{"id":428,"date":"2010-05-12T09:28:11","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T15:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/paganportal\/?p=428"},"modified":"2010-05-12T09:28:11","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T15:28:11","slug":"keeping-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/pantheon\/2010\/05\/keeping-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"
\nKeeping secrets is rude and divisive, and British Tradition Witcca (BTW) gets a lot of crap for doing it.\u00a0 My particular flavor of Wicca, Gardnerian, is one of the most secret squirrelly of them all.\u00a0 In fact, Gerald Gardner\u2019s books are littered with overtly provocative statements including \u201cforbidden to speak,\u201d \u201ccannot tell,\u201d and \u201cmust not divulge.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s seriously immature. If you try to say that at a party, you\u2019d get laughed out of the room.\u00a0 So how does a modern urban witch, who believes strongly in the values of transparency and sharing, handle being oathbound?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s back up for a moment.\u00a0 What is oathbound?\u00a0 When I was initiated as a Gardnerian, I repeated an oath.\u00a0 That oath forbids me to discuss the initiation itself, any Gardnerian rituals, my Book of Shadows, and the identities of any other Gardnerians.\u00a0 What happens if I break the oath?\u00a0 Well, I\u2019m not allowed to talk about that either.<\/p>\n

As many of you know from reading books by or about Gardner, the Gardnerian tradition includes stuff from lots of different older traditions, so one way I was taught to get around the oath is to learn all of them.\u00a0 If I\u2019m having a conversation with you about rituals or magic and you ask me about something oathbound, rather than acting like a four year old and chanting \u201cI know something you don\u2019t know,\u201d it\u2019s more likely that I\u2019ll pause for a moment and then start talking about a practice from ancient Mesopotamia.\u00a0 That was me doing a mental runaround to avoid breaking my oath.<\/p>\n

Other BTW traditions have oaths as well.\u00a0 For instance, the Kingstone and Silver Crecent covens around my town \u2013 Seattle, won\u2019t even tell their pre-initiates who is in the coven and who isn\u2019t.\u00a0 (Gardnerians are allowed to do that).\u00a0 Kingstones consider Gardnerians to be equivalent to Kingstones, so they can talk to us about their practices and show us their books.\u00a0 But we don\u2019t consider them to be Gardnerian!\u00a0 So they can tell us everything, but we can\u2019t tell them anything unless we initiate them first!<\/p>\n

Things tend to get more secretive over time.\u00a0 People would rather be on the safe side of the oath, and each student who plays it a little bit safer than their teacher did contributes to this increase in secrecy. Where blogging falls into this whole cluster of oaths, I don\u2019t think I want to know.<\/p>\n

So I apologize to the greater pagan community that there have been some BTW cranks over the years. Most of us aren\u2019t like that. Most of us wanted to practice traditional witchcraft, weighed our options, and decided that politely keeping our mouths shut about a few things was worth the trouble.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keeping secrets is rude and divisive, and British Tradition Witcca (BTW) gets a lot of crap for doing it.\u00a0 My particular flavor of Wicca, Gardnerian, is one of the most secret squirrelly of them all.\u00a0 In fact, Gerald Gardner\u2019s books are littered with overtly provocative statements including \u201cforbidden to speak,\u201d \u201ccannot tell,\u201d and \u201cmust not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":300,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nKeeping Secrets<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Keeping secrets is rude and divisive, and British Tradition Witcca (BTW) gets a lot of crap for doing it.\u00a0 My particular flavor of Wicca, Gardnerian, is\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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