Thursday, January 24, 2013

Shit They Don't Tell You In Books, Part 2: Traditions, Egregore, and Magickal Current

My colleague, Spanish Moss, posted an excellent blog recently about "Traditions" - magicko-religious affiliation groups in the "Pagan" vein. Everyone should go read it now. Seriously, you should, because it will help you understand this blog better.

Everything Spanish Moss said is factual and true, but more can be said. In reality, not all "Traditions" are equal, and I don't mean characteristics of practice such as circle-casting techniques or pantheon relationships. No, I mean the internal, unseen, energetic underpinning of a Tradition along with its deeper relationships to Deity and Mythos, all of which go into making that powerful and mysterious concept we call egregore.

The Gardnerian Tradition has been around for at least sixty years and perhaps more, depending on if you believe Gardner made it all up or found/added to/adapted some pre-existing practices. The Alexandrian Tradition has been around for nearly fifty. They've had thousands of initiates and hundreds, perhaps 1000+ of solid practitioners who are working the same core material for decades.  They also have a simple Deity structure that is stable. That's a lot of man-hours of practice. That's a lot of people tied to their respective egregores -- which, it might be said, is conceivably part of a larger egregore called "British Traditional Wicca." That's a lot of Third Degrees and Second Degrees. All that solid practice and all those Third and Second Degrees act like pillars and archways and flying buttresses that hold up the structure of those Traditions.

The Eternal Harvest Tradition, on the other hand, is 22 years old. It was created as a single coven by two First Degrees (Doug and his then-wife Morgana) and two other people who came from a non-BTW teaching group who taught a very different brand of "wicca," the Frosts. It was augmented by Doug's studies with various outer-court-American Wicca, Druidic, and ceremonial groups, often involving people such as the late Lord Ravenwind, who came in and brought their teachings and initiations. 

Eternal Harvest was quite volatile in the 1990s, quickly attracting dozens of students and a good number of initiates, who quickly hived off, and then just as quickly left. When I joined 12 years ago, I made it my ambition to rebuild. We attracted some very solid people, most of whom the readers of this blog will know from local gatherings. We did some good work in the local area. I know we have made a real, measurable, and profound change for the better in several peoples' lives.

But the Eternal Harvest egregore is nowhere near as mature, robust, or stable as an Alexandrian or Gardnerian group, and the same is true for many other trads here in the United States.  Part of that is because we're still relatively young. Part of it is because we have not had the hundreds/1000+ people practicing with us. There are a lot of other factors, too, but these are two of the big ones.

As some of us matured in our practice, both EH and with other groups, the Power inherent in this Cauldron we call "egregore" has increased rapidly, even exponentially. The unseen ties that bind our initiates together have grown stronger. This is great in some ways, not so great in others. What's great is that when person A has a magickal breakthrough as an individual, the rest of us kind of automatically get a backwash of benefit. On the other hand, when one of us undergoes a tectonic shift, such as I have, it creates an earthquake and subsequent tidal wave of destruction and instability. If we had 500 people in EH, it probably would not matter as much. Or, maybe it would: certainly the Feri's and Reclaiming have been rockin' and rollin' on shifting ground for years.

An interested party, seeing these shifts, asked me what was going on. My reply: I don't know. I really don't know. I know that last summer, I invoked Air, and via Air everything changed. I know that at the last lunation, I invoked Fire -- in a much gentler way, but enough to open a fissure within me until I erupted like Mount Kilauea and spewed a fountain of hot lava out. 

Those of you lucky enough to have been to the Big Island in the past 20 years will remember the explosions that take place when hot lava meets the sea. It's terribly destructive. It's also exhilarating and visceral. Ultimately it builds new land, but woe unto the trees and huts that get in its way.

I don't understand the relationship between my actions and thoughts and the egregore of my group. People like Annwyn being pissed off at me, sure, I get that. I said some shitty things. I'd be pissed at, and offended by me, too. But -- and I am in no way trying to deflect responsibility -- clearly there is more going on, because if our egregore is being this rocked by people getting pissed off at me, then how stable was it to begin with? And if it wasn't, why wasn't it? And what can be done about it?

I have never seen a detailed discussion of egregore. It's mysterious territory. If the BTWs know stuff about it, they ain't telling. I personally never dreamed it would be this powerful. As someone who loves analyzing energy, I'm hell of curious and fascinated. As someone who, at the end of the day, is a bit of a loner with strong selfish tendencies, I'm kind of horrified by how tied together we all are.

I would love to be able to give advice to people on how to assess an egregore in your choice of magickal groups, but I can't. This is one of the things the magickal community embedded within Contemporary "Paganism" ought to be talking about but unfortunately we're all too busy sticking our heads up our asses pursuing other lines of conversation. *Le sigh.*

I DID tell my enquirer the following: Magick is Hot. It's a Hot current. It's like electricity. It amps everything up. It accelerates. It frequently de-stabilizes. If you look at the history of Contemporary "Paganism," you will see that most magickal groups blossom and fade like daylilies. Stable, long-term groups are the exception and not the rule. And except for the BTWs, the very stable and long-term groups are often dependent upon one or two leaders who are the keystone of that group. When those people die or retire, the group breaks apart. You also see this with non-"Pagan" groups that run energy, such as some Pentecostal Christian groups. 

Outside of "Paganism," long-term religious groups rely on tribalism and and shared secular culture, or financial stability, or political agendas, to hold the flock together. We don't have that in "Paganism," and the Hot Magick Current makes it hard to develop. 

Again, I don't have an answer, but these are things that need to be said.


!!!TRADITION!!!

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