Solitary Practitioner is a term used to describe an individual who chooses to practice their spiritual faith in the privacy of his or her home or other designated space, without the need to participate in a group such as that of a Wiccan coven; although it’s not uncommon for solitaries to participate in some communal activities[1] (e.g. Sabbats.) Most often the term solitary practitioner is ascribed to those within the Neo-Pagan community, a diverse group of spiritual paths that include various forms of Wicca, Traditional Reconstructionism and Traditional British Witchcraft among others; about half of all pagans are self-ascribed solitary practitioners.[2]
While formal training is not a necessary component of solitary practice as it is in more organized groups, it is nevertheless a supported recommendation and practitioners can find a myriad of workshops, seminars and classes, in their local communities and online, that help to provide a more well-rounded approach to their spiritual practice; in most cases books are the primary means of education to the solitary practitioner, along with CDs and instructional videos. Furthermore, the Internet has provided for innumerable avenues of personal education in several spiritual faiths, Neo-Pagan or otherwise, making it possible for an individual to learn all he or she can about a particular path. In addition, that individual may decide to merge the various beliefs, legends and rituals they’ve researched from differing paths into a diverse, yet coherent whole known as being “Eclectic.”[3]
Of course decisions for choosing solitary practice over community gatherings are as individual as the practitioners themselves, but a few common reasons are often cited. The reason most often given is that of fear, in that the practitioner is concerned he or she might be the subject of harassment or abuse, whether physically, emotionally and/or socially, should the individual publicly express his or her beliefs, especially when those beliefs are in direct contrast to those of their local community; this mentality is often referred by those in the Neo-Pagan community by the slang phrase, “still in the broom closet.”
However, another reason is mere personal preference: the individual simply feels more comfortable practicing alone, rather than with others, by entering into sacred communion with his or her deities on a one-to-one basis in private. In fact, History speaks to the traditional nature of the solitary path through the existence of wise women, oracles, shamans and the like who practiced their craft alone and offered essential services to their communities,[4] choosing a select few to inherit their knowledge (most often members of their family or people they were particularly close with.) The claim could be made that such exclusivity contributed to the targeting of witches, genuine or not, whose secret arts engendered fear and suspicion in the minds of the general public and jealousy in medieval doctors, whose practices were woefully ineffective (it should be noted that this last statement is inferred from historical premise and opinion and should not be treated as fact.)
Yet, solitary practice has been the subject of scrutiny within the Neo-Pagan community by those who feel that the practice is uncommitted, or in some way insincere, especially within the Wiccan community who consider a witch’s power to be transferred/bestowed upon an individual by the leading authority of a group, for instance a High Priest of Priestess. Regardless of public opinion, several proponents of solitary practice, such as Doreen Valiente and Raymond Buckland, have advocated and promoted the act of “self-initiation”, a process by which an individual professes in private (usually through a ritual of some kind) their commitment to and worship of a particular deity or pantheon. In this way a practitioner may acquire in his or her own way a feeling of authenticity, with the added benefit of remaining exclusive, and an extensive amount of self-initiating rituals have been written and published for the general public by popular New Age authors like Silver RavenWolf and the late Scott Cunningham, both of whom have excellent and educational guides for the solitary practitioner.