Lee Morgan's Blog, page 3

The Haunted Books

When I first set out to write ‘Wooing theEcho’ I thought I was just writing a simple book. My conscious aim was to write a book about magic that would leave people wondering: could this really happen? I wanted the kind of magic that the book would deal with to be the kind that an occultist would recognize as within the realms of ‘radical possibility’. Rather than escaping to a world where the impossible happens, I wanted the reader to come away finding reality itself more magical.
The story was meant to be about a young man struggling with a haunting, trying to understand his ghosts, and finding magic, real magic, as an antidote to his feelings of alienation. Over several books the story would chart his growth and development as a person and as a student of the occult arts. Kind of like a much more adult version of Harry Potter, -except with magic that would border more closely on being ‘believable’. So of course I drew on real esoteric traditions, including folkloric witchcraft to create this suspension of disbelief. There are a lot of modern movies and books about witches, werewolves and vampires but all of them so fanciful they are not meant to encourage the audience to believe they are meant only for escapism. Not only that, most of them have lost touch with the richness of our true folkloric heritage.
In short I wanted to write a very adult faerie tale – taking us back into the deep roots of European folkloric traditions of witchcraft and away from the twee quality that the supernatural genre has acquired of late.
Throughout the books there are numerous descriptions of magical workings and rituals, including scenes where various gods and spirits appear. As I went along I began to link certain characters to the witchcraft gods such as the Witch Master, Dame Fate and the Rose Queen. Quite soon something began to happen a little reminiscent of the uncanny incidents ascribed to the ‘Scottish Play’. The events in the books began to impact events in this world. My experience with writing these books has opened my eyes to the space of the uncanny that stories occupy in our lives everyday, like water to a fish we are swimming in stories every day and we forget to notice them. Narrative interpenetrates every aspect of our lives and all forms of real magic depend on it or utilise its power. 
It wasn’t long before the story, its characters and underlying mythic themes came to life in very tangible ways for me. Not only did I start to dream about the characters who would inform me of what their ‘future’ should hold, but other friends dreamed about them and sometimes it wasn’t easy to tell if they were the character from the book or being ‘gloved’ by a spirit or god they were aligned to mythically in the book. The characters have become what is known in the western Occult tradition as ‘egregores’ or thought-forms.
 Many of the rituals in the books come from real life witchcraft and all of the content is drawn from genuine folklore so I guess it’s hardly surprising that these books are haunted. Since I began writing them we have experienced people turning up with the same name and fetch animal as one of the characters or spontaneously revealing the same secrets as something that no one else had read which I’d already written. The synchronicities have kept on coming for over a decade now, as these thought-forms have continued to gather power. It is now time to share these stories with a wider audience.
Recently a friend experienced a semi-initiatory vision of great importance brought on by a response to reading something that occurred in one of the books in this series. It seems that I have knocked at a door, offered an egregore-mask of types to spirits and they’ve answered, driving the direction of the story to their own ends. It is an exercise in what I call 'story sorcery'.
All I can say is that I realize now that the Christopher Penrose books are haunted. I have a lot of experience as an occultist but I’ve never done a working of this scope, a working that has so far spanned over a decade, beginning when I was twenty-one and stretching into my thirties. When book nine comes to its conclusion I don’t even know what shape it will take, but I do know that whatever it wants to be is happening through me in the same way that children happen through you, you don’t get to control them or create them in your own image. You just have to hold them and provide for them and then step back to let them flower.
This is my statement about the kind of 'story sorcery' that this series of books represents:
As an artist what you aim to do is loosen parameters so that you can show your audience into the antechamber of a new way of being. You aim to induct them, slowly at first, into new ways of being so that their scope of ways of knowing joy is made wider. You don’t do this in a shy or inhibited, cynical manner, you do it with gusto and an open heart. Or why do it at all?
We The Artists, those of The Art, are not here to change and replace your ways of being or your modes of pleasure. We are here to show you all the options, the many shades of delights tinged with agonies that exist around the edges and the shadows of things. Without us and the pleasures and dangers of genuine Art our society will lose its colours and subside into beige shades of mass-produced twee.
This is my invitation to you to come and sample The Haunted Books of the Christopher Penrose series. 
Photograph by Rebecca Flynn

