A first degree initiate in Wicca is a Priestess, not a High Priestess. High Priesthood is specifically 2nd and 3rd degree, and it entails a lot of service and training. While different Traditions of Wicca will differ slightly, there is no Tradition in which first degree is High Priesthood.
Usually, a first degree initiate is a member of the coven as a fully trained, competent priest or priestess, who can do almost everything that the 2nd and 3rd degree folks can do, save teaching and elevating others in the Tradition, and leading congregations (covens). They also have a lot less stress than 2nd and 3rd degrees have.
The jump from priesthood (first degree) to High Priesthood (2nd and 3rd degree) is a mighty one. Second degree, specifically, is all about having to engage your Shadow Self in personal work, all while competently taking more responsibility in the coven. It’s not for the weak. Handling your own Shadow Work while doing a whole crapload of administrative and teaching duties is one of the most challenging things most of us do, because, as anyone who has done Shadow Work knows, you feel like the cheese is sliding off your cracker. It’s scary. The rewards, however, are immense.
In the coven I ran for 8 years, 2nd degree folks took the coven’s sword for a year, so as to be the person who has to do the spiritual heavy lifting for the group, all under my watch, and with my advice. A woman whom I elevated to 3rd degree a year ago took the sword in her 2nd degree (the Sword Holder is the “buck stops person”) and not a week later, had to summon a covener for a formal disciplinary action which didn’t get well received at all. The woman ended up leaving the coven, rather than comply with the disciplinary decision of the sword holder. The entire thing was draining, hard, upsetting, and wrenching for the sword holder, the disciplined person, and me, who had to watch my student learn to do a very unpleasant duty of High Priesthood.
In most covens, the journey from initiation to 3rd degree takes MUUUUUCH longer than 3 years and 3 days, and it SHOULD. I was lightning fast in my Tradition at 9.5 years. Most people take longer. Heck, most people are not even called to High Priesthood, and that’s OK. It’s not an easy life path.
High Priesthood takes time, effort, service, money (not as in being charged a fee, but the personal money a coven leader spends on their group…office supplies, food, extra plates, napkins, silverware, toilet paper, utilities, elevation gifts like cords and other regalia), and love. It is often thankless.
Aspiring to be a first degree initiate in a coven is a fine thing. The way you do that is you start at the beginning in a coven’s teaching grove, and you do the studies and you write the papers and you perform the rituals and you become a fully invested coven member. And if you are inclined to do that, I commend you. The world needs more Wiccan priestesses, in my opinion.
