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haptalaon Heyyyyyy it's part 5! Still awake? Imagine we're walking in the snow - keep putting on thermal vests and extra jumpers and a second scarf and many, many pairs of socks. Layers and layers and layers and layers.
By now, you've got a coven whose organisation and liturgy are designed to limit unhealthy use of power. Your clergy and members are aware of abuse, and both are trained in ways to prevent their behavior, or help them spot it in others. Hopefully, some of this will quietly hum away in the background, ready to spring into action when required.
This post is about running the coven day-to-day, to discourage power concentrating in the wrong hands.
Morbid, I know. But "safe space" isn't a static thing, it's a process, a series of choices. A space has to be made safe by the people in it.
Take opportunities to reflect, to check members feel OK, to find opportunities to respond to news stories or bring conversations about safety and trust into the circle, to get feedback, etc. Constant vigilance! If you have an annual meeting, why not get members to anonymously fill in the Bonewits Cult Safety survey so you can learn what isn't working & improve it.
Success mode: "Leader of the coven – person who books the meeting hall & buys the cakes” is separate from “Leader of the coven – high priestess who channels the goddess”, and give everyone the opportunity to take on semi-divine roles in rites, as far as is possible.
Incarnating divinities is a fairly common Pagan practice - rotating might not be the best solution, or appropriate for your trad. I think it would feel weird to have "James is doing the Horned God today, but next month we have Laura, and then we have Louise" - weird and meaningless.
Still, we need to diminish the risk of a person identifying themselves too closely with a divinity - or with other people investing their awe of the divine in a mortal - or if we allow these things to happen, figure out how to channel that power in a healthy way.
For example - consider ways that everyone can be an avatar of the divine – I have less problem with someone claiming semi-divine status if I get to do it too! Both practically, as in they can’t pull rank on me, and psychologically, because it boosts up my sense of importance and strength. If James is consistantly the God, Laura the Lady, and Louise the Goblin King, each gets the benefits and is insulated against problems from the others.
Failure Mode: Carol is your only and primary contact within the group/ you work in a couple with Carol / Carol expects everyone’s primary loyalty to be to her / Carol is the core & hub the coven orbits around.
Success mode: You do divination with Morgan for a month, and then the next month you’re on library-work with Steve, and then you’re working with Carol and Sue on the ritual for Mabon.
A key feature of huge abuse scandals is 20 or 50 or 100 people thinking they were the only one, and feeling like they won’t be believed. Strong relationships with several group members mean a wider network if something seems “off”. Information is less concentrated.
Perhaps Morgan and Steve and Sue all have a funny feeling about Carol. If Carol is the person you do most of your working and communicating with, then you’ll all remain islands. Better to cultivate an atmosphere where perhaps Morgan is closest to Steve, so they have someone to “check out” Carol’s unsettling behaviour with.
Failure mode: "We cannot let this stain threaten the work of the church! If we don't say anything, our reputation will be intact and no one need ever know"
Success mode: "We run the risk of damaging or even destroying the church. Nevertheless, we have to support and protect our member - it is the right thing to do"
Especially when aspiring to create a tradition, or thinking about a group, it's easy to focus on the big picture at the expense of the little humans who make up your vision. It has always been the way of Great Men who have a vision, a mission, or a dream to sacrifice their footsoldiers for the greater good. That's evil shit, so don't do it
This includes a willingness to shape group practice around its members goals, rather than trying to shape members into what's "correct" for the tradition. This is also about humility: actually, the survival of your religious tradition really isn't all that important, on the grand scheme of things, compared to the wellbeing of those you have taken responsibilty for.
Because I’m too 90s to function. Open Source is about challenging feelings of ownership. You write a Wikipedia page. Someone comes and changes it. Are you angered by the invasion, or uplifted by the collaboration?
The key to not being a shitty coven leader is, I think, the ability to take a step back, and see yourself as someone who is serving your members – rather than members being ritual props in “your” coven.
This means: cultivating a willingness to let go of your material, making space for others to participate in writing rituals, adapting things to members’ needs, seeing it as a collective organisation rather than “yours”, letting it be a living creature. As I said in the introduction, just thinking about this makes me feel pretty pissy about my Imaginary Coven Members changing bits of my Imaginary Liturgy.
There’s a bit of conflict here with something Jennet wrote about people entering new covens and immediately trying to change everything. That sounds extremely irritating! In Guernsey French we have a word broussepier, a verb meaning “to rub a cat’s fur in the wrong direction”. So groups ought to have a core identity, and lines where they say “no – this is a step too far away from our original purpose and practice, you need to explore this on your own”.
It’s back to asking about “proportionate means”:
Again, I see the primary goal of this process as actively recognising possessive feelings, and encouraging leaders to be aware of their authoritarian tendencies. Once you know they are there, you can challenge them, and hopefully make a better decision with that set to one side. That answer may still be “no, we keep things as they are” or “this is a hereditary trad, our key feature is doing things as they have always been done”. But it is important for that to be a decision from a place of strength, rather than threat.
By now, you've got a coven whose organisation and liturgy are designed to limit unhealthy use of power. Your clergy and members are aware of abuse, and both are trained in ways to prevent their behavior, or help them spot it in others. Hopefully, some of this will quietly hum away in the background, ready to spring into action when required.
This post is about running the coven day-to-day, to discourage power concentrating in the wrong hands.
Keep thinking about abuse
Morbid, I know. But "safe space" isn't a static thing, it's a process, a series of choices. A space has to be made safe by the people in it.