Witchcraft and Personal Power

I recently read a wonderful blog post on 'shining' and the way we see what it means to shine in our society (found here). It got me thinking about power in the Craft. Now, for anyone who is familiar with my work they will know that I use the word 'power' to mean what most people mean by 'energy' - occult potency, vitality, the ability to affect change, as well as many of the things that are usually meant by the word 'power'. What it very seldom means when I use it, however, is power over someone or something else. Now before you think that this is leading to a whiter than white 'how I'm so nice and never sorcerously affect anyone without their permission' sort of post let me explain my reasons for this statement.

In reading the above mentioned blog post I started thinking about why I consider power to be something that one cannot gain via domination of someone else and where essentially I think it comes from. I realised that what was at the heart of this belief for me was not morality but a belief that all sorcery of true power must reach beyond the confines of the ego. When we compare ourselves to somebody else, deciding we are lesser or greater than them, when we attempt to gain control over them or to place ourselves as someone else's inferior we are acting within socially defined human constructs. A witch does not draw their essential power, or essential sense of self from any agreed on human convention or structure. One agrees to participate in many such structures, one may even recognise some of them as valid structures, but one does not gain one's fundamental power from them.

A witch's power has an Otherworldly source, and therefore to preoccupy ourselves with dominating others in this world, in petty verbal disputes for instance, or even by taking pride in intimidating others is to lose focus of this fact. To worry about feeling less special or important than someone else, even perhaps resenting them for their personal power, luck force, or gifts, is all to source our power from finite mundane sources. By doing so we have immediately bought into a power structure was created by society and will likely have many limitations.

In such a context there will always be jostling, a sense of there not being enough, a sense of competition, of others as merely something that gets in the way of you obtaining the quantity of someone else's time or admiration that you might like. But when one sources one's power from the infinite expanses of power that exist outside of the ego cage and all temporal power constructs, one does not have to win a race against some other person, there is only one's self and how well one goes about becoming that. The true achievement of the occultist is the becoming of one's true self.

A witch's journey is never to impress someone else or to be better than someone else, such things are at best distractions. A witch's way of finding power is far more mysterious and hidden. There is a certain something that he or she is meant to become, a blossoming that is occurring within, a fate they must be true to. How they perform in relation to that inner truth is what matters, not how they perform in relation to some other person. This is the true power, the true centre that cannot be assailed by others. This is the power that cannot be moved or broken. Even if the whole of society were to turn on that person as one and decry them as wrong and flawed they could not be moved from their centre of power. No human being ever bestowed it on them, and so no human can ever take it away.

Words that Gender

Art by Zhan Ni LiThis week a dear friend asked me which gender pronoun I would like to be known as, and my eyes filled up with tears. He wasn't asking me if I felt the need to force everyone to obey this decree, come out all over again, run a 'take two' on the seven layers of hell required to get everyone to swap over in the first place, or the sickening comparative ease with which everyone reverted when I went off hormones. He was just asking how I would like to be known by him. When it was that simple I found the question startlingly easy to answer.

Although not living as officially transgender anymore I've been through all the key experiences, and back again (for complex reasons). And the deep sense of relief I felt at the idea that I could simply elect to define my own identity in relation to this friend without embarking on the epic social trials involved in asserting this identity across the board made me start thinking about a few things.

I have realised for a while that gender queer people (and I tend to prefer the more ambiguous term queer these days) tend to stir up and bring to the surface sides of other people that aren't usually visible. Perhaps this is actually the key to part of our power and purpose? But more on that later. Today I thought I would compile, both for my own catharsis and the interest of others some of the responses to my gender status I have received from others, both whilst living trans and when discussing it with people afterwards. This anonymous list of comments and observations is not meant to vilify or blame the people involved but simply to raise our awareness about the way we view gender. Some of these comments I found hurtful, others are of less concern but I include them because I find all of them revealing in some way, revealing of deeper assumptions about gender.

