Post by jadedsage on Feb 29, 2004 0:06:21 GMT -5
by Sine Silverwing
(shaktisine@aol.com)
History
Our tradition is named after Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964), a British civil servant who studied magic and many other things over the course of a long life. He knew and worked with many famous occultists, not the least of which was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Gardner agreed with Margaret Murray's (1865-1965) premise that what was considered folk magick in Great Britain and Celtic Europe was actually the battered remnants of the original pre-Roman and possibly pre-Celtic religion of western Europe. He was probably encouraged, and possibly inspired by the publication, by Charles G. Leland, of his work on reclaiming similar survivals in Tuscany and from within the culture of the Rom. Certain traditional practices had survived in Gardner's family, and he found others who had preserved similar survivals, and shared his beliefs in the ancientry of this knowledge.
Probably basing the structure of his work on what he had learned in various magickal lodges, Gardner set about re-inventing that ancient, ancestral religion. He had little to work with; he had to write a good deal of it himself. He borrowed appropriate work from other artists, most notably Aleister Crowley and Rudyard Kipling, Queen Victoria's Poet Laureate. Gardner's High Priestess, Doreen Valiente (1922-2000) wrote much of the most well-known poetry, including the much-quoted Charge of the Goddess.
The core group grew slowly and in utter secrecy; witchcraft was illegal in Britain at the time. When the Witchcraft Laws were replaced, in 1951, by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, Gerald Gardner went public. The rest is history.
Neo-Paganism suddenly exploded onto the world scene, primarily in Great Britain, first, but spreading quickly throughout the English-speaking west, and beyond. Raymond Buckland gets credit for bringing Gardnerian craft to North America. Some of the suddenly-visible groups were Gardnerian, some were daughter groups of Gardnerian, others were different groups inspired by Gardner's work or by his example. Some of the suddenly visible groups were not Gardnerian at all. It doesn't matter.
If there was only One True Way, that Way would be so self-evident that we would all understand it from birth, and we would be as unaware of it as fish are unaware of water. The huge multiplicity and varieties of paths shows how rich the human imagination should be. The concept of the Quest may very well be as universal as it is because each of us longs to find the path to the Truth that is right for us. For some, that seeking lasts a lifetime; others are born where they belong...some explore other paths and then go home. Some find their path and light it up to help others find it.
Core Beliefs:
Our core beliefs include balance, duality, and the Goddess & the God in equal partnership. We acknowledge the reality of Life and Death as necessary cycles: in order for Life to endure, there must be Death. If nothing ever died we would be up to our ears in houseflies in no time flat. It is the physical nature of humans to cooperate and compete, love and hate, kill and nurture. Balance is the goal. The Rede is a guiding principle, not an iron-clad rule. The coven is the basis of all Gardnerian organization; the coven is our family, the High Priestess and High Priest are first among equals. We preserve the original work by Gerald & Doreen, with expansion and creativity encouraged as long as the rootstock is preserved and the legacy is identified as such. Ritual is important but fellowship is more so; we practice gender magic, rather than sex magic as such; everything in Gardnerian is arranged male to female, female to male.
Organization of Groups:
Gardnerian covens are autonomous. Each coven has its own personality, and an individual who is an honest seeker may not fit in with group A, but may be enthusiastically welcomed into group B. Because the coven is a family, the process from meet-and-greet and the polling of the Elders to the invitation to be initiated is more like a courtship than a screening process. The consummation of the courtship is the initiation; that is the agreement by the postulant and the coven that they want to make the relationship permanent. This is a permanent relationship, make no mistake! Because of that, initiation is not offered lightly. An honest seeker who is perceived to not be suitable for Gardnerian initiation may be shown other paths, so that more exploration might be conducted.
