June the 21st was the summer solstice, but June is also the month that we celebrate Father's Day. There are many ways to celebrate our Fathers and there are many men we may wish to celebrate beyond our biological fathers. We should, of course, celebrate our relationship with our God above all others. But, Father's Day is a wonderful day to celebrate not only the our birth fathers or the men who raised us, but also a chance to acknowledge our spiritual fathers and that can include our teachers, like Scott Cunningham and Raven Grimassi and Gerald Gardner Raymond Buckland.
I don't know what I would have done without Scott Cunningham. As a Christian Witch out there trying to find my way through the Craft often through a forest of Christian unfriendly books and writings, Scott taught that the Craft can be more than the art of pagans and Wiccans but can be accessible to any person of spirit who wishes to work the Craft and embrace the natural world around them. He wrote primarily for his own pagan faith, but he made his Craft open to anyone who wanted to learn.
Father Gardner was also a Craft teacher for me though he was less concerned with the possibility of a Christian Witch than some writers. If he had not written down his knowledge and his scholarship in his Book of Shadows and his other books, there would be little in the way of Craft as religion today.
Then there is Raymond Buckland who gave us so much more than the Big Blue Book, but acknowledged the need of people to study and initiate on their own because of the lack of a local Craft Community and the differing disciplines that were arising out of the world wide Craft community.