I was told after surgery by someone close to me that without either breasts or a penis I had rendered myself 'useless' to people of either sex.

I was regularly told by a whole assortment of people that if I 'wanted to be a man' I would need to speak with more authority, square off, come across more assertive/aggressive, wear different clothing and that my sexual interest in other men greatly undermined my claim to some form of masculinity. I am still regularly told by a female friend that she is more of a 'man' than I am due to my lack of obvious physical strength and interest in cars.

I was told by a female friend that they realised they had started to view me as male because they had started to do acts of service for me, such as clean up after me, and treat me as 'alpha'.

'If you are interested in men anyway why can't you just be a straight woman?'

But you realise it was never really real anyway? You were only ever acting and tricking people, you can't ever be anything other than a woman. (from a professional counsellor)

'Good luck with your battle against patriarchal dominance then' - a comment received at the end of a counselling session from a trained psychologist, a session during which I had never mentioned any kind of political or feminist motivation and he had introduced this assumption that I was attempting to wrest power from the patriarchy.

Me: 'How come you call that trans woman her but you struggle to call me he?'
Other person: 'Well she got the man bits cut off.'
Me: 'Oh okay, so being a woman is achieved just by getting rid of something?'
Other person: 'Well yeah, that and what you look like.'
Me: 'And being a man?'
Other person: 'Well that's all about what you've got."

'You'd be great to use for a cabin boy fantasy where the guy discovers you're a girl while trying to bone the cabin boy.'

'Why do you have such a problem with the feminine? I can see the goddess in you and she is beautiful.'

In a lascivious sort of manner from a male: 'You're obviously just uptight and need to loosen up a bit.'

'Having a baby will cure you.'

'You shouldn't really have a problem with being female. What you should have a problem with is the discourse that tells you that being female has to mean a certain thing. If you could just open your mind about the potentials of womanhood you wouldn't have this problem anymore.'

Insistence even from close friends of ascribing female terminology to me even after I've asked for them not to do it.

From a heterosexual male: 'I don't understand why you'd reject being female. Women have so much power over men and you'd lose all that.'

From a gay guy: 'Any guy that got with you was not gay. He had to bisexual. Any truly gay man couldn't go anywhere near someone who was still had some... you know... female bits.'

'I totally don't see how the male genitals have ever been socially or consciously viewed in a more positive light than the female genitals. No, women have no more excuse for writing poems to them or having hang ups about them than men do. I've experienced no difference.' -from a straight, male mental health professional.


This is a just a sample of things that spring to mind, many of which have stayed with me for many years. Most of which the people who said them probably don't even remember saying. I write them here not to punish or embarrass the people who said them but to draw attention to the underpinning cultural assumptions that blazon forth in coloured lights when someone discusses gender with an FTM person. You can see the projections aimed at the trans person, the assumption that you envy male privilege, even the refusal of women to grant you male gender because they see it as lifting you above them. Or more disturbingly still the willingness of some women to accept that it lifts you above them and do it anyway. You see the fetish-ising of the trans body as object, the assumption of motherhood as a natural state for all biological females, and even the deeply homophobic assumption that interest in other men makes you less masculine and makes it unclear whether you can even be classed as a male.

It would be nice to think that things have changed since then but many of these example are recent.

Some of you may realise that these people 'got it wrong' and rush to find out how you can 'get it right'. Others will have their nose put out of joint (irritation at the need to be politically correct is one common response to asking for a different pronoun) asserting to themselves that they can't possibly be expected to know the 'right' thing to say. But there are other options. Indeed no one is forced to be politically correct, no one HAS to consider their language, and more importantly the assumptions behind it, to assist in preserving my feelings or those of other gender queer people.

However, if you genuinely care about someone's feelings it can be a great opportunity to look deeply into your own programming about gender. I don't see the people who made these comments as some terrible enemy to whom I am the victim. Some of them were 'joking'. Some of them have been victims of gender stereotyping and my ambiguity has merely allowed for those hurts to rise to the surface. The women that subconsciously deny me my gender of choice may do so as a way of denying male privilege, something they are all too aware of. The woman who does not deny but submits has been taught to do so for so long that she may see no other way of relations between a woman and someone elected as 'male'. A vertical power relationship is assumed and in this inherently abusive model exists so much of the trauma around the gender topic.