Role of Clergy:
Each initiated Gardnerian Wiccan is a priestess or a priest, with direct, personal, one-to-one access to the gods. There are no intermediaries. There is no laity in Gardnerian Wicca. The obvious result of that is that there are no "ministers" as such; there are no pastors. The closest thing to that role (advisor, confidant, counselor, etc) are the High Priestess and the High Priest. Gardnerians relate to the High Priestess and the High Priest as first among equals as well as, in a sense, Mom and Dad. They don't need to be older, but they are almost always more experienced in the Craft, and if a covener comes to them with a problem they can't handle, it is their responsibility to help the covener find a way to solve the problem, magickally or mundanely. But because of the high value we place on fellowship and the internal cohesiveness of the coven-as-family, any member of the group may turn to any other member and be confident of aid.
Gardnerianism is the path that states that only a Witch can make a Witch; we hold this to be true for those of our path: only a Gardnerian can make another Gardnerian. We believe in the physical passing on of power; that is one of the reasons why we keep records of our lineages: we remember where the power came from. Part of the equality of the sexes in Gardnerian is that a woman is initiated by a man, and a man by a woman.
Holidays:
Esbats at the full moons, sometimes at the new moons, any other time the coven wants or needs to meet.
Sabbats are the Eight Points of the Wheel:
Samhain (31 October)
Yule (21 December)
Imbolc (1 February)
Ostara (20 March)
Beltane(1 May)
Litha (21 June)
Lammas (1 August)
Mabon (20 September)
Since covens adjust to their members' needs, meetings may actually be held on the nearest weekend, rather than being strict about the exact date.
As you can see from the names we use for the Sabbats, Gardnerian is a patchwork of information from various traditions and cultures. The names we use for God and Goddess also vary sometimes from coven to coven, sometimes within the coven from circle to circle.
Standards of Conduct:
The four pillars of a Witch's strength are the power to dare (courage), the power to will (determination), the power to know (willingness to learn), and the power to keep silent (a sense of privacy and respect for others). The most important, if they can be ranked at all, is the last: Witches must respect other people's right to choose their own faith if we are to expect it for ourselves. It is not appropriate for a Witch to brag about her accomplishments or to flaunt her membership in the coven. It is NEVER appropriate to reveal another person's membership without their permission: you do not know what the ramifications of that could be for that person. People have lost jobs, homes, and custody of their children as a result of being "outed" like that.
A Witch's word is Magickal...and careless use weakens the power by diluting it. Never promise what you can't deliver; tell the truth or refuse to speak. Every word you say is a Magickal word, part of the Magickal Act of Living. If your words are careless or thoughtless, your magick will be, as well, for what is a spell but words with your will behind them?
We do not believe in sin; we believe in karma. We deal with it with the Wiccan Rede. The Rede is so simple it almost qualifies as a Zen koan, but it is too easy to understand. "An it harm none, do what you will."
Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is not simple. On the surface, the most superficial instruction is simply that one should consider one's actions in light of who might be hurt by them, and then one should modify one's behavior to minimize the harm one does. Minimize does not mean eliminate. There is no way that anyone or anything can live without harming anyone or anything else. The Rede recommends minimizing the harm one does, and strongly implies cleansing your heart so that your intent is not to cause harm. It does not require you to be a vegetarian to refrain from harming animals; it does not require you to give a way your fly swatters to avoid harming insects. It does require you to think about your weather magic, for example: if you work to keep rain away from a festival site, you may be harming the crops, and therefore the livelihood, of farmers who live nearby. If you call rain, you may call it from someplace that needed it just as badly, or you may summon a hailstorm or a tornado that destroys property or kills.
You will make mistakes. One of the lines of poetry that Gerald Gardner borrowed from Aleister Crowley for his Book of Shadows was "Keep pure your highest ideal; strive ever toward it." When that is taken along with the Rede, one realizes that, as humans, there is no way we can succeed at "harm none." We can only strive ever toward that ideal. The word "rede" is a thousand years old; in Saxon, it meant "advice." That's all the Wiccan Rede is: it is ADVICE. It is not a commandment.
