Weighing in on Recent Gardnerian Schism…
Recently, a division has been brought to light. Within the community of neopagan witchcraft, it has come to light that there are people claiming to be Gardnerian Wiccans who practice very differently from how this craft was passed from Gardner through the priestesses with whom he worked.
The manner of this revelation was an unfortunately worded inflammatory letter that should never have been made public and probably not even signed given the wording. This letter, signed by several people, ended up inciting a schism among those who call themselves Gardnerians, on the internet. On one side are the more traditionalist practitioners who wrote that ghastly letter who (I believe rightly) claim that there are a large number of people who have SIGNIFICANTLY changed this tradition into something that differs in core tenets and practices so much as to be a completely different tradition. (Imagine if a town in America celebrated the Fourth of July but supported re-unification with the British Empire and had never heard of the Declaration of Independence!) On the other side of this schism are those who have made significant accommodations to be more inclusive and welcoming of the rapidly growing LGBTQ+ community seeking pagan spiritual paths. This latter group took GREAT offense to that letter and now, both sides have more or less shunned each other.
Below are some points I’d like to make to clarify where I stand.
- Not the Only Path
- Exclusivity, Inclusion, and Universality
- Orthopraxy
- Fertility Religion
- Polarity
- Some points of ritual:
- Symbolism:
- HPS and HP relationship:
- Power and leadership
- Initiation
- Touchstones
- Gardnerian Initiation IS binary and passes from male to female and vice versa.
- For those who are non-binary or in transition, there are options of:
- Choosing not to practice as a traditional Gardnerian.
- Waiting till your transition is more or less complete.
- At the discretion of the HPS, selecting a binary gender within which to work with the coven.
- Sex for procreation and sexual tension (and release):
- Cakes and Wine
- Transformative power – Among other things, this part of our circle represents the power to transform ingredients into a greater result: from grain to cakes and from juice to wine, and thus to transform ourselves, eachother, and our world.
- “With a kick” – Traditional Garnerian practice utilizes (usually fermented) alcoholic beverages along with the cakes. Variation to a non-alcoholic wine/juice/beer as an alternative should only be substituted if necessary, for example if the ritual takes place under strict alcoholic prohibition or if someone in the circle has a severe allergy. Whether the substitution is proper for a person in a circle who is in recovery from alcoholic addiction is up to the HPS and the person in recovery. If there is no reason to substitute, we use wine or ale or some other fermented beverage.
- Standing in Circle:
- Initiation: Lineage and Tradition
- Gerald Gardner and The Beginning of Our Tradition
- Growing: Evolving vs Fracturing
- Coven Autonomy
- What’s in a Name?
- My Opinions and Conclusions
- Choices: Sex and Gender Roles Today and for the Future of the Gardnerian Tradition
- Restrict our practice to traditional gender roles, physically binary sex and gender.
- Recognize that we can and often do work with symbolism and learn that while the best symbol for a binary sex/gender procreating couple is a binary sex/gender procreating couple, we can make due with symbolic substitutions when necessary. In fact we have been doing so in other aspects (Cakes and Wine, for instance) for a very long time.
- Re-evaluate what the Craft and the Gardnerian Tradition is and redefine what we do.
- Create a whole new tradition and be truthful and call it something else – New/Reformed Gardnerian if it doesn’t differ too much.
- Again, in my own opinion, I choose the second option. Keep the tradition and its foundations, but allow symbolic representation. There may be those who choose the first and I wouldn’t stop them, but I feel it would be difficult to maintain a survivable number of practitioners for more than a couple generations and the Craft must ever survive. The third option seems dishonest. I would also encourage people to be honest about changes and take the fourth option if the second doesn’t work for them. But please, do not call what you do Gardnerian if old Gerald wouldn’t recognize it.
- The term, “Traditional Gardnerian”
- When you make changes
- Changes will happen. When you make them, I’d like to suggest that it would be a good practice to record all of these items:
- The old way>
- The reason(s) that led you to make the change
- The new way.
