the student was that the dynamic would be relationship-based. You wanted to learn witchcraft, and to do so you had to develop an in-person relationship with a teacher.

Contrast that with how seekers learn now. It is absolutely possible to learn how to be a witch and do so entirely through purchasing books, subscribing to a Substack, watching TikTok and Instagram, purchasing a seat in a workshop (whether online or in person), and buying spell kits at your local witch store or on Etsy. You don’t ever need to have a personal relationship with a teacher to successfully learn about witchcraft and magic. You can essentially purchase all the knowledge -- a transaction-based dynamic.

So you have a whole generation of witches whose experience is that acquisition of knowledge is transaction based -- I give you something (money, whatever) and you give me knowledge. And many of them are encountering people who learned their witchcraft in an exchange that was predicated on building an ongoing relationship as a container for the acquisition of knowledge. I know you and therefore I teach you what I know. A lot of the disconnect that happens between “old school” witches and those newer to the Craft can be explained by this difference in frameworks. Because when knowledge exchange is purely transactional, there should never be any barrier to acquiring knowledge other than price.

But if you’ve come to the Craft in a relationship-based framework as opposed to a transactional one, what knowledge you are allowed to get is predicated on what the status of your relationship is. It’s no surprise that most people who engage in hierarchical, oathbound group practices like Wicca learned their Craft in the context of a relationship based framework. Because the underlying principle that degreed systems and initiatory traditions are based on is that as your relationships grow within your coven or your group or with your teacher, that you will demonstrate that you are able to handle more and deeper knowledge. Only when you have demonstrated that you are ready for the relationship that goes along with the status of priestess or high priestess will you be given access to the knowledge that comes with it.

If you want to be technical, yes, this meets the definition of “gatekeeping.” The high priestess or the elder or whoever the teacher is, withholds certain knowledge until the student demonstrates that they are ready for it. And often that readiness is determined not by the student, but by the teacher.

And if your understanding of how to learn witchcraft has been dominated by a transactional framework, you will look at that and say, “that’s some fucked up shit right there.” And if I’m being honest, it’s not an invalid viewpoint. After all, as someone who places a strong emphasis on the idea that a witch is sovereign over their path, and that no one needs anyone’s permission to take up witchcraft, I see the issue in allowing a witch (even one you are in a trusted relationship with) have a say so over whether you can access certain knowledge or not. It’s a situation that can readily be abused and which appears to undermine the sovereignty that I claim to cherish so much.

And yet, all knowledge is not the same. What the knowledge is can and should affect the circumstances under which it may be acquired. There are, in fact, some distinct things to consider before one leaps to the dreaded conclusion that people are “gatekeeping” and should therefore be taken to task for it.

The cold, hard truth of it is that not everything needs to be available to everyone all the time. Knowledge can be held as proprietary for a number of reasons. For instance, some practices and knowledge is proprietary to certain cultures, and are considered “closed practices,” meaning that they are only available to people of that culture and/or people who have met certain criteria that the culture dictates that makes one able to participate in the practice. Smudging with white sage is one of the most prominent examples of a “closed practice” that most witches have been educated on. While many cultures engage in using bundles of herbs for smoke cleansing rituals, the Native American ritual of burning white sage and using a feather to spread the smoke in a “smudging” to cleanse a space is something that is proprietary to Native American spirituality and when done by someone outside the culture it is considered appropriation. Many of the practices of Voodun are likewise considered “closed practices” that are only available to people who have been through the right kind of instruction from a teacher with an appropriate lineage.

Some knowledge is held as proprietary because it is the creative property of an individual or a group. While it is true that most of the elements of Gardnerian Wiccan practice are already readily available online and a lot of magical techniques and practices are available in books and online, there are still some things that are the product of a individual witch’s creativity or practice and should therefore not be used without permission. So that chant that you might have learned when you went to the Yule ritual at a friend’s house? Ask before incorporating it into your own Yule the following year. Why? Because our culture recognizes that people’s creativity is not up for grabs by just anyone. Creators own their creative product, and have the right to say who can use it and who can’t. That’s why Sabrina Carpenter can get mad at ICE for using her music without her consent (and sue if it continues). While I’m not sure anyone has ever tried to legally protect a spell or a chant or some other bit of magic, there is the matter of common courtesy. (As one of my professors in law school used to say, the boundary of what is legal is not always the same as what is socially or morally correct.) Witches spend a lot of time and energy creating spells, creating altars, creating tools and techniques. That effort, that creativity, is significant, and the fruit of that labor should be recognized as belonging to the person who created it. Appropriating it without consent is looking to get something for nothing.

