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Myth Woodling is the author of most of this website's content, except where noted otherwise.
Myth Woodling has been on the path of the Goddess since 1979. She has been active in the Maryland Neo-Pagan community since 1984 and was initiated into a Faery-Elven Wiccan tradition in 1986. When the Free Spirit Alliance, a fully democractic 501(c)(3) non-profit Pantheist organization was founded in 1986, Myth Woodling was one of its founding members. She served as its network coordinator for years as well as serving two terms as FSA president.
Myth Woodling is now a member of the Chesapeake Pagan Community, formed in 2003. In July 2007, Myth Woodling became elevated to the 2nd degree in the Protean Tradition of the Gardnerian lineage.
At various portions of this site, Myth Woodling states that she does not practice Stregheria and is therefore not qualified to call herself a strega. The streghe of Italy are practitioners of traditional Italian witchcraft, folk medicine and magic. Myth Woodling is not of Italian descent and speaks neither Italian nor Latin. While there are several American-Italian traditions, including those who trace their lineage back to author Raven Grimassi's Aridian Stregheria, Myth Woodling has never had any formal training from anyone in any of these traditions.
Much of the Wiccan material on this site could be described as "Modern Wicca with Italian seasoning."
What was the "Faery-Elven Wicca" which you mention? I'm not familar with that tradition of Wicca.
I (Myth) am often asked this question. I will try to explain this briefly. The high priestess of this Faery-Elven Trad had studied with, but not initated into, an Alexandrian coven in the late 1970's. She worked with another Wiccan for a while and received a "Craft Initiation" from him. Having read Starhawk's Spiral Dance (1979), she then formed her own coven in the early 1980's using materials from Starhawk, the Farrars, Buckland, Gardner's Witchcraft Today, English and European Fairy lore and Elf lore (hence the no iron/steel blade rule for athames), lots of singing, music, and druming, and using Tolkien's Elven language and Elven names. It was primarily a celebratory coven and a teaching coven.
She was honest about sources, although sometimes she misremembered or mixed up where she got what from.
As the practice had mutated quite abit from what was written in Starhawk's Spiral Dance (1979), she renamed it the "Faery-Elven Trad" in the 1980's. (This HPS had some initiates who hived off, and I think they started their own covens, but I am not in contact.)
In the Spiral Dance (1979), Starhawk refered to the tradition she had been writing about as the Faery Tradition as she had been a student of Victor Anderson, but Starhawk had never initiated with Victor Anderson. Victor Anderson orginally called his tradition the Faery Tradition. Later Victor Anderson called his tradition the Feri Trad.
As far as I know the Faery-Elven Trad was simply local to Maryland, but it may have moved into a nearby state with other initiates.
In the early and mid 1980's, I wrote to any group that had something to do with faeries and elves