Most people do not deny a trans person the gender that feels right for them to hurt that person but because they themselves are hurt in relation to gender.

The gay male who virulently refuses to allow that any gay man could have sex with a trans man may do so because of a lifetime of pressure to be having sex with people with a vagina and he isn't going to take it anymore. He is going to assert his right to say 'I like cock'. And good for him. But while he is there he might like to consider the way the same prejudices that are used to gender people in our society designate him as lesser than a heterosexual man. The heterosexual man who fetishises the trans body as a girl in boys clothes fantasy implies that a 'use' must be ascribed to the biologically female body - one that serves the needs of the straight male. But how else has society taught him to relate to gender? In his own way he too has been boxed and enclosed by gender stricture.

And perhaps this is one of the deeper spiritual purposes of the transgendered, the queer, the two-spirited. We force confrontation with the liminal, we bring sometimes uncomfortable internalised material to the surface for people, and hopefully can facilitate its healing, via our own woundedness. If people can begin to accept, if not altogether welcome, the usefulness of discomfort then we will be halfway to valuing people like me - not to mention our own hidden ambiguities.

I don't hope for a world where people will use more politically correct terms to be seen as savvy and sophisticated or to avoid copping an earful. I long for a world where the desire to extend freedom of identity to others is natural and instinctual. Where we will claim the same freedom for ourselves where necessary and from that internal healing act with unforced compassion and felicity with others. Where, like my friend did for me, we don't wish to limit someone's self expression within the parameters of a materialistic world. But instead acknowledge the multiplicity that dwells within each being, the many possible genders, the many ages, regional and cultural expressions, the non human or animal skins, even, that are potentially part of an identity and allow each the personal sovereignty to elect the words that will define them in the eyes of other humans. Because really, when we look deeply we may feel discomfort at a world that refuses to stay simple, concrete, black and white, but we really lose nothing from extending this freedom to others and what we potentially gain in return is a glimpse of our own unconditioned state.

A Deed Without a Name

Have a book out is exciting and stressful in equal measures. I certainly didn't expect to be contacted so frequently or so quickly by people reading my work all over the world. I also received a recently that I'm extremely happy about. Like most first time authors I feel I've learned so much from other people's reviews and critiques and of course the parts that readers found most useful. I am always writing and have enjoyed the fact that this book took so long to come out because it has allowed me to gather research for my next one. Thank you to everyone who has already bought my book or sent letters telling me how much they got out of it.

Witch to Fetch Mate - A Dialogue

- For Gede, inspired by our recent conversations on the topic of the Fetch Mate.



Witch:
I offer you my sharp edgeLike a wolf’s toothFetish keenTo always stay That little bit hungry.
I offer you my youth pledgeMy edgeMy singing truthAnd my yet unblackenedSparks. Falling.Always falling forand against the abyss of you.
Ride with meRide me. Dance with me.Dance me. Enter flesh. And knowThe joy-lamentAgony-bliss of it.
Fetch-Mate:
I offer you blue skiesThat go on foreverAnd forever as loveSeems to stretch outVista-thin to infinity In the minds of the Forever young.Though your heart beats Mortal redYou are Greening,Of the green tribe -turning.Step out with meBeyond the willow’s twining grasp.Take my handI’ll unravel your Paradise,Hidden between the webbingOf your musclesAnd tender nerve ends.Glimmers of stardust…They dance beneath My starry hands.
Witch:
Lover I hear youI am seduced And entangled In your words Your starry handsTease to beggingThe silver secretHidden betweenMy muscle webbing.Star-ravished; I tremble.
Fetch-Mate
Lover I hear youI am seduced Into manifestationBy the ever pulsatingWet gush of yourPleasure poundingHeart rush.I am of the dream stuffAnd of mind fire made-I drink lightning.And yet I tremble.