(shaktisine@aol.com)
History
Our tradition is named after Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964), a British civil servant who studied magic and many other things over the course of a long life. He knew and worked with many famous occultists, not the least of which was Aleister Crowley (1875-1947). Gardner agreed with Margaret Murray's (1865-1965) premise that what was considered folk magick in Great Britain and Celtic Europe was actually the battered remnants of the original pre-Roman and possibly pre-Celtic religion of western Europe. He was probably encouraged, and possibly inspired by the publication, by Charles G. Leland, of his work on reclaiming similar survivals in Tuscany and from within the culture of the Rom. Certain traditional practices had survived in Gardner's family, and he found others who had preserved similar survivals, and shared his beliefs in the ancientry of this knowledge.
Probably basing the structure of his work on what he had learned in various magickal lodges, Gardner set about re-inventing that ancient, ancestral religion. He had little to work with; he had to write a good deal of it himself. He borrowed appropriate work from other artists, most notably Aleister Crowley and Rudyard Kipling, Queen Victoria's Poet Laureate. Gardner's High Priestess, Doreen Valiente (1922-2000) wrote much of the most well-known poetry, including the much-quoted Charge of the Goddess.
The core group grew slowly and in utter secrecy; witchcraft was illegal in Britain at the time. When the Witchcraft Laws were replaced, in 1951, by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, Gerald Gardner went public. The rest is history.
Neo-Paganism suddenly exploded onto the world scene, primarily in Great Britain, first, but spreading quickly throughout the English-speaking west, and beyond. Raymond Buckland gets credit for bringing Gardnerian craft to North America. Some of the suddenly-visible groups were Gardnerian, some were daughter groups of Gardnerian, others were different groups inspired by Gardner's work or by his example. Some of the suddenly visible groups were not Gardnerian at all. It doesn't matter.
If there was only One True Way, that Way would be so self-evident that we would all understand it from birth, and we would be as unaware of it as fish are unaware of water. The huge multiplicity and varieties of paths shows how rich the human imagination should be. The concept of the Quest may very well be as universal as it is because each of us longs to find the path to the Truth that is right for us. For some, that seeking lasts a lifetime; others are born where they belong...some explore other paths and then go home. Some find their path and light it up to help others find it.
Core Beliefs:
Our core beliefs include balance, duality, and the Goddess & the God in equal partnership. We acknowledge the reality of Life and Death as necessary cycles: in order for Life to endure, there must be Death. If nothing ever died we would be up to our ears in houseflies in no time flat. It is the physical nature of humans to cooperate and compete, love and hate, kill and nurture. Balance is the goal. The Rede is a guiding principle, not an iron-clad rule. The coven is the basis of all Gardnerian organization; the coven is our family, the High Priestess and High Priest are first among equals. We preserve the original work by Gerald & Doreen, with expansion and creativity encouraged as long as the rootstock is preserved and the legacy is identified as such. Ritual is important but fellowship is more so; we practice gender magic, rather than sex magic as such; everything in Gardnerian is arranged male to female, female to male.
Organization of Groups:
Gardnerian covens are autonomous. Each coven has its own personality, and an individual who is an honest seeker may not fit in with group A, but may be enthusiastically welcomed into group B. Because the coven is a family, the process from meet-and-greet and the polling of the Elders to the invitation to be initiated is more like a courtship than a screening process. The consummation of the courtship is the initiation; that is the agreement by the postulant and the coven that they want to make the relationship permanent. This is a permanent relationship, make no mistake! Because of that, initiation is not offered lightly. An honest seeker who is perceived to not be suitable for Gardnerian initiation may be shown other paths, so that more exploration might be conducted.
