Tag Archives: Witchcraft

Magical Retreat

20130211_mmI met Alex when I was twenty-four and he was thirty-two. That was a big difference in ages at those ages! We were living in an intentional community and both had other relationships.

I’d been initiated into Witchcraft and kept the sabbats. He had studied Ceremonial Magic and yoga. I taught him Witchcraft, he taught me Ceremonial, and together we studied sex magic, both in theory and practice.

After a few months we ran away together – broke off our relationships and said goodbye to the community. I jumped on the back of his motorcycle and we roared off over the mountains.

Washington is an agricultural state. Every year in September the call goes out for pickers to live in the orchards and bring the harvest in. We ended up in the Okanogan Valley, living in a picker’s cabin without electricity or running water, with a communal shared toilet-shower.

At the end of the harvest season Alex was offered a job in the orchard as a “steady hand”. This came with a cabin with wood heat and running water! We still used the shared toilet-shower though. With a steady job and a place to live, he proposed, and I accepted. We turned up in front of a justice of the peace at the county courthouse with a couple who served as our witnesses, reception at the Dairy Queen after.

Having traded the motorbike for a beater truck, we roared off to spend our honeymoon in a tent on the coast. It rained, the tent flooded, we checked into a hotel, and I took another step in the lengthy process of growing up.

We lived in that apple orchard for three years. Pre-internet, out in the Washington sticks, we had to use mail order to bring books into the house.

Alex worked each weekday, I worked seasonally in the orchard and in the house when there was no work. At night, on weekends, we studied and practiced magic. At sabbats there were just two of us in the circle. We bought the Aurum Solis Magical Philosophy series – we were among the people who sent in money to print the fifth book – and worked through that system as a self-study program, doing rituals together and apart, writing journals, taking notes.

At the end of three years we felt ready to emerge from our lengthy magical retreat. We traded the beater truck for a travel trailer and roared off over another set of mountains to settle in Puget Sound. Seattle is a big town or a small city. We have spent more than two decades working with various magical systems but staying in touch with the same people.

It was such a luxury to be able to focus on nothing but magic for all that time. However far I’ve gone in my magic and travels, that early magical retreat provides a solid substratum for my practice. I am still immersed in the world of community, but I have a thought at the back of my head that I will end up in my old age holed up in a cabin in the woods on one final magical retreat.

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Rainbow Serpent

My third degree initiation as a Witch is in the Rainbow Serpent tradition. You’ve probably never heard of it, it’s one of those small-but-mighty lines of Witchcraft. This line travelled from Northern California to Australia and then back to the Pacific Northwest.

It came to me at a time when I was pushing against the definitions of Witchcraft. There was a feeling among traditional Witches that if you weren’t initiated by another Witch, you weren’t actually a Witch. I argued for self-definition in the pages of the mimeographed Pagan magazines for a while before finally copping to a Georgian first. See? I’m a real Witch! I still wanted to advocate for all those who were called to the path, however they arrived.

Challenge came to Rainbow Serpent naturally. In Australia the seasons proceed opposite the northern hemisphere. Even the way water spirals down a drain is reversed. Should Witches continue to celebrate Yule in the height of summer and dutifully trod the circle clockwise? Rainbow Serpent developed a methodology of adapting the celebration to the place it was being celebrated.

This was my idea of a tradition! I was happy to find a line which prioritized integrity to the magic over strict repetition. It still seems to me to be simple common sense. Our magics root in the earth; that rooting is not theoretical, but practical and immediate. It’s not symbolic earth, it’s the dirt underneath my feet.

I started a custom of decorating a sabbat altar in the house from items I find in the woods around the house. At Yule it fills with evergreen boughs and holly berries, at Beltane sprigs of hawthorne and sprays of Indian plum, at Samhain the altar fills with red maple leaves. I watch the seasons pass and tune myself to what is happening in the world. This is what I learned from my tradition, and I am proud to practice it.

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Covenant of the Goddess

Do you know about C.O.G.? It is one of the oldest and largest groups of Witches. Membership in C.O.G. is open to covens and individuals of any type of Wicca or Witchcraft, so long as the group is self-sustaining and centers on the Goddess, or the Goddess and the Old Gods. The Covenant was incorporated on October 31, 1975 as a non-profit religious association.

My coven, Coven of the Mystical Merkabah, formed in spring of 1985, joined C.O.G. in the fall of 1985 as soon as we were eligible, and have been members ever since. In our time together we helped found the Northwest Local Council. The local council subsequently dissolved but C.M.M. has remained a C.O.G. member at large.

The Covenant’s annual meeting, Merrymeet, moves around the country. I co-facilitated Merrymeet in 1990. Phoenix Whitebirch and I themed the event “Merrymeet 1990: Building Pagan Culture”, a five-day festival combining the Covenant’s annual meeting and Leadership Institute with workshops, rituals, concerts, and an art show.

We were elected to chair the national organization (an office called “First Officer” and legal President) in 1990. I was re-elected as First Officer in 1991, co-chairing with Ted Gill. We served a year as emeriti in 1992.

In 1993 I was one of many representatives from C.O.G. at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, held one hundred years after the first Parliament that kicked off the interfaith movement in the world. I presented Wiccan Devotionals.

Since that time I have not held office in the national organization but remain committed to the Covenant’s goals to represent Witchcraft as a legitimate religion. I am the current representative of C.M.M. to C.O.G. Ours is a closed coven of elders holding elder credentials with C.O.G.

Whenever people ask me how to get involved in a Pagan group I send them to the nearest C.O.G. local council, as those folks are likely to know the most about their local communities. In my time as a Witch I have seen media coverage shift from sensational to respectful, partly if not largely due to the tireless efforts of C.O.G. officers and members providing decades of public education. C.O.G.’s interfaith work has resulted in the inclusion of Witches in many interfaith groups.

As a tiny group C.M.M. could not alone make those kinds of changes in the world. Banding together with many other covens, we can do our part to make a difference.

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Georgian Tradition

My first Wiccan tradition is Georgian. Flashback to 1976. There’s no internet, just a few books in print, and the closest occult store to where I lived was dozens of miles away.

My boyfriend and I were hitchiking through California and hit the freeway outside Bakersfield. The guy who stopped to pick us up had a pentacle duct-taped to his trunk. I said “Blessed be!” He took us home for the night and introduced us to the Georgian tradition and to its founder, Pat Patterson.

I worked through Pat’s correspondence course for several months, visiting Bakersfield whenever I could. We met in Pat’s detached garage-turned-temple at night and in the backyard in the daytime. I spent hours washing down the goddess and god statues around the yard. I got to join in the rituals in circles made from flowers, dancing to music by cassette tape. It was sweet and beautiful.

I have always thought of my first degree initiation as the transition between childhood and adulthood. Even though I had been married and divorced and had another boyfriend, I was only twenty-one, I was still naive, and the world still had that plastic changeableness of childhood. The initiation brought me into the world of irrevocable actions. I left that initiation circle a Witch forever.

Years later I ran into Zanoni, who was then using another name and living in the Pacific Northwest. I got another whole perspective on my experiences there; talking to her helped me to own what I had learned.

Although I have since taken many initiations, I find that Georgian remains my foundational Witchcraft practice. I still go outdoors, I make circles with flowers and stones, my practice is British Traditional like without the concern over lineage. I am grateful to Pat, Zanoni, and all those who walked partway with me on the journey.

Did you know that the Georgian gathering Mountain Meet was one of the first Pagan gatherings? Not only that, it’s still going on! I didn’t make it out the year I studied with the group, I hope to make it someday.

More info: The Georgian Wiccan Tradition

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