-Lee Morgan, 2013

Between Old and New

One of the greatest gifts of my early thirties (at least as an occultist) has been an ever solidifying sense of my life purpose. And with that has come a better understanding of certain challenges I experienced in my twenties. I realised today after a wonderful talk with a fellow Crafter how incredibly clear that sense of purpose has become for me, how sharply defined and yet still as challenging as ever.

Of course there is always a certain degree of folly in talking about 'purpose'. As human animals it is enough in many ways that we are that we breathe, eat, sleep, wake, love, enjoy, suffer, create, destroy... There is great meaning in the many coloured tapestry of our simple humanity, and as time has gone by I have found myself slowing down more frequently to pay attention to it in new ways I wouldn't have thought to do ten years ago. To value the feeling that being me just as I am is quite simply 'okay', that I don't (as a human animal at least) have to constantly be pushing myself to be something other or to thump a foreign significance into things that are already meaning-full in themselves.

But as a witch there are always two lives lived, -at least. And the sense of purpose bequeathed to a true witch is undeniable, though I must say I do not believe we all carry the same purpose. For me I have come to understand my place in the occult world in terms of being a conduit between two things, a threshold, or a bridge - in my case between the old world and the new.

I come from a traditional English family and in many ways I came to maturity enamored of the past and the ambience of history. Many of the things I valued and in many cases still do, did not seem to be valued by the present world. My love for art and artistry, for long study and slow accumulation of skill, for beautiful hand written and hand made objects, for intense long term friendships built on leisurely face to face communication, deep and concentrated spiritual bonds with only a few people and settled communities where a friendship lasts a life time, my love for values like honour and hospitality and sundry old fashioned notions that cluster around these things; all of that made me a natural candidate for gravitating toward Traditional Witchcraft. At my first sniff of the flavour of it I knew I had come home, and I was far away from the plastic stench of disposable spirituality I associated with the New Age.

But I was also queer, gender and sexuality wise and differed from many traditionally minded people (both witches and non witches) who were part of my formative years. I didn't just differ from them in regards to this one issue but in many ways I was 'progressive'. For a time I tried to ignore the seeming contradiction but it never went away.

With the benefit of hindsight and expanded vision I realise that it didn't go away for a reason, inherent in this seeming dilemma was my occult purpose. In some humble way my life's work was to bridge this gap and keep a balance. Both to accept in positive elements from the modern world, but also to protect as many shreds of Old Craft that do not deserve to be the baby thrown out with the bath water of rampaging modernity.

As such I find myself always in the middle between post-modern movements that fully embrace the modern world on one side of me, and self consciously old fashioned traditionals who hold strongly to past foundations on the other. I am not trying to say that this 'middle road' represents some kind of ultimate perspective, only that this is the path I have to walk. I cannot always justify with pure logic the value of that which is old, worn in and reddened by usage and passed from hand to hand, or fully explain why I find it hasty to change the old ways too rapidly. But I can suggest that there is something productive for self growth in the humility involved in entertaining the idea that the accumulated knowledge of many full lifetimes of occult practice over generations may have something to offer that cannot be reproduced over night in an environment severed from its roots.

On the other hand though (because I am always to ride this hedge, to stand in the centre of this crossroads and perhaps be seen as 'sitting on the fence') there are lessons to be learned from the future as well as the past. And the young people who represent our future, who manifest it in fact, are in touch with the vital spirit of growth and have a better idea of how to navigate this new exponentially changing world - sometimes spiritually as well as physically. There is a world being created, for better or for worse, all around us that has not been tried at any other time in history. As a species we are doing unprecedented things, tradition can steady us in this heady time, the wisdom of our ancestors and the past can provide steady roots, but without flexibility in our branches we risk being unable to respond to an unprecedented world that includes many things our ancestors hadn't even the need to dream about.