Role of Clergy:
Each initiated Gardnerian Wiccan is a priestess or a priest, with direct, personal, one-to-one access to the gods. There are no intermediaries. There is no laity in Gardnerian Wicca. The obvious result of that is that there are no "ministers" as such; there are no pastors. The closest thing to that role (advisor, confidant, counselor, etc) are the High Priestess and the High Priest. Gardnerians relate to the High Priestess and the High Priest as first among equals as well as, in a sense, Mom and Dad. They don't need to be older, but they are almost always more experienced in the Craft, and if a covener comes to them with a problem they can't handle, it is their responsibility to help the covener find a way to solve the problem, magickally or mundanely. But because of the high value we place on fellowship and the internal cohesiveness of the coven-as-family, any member of the group may turn to any other member and be confident of aid.
Gardnerianism is the path that states that only a Witch can make a Witch; we hold this to be true for those of our path: only a Gardnerian can make another Gardnerian. We believe in the physical passing on of power; that is one of the reasons why we keep records of our lineages: we remember where the power came from. Part of the equality of the sexes in Gardnerian is that a woman is initiated by a man, and a man by a woman.
Holidays:
Esbats at the full moons, sometimes at the new moons, any other time the coven wants or needs to meet.
Sabbats are the Eight Points of the Wheel:
Samhain (31 October)
Yule (21 December)
Imbolc (1 February)
Ostara (20 March)
Beltane(1 May)
Litha (21 June)
Lammas (1 August)
Mabon (20 September)
Since covens adjust to their members' needs, meetings may actually be held on the nearest weekend, rather than being strict about the exact date.
As you can see from the names we use for the Sabbats, Gardnerian is a patchwork of information from various traditions and cultures. The names we use for God and Goddess also vary sometimes from coven to coven, sometimes within the coven from circle to circle.
Standards of Conduct:
The four pillars of a Witch's strength are the power to dare (courage), the power to will (determination), the power to know (willingness to learn), and the power to keep silent (a sense of privacy and respect for others). The most important, if they can be ranked at all, is the last: Witches must respect other people's right to choose their own faith if we are to expect it for ourselves. It is not appropriate for a Witch to brag about her accomplishments or to flaunt her membership in the coven. It is NEVER appropriate to reveal another person's membership without their permission: you do not know what the ramifications of that could be for that person. People have lost jobs, homes, and custody of their children as a result of being "outed" like that.
A Witch's word is Magickal...and careless use weakens the power by diluting it. Never promise what you can't deliver; tell the truth or refuse to speak. Every word you say is a Magickal word, part of the Magickal Act of Living. If your words are careless or thoughtless, your magick will be, as well, for what is a spell but words with your will behind them?
We do not believe in sin; we believe in karma. We deal with it with the Wiccan Rede. The Rede is so simple it almost qualifies as a Zen koan, but it is too easy to understand. "An it harm none, do what you will."
Sounds simple, doesn't it? It is not simple. On the surface, the most superficial instruction is simply that one should consider one's actions in light of who might be hurt by them, and then one should modify one's behavior to minimize the harm one does. Minimize does not mean eliminate. There is no way that anyone or anything can live without harming anyone or anything else. The Rede recommends minimizing the harm one does, and strongly implies cleansing your heart so that your intent is not to cause harm. It does not require you to be a vegetarian to refrain from harming animals; it does not require you to give a way your fly swatters to avoid harming insects. It does require you to think about your weather magic, for example: if you work to keep rain away from a festival site, you may be harming the crops, and therefore the livelihood, of farmers who live nearby. If you call rain, you may call it from someplace that needed it just as badly, or you may summon a hailstorm or a tornado that destroys property or kills.
You will make mistakes. One of the lines of poetry that Gerald Gardner borrowed from Aleister Crowley for his Book of Shadows was "Keep pure your highest ideal; strive ever toward it." When that is taken along with the Rede, one realizes that, as humans, there is no way we can succeed at "harm none." We can only strive ever toward that ideal. The word "rede" is a thousand years old; in Saxon, it meant "advice." That's all the Wiccan Rede is: it is ADVICE. It is not a commandment.