Take opportunities to reflect, to check members feel OK, to find opportunities to respond to news stories or bring conversations about safety and trust into the circle, to get feedback, etc. Constant vigilance! If you have an annual meeting, why not get members to anonymously fill in the Bonewits Cult Safety survey so you can learn what isn't working & improve it.
Rotate ritual roles
Failure mode: The older figures I’m reading about often have one person associated with a ritual role – Crowley as the Beast, Cochraine as the Magister, and Murray’s wider idea of a single human who is both leader of the coven and Devil incarnate. This runs the risk of people investing semi-divine power in a human who might be very unscrupulous.Success mode: "Leader of the coven – person who books the meeting hall & buys the cakes” is separate from “Leader of the coven – high priestess who channels the goddess”, and give everyone the opportunity to take on semi-divine roles in rites, as far as is possible.
Incarnating divinities is a fairly common Pagan practice - rotating might not be the best solution, or appropriate for your trad. I think it would feel weird to have "James is doing the Horned God today, but next month we have Laura, and then we have Louise" - weird and meaningless.
Still, we need to diminish the risk of a person identifying themselves too closely with a divinity - or with other people investing their awe of the divine in a mortal - or if we allow these things to happen, figure out how to channel that power in a healthy way.
For example - consider ways that everyone can be an avatar of the divine – I have less problem with someone claiming semi-divine status if I get to do it too! Both practically, as in they can’t pull rank on me, and psychologically, because it boosts up my sense of importance and strength. If James is consistantly the God, Laura the Lady, and Louise the Goblin King, each gets the benefits and is insulated against problems from the others.
Or see: speaking in tongues in Christian evangelical groups, and horsing in Vodou where anyone can have the spirits come to them. In these environments, any congregation-member can spontaneously claim divine contact. I’ve been in a meeting where a smug girl from choir channelled the power of Jesus to heal someone’s headache, and irritating as it was at the time – this is a good division of power. Smug choir girl isn’t anyone “special” in the organisation – in fact, I believe their sect don’t let women be priests – but she has the right, ability and confidence to channel the divine & access to its powers. That’s healthy.
Not the only way to solve the problem, but a concept which needs careful handling.
Rotate who people work with
Failure Mode: Carol is your only and primary contact within the group/ you work in a couple with Carol / Carol expects everyone’s primary loyalty to be to her / Carol is the core & hub the coven orbits around.
Success mode: You do divination with Morgan for a month, and then the next month you’re on library-work with Steve, and then you’re working with Carol and Sue on the ritual for Mabon.
A key feature of huge abuse scandals is 20 or 50 or 100 people thinking they were the only one, and feeling like they won’t be believed. Strong relationships with several group members mean a wider network if something seems “off”. Information is less concentrated.
Perhaps Morgan and Steve and Sue all have a funny feeling about Carol. If Carol is the person you do most of your working and communicating with, then you’ll all remain islands. Better to cultivate an atmosphere where perhaps Morgan is closest to Steve, so they have someone to “check out” Carol’s unsettling behaviour with.
The individual is greater than the group
Failure mode: "We cannot let this stain threaten the work of the church! If we don't say anything, our reputation will be intact and no one need ever know"
Success mode: "We run the risk of damaging or even destroying the church. Nevertheless, we have to support and protect our member - it is the right thing to do"
Especially when aspiring to create a tradition, or thinking about a group, it's easy to focus on the big picture at the expense of the little humans who make up your vision. It has always been the way of Great Men who have a vision, a mission, or a dream to sacrifice their footsoldiers for the greater good. That's evil shit, so don't do it
This includes a willingness to shape group practice around its members goals, rather than trying to shape members into what's "correct" for the tradition. This is also about humility: actually, the survival of your religious tradition really isn't all that important, on the grand scheme of things, compared to the wellbeing of those you have taken responsibilty for.
Open Source Ethos
Because I’m too 90s to function. Open Source is about challenging feelings of ownership. You write a Wikipedia page. Someone comes and changes it. Are you angered by the invasion, or uplifted by the collaboration?
The key to not being a shitty coven leader is, I think, the ability to take a step back, and see yourself as someone who is serving your members – rather than members being ritual props in “your” coven.
This means: cultivating a willingness to let go of your material, making space for others to participate in writing rituals, adapting things to members’ needs, seeing it as a collective organisation rather than “yours”, letting it be a living creature. As I said in the introduction, just thinking about this makes me feel pretty pissy about my Imaginary Coven Members changing bits of my Imaginary Liturgy.
There’s a bit of conflict here with something Jennet wrote about people entering new covens and immediately trying to change everything. That sounds extremely irritating! In Guernsey French we have a word broussepier, a verb meaning “to rub a cat’s fur in the wrong direction”. So groups ought to have a core identity, and lines where they say “no – this is a step too far away from our original purpose and practice, you need to explore this on your own”.
It’s back to asking about “proportionate means”:
- Why do we do it the way we do it?
- Why do I feel resistant to this change?
- Is my desire to keep things the same proportionate and legitimate? Or is it coming from a place of envy or control?
Again, I see the primary goal of this process as actively recognising possessive feelings, and encouraging leaders to be aware of their authoritarian tendencies. Once you know they are there, you can challenge them, and hopefully make a better decision with that set to one side. That answer may still be “no, we keep things as they are” or “this is a hereditary trad, our key feature is doing things as they have always been done”. But it is important for that to be a decision from a place of strength, rather than threat.
