Secrets of the Craft Revealed
by Valerie Walker
CNL Spring 94
I have been happily out of contact with the local Craft community (an oxymoron?) for several years now. But my co-covener (let's call her Grizelda) keeps me up on the latest scandals. Grizelda phoned yesterday, ticked off because a woman she's been studying with (let's call her ChloÎ), a Big-Time Witch and initiate of the Faery Tradition, is refusing to give some eyes-only Faery information to any members of Compost because a former Compost H.Ps. and Big-Time Witch (let's call her Starhawk, shall we?), told ChloÎ that none of the Composters I initiated was really in the Faery Trad, because Starhawk didn't give me a real Faery initiation (did you get all that?)
Oh, the shame of it all, after all these years, to find out that my lineage is illegitimate! Does this mean I have to turn in the Secret Decoder Ring?
Our favorite Witchy symbol, the pentacle, symbolizes the human being in relation to the universe. One writer says that if one point is up, you rule your life with your head, but if it's two points up, you rule your life with your ass. I wish these Big-Time Witches would get their pentacles right-side up. Denying information to sincere seekers (who, legitimacy of lineage aside, have been practicing Witches for decades) is very small-time. Yeah, I know, "power shared is power lost"; but information is not quite the same thing as power. Information shared is information gained and multiplied. And surely in the 1990s we can quit looking for power to the secrecies of Gardnerianism, back through the deeps of time to, what was it, September 1939? Any Fam-Trad Witch from before that time doesn't regard us johnny-come-latelies as legitimate; they don't even let us know who they are. So, since the majority of Witches extant (Fam-Trad aside) don't trace their lineage past the time I was a year old, whose lineage is legitimate?
I believe in continuing revelation of spiritual matters. The Gods don't just give us the Word and walk away. After vowing that "all between my two hands belongs to the Goddess," I have to keep finding out what that means on a daily basis for the rest of my life. This means that I am no better than any other person, initiated or not, or by whom, or with what ceremonies, if I don't use this revelation to shape my life.
After a while all this Secret Lore doodah stops being fun and starts to feel mean-spirited.When I was teaching, I was appalled at how easy it was to acquire groupies to massage my ego in exchange for being in on the Secret Lore of the Craft. And I could have told them ANYTHING -- very little reality-checking goes on among disciples. (Remember Jonestown?) Having and withholding secrets is a cheap way of acquiring power over people. And it's not good for anyone involved, adept or disciple, if there's even the least hint of power games. (But, of course, none of us have to worry about THAT.)
The real Secret Info isn't the handshake or the password. It's not the message decipherable only by the Secret Decoder Ring. The Real Deal's the stuff that can't be told because it's untellable, because itÆs passed on experientially and spiritually, and discovered anew by each generation. It's the kind of knowledge that generations of initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries did not reveal over hundreds of years. Literally, you hadda be there.
The most effective way of teaching a body of knowledge to another person (whether it's Magickal, mystical, esoteric, artistic, physical, or even scientific) is to speak to that person's condition. Teach them to question authority, even yours. Show them by the way you live that the Real Deal has to be grown for oneself, in one's own heart and out of one's own experience. All acts of love and pleasure are Her rituals: Magick works. But the spells and rituals which work the best are the ones you make out of your own juice. You don't need to know the handshake or the password to make your life better; you grow your own. And you can get the Decoder Ring out of a box of Cracker Jack.
Intent is EVERYTHING. And that's the only secret there is.
In full ritual drag and feeling my oats.