Essay Pages

OATHS AND SECRECY IN WICCA

by Adam Pacio
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Wicca is an initiatory mystery tradition with a line of demarcation between coven and cowan separated and enforced by the initiatory oaths. This defines us and separates us from the neopagan groups as a whole, which often results in being misunderstood by the general pagan populace at large -- being labelled elitist, exclusive, or downright snobs. Perhaps Western culture has grown so accustomed to instant gratification that there are many who demand answers and expect them right away. Perhaps the feel-good politics of grade school coupled with the PC movement of college has accustomed us all to a communal level of involvement where all one must do is show up to be accepted and, perhaps, win a trophy. Perhaps there really are Brit Trad Wiccans who *do* feel and parade their ‘superiority’ over the masses of neopagans and this has left a very bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

Whatever the cause, after only a short time as a BTW, initiates are bound to run up against one of those pesky type of pagans who feel slighted by the implicit exclusion that an initiatory mystery tradition creates, and who will often press for information or arguments, testing one of the few boundaries they have likely encountered which did not cave in to an extended temper tantrum. It’s very likely to happen, because even when an Initiate is ‘ closeted’ sometimes a close friend introduces you to their pagan acquaintances and lets slip the fact of your Trad affiliation, effectively painting a target on your chest and tattooing “Bother me, I’m bored,” on your forehead if the newly-met pagan happens to have a bone to pick with Traditions.

DISCARDING SECRECY
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For BTWs who have been called to or chosen to lead a Wiccan life ‘out in the open’, these encounters happen often, and are part of the price that have to be paid in order to answer the urging of the Gods to work in an open fashion among the pagan community. One argument that crops up again and again in a multitude of forums is the argument in favor of discarding secrecy. There are a couple of different incarnations that this argument will take, depending on who you’re dealing with. First, there’s the line that,
“ Everything has been published already, so there’s no use trying to preserve
secrecy.” You can also get, “You’re just keeping secrets because you think you’re better than the rest of us!” And finally, you’ll find the uber-politically-correct line that “Secrets imply dishonesty; you need to ‘ fess up' to your dirty secrets so that you can prove you’re not hiding anything.”

THE WHYS & WHEREFORES
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There are good counter arguments against all of those points and more, but the underlying problem is that few cowans, and regrettably some Wiccans, don’t seem to understand the point and nature of the Oaths in the first place.
In THE SONG OF TALIESIN, by Matthews, the story told by the Bard Taliesin begins with a chapter mentioning his Oaths, and why he keeps them. The Bard refers to the horrors and joys, pains and pleasures which he experienced in his Initiation from the Cauldron of Cerridwen. It is the burden of these memories, not fear, which seals the lips of the Initiate, he claims. This isn’t so very far from the truth, and returns us to the fundamental nature of Wicca as initiatory, and as a mystery tradition. One the one
hand, we create a community through the preservation of secrecy, and it is a community whereby all have passed through the same gateway to enter. This is a place where all have undergone the same trials, and all have partaken of the same experiences. This standard is meant to allow those who have faced personal trials to be able to communicate openly with others who have proven themselves on the same battlefield of the psyche and personal development.
Also as Wiccans, we are a priesthood, and the preservation of the rites and rituals of our heritage is one of our primary duties in the service of our Gods. We are initiated into this priesthood, and our word is our bond to our brethren and our Gods. This oath is sacred. It is not a pact of the profane, it is holy in the sense that we have stated wherein lies our faith and what we offer to Their service. These answers are secondary, though. It is hard for someone on the outside to comprehend the sanctity of word or the communal bonds created by the Oaths we take. The true test of them lies in the second portion, the Mystery of the mystery tradition.

EMPTY WORDS
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‘ We had the experience/ but missed the meaning./ And an approach to the meaning/ restores the experience in a different form.’ - CATS, T.S. Elliot, A.L. Webber, T. Rice.

