Burning It All Down: My Experience Starting (And Ending) My First Coven
A brief look into my experience with starting my own coven, and what it took for me to burn it all down (and start anew).
My husband dragged me to watch Pixar’s Hoppers last week (warning: spoilers ahead!) and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the forest fire scene. It was entirely devastating, the moment of the film in which all hope is lost… and then, you see a beaver sniffing out the scene, wanting to make its home there, carrying out Mabel’s ultimate goal to bring the beavers back to the glade, to return its original glory in honor of her late grandmother.
Me being me, of course, could not ignore the spiritual significance of burning things down to start anew. Like a phoenix, rising through the ashes, as they say – or, as Friedrich Nietzsche would say: "You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?" This advice is not only used spiritually, but used practically, too: agriculturally, the "slashing and burning” of farmlands is utilized to help bring nutrient-rich, pest- and weed-resistant qualities to the soil.
“You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?” — Friedrich Nietzsche
I relate this act to my own life: from January 2024 until about a month ago, I had built a sizeable community known as The Grove of the Flame Acanthus. This group was initially a way for me to make more “witchy” friends in my local area, as I felt very isolated after COVID and was hoping to make new friends.
After a few months, it turned into something much bigger. We had a group of leaders, AKA “The Council”, that planned events and reviewed applications to join the community. Not too long after that, we looked into developing By Laws and registering as a 501c3 organization. Looking back now, I think our eyes had gotten bigger than our stomachs.
Fast forward to 2026, our Council had restructured almost completely – out of the 8 original folks, only 2 had remained (including myself) and we had whittled down to 6 members total. With the upheaval of our leadership, we ended up with new priorities and goals: none of which were congruent with what The Grove had become. We found ourselves prioritizing “smaller group energy” – we felt that the group we had fostered was disingenuous, and we weren’t sure how to rectify it. Should we require more participation from our current membership? Should we completely update our application process to reflect our new values? How can we restructure things to make it work better?
In the end, we decided the easiest and most effective way of carrying out our new goals and aspirations (and, probably the most drastic): burn down the old group, and start anew. (I think my exact words were: “Forgive me if this sounds dramatic, but why don’t we just… start all over?”)
This decision did not come without some hesitation: This “project” was my baby. I built it from the ground up. It was my pride and joy. It felt like I was not only giving up on the people who put their faith into the community, but I was also giving up on myself.
But then I had this image of a person – this person representing the Grove – dragging itself through an apocalyptic street, half-dead, just wanting to be put out of its misery. A self-aware zombie, begging to die. And it was my responsibility to pull the trigger. I could try to save it, try to nurse it back to health – but it was too far gone. It was time to start fresh.
This article is a small sampler of a much larger project I’m currently working on. If you’re interested in learning more about my experience as a coven leader, or are interested in learning how to start a coven of your very own, be sure to subscribe to my Substack (for free!) at the button below, and keep your eyes peeled for future announcements!
So, we burned it all down. We let people know that we were shutting things down, and we encouraged everyone to get in touch with people they got along with to potentially start their own off-shoot groups, if they felt inclined to do so. We deleted the community chat, our social media, and removed all the online listings pointing to our application. The only thing that remains, which serves as an archive, is our Substack.
Myself and a few others, of course, still felt the need to have a coven of some sort – one that better reflected what we wanted to mold The Grove to be. So, we decided to “hive off” into a new (much smaller) group to carry out those new goals and aspirations we had. “Hiving off” is a very common concept within covens – usually occurring when covens get too large, or when a group of people stop jiving with the coven leaders, or when coven members relocate. Hiving off made the most sense for us, as we all originated from The Grove, but we were branching off into something new (and, hopefully, improved).
I can only hope that the folks from The Grove take initiative to start groups and hive off themselves. In being part of such a large community, and now in a small one, I see the stark differences; the stark costs and benefits. Bigger groups are great if you want to network and make connections, or if you’re nervous about moving from solitary to group practice. But it’s also easy to fall through the cracks, and for friendships to feel disingenuous. Depending on the tradition that the large group practices (for example, if the group is eclectic), it can be hard for group rituals and activities to feel personal, or impactful.
Small groups are much different: connections to others are more intimate and can be more meaningful, but this can cause deeper hurt and greater fallout between members. With magical tradition, it’s a bit harder to pull a group together that follows the same path, but group rituals will feel all the more meaningful because everyone is practicing the same thing.
Depending on where you are in your spiritual or witchcraft journey, either type of group may work well for you. But here is my advice: if you have been waiting around, unsure if you should pull the trigger on joining (or starting) your own group, just do it! Don’t wait for the “right” moment. I can tell you that despite all the errors I have made, and despite the fact that my first coven has been burnt to ashes, I have never learned more about life than I have through running The Grove. And I wouldn’t change it for a damn thing.
Don’t be afraid to go for it, and don’t be afraid to set it on fire if that’s what needs to happen. I promise you’ll be all the better for it.