In its early days, Modern Witchcraft was basically an “initiation only” spiritual path, and keeping
silent was often about the rituals and practices that could only be accessed by initiates. Most Witches who
become a part of a tradition take some sort of oath or vow to safeguard the secrets they’ve been given and not
share them with outsiders. Keeping silent applied to most every aspect of coven life, and those who did write
and speak about their Craft mostly did it in the broadest strokes possible. That’s why there were no “how to”
or “ritual” books until the early 1970’s.
Many of those first “ritual books” were full of oath breaking highlighting certain people’s inability to
keep silent. The most notorious (and influential, at least for a while) was Lady Sheba’s Book of Shadows (and
later the expanded Grimoire of Lady Sheba). On the plus side, Sheba’s entry into the mall bookstore resulted
in several people writing books of Pagan and Witch ritual that did not reveal oathbound things, and I’m cer-
tainly thankful that people like Raymond Buckland, Starhawk, Margot Adler, and Scott Cunningham chose to
break their silences.
I bring up some of this because I’m currently writing a book on what I think of as the Five Mysteries
of Witchcraft. In the book I write about Gardner’s alleged initiation, the cone of power, initiations and eleva-
tions, drawing down the moon, and the great rite. I’m guessing that anyone who reads this blog is probably fa-
miliar with those five things/terms. I don’t think any of them are oathbound secrets, nor are they things unique
to just one or two strains of the Craft. Every Witchcraft tradition I’m familiar with has an origin story, raises
energy, has some sort of initiation rite, interacts with deity, and does something that celebrates the mysteries
of life and existence.
Of course it’s completely possible to write about such things in a way that breaks an oath. Taking a
tradition’s version of those rites and sticking them into a book is certainly not “keeping silent” in the way that
I and most other Witches understand it. Nor would be taking events from an oathbound situation and sharing
them with the general public, both instances are huge “no no’s” and would certainly break certain vows. I was
rankled because it was being suggested that by simply writing about these things in 2017 I was breaking an
oath, regardless of what words I used or how I wrote about such things (or will write-this is book is only 25%
pinterest.com
written!).*
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Pagan Living Magazine Litha 2017