Deja Broom: "So you want to be a Gardnerian?"

"DEJA BROOM" denotes a blog repost from my old site.  Feel free to read anew, or refresh your memory to re-live the ranty goodness.  Otherwise, skip this repeat and await more modern mayhem.

So you want to be Gardnerian?

If you are seeking to become a Gardnerian witch, the only way to do so is to become an initiate through a vetted, properly lineaged Gardnerian group. That is not to say you cannot be a perfectly wonderful witch of an eclectic stripe, but being a part of the Gardnerian tradition, or any lineaged tradition for that matter, denotes some very specific things.

Gardnerians are one of the various types of British Traditional Wica (BTW), that is to say one witchcraft variants whose origins stem from the New Forest area of the UK. Other BTW groups may include Alexandrian, BlueStar, Kingstone, Mohsian, Central Valley Wicca, Georgian, Protean and others.

Gardnerians, specifically, are of an initiatory mystery religion with various, traceable lines of initiates who are all linked with a common ancestry back to Gerald Gardner. Gardnerians all share a core set of materials --- written, demonstrative and oral --- which have been taught to every member of the tradition in a somewhat standardized method of hands-on/directly communicated, experiential and relevatory practices. These practices include certain rituals and techniques which can only be transmitted from teacher to student, in person, and via an alternating male-to-female, female-to-male fashion.

Ok, now that we've gotten the "legal mumbo jumbo" of our rough definition out of the way, I do have to stress that one cannot become a Gardnerian without being initiated by an existing member of the opposite sex, most often by being adopted into an existing coven. You cannot "pick it up" through reading books written by known or purported Gardnerian authors, nor by following along with one of those alleged copies of the BOS found in the public domain.

There is a word common to all BTW folks....that is the notion of "vetting."

Vetting is a means of vouching for or otherwise fact-checking amongst each other so that we can avoid frauds in our midst or so that we can confirm which level of attainment (degree) a person has reached and therefore not prematurely disclose teachings to which the person may not yet be privy. It is essentially the tracing of one's initiatory family tree showing the links of the claimant in the tree and up through their "who begat who" all the way back to Gerald Gardner, and at each level, the named people in the tree can verify their predecessors and antecedents in the transmission of initiations and subsequent elevations to prove that the claimant is a legit practitioner.

Know that such "avoidance of premature disclosure" is not designed for the purpose of higher-level members to lord things over those who are not of similar attainment or degree to receive the knowledge, but to ensure that the person who has not yet reached that degree may have the opportunity to fully experience the revelation directly and for themselves, without the influence of another's opinions. In short, we don't want to "ruin the surprise" of letting everyone come to the same epiphanies as we had done back when we were being trained using the same tried-and-true techniques and exercises.

Vetting is standard practice for BTW folks. Every tradition keeps records of who its initiates are, who is upline or downline from everyone else. And so we can do these periodic checks of folks claiming to be members so that we may: (1) confirm if a claimant was indeed initiated into the tradition as s/he has professed by verifying such attainment with his reported initiators and upline, (2) that the claimant has indeed been passed the requisite material (written, demonstrative and oral) which further verifies his/her understandings of the essential standards/core common to all other members of the claimed tradition and as befitting his/her professed degree and (3) as a method of recordkeeping so that when claimants are proven liars about being a part of a tradition as a deliberate act to defame or otherwise cause negative influence under the auspices of the tradition, we can confront such individuals and counteract their influence.

So it is important to note that as a seeker of any BTW trad, you too have a right to some level of vetting to ensure you aren't being led astray by someone claiming to be of a tradition that they may not be affiliated with.

If you are sincere in seeking out BTW training, I encourage you to join the Yahoo chat group called "Amber and Jet" but also to warn you that it is NOT your typical public pagan atmosphere. It is a group where various factions of BTW teachers, scholars and students come together to answer honest seeker's questions.

I strongly recommend before you jump right in with whatever questions you have there, that you read through the archives since most questions have been asked countless times before you. Speak little and listen much....get to recalibrating your understanding about how a traditionalist thinks versus how an eclectic person thinks about the styles and methods of practice. They are VERY DIFFERENT, VERY DISTINCT paths and not merely a dip of a different pantheon or the changing of a few words of poetry which separate the two.

Also, get to know the other styles of BTW beyond Gardnerian. It may well be that one of these other varieties appeals to you and you may not have known it existed. It is usually far more important to find a coven family that you connect with than it is to try for a specific BTW tradition. In the end, you'll see that the match more than the means makes all the difference.