“ For there is no way to communicate an experience in words to those who have not already had the experience – or at least something somewhat like it, to be referred to by analogy.” - ORIENTAL MYTHOLOGY, Joseph Campbell.

Mystery is, in itself, ineffable. It cannot be expressed, only experienced, internalized, and demonstrated through example for those who will not or cannot approach it. We as BTWs have approached the Mysteries of our tradition, which are cosmic Mysteries pertinent to all of life, across culture and across era, in the same spirit by which the Mysteries of the Ancient civilizations operated as well. It is nothing less than the encounter with what lies ‘beyond’, expressed in symbolic terms and undergone as a willing participant which is encapsulated by each of what we call ‘degrees’. The exposure and the experience are granted in a matter of hours, give or take. The internalization, what Elliot refers to as the ‘approach to the meaning’ take much, much longer.
It speaks eloquently that some of the older Elders of Wicca still continue to return to something as basic and fundamental as the Mysteries of 1st Degree. Men and women who have been practicing Wicca longer than I’ve been alive –still- manage to find relevant epiphanies from the Mysteries which *started* them on their Path. It is truly as though they have drunk of the greal of Cerridwen (to borrow a mythic reference), for a single taste from Her cauldron replenishes and nourishes the spirit for an entire lifetime, and perhaps beyond into the lifetimes to come.

CONTEXT IS KING
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“ Well, if I’m not going to understand it, then why do you need to keep it secret?” comes the practiced rejoinder. The response to that one is simply, “Context.” One of the other underlying faulty assumptions of the agenda’d cowans is that the possession of the Book of Shadows somehow confers the secrets of the Tradition. Experience in BTW will show concerned Initiates that this simply isn’t so.
Returning to T.S. Elliot’s quote, we find the two missing elements which possession of written work, grimoires, and liturgy cannot impart – the experience of the work, and the meaning which underlies it. In BTW terms, this refers to Practice as a whole, including the experience of the Mysteries within the Degrees, and it also refers to the underlying meanings and explanations which our forebears in their wisdom did not write down. We call this ‘Oral Lore’. Without the experience and the meaning, the rites are incomplete. The context is removed, and the understanding, the synergistic Whole is lost. Without the overarching context, the tradition can be misunderstood. Elephant parts instead of an elephant.

Secrecy, then, preserves the whole. It ensures that those who are honest Seekers will not be poisoned by encountering out-of-context parts and practices, that the system continues as it was designed. Without the teacher to guide the Initiate, without the oral lore to clarify meaning, the experience of the degree and the Mystery contained within cannot be approached a second time to be ‘restored in a different form’. The draught of wisdom then comes not from the Eternal which sustains and fulfills the spirit throughout this lifetime, but instead comes from the fey, the food that once tasted instills in the eater a hunger for more which will consume them from the inside out, devouring the very spirit originally intended to be nourished, until the person can be driven away from this Path, insane with envy, or a victim to bitter anger of disappointment as the forbidden fruit continually eludes them.

Why not share if you cannot understand? For the same reason that not many Math professors spend time trying to teach Calculus in kindergartens -- no preparation, no context, & no understanding possible.

THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
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Occasionally Initiates will run into someone who not only has an agenda or a bone to pick with the traditional Wiccans, but also suffers from the delusions that they have exposed the ‘real’ truth, and seen beyond the ‘ smoke and mirrors’ that BTW employs in the name of self aggrandizement. These are the ones who view the Traditional Craft as some sort of encounter in Oz, with the man behind the curtain putting on a show at being a wizard. They may hail from different Mystery schools (Masonry, fraternal
organizations, a different religious Path), or they may have been involved in some sort of Craft scandal with their training and been let go, or asked to move on, and now bear a grudge. These proponents of discarding secrecy or abandoning the oaths may be very eloquent, but one thing tends to be in common with them all… they suffer from an unbalanced sort of understanding, exposed to a cosmic Truth without the proper preparation, training, or support to approach or at times even be aware of the Mystery which underlies it.

