I am totally in agreement on 'make it easy to leave'.
Ours is explicitly: "We expect you to keep your agreements about confidentiality, and ask that you return in order to properly part from the group, because there are some ritual pieces that are much tidier if we can do that." But if someone isn't willing, then tell us you're done, and we'll do the less-great but perfectly workable option.
(This is because Dedication and then later Initiation create some explicit energetic ties between the person and the people involved in those rituals, and releasing them cleanly is a thing.)
On faith - one of the things I'm really explicit about is that we're a group of shared practices not shared beliefs, and it's okay to believe different things. (We were talking about past lives last week, for example, where I am very 'I have some theories, but I'm not hugely attached to most of them'.)
There are expectations about how you treat people in the group, and some stuff where treating people a certain way would have implications for 'do we want to be in circle with you?'.
And of course, some practices make a lot more sense with some beliefs than others. (If you're totally atheistic, doing ritual to deities probably doesn't make a lot of sense.)
Beyond that, we talk about ethics in terms of 'what kind of person do you want to be more like' and 'how does that shape you and your magic' and so on.
no subject
Ours is explicitly: "We expect you to keep your agreements about confidentiality, and ask that you return in order to properly part from the group, because there are some ritual pieces that are much tidier if we can do that." But if someone isn't willing, then tell us you're done, and we'll do the less-great but perfectly workable option.
(This is because Dedication and then later Initiation create some explicit energetic ties between the person and the people involved in those rituals, and releasing them cleanly is a thing.)
On faith - one of the things I'm really explicit about is that we're a group of shared practices not shared beliefs, and it's okay to believe different things. (We were talking about past lives last week, for example, where I am very 'I have some theories, but I'm not hugely attached to most of them'.)
There are expectations about how you treat people in the group, and some stuff where treating people a certain way would have implications for 'do we want to be in circle with you?'.
And of course, some practices make a lot more sense with some beliefs than others. (If you're totally atheistic, doing ritual to deities probably doesn't make a lot of sense.)
Beyond that, we talk about ethics in terms of 'what kind of person do you want to be more like' and 'how does that shape you and your magic' and so on.