If we go too far in one direction we risk hubris, in the other inflexibility, I do not wish to be guilty of either and the idea of an exchange of learning between old and new seems desirable to me. But I am also highly aware that as witches we don't all represent or manifest the same thing. I do not believe that we are all born here to heal or save the world. I believe our purposes and the powers we manifest to be as diverse as Nature herself. Certainly we can and at times have been a force for positive change in our environments and yet we are not always this one thing. And no matter how ethically bankrupt we may find a fellow witch who has no concern whatsoever for ecological crisis or aiding their fellow man, we would be lessening the scope of witchcraft to deny that as one possible way of being a witch.

I believe that there is something intrinsic about witchcraft, about the anarchic, wild story-soul of it that resists being harnessed to a particular or single goal or political motivation, no matter how noble and no matter how much I agree with the goal. This doesn't mean that I think witchcraft can't be political, in fact in one way of looking at it all conscious explorations of power are 'political thinking'. Certainly I would describe the spirit of witchcraft as 'revolutionary' but what that actually means in practice could be dizzying in its possible implications. And if there's one thing that really makes us humans uncomfortable, makes our skins crawl, is total, unclassifiable, dizzying diversity.

I believe that witchcraft by its nature is an ambiguous chaos-factor in human nature, that factor that Nature injects into our capabilities to throw all the chips up in the air. Tomorrow we could band together to save and heal or to lance and destroy. But what is more likely is that we will do many things, diverse things, things that look more like eruptions of natural forces of all different kinds. In certain contexts we will socialise the Nameless Deed that is simply in our nature, and we may agree to co-operate with a particular human group and we may perform positive services for that group, perhaps at some point that group might be something as immense as 'mankind itself'. As creatures aligned with morally grey animistic forces we are likely to respond with rage, sadness or other forms of resistance to the desecration of the natural world, because we are deeply of it. But each of us will fulfill our mysterious purpose in a way that might not make sense to those around us and may not satisfy someone else's definition about what our responsibilities as witches are. But if we fulfill the spirit-gifted purpose that has been burned into our brow when we were Called then we are playing our part in the grand weave of things in our own mysterious way.

And tonight I think I am okay with that.

Hierarchy, Office-Holding and Leadership in Traditional Craft

It seems like I'm on a bit of a roll with tackling thorny issues in the Craft after having just done 'secrecy' only two blog posts ago. But this one is an issue that has been really in my face of late, for numerous reasons. Some of those reasons are reminders of shitty things I've seen happen due to hierarchy, others are reminders of problems encountered without the accountability of leadership, the fact that I've started training in another tradition besides my own (Wildwood) which is egalitarian in nature, and most immediately  when it was stated to me on a Facebook group that: 'if it has a hierarchy then it's not witchcraft.'

Rather than reply immediately to this statement I went away and thought about it, as the issue was already one at the forefront of my mind I decided to explore the question in more depth here.

My tradition, like most other forms of Traditional Witchcraft and Traditional Wicca as well, has office-holders - though whether or not the way that works in practice conforms to the negative connotations carried by the word 'hierarchy' is another matter. But nonetheless, as someone devoted to inquiry and philosophical rigor, it is necessary that I ask of myself the following questions: Why does your tradition have office holders? Is it simply because it's traditional and it's how things have been done previously? And if this is so, are you really any different to conservatives that oppose things like marriage equality because that is not the way that marriage  has 'always been done'?

For a liberal progressive like myself these are hard-hitting questions, so please bear with me while I try to answer them as best I can.

When I initially considered the question most of my responses were anecdotal. They related to things on both sides of the question that I have observed. I have seen hierarchy taken to cult-like proportions in the past, and recently wrote a ten point list of things for Traditional Witchcraft seekers to watch out for. And yet equally I have watched the way office holding, based on experience and knowledge, can act as a check and balance on 'the cult of personality' - a type of authority wielding that is never usually called out for what it is and isn't always wielded by someone that serious minded occultists would consider for the holding of an actual office.