This goes even double in situations where witches have gone out of their way to protect that magical practice through the use of oaths. Oathbound traditions, groups of witches who maintain a level of secrecy around their membership and their teachings and practices, do so in part because secrecy is an important tool for creating something sacred. The ability to deny access to a thing is a form of power, and as witches, part of becoming adept at magic is becoming adept at using all the forms of power at our disposal. In an age where we’re set on the idea that something is more powerful the more people view it or see it or like it or engage with it, we’ve neglected the value in empowering something by NOT sharing it, by holding it apart.

And then there is the fact that some knowledge has to be earned, it is not meant for rank beginners. Some of that earning is a matter of sequencing. There is a reason why one cannot learn calculus until one has completed algebra -- the concepts of calculus are incomprehensible unless one has first mastered algebra, the one is a necessary precursor to the other. Likewise, there are certain magical practices that one cannot possibly comprehend until you have mastered the building blocks that provide the underpinning for them. You must learn in the appropriate sequence.

But there is also the matter of demonstrating readiness on a more personal level. Certain traditional Hebrew scholars used to hold that only adults over 40 should undertake the study of Kabbalah, because it was presumed that only someone who had reached that level of maturity was capable of exercising the judgement and discipline necessary to the task (a rule that admittedly was often observed more in the breaking of it). While I don’t beleive one needs to establish age thresholds for certain types of magic, it IS true that maturity matters. There are certain techniques that I’m not going to teach to someone who hasn’t demonstrated an appropriate level of commitment and dedication, because to do so would be a waste of my precious time. And there are certain practices, particularly more powerful techniques that fall under the “baneful magic” category, that I’m not going to teach to someone who has the potential to seriously misuse them.

Let me be very clear here -- some of the most amazing witches I know are solo practitioners who are not affiliated with a tradition or a group of any kind. And you are never under an obligation to prove to me or anyone else that you are entitled to respect as a practitioner. Everyone who claims the title witch should receive a baseline amount of respect, because that’s what you do for your fellow humans. Sometimes more experienced practitioners forget that. They get so invested in protecting their Craft from people they don’t think are “worthy.” And there is a certain arrogance in beleiving that it is your job to decide who gets to be a witch and who doesn’t.

And while yes, you don’t need anyone’s permission to be a witch, and participation in a tradition or a group that has certifications or ranks is absolutely unnecessary to being a witch, the truth is when it comes to certain types of information, such as that belonging to a culture, an individual or a tradition, the folks who hold such information have an absolute right to decide who may access it and who may not.

I’ll also admit that where there is some kind of “third party validation” present, I am way more readily confident in who that witch is and what their skills are. That’s not necessarily gatekeeping, but a natural decision-making technique that people use when they have to make choices. If you’re looking for a primary care doctor, among the questions you’re going to ask is what medical school they went to, and what hospitals they have privileges at. If you’re looking to sell your home, you’re likely to want to employ a realtor, and you might want to ask which firm he or she is affiliated with, or which industry association they are a member of. There are many instances in our lives where we look to see who someone is affiliated with in order to determine whether we are going to engage with them and trust them with something important. It’s not outrageous to suggest that a similar dynamic might be in play as we decide who we’re engaging with on a deeper or more significant level with our Craft.

Whether you are a fan of Wiccan tradition or not, the fact is the three tiers of initiation in most Wiccan groups do offer both the teacher and the student a set of milestones that provide a reasonable reference point for where you are on your path and what you can be expected to know. I can look around a circle in my Tradition and know that everyone who’s wearing a certain color cord can be counted upon to have done certain practices and know certain things. It’s not for everyone, that’s for sure. Not everyone is cut out for that kind of structured environment, and certainly in groups where there are poorly maintained guardrails abuse of power can be a genuine problem. And there are more things involved in deciding who you trust than whether they are wearing a certain color cord or claiming a certain status within a group. That does not mean that a credential or an accolade or a verified accomplishment isn’t a valuable point of consideration.

In the end, a framing of “gatekeeping” that suggests that everyone should always have the same access to everything is too simplistic, and ignores some very important issues around how we create Craft, why it sometimes needs extra protection, and why we sometimes do want to draw distinctions around who can access our people and our information.

Blessed be, Witches.