- The date of the change
- The HPS who made the change.
- For those covens who keep a Book, it may be a good idea to have a section for coven leadership of child covens where you can include the changes and reasons. Future generations may find it useful to revert back to an earlier way or to know why something has been altered. You owe it to them“> to pass on the complete information. (For the software engineers out there, this is simple a change control system)
- You should talk to your fellows, especially YOUR High Priestess who initiated or elevated you, and establish what the core practices are. We need to define what makes OUR family recipe for chicken soup OURS. Water, chicken, garlic, basil are core. Grandma added that secret ingredient, cardamom. We need to define how far it can be changed before it needs to be called something else. This is our shared responsibility.
The Gardnerian Tradition is NOT the only path, nor is it the only path of witchcraft, nor even British witchcraft. There are many other legitimate options for those who seek a path and for whom ours may not be a good fit. We are NOT the One, True, Right, and Only Way.
The Craft is not for everyone. Gardnerian Craft is not for everyone. We are not a catholic (small c) religion. We are not universal. We are somewhat exclusive to those who are called, but who are we to question a genuine calling? We welcome into our circle those who fit well among us – proper people as the saying goes – and teach and guide them and welcome them once again as family – prepare them – and finally welcome them as a part of our family with all the good and bad that entails. I wouldn’t presume to turn away a person from the Craft who has felt the gods calling, but I would most definitely turn them away from my coven if I didn’t think they were a good fit or if it was not a good time.
Gardnerian tradition is an orthopraxy. We are defined by what we do, not what we believe. By not requiring any specific beliefs, we open our practice to people who have VERY different beliefs. We are an orthopraxy. A witch is as a witch does.
Our tradition is based on the concept of fertility: for crops and animals and people. This is a basic foundation of what we do, but it also does not limit what we do to only fertility. The cycles of life include much more than procreation and birth.
Much of what we do, as a result of our base in fertility, includes work with polarity. Much but not all and not limited here.
Often we use symbolism in ritual. A symbol is a representation of the actual item – a poppet might represent a person for example. A very wise person once pointed out, “The best symbol of a sharp knife is …. a sharp knife.”
The High Priestess is the symbolic representation of the goddess and she is first among equals. The High Priest is her chosen partner in the coven and circle, and he is the symbolic representation of the God. They are a binary pair: male and female. Nothing in this tradition precludes other people being members of the coven who fit other roles which may well be important to that coven (family). One binary pair does not preclude other additions if they are a good fit at that time and place for those who are present.
A coven belongs to its High Priestess. Period. Full stop. That is our tradition. The High Priestess selects her High Priest who completes the polarity.
There are points (metaphorical touchstones) during the initiation with which one Gardnerian can identify another. These must not be changed, lest you end up with a distinctly different tradition. (When making “Chicken Soup”, if you substitute pork for the chicken, it is no longer chicken soup, though it is still soup. It might even be pretty good. You might even like it better. But it is no longer chicken soup.)
Much of what our practices entail is at least symbolic of sexual procreation. Sexual dynamics and the cycle of life include this concept of ups and downs, – ins and outs if you will.
Our tradition has it that we try to circle alternating male-female as much as possible. This is not always possible for reasons such as numbers (odd number of people circling) or imbalance in genders. This doesn’t invalidate that circle in any way, but balance of alternating genders is preferred.
Gardnerian tradition is passed with both lineage (through one of the high priestesses Gerald Gardner worked with) AND the tradition itself passed down more or less intact. Initiation is done male to female and female to male, in a circle cast by a High Priestess. I am not aware of our tradition differentiating between sex and gender as that is a very recent cultural shift. See my earlier point, (6.1) regarding symbolism and the best symbol.
The Gardnerian tradition or path is named after Gerald Gardner because he took the tradition he received and made significant changes to it. While those specific changes are not something I will discuss publicly, suffice to say, they fleshed out an incomplete and probably dying form of British witchcraft. There is no harm in calling your tradition something different if it IS something different. It would be fraudulent, however, to continue calling what you do using his name if what you do no longer matches the tradition he began.