Lastly, be prepared to have to actually seek out training for awhile. Do not hold the expectation that simply because you've expressed and announced your desire for it, that it should be given to you. BTW folks are selective about whom they are willing to take as students. This isn't an open cattle-call whereby we take anyone and everyone just because they say they want it. Like schools of higher education, we look for the best and the brightest ---you'll hear the term "proper personhood" bandied about--- before we consider passing on the tradition that we have grown to know and love, who will take care of it after us.

And be prepared that in some cases, you may have to travel to study with a group. There may or may not be a BTW group near you. Folks have been known to drive for hours or take flights several times a year to undergo training.

Pagan Head-Scratcher: The "Gold Standard"?!

"DEJA BROOM" denotes a blog repost from my old site. Feel free to read anew, or refresh your memory to re-live the ranty goodness. Otherwise, feel free to skip ahead to more modern mayhem
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When you notice something odd once, you think: hmm, that's weird...

When you notice the same oddity twice, you think: gee, what a remarkable and strange coincidence....

But when the same idiocy shows up in greater frequency, you think: Really? You have got to be kidding me!!

And so it was that I've witnessed the phrase: "Gardnerian Wica is the 'gold standard'" several times this week, much to my chagrin and increasing acid reflux.

What on Goddess' green Earth does this silly affectation imply? Who is perpetuating such nonsense? Does anyone honestly believe it? Anyone else think this comment and the list of erroneous assumptions behind it are ridiculous to the point of wishing to offer the speaker of this phrase a Professor Snape-like smack to the back of his or her head?

It is just wrong on many levels, and it comes across as a left-handed compliment of the type where you are not quite sure if the speaker is attempting to flatter you to gain your trust by means of excessive and overt manipulation or if they have just given you a sly and subtly disguised insult couched in the guise of nod to your ego.

First off, let's start with the Gardnerian's perspective of this phrase.

On the surface, it appears to give deference and praise to the accomplishments of our particular form of witchcraft, but in reality, it is attempting to hold us accountable for what other traditions and practitioners do, as if we have some authority to grant them authenticity or validity based upon the private goings on within our own trad. That does not make any sense whatsoever. What a Gard person does with in the privacy of their own coven, line and tradition family, is their own business and they have utterly no weight in the giving or withholding of credence or standards outside this circumscribed parameter. Gards (and other BTW's for that matter) don't really give a damn about the goings on in other factions of the Craft, so long as those other factions do not seek to imply they have knowledge of our inner workings or may speak on our behalf when they are genuinely not privy to same.

I've given my novel on this subject before in other posts, but the subject keeps rearing its ugly head. It leaves me wondering if the current wave of new witches is truly suffering from fragile egos or if there is still some faction of rigidly asshat traddies from circa 1960's still fighting the war on eclecticism. I'll be darned if I've ever met any of those older folks like that in the many pagan circles I run with (no pun intended). Coincidentally, every time I run into a newbie who says they've met one of these calcified oldsters and I ask them for the person's name or contact info, they can never provide it so I can verify the interaction for myself and take it up with my traddie brethren to remedy. Hard to fix the alleged problem, if I don't have concrete evidence of its existence, only second-generation rumors and hearsay.

So back to my point, all the Gards I know aren't flattered by this "gold standard" idea and certainly don't believe it of themselves.

It defies logic and seems to imply that if you're not part of this one specific type of witchcraft, then you aren't worth your herb closet. But the proof of witchery is in the pudding...the action and good outcome of your workings, the temperance and wisdom experienced in your path that determine whether or not you are legit. The litany of "who begat whom" isn't what warrants you the merit, as lineage is only an indicator of the manner of study you have undergone and the standards by which you'd be measured amongst others of similar practice. We don't measure others, we measure ourselves.

Now then, this "Gardnerian gold standard" phrase also is rather insulting towards all the other long-standing, viable types of witches...some of whom are contemporaries of the Gardnerians, some who pre-date the formalized Gardnerian path and some who have formed more recently but are no less functional and worthwhile versions of witchcraft spirituality. It must really irk them to be forever ranked "less than the Gards" somehow, either because they're not as widely recognized and known or else they don't have the recorded history/lineage longevity that the Gards may have.