The first scenario needs little to no explanation. Simply reading over my ten point warning list will tell you most of what you need to know about things I've witnessed regarding the abuse of office. The other scenario will require a little more unpacking. In today's occult world having written a book or achieved some form of minor celebrity in Craft circles is often mistaken for evidence of wisdom and spiritual attainment. What this can mean is that someone who has not themselves ever been anyone's student, ever undertaken an initiation, ever had to put their ego second to learning something with humility from someone else, or even satisfy an elder or two that they genuinely are a self-realised and highly functioning human and occultist, can be seen as possessing an authority based solely on celebrity and a personality based following.

This person may style themselves as egalitarian even, whilst still having a large following who exhibit all the same signs that this person is their 'leader' and they are acolytes. I have personally encountered a traditional group that ran along such lines. The leader had emerged through the ranks of minor occult celebrity and had given themselves a title, and given magisterial roles to several other people who were also officers with different functions. At some point or another the leader decided that they wished to suddenly do away with tradition and become egalitarian, so they promptly dissolved the offices that had been given to others, as well as their own.

Of course what happened is that the individual's 'cult of personality' remained unscathed and the other officers, who potentially might have acted as some kind of check and balance as to the behaviour and ego of said leader no longer had any standing. This 'egalitarian' move allowed the previous oligarchy to go back to the unspoken monarchy it had been before the other officers arrived. But conveniently, as there are no officers in this tradition now, there is also no accountability and no standards of practice outside of the whims of the leader that isn't to be called a leader.

Now, I'm not saying all attempts at egalitarian witchcraft pan out in that manner. Although I have no experience with it I am given to understand that Reclaiming Witchcraft manages to negotiate this ground in a more thoughtful manner. But I remain unconvinced that there is ever such a thing as a leaderless group. In any group of human beings influence flows to certain individuals over others, often just the loudest people, the ones who push themselves forward, sometimes just the ones with the biggest egos or even just the largest desire to co-opt the groups working energy to make people listen to tedious stories about themselves and their 'personal journey'. If you are lucky it will be the ones with the keenest interest in the Craft.

Ideally, in a coven that has office-holders, especially when there are elders who can pass that office to another and oversee the suitability of future candidates, those who take on a leadership position are those with the most knowledge, talent, dedication, skill and artistry. Excellence rather than a dominating personality or charisma is what is valued. The person takes on an office as a responsibility to others. And if one is offered by a coven and accepts the primary office of Magister (I'm not using this as gender specific here) then one also accepts the ultimate accountability. When it comes to what happens to people in that coven, your ethical decisions and the well-being of those around you, the buck stops with you.

In the aforementioned example of a group that tried to dissolve offices the buck didn't stop anywhere and there was literally no accountability for anything. Whilst the 'non leader leader' continued to influence everyone greatly they also regularly repeated their statement of non-responsibility 'I'm not setting myself up as a teacher or anything'.

Now I'm sure many of you will point out that traditions like Reclaiming doubtless have developed strategies for dealing with such situations and I would not want to argue given that I haven't experienced them. The day I fully experience a truly leaderless, successful group of any kind I will comment more fully on this matter. But I think it also warrants attention that the general aims and core philosophy of organisations like Reclaiming and my own and other forms of Traditional Craft are probably quite different.

As I say, I have had to think quite deeply on this matter to nut out what I really think about office-holding. And I found myself having to scrutinize questions like: what is the purpose of witchcraft from the perspective of my tradition? What is the purpose of a coven? The visitor to my page that asserted that anything with a hierarchy wasn't witchcraft obviously had a strong sense of what she thought the purpose and nature of witchcraft was. I won't speak for all manifestations of this very diverse word but I can tell you what it means to me and the people I work most closely with.

To us witchcraft is an Art that combines elements of what some call 'high' and 'low' magic (though I dislike those terms) into a fusion where mystical attainment is achieved through sorcerous means, and where sorcery is enabled through mystical realisation. The two cannot be divided or considered outside of this relationship. Witchcraft is both a calling to perform an Otherworldly duty and a path to Mastery; that is the full realisation of the All within Self and Self within the All.