In order to survive, the Craft must evolve. As practitioners, we are the custodians of the tradition and it is our responsibility to maintain that tradition as best as we can. Over time the Craft and our tradition will change. What must be established is how much it can change before it fractures.
Recalling the comparison about secrecy in the Craft that spoke of chicken soup recipes, think of the Craft as soup. Your grandmother made a very distinctive chicken soup using lots of garlic and basil with a hint of cardamom. It was a slight variation of the one her grandmother made because by your grandmother’s generation she had new spices available (cardamom) that went well in the broth. In your house, you found that your family liked to leave out the rice because it always fell to the bottom, but now use pasta. You still mostly make chicken soup in your family tradition. If you go to a friend’s house and they make chicken soup JUST LIKE your grandmother’s grandmother, how well would you recognize it as your family recipe? Now some other day, you’re at someone else’s house and the only things the same about their chicken soup is the chicken and the water, that’s definitely not your family’s recipe, now is it? It is still soup. It is even chicken soup. It may well be amazing chicken soup, but it isn’t your family’s traditional recipe for chicken soup. If your sister makes a soup where she leaves out the garlic and swaps pork for chicken, she isn’t making your family’s chicken soup any more, but rather her own other kind of soup. You wouldn’t still call it Great-great-great-Granny’s soup because it clearly isn’t.
As custodians of our traditions and the Craft, we need to decide what are the touchpoints that define our tradition. Many of these will not be public, as they are points done during oathbound activities – circles, initiation, etc.
Within the Craft and our tradition within that, covens are more or less autonomous. You are free to do what you feel is right. That does not mean that your coven, its activities, or initiates will be accepted by others if you change the tradition too much. If you change what you do too far from what others of related lineages do, you may not be considered “one of us” any longer. If you have fundamentally changed how you practice, you may have a lineage that eventually traces back to Gardner, but you no longer practice a tradition recognizable as Gardnerian.
What’s the fuss about being a Gardnerian and why are people upset about things being changed? The world changes. The common belief structures, the common understanding, and craft practices change. When you are no longer doing something known by a certain term, you probably shouldn’t use that term to describe what you do any more. You also shouldn’t be upset if someone explains to you that’s not what what you are doing is called. If you have significantly changed a core tenet of a tradition, you might want to alter what you call it. You are not honoring the tradition by making it unrecognizable. While the term, “Gardnerian” was originally used in a derogatory manner, it has come to mean the Craft as Gardner passed it along. He, himself took what he received and made significant changes that we continue to use and pass along today. If your practice goes off in a different direction, you might want to change what you call it. Don’t be surprised to be called out on your changes.
Welcome to the 21st century. Traditional gender roles have eroded in western society. Sex and gender are no longer synonymous and no longer a simple binary condition. Love is not exclusive to these binary conditions with each other nor even with a single partner nor requiring any partner. We, as a tradition, will need to figure out what to do with these changes.
Some options include:
Much has been said about the new “Traditional Gardnerian'' term and the people behind it. Accusations have been thrown out about transphobia, and other anti-LGBTQ+ views. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask people to consider the words I typed in 16.1 above. Those who choose the first option may be simply trying to preserve what they feel is their tradition – not out of hatred or fear of other people, but saying “This is my household. Your household is valid but you are not a part of my household.” I’d like to suggest this is a valid viewpoint and does not necessarily denigrate those who do not take that approach. Of course if someone is actually a bigot, that’s a whole different thing. Feel free to call them out on it.
I think the reason we see the Traditional moniker is because there are enough people who have changed their practice so as to be a different thing but still call themselves “Gardnerian”. They did not change the name after significantly changing their tradition and a distinction was necessary for those seekers who are seeking the old ways. “Traditional” was added to distinguish Great Great Grandma’s chicken soup recipe from all the other chicken soup recipes that were very different.
Iarwain 3°