For example, in the BTW world, there are many varieties of witches who link back to the New Forest area of Britain, but not all of them descend from Gerald Gardner or have any direct affiliation to his contributions to modern Wica. Some of these folks come from family traditions that may have existed concurrent to Gardner or perhaps may have at some point stemmed from an earlier common, insular source. Not all of these varieties participated in the exchange of occult information during their formative years. They weren't interested in "saving witchcraft" as old Gerald, and later Alex, may have been, and so perhaps they didn't have a spokesperson out there talking to the media and informing the general public of their existence.

And so these hidden witches could, and probably do, have widely different practices than what the Gards possess. Practices which fulfill needs, promote ideas and offer avenues of thought outside the ken of what Gard folks may or may not work with. Thus, to call out only one type of witch --in this case, the more visible Gardnerians-- and not account for these other groups, seems unfair and misleading. How can you have a standard if some folks allegedly being "measured" would be off the charts altogether?

Now onto the completely felonious usage of this "gold standard" statement as it relates to the Eclectic movement.

If I were still an eclectic practitioner, this concept of having a "gold standard" would totally piss me off. What purpose does it serve me, as an eclectic, to be constantly compared to something which I know little to nothing about and therefore cannot hope to achieve any sort of credibility without paying deference to them? Why should I pay deference to anybody at all?!

It's my favorite analogy again.....as if the automakers would go around trying to sell their wares not by speaking of their own good qualities and benefits, but instead by constantly speaking in terms of reference against the qualities of their competitors: "Buy our Chevy Trucks because they are as good as Fords"...or "Go with a Jeep since we're practically a Land Rover." See what I mean? It is like offering your respectful submission to the other party by even stating they are related to you.

If there is such a thing as a Gold Standard....it implies that there are such things which are less than Gold.....and who wants to fight that no-win comparison battle all the time? Who wants to forever look for validation and affirmation from outside themselves?

Answer: No one.

DEJA BROOM: Gerald Gardner, the man and the myth

"DEJA BROOM" denotes a blog repost from my old site. Feel free to read anew, or refresh your memory to re-live the ranty goodness. Otherwise, feel free to skip ahead to more modern mayhem

The idea that he made the whole thing up is completely and utterly false. What he himself purported to be was a revivalist of an insular British cult/religion that he was initiated into and didn't wish to see die out in his homeland, and later wanted to see spread elsewhere in the world because he found it so enriching and valuable. I also did not say Gardnerians have proof of Wicca as we know it today being around before the advent of Christianity ---- what I said was that Wicca, or at least the progenitor to what most folks today think of Wicca, pre-dates Gerald Gardner if only because there is evidence that Gerald himself was initiated into something which existed before he came along.

Here's another funny aside....can anyone on here even tell me how "Gardnerians" got their name? It wasn't because Gerald called it that. In all actuality, the epitaph started out as one of derision bestowed by a different variety of traditionalist witch from within the UK (Robert Cochran aka Roy Bowers), who used it to distinguish his own way of practice from Gardner's....as in "Oh, you must be one of those....GARDNERIANS!" rather than a witch practitioner of a his tradition, another family tradition of insular British origin. It is also interesting to note that Gardner himself, and his first several priestesses (a few of which you may know from their biographical books) didn't call themselves Gardnerians, they called themselves, simply, witches.

Most non-initiates are probably not going to like or be satisfied with my answer, but I can only tell you that there is proof, written proof, available, but it is presently only accessible by initiates of our tradition. There was indeed an old Dorothy. There was indeed a group/coven into which Gardner was initiated. There was indeed a set of written and oral materials which he was passed when he became a member of that coven.

Was there a lot of written material? As I've said before, no there wasn't. And this was why Gardner was afraid that as the older members of the tradition were dying off, he feared their ways would go into the grave with them. To reiterate what I said earlier, Gardner took the skeletal framework he had been given, and with the permission of those from whom he studied, he began to add pieces from other occult resources in order to flesh things out into a more viable practice that could be taught to and shared with others. Gardner's oft-quoted goal was to ensure the survival of the Craft, a religion which in the context of his times, he felt was endangered. Once the laws against witchcraft in England were repealed, Gardner sought to promote the ways he was taught to others to encourage the spread of the Craft.