A coven is there to fuel this process of realisation for all involved in it, but most particularly for those who are new to it. Someone who is an officer is basically saying, when they accept that role, that they have progressed to a point where they no longer require the coven's combined power to fuel their growth, but can lend their power more towards assisting others who come through. The emphasis is upon realisation, awareness, passage and seething of the Cunning Fire of transformation, and upon demonstration of artistry and excellence. The rituals are offerings of a sort from the officers to the body of the coven, an act of simple overflow that occurs with natural generosity once one's cup is in overflow. To us an officer is in a position of service to his or her coven. The role is more sacrificial than it is authoritarian and the body of the coven should be benefiting from it more than the office holders.

I will also point out that for us there is not one but many potential offices. This was also the case for many other Threads. Andrew Chumbley said: 'The offices of Elder, Magister, Maid, Priest, Priestess, Summoner, Seeress, Verdelet, Chronicler, and Ward are based wholly upon the skills that individuals possess and demonstrate; the 'raising' of an individual to any such position is furthermore subject to the consent of both the Brethren and the Spiritual Patrons.' So you can see from that that in his tradition not only is the consent of the coven required but there is a great many potential roles! The good thing about having a number of officers is it can act as a check and balance against a Magister or Maid that loses the plot and goes on a power trip.

But this is not the only point here. These roles imply speciality, excellence, quality over quantity, the honing of mastery in a particular area - not to the exclusion of other areas but certainly finding the things that one has to offer one's coven and making a gift of those services to one's group. So important can some of the powers be that office holders work with and transmit to a working coven that some people will have no body of a coven at all after a while and everyone will hold some kind of office.

I will not go over in detail the purpose of each of these offices, but I will say that sorcerously speaking the purpose of the Magister in relation to the coven is a little like that of a conductor to an orchestra. Generally speaking they are also expected to reflect the best qualities of their tradition and be a person of learning and Art, you might say a lot more is expected from them than they expect of their coven - assuming they are doing their job. As a group we have taken the modernising step of disconnecting these roles from their traditional gender connotations to some extent, mainly to free Traditional Witchcraft from any taint of having a patriarchal bias, or a bias in the direction of any or either gender really.

The important thing is the ability of those individuals to work with and channel certain powers and potencies, particularly The Master in the case of the Magister, but this should never mean that we receive access to those gods via the officers only. All functioning witches should have direct access to the divine, both within themselves and without. You might actually say that these roles serve a ritual and sorcerous function much more than they do a social function.

In conclusion, I cannot still after everything I've witnessed countenance the idea of our tradition not having officers. And I say that as someone who has both been an officer and worked under officers. There is just a sensation of the power and virtue of the tradition being 'held' in a way I can't fully explain, a way that has a kind of power about it. Is it the power of a well 'reddened' (or well worn in) way of doing things? Or is it just the very nature and spirit of our tradition that demands this format? Does the question at the end of the day go beyond logic? I have tried to be logical here and to expose the philosophical core of my reasoning for continuing with this traditional pattern, whilst we have with some consideration made changes to others. But I come back simply to where I began, with an almost instinctual feeling that there is a deep magic in this path of service and the pursuit of excellence, in the Art that I believe it embodies and manifests.

Vision to Reality

Sample art from the book, by Brett Morgan
'A Deed Without a Name' is finally
There is a strange tension that settles over an author whilst awaiting the arrival of their book. My other writing projects are on hold until the hard copies actually arrive at my door; it is much like waiting on a birth. It's an odd feeling to realise that a project that has been brewing and seething in your skull for about four years has now almost come to full fruition and is soon to be erupting into the minds of others.

And yet I always felt that the point of writing at all was to send those ripples out into the Wyrd and tremble the web in some small way. I know I am adding my voice to a rising number of people calling for genuine connection and manifestation of the Old Ways, the red and white threads of power passed to us by our forebears, remembered by the land, and hiding in what appear to be simple fairy-tales and folk customs. Not just to read about them or piece them together but to do them, craft them, make art, make culture, and come together with others in a spirit of re-enchantment and re-sacralisation.

 I am really lucky to have the support crew that I have had behind me encouraging me that I really did have something worth adding to the 'state of knowledge' on the topic, not to mention the wonderful artwork that my talented spouse has contributed.