The need for preparation and proper context when approaching an institutionalized Mystery cannot be stressed enough. To spout the deeper truths and try to reference an experience your audience has not had can result in interfering with their orderly spiritual growth, leading them to apprehend a portion of cosmic wisdom but only from one dimension of understanding, to the exclusion and blinding of the other ways of knowing, resulting in a skewed perception and practice, and completely missing the
point.

The statues of Aset (Isis) were veiled in Egypt for a reason. Not to keep the features of the statue’s face a secret, but because we as mortals enter the Sacred initially unprepared for the experiences or consequences of encounters with the Divine face to face. The secrecy, the oaths of binding, are not to prohibit and preserve for the sake of elitism and secrecy itself, but are instead meant to protect and channel, to allow the wiser to guide the newer, to allow the honest Seeker to be understood in her sincerity,
before forcing an encounter with Divine Unknowable Beyond upon a psyche which could possibly be unready, and ill equipped to deal with it.

Actaeon encountered the Goddess Artemis in her bath while he was hunting, and because he approached the Goddess directly and unready, out of proper context and consecration, he was turned into a stag and his own hounds fell upon him to tear him to shreds. The Tower in the Tarot is the card of the lightning flash of illumination, which destroys all which has come before. It comes near the end of the cycle of the Fool’s Journey, for it is only – after- proper preparation that the soul is prepared to endure this trial.

Indeed, it is only after experiencing the whole cycle prior to the Tower that the encounter has a chance of being survived. How irresponsible would we be, as Initiates, if we allowed Seekers to rush into things they were not spiritually ready for? How pleased would our Gods be if we trivialized the journey we ourselves had to take to encounter Them fully by simply ushering in the profane for a cosmic peep-show? The Oaths preserve and contain that level of decorum and prudence, by forcing a process upon all those who wish to follow where we have gone. They also force us to lead only over territory we ourselves have trod, so that we may not bring our students and other brethren into places of danger or paths untried. Why, then, would we flap at the mouth to any and all revealing things currently bound by oaths and potentially muddying the waters further still? It is a hard enough Path to undertake from Seeker to Initiate,
without littering the ground with yet more confusion, lies, and half-truths.

BEHIND THE VEILS
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Secrecy and oathbinding are necessary. They are the Veils behind which the glory of our Gods shines through. The truth of the matter is that Divinity and Mystery are not wholly of this plane, and as such, they will appear veiled whenever they manifest. By speaking freely or revealing too much of that which is hidden and bound by our oaths, all we do is let loose a bit of that Mystery which will, according to cosmic law, simply veil itself in another way by the very nature of what it is. We do no favors by breaking our Oaths, regardless of the consequences or our obligations to the priests and the Gods who we serve. We may think we are ripping off the Veil to reveal the Truth behind it, but all we do is force obfuscation of a different kind. Better to approach the Mystery shrouded by the veil of secrecy, than to wrestle with the Mystery obscured by the veils of half-truths, whole lies, illusions and misperceptions.

Our oaths are our community. They define our boundaries, and allow us to recognize who is prepared to deal with the Divine illumination that is reflected in our understandings and experiences, our delving into the Mysteries. The Oaths encircle us and allow us freedom to grow and share responsibly, and maintain the sense of security that, by honoring the Words we have sworn to Gods and Men, we will not be contributing to the diffusion, dilution, or destruction of the Path that must be trod by all sincere Seekers who follow after us.

The sanctity of my pact, the knowledge and wisdom tempered by training and experience, overshadowed by the ecstasy of the remembered encounters with the Divine; all of this contributes to my preservation of my Oaths. I don’t care for secrecy for its own sake, nor do I find myself or any other oathbound brother or sister of the Art to be better or superior in any way to another practitioner of the magical arts. But no matter how logical the argument against secrecy, or how persuasive the speaker who admonishes abandoning the practice of binding by Oath, the necessity of the Oaths will
never be truly abolished.

© 2003, Adam Pacio published with permission.The Covenant of Twilight Circle

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