Hearth & Horn

First things first...

If it's OK, I'd like to fold some of your ideas about this into my v2 Sequence (with credit). Would that be OK?

Absolutely.

Measuring your own group against my ideas is, I guess, the sort of thing I'd like people to do for this to be a resource - but it's really useful for me to see them "applied" in practice. Either as examples of what this looks like when it's working (or what it can look like), and also places where it won't work or isn't practical.

I'm really enjoying it (and getting useful things) out of it too, so thank you for doing the setup! As is probably clear, a lot of my current group work is making me look at things because it's the first time I'm doing some of them in about a decade, and in a different structure in some ways.

And it's definitely an area where I think looking at how things come out in applied practice a) varies and b) seeing the variation is really helpful.

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I'm starting with this post because it's one where my reply is more in-depth than a greatful nod.

I think you're right, and I'm wrong. Your way of doing things is sensible and it's hard to imagine a better one. I think the problems I raise are legit, but I'm re-filing them as "challenging without solutions/problems to be aware of"

Heh. I think there's also legitimate variation here - a bunch of your suggestions do make a lot of sense for, say, a Pagan open ritual group without a lot of esoteric streams in play.

(I just met someone for coffee last weekend who is interested in getting a local Pagan Way-type group going: rotating open rituals with something like potluck and topic-focused discussion after sort of thing. In that case, rotating duties in most roles make a lot of sense, though you want some consistency for a reasonable period for things like 'organisation head' and 'treasurer' but those can also rotate at longer intervals, like a year or three.)

A big part of why the last committee went wrong was vagueness: "we'll all check the emails whenever we can". A big part of why I was the only previous committee member now not in disgrace is I came in and said "I can't do this, this, or this; but I am good at these things, so I take full responsibility for the library and being visible at meetings."

It's amazing how having boundaries comes across looking weird, doesn't it? And yet, works so much better than trying to do everything, vaguely.

I hadn't considered the esoteric side that you mention; and I'm interested by the idea of integration.

I am glad to see if I can expand more, if you have more questions.

So I can imagine entering rituals where the 5 members have, collectively over time, built up not only a group egregore, but a collective understanding of each ritual role/experience, which would be inaccessible to someone new.

That is a big part of it, yep - and there's a lot of 'this thing needs to feel this way but it's hard to describe, you learn by being around it a bunch of times' in some forms of Craft (including mine.) It's not that someone can't learn it - but that it takes time.

(And likewise, people swapping roles is a good learning experience, but it shakes up other things in the circle. In general, that is not the circle I want for high-intensity ritual or higher-risk ritual, like initiations, or Drawing Down, or whatever. I want to know what the energy's going to feel like before we add the more complicated stuff.)

When I imagine you and your coven, I have a generally buzzy feeling in my chest; and I have a mental image of it as "your" coven, and that being a positive thing

Aw, thank you!

(Is this weird, but you've been on the web in the same places as me long enough that I have a mental image of a person, rather than a wall of words? I was on the Cauldron, finding you here was a pleasant surprise & one which encouraged me that Dreamwidth was a safer environment than tumblr for ideas.

Not that weird!

And now I think of it, I get a synesthetic blue/black/white association, which is also present in my system for a Mythic Queen Of The Witches figure, so evidently my subconscious does have a concept for "coven leaders which are good & true".)

That is fascinating, and an image that fits things I've heard from other people, but not exactly the same. (I am, mind, the world's greatest fan of cobalt blue and other blues around that shade.)

(I imagine this is a trend generally in this Sequence, where a thing is pretty much OK so long as the wrong person isn't abusing it)

Yeah. And that's the hard problem to solve.

I've always got the impression of you as the sort of person who files the taxes, manages the calendar, and does the admin - instead of an aspiring deity/prophet who gets the praise and the benefits, while other people wash the dishes. And because of that, the idea of a tradition which is transmitted from a single vision - rather than a collective thing - seems more palatable and safe.

Which amuses, because my current students are very insistent about washing the dishes.

I've been thinking (and there will be some blog posts on Seeking as soon as I can get my life to simmer down enough to sort out a posting schedule for them) about how a lot of this is driven by 'we are hosting this thing in my home'.

They might do the dishes, but I'm also doing an hour or so of clean-up household prep before every class or ritual (plus the routine 'enough cleaning I can have people over regularly') on top of the explicit class or ritual prep.

But yes. I have gone into it very much with "This is the thing I do and want to do, and I am glad to share it with people it's compatible with, but I have limits on how I'm going to do that and what I'm going to commit to and what that means."

So (brief) modified proposal advice would be

(not quoting the whole thing)

I like both of these a lot - I'd love to have a resource checklist (similar to the CARE pages on the Seeking site - that individuals and group leaders could review regularly.

I think one of the greatest (and probably most common) fail states for relationships of all kinds is that a thing goes along, and then it changes slowly over time, and it's hard to notice that the new status is not actually an okay thing until something brings you hard up against a problem. At which time it's painful to course correct (and more likely to fail) even if everyone is basically a person of good will. And of course, that's also the state where abuse often happens: there's a building of trust, and then things go bad.