Along the way, that initial framework he had was added to with the intent to make it more viable and attractive along side the occult learning of the day. Yes, there is some ceremonial magic in there, some borrowings from Charles Leland, from Robert Frost, from W. B. Yeats, from Dion Fortune, from Margaret Murray, from Aleister Crowley, Doreen Valiente, and others. But these are additions, not alterations. That idea, to add but never subtract or alter, is a hallmark of many traditionalists.

As for the Laws, those are a whole other matter and not one I would respectfully prefer to discuss. Matters concerning their origin and application are, to me, something I hold sacred and oathbound, despite what may or may not be said about them elsewhere.

Finally, to speak of "the Old Religion".....in my opinion, there is no evidence to say that the orthopraxy we use today was delivered to us in an unbroken chain since time immemorial. I prefer to think that the phrase is actually a euphemism, one alluding to the concepts of deity being something which is nameless, timeless; unknowable through our human capacity except as it is referenced through the immanent lifecycle of nature.

We call it a religion because we hold reverence for it. We call it old because its cyclical nature of birth-life-love-death-rebirth is the experience we can see, taste, touch, hear and smell, veritably witness and participate in first-hand for ourselves.

Ritual is simply a repetitive way of honoring and enacting those moments of epiphany so that we remember them and, hopefully, ingrain them into our subconscious, perhaps our universal consciousness.

By whatever means that makes sense to you, to the next person or to Gerald Gardner, makes difference only to those who chose to perform those acts. Those who elect to use the skeleton which Gardner had been given and further supplemented, we do not look to him as some demi-god or guru. He isn't thought of as our "pope" or some infallible dignitary. He was a man like any other man...but a man who was passionate in his goal of reviving something he perceived as lost and propagating it through a specific means so as to keep the integrity of the material he was passed by his initiators.

The in today's world, a person seeking to participate in witchcraft has the option to choose to go the route of immersing themselves in Gardnerian or one of several other lineaged trads. Or they can just as easily come up with their own recipe for achieving results which are meaningful to them. There is no value judgment to the path, just different paths to similar goals.You know,  when speaking with newcomers to the Craft, I find it remarkable that one would whole-heartedly side with Scott Cunningham's view of how modern witchery should be and yet emphatically deny everything about Gardner's contributions. Got a newsflash for you, Scott wasn't a "pagan saint" either.

Mr. Cunningham's own "lineage" per se has some underpinnings of information which derived from British Traditional Witchcraft and it is from those connections where he'd borrowed some of his ideas, repackaged them and gave to them in a watered down version the masses in an effort to make witchcraft more accessible to those who couldn't locate a coven to train with.

These concepts of "you too can be a witch if you subscribe to the minimalist view, the least common denominator" I don't think he'd meant to extrapolate into a DIY-witchcraft worldview, but it has become so today and even traditionalist folks acknowledge that this new strain is a mostly healthy derivation which ensures that the Craft as a whole thrives.

Now before you go getting your collective panties in a twist, I am emphatically NOT saying that you have to be a properly initiated traditionalist of whatever variety to be a proper witch.

I certainly think eclecticism is as valid and viable path as is anyone who participates in a format which is Gardnerian, Alexandrian, Roebuck, CVW, Georgian, BlueStar, MacFarland Dianic, Kingstone, Mohsian, Georgian, Minoan Brotherhood/Sisterhood or what have you.

*Heck, did you even know that there were other branches in the traditionalist family tree beyond Gerald's and Alex's?*

Anyway, back on point with another newsflash. Gardner never claimed to have created anything. What Gardner was passed by his initiators --- and yes, Virginia, Gardner had initiators, he did NOT invent this thing called "Wicca" --- was a skeletal system of beliefs, practices and rituals.

Like other burgeoning occultists of his time, Gardner had often sought out and traded information with other practitioners, using his best judgment to reconcile the information he gleaned to from others against any then-known historic evidence in order to corroborate and supplement the set of practices, rites and ideas he had been given to work with. He did this to fill in the gaps of what he'd been given, not to create something which never before existed.

This was not any mindless grabbing of whatever came across Gardner's path, as some of the more fluffy/less educated variety of eclectics do today. No sir! Gardner took vast amounts of reference notes, had intellectual dialogs in person with other occult contemporaries and wrote many, many letters to others not within his immediate scope of travel. Most of these letters are not available or currently accessible to the general pagan populace, but as a Gardnerian initiate myself, I can only assure you they do exist. They are oathbound materials which pertain to our ways of doing things and are therefore, not something which should be of great concern to those outside our tradition.

Gardner is NOT the founder of Wicca.