I’m not a magus, high priestess or Great Lady of the Greenwood. I don’t dress in black, wear pentacle earrings or exclaim ‘Oh goddess!’ when I drop a brick on my foot. In fact, I’d probably get lost in a crowd of three, and that’s just the way I like it. If you passed me in the street you wouldn’t give me a second look. You certainly wouldn’t think I was a witch or that I had taught magic for several decades.

Now I don’t know what your personal view of magic is. Most people fall into one of the following categories:
1. I believe wholeheartedly.
2. I think it’s possible but I haven’t done magic myself and I don’t intend to.
3. The very idea of magic freaks me out. You shouldn’t dabble.
4. I think it’s a load of rubbish and anyone who believes in it is mentally deficient.
5. Magic doesn’t exist.

All these viewpoints exist – and more. I can only ever write from my own point of view and I believe in magic because (a) I’ve witnessed it happening (b) I’ve done it myself. Believe me, I’ve looked for other explanations. After all, believing in magic wasn’t exactly something you’d admit to until a few years ago. After so long keeping my magical interests confined to those who could be trusted not to laugh or string my up on the nearest gallows, I must say it’s come as a nice surprise.

Over the years my students of magic have come in all shapes and sizes, all ages and backgrounds. But until recently, I’ve always been very reluctant to teach teenagers. It’s not that I feel they’re too immature to understand magical concepts. Not at all. If a teenager can cope with school, juggle exams, a part time job and learning to drive they can cope just as well with elementary magic as someone ten years older. No, my problem is not their understanding nor their maturity. What worries me is their power.

You see, whether we like it or not, children and teenagers are already doing magic under our noses. Older students can take years to get to grips with visualisation, but five year olds have been generating thought forms ever since they could first create an imaginary friend or play games of make believe.

So teaching magic to the average adolescent is a bit like trying to tame a wild horse: exhilarating yes, but also exhausting and occasionally dangerous. Many teenagers are brimming over with so much power that if they start dabbling in magic without proper guidance they could well blow a psychic fuse – theirs or someone else’s!

So for years I refused to teach teens. Even when they asked me nicely. But over the years I realised that I was being unfair. Yes, they were powerful, they were challenging, but without proper guidance they were extremely vulnerable. And proper tuition, geared to their specific needs is not all that easy to come by.

Now it’s a sad fact of life that there are plenty of people who will exploit you. Some garages will exploit you when your car needs vital repairs, politicians will exploit you when they think they’ve got your vote in their pocket. And there are ‘Teachers of Magick’ who will exploit a young person’s desire to learn, knowing they are limited in their choice of teachers.

Despite the grand titles they award themselves, such teachers are often not all that experienced and some have a very unbalanced view of magic. Many see spells as the answer to all life’s problems so the moment they spot something that could be remotely described as a crisis they whip out their Book of Shadows and start looking for an incantation to deal with it. Some even see magical attacks and manufacture ‘witch wars’ where none really exist.

On the other hand, there are those who try and occupy the moral high ground and say that you should never use magic. Some of these are so timid they cast around for other solutions ad nauseum in the hope that something – anything – will suggest itself and they won’t have to do anything magical about it.

Both extremes rather miss the point. If you want to do magic, you have to practice it and you have to learn about it thoroughly, not just play around with wands and athames and pretty crystals. You wouldn’t dream of dabbling with plumbing or rewiring the house afer all. It’s the same with magic; you have to know what you’re doing. But unless you have a family member or close friend willing to train you, you are thrown back on your own resources. Often this means your only option is looking for ‘Teen Wicca’ books in your local library. And that’s always supposing these books are in stock; the head librarian in my local library refuses to display books on paganism (or, weirdly, car maintenance) ‘in case the wrong people read them.’

Even if you do manage to find some basic books on ‘teen magic’ you have to realise their limitations. Most will teach a variety of spells but not the real ‘how and why’ that underpins all good magical practice and almost all of them have a strong bias towards Wicca which is not the be all and end all of magic. There are other, equally valid paths.

What sort of magic can people do? Almost anything, it depends what interests you. I had an aunt who did weather spells. (I don’t know why, it wasn’t as though any of the family went to sea and needed a fair wind to bring them home.) One of my grandmothers could charm warts. Another family member can change traffic lights and I’ve seen people put out street lamps by simply walking under them and ‘thinking them out.’

Before rushing off to try and turn your annoying little brother into a frog, however, remember that although you have power, at the moment it’s an untrained force. Teenagers and magic are a bit like teenagers and powerful cars – a dangerous combination. Psychically you may be powerful, but mentally you could be just as untidy as your bedrooms. Trying to perform magic while your head is full of mental and emotional clutter is like going fishing with high explosives rather than a rod and line!

Seeking the Green by Tylluan Penry, published soon by Capall Bann. For more info - watch this space!