Coven Forming

So, you want to start a coven, do you? It's going to be ever so much fun! Casting your spells in your beautiful Temple while the full Moon shines through the skylight, candles glowing and athame points glittering, as you dance the Circle in your black hooded robes with silver embroidery. The High Priestess lifts the jeweled chalice, and-
REALITY CHECK!!!! Chances are that you won't have a beautiful Temple. It's kind of expensive to get robes. Sure, you all have athames. And the Moon is always visible when it's full, right?
Wrong. So very, very wrong. What do you think this is, 'The Craft'? Are you telling me that ALL of your group convenently is the correct Element and everything? And that you'll have a room where candles cover every flat surface and you have each and every tool you can think of? Excuse me for a moment. *goes off into another room. Maniacal laughter may be heard. Returns* Okay. Now, I'm afraid that I have to dispell (ha, ha) some of those wonderful dreams.
First, it's very, very rare that a coven of Witches in our age group will have a nice and attractive Temple. Or even a regular ritual space. If you're lucky, or you have a member with parents who are accepting, and can keep their mouths shut, you might have a space. But probably not. And even if you can have a ritual space, it probably won't seem all that magical. At the best, if it's a room you can use as long as you need, there will be furniture you don't want but can't get rid of. If you're lucky, there'll be space for a permanent altar with candles and tools on it at all times. The altar will get messy. Wax drips and makes huge piles of colorful encrustations. Incense ash accumulates.
And the floor is very important. A cement floor is good, because it can be easily cleaned. Stay away from nice carpets if you are in the habit of carrying flame to all the candles in the room with one taper. Hope for luck and a cement floor - it's a bugger when you're barefoot, but it saves shouting.
The truly blessed will have walls that face the cardinal directions, and small tables that may be used as Elemental altars. It's not very often that you can have a big pentacle chalked or painted on the floor.
If you're lucky. Lots of us are not. And, if you're lucky enough to have the above things, good old Karma will step in and blight you with something else. Which brings me to Point Two.
Your coveners might not get along. There might be some who are the best of friends (hopefully a lot of them), and some who hate the others. One might be a white-lighter, another a fluffbunny, and yet another wants to curse everyone.
The trick is in balance. I'll get to that. But I must tell you a tale of a coven that was consumed by a cancer, fell to its knees, and excised its tumor and rose from ruin. I should be able to tell it quite well. It's the one I belong to. I call it...

How Not To Run Things

Imagine, if you will, a small town in southern Ontario, home to the Coven of the Silver Dragon and the Temple of De'eme. This needs explanation. The two groups are run by the same person, and operate like a church. The Coven is like a youth group, and the Temple is a formal church. The whole thing consists of five regulars:
High Priestess Silver Dawn (SD)
Priestess Silver Mist (Mist)
Silver Moon (Moon)
Silver Knight (Knight)
Myself, Silverfire Darkmoon
You may have noticed the 'Silver' thing, yes? There is a reason. It was a Coven guideline, suggested to give a sense of unity. I suggested it to SD, and she rather liked it. We have since done away with the guideline for certain reasons.
Anyway. All of them but me constituted the Coven, and we were all the Temple. I generally came along to both, because SD brought me around to socialize (she was, and happily still is, my best friend) and to help with what I knew. I knew them all well enough, although I didn't know Knight as well then as I do now. Every Friday, we would ride the bus to SD's house after school, and talk about Witchy things for about an hour, and hang out the rest of the time. Despite Mist and Moon not knowing much about the hows and whys of magic, I liked them as friendly aquainances.
The coven worked well enough, as far as I know; I only went to two meetings. One was when they initiated Silver Knight, the other was when we went to Silver Mist's house. That time, nothing got done, and me and Dawn went out to look at essential oils at Shopper's Drug Mart.
And so things went along. On October 26 me, Dawn, and Knight cleaned up a room in Dawn's basement, moved the altar down there, and filled the room with candlelight. It was at first rather crude, us having a few cheap votives on the altar and not much else, but on Samhain it was pure magic - Dawn had curtained the room off from the stairs, and I had bought even more candles and holders - a load of white pillars for general illumination, some metallic tapers for the altar, nice glass holders with veins of the Elemental colors, and iron holders supported by pentagrams for the God and Goddess. It was rather expensive. But the time we put into it was worth even more. We spent an hour putting a Pentacle on the floor with silver duct tape, and we cleaned everything - the tables, the couch, the bookshelves, and the altar. We washed the floor twice with bleach to remove negative energies and get rid of the smell of mould. We lit some incense and talked about the problems we had been having with some of the coveners, Mist and Moon. They had been rather disruptive of late, we felt, and it seemed that they had a definite dislike of me, which I found very difficult to understand because I had always enjoyed being around them and thought of them as friends. Yes, they annoyed me at times when they didn't feel like doing ritual or anything, and the 'Mabon Fiasco' when they decided to go to the fair instead of the Sabbat was rather vexing, but that was the way they were. More irritating was their abiding need for cigarettes. I actually used them for a clock one day - every ten minutes they would go outside for a smoke. I was the only one in the group who didn't smoke or drink. Mist, Moon, and Knight also did pot, which I disagreed with, because the Book of Shadows teaches us that being even slightly confused made it impossible to control the powers you raised. I was also miffed at the fact that I was apparently an outsider. At one point they said I shouldn't read the Coven Book of Shadows because I wasn't inthe coven, which perplexed me because there was hardly anything in it at the time and what was in there I had knowledge of already, and they had never bothered looking though it. Also, any ideas that I had were shot down. If I suggested that we raise power, they felt too tired. If Dawn wanted to do a spell, they felt they didn't need to because they were too powerful for that, or the Gods would do it for them (what, and the Gods don't help those who help themselves?). Mist appeared to be having 'visions' left and right, and said she had spoken with a Mut (an ancient Egyptian creature in Anubis' service who devoured the souls of sinners) and had been dead for two hours. She also said she was the personification of Epona, the Celtic horse Goddess. Worst of all, she said I had no right to have 'silver' in my Craft name. This needs a bit of explaining.
First off, there was the coven name, Coven of the SIlver Dragon. Not that original, but oh well. I had a neat little idea for Dawn. I suggested that it would be an interesting little coven tradition of having 'silver' in the names of the members. Not a requisite, just a little suggestion that could provide a sense of coven unity and tradition. She thought it was a great idea, and instituted it.
Now, I came across my magical name in an interesting fashion. I wrote down all the 'name components' I liked, words like 'ash' and 'feather' and 'moon' and 'fire' and so on. I put these in a bag and drew them out in pairs. I put them together with tape and tossed them back into the bag, and dew one and then the other. The first was 'Silverfire' and the second was 'Darkmoon'. This is odd because these describe me rather well. My favorite metal is silver, I can't stand to wear gold. And I'm a Leo, the cardinal Fire sign. The concept of a silver flame is sort of interesting, isn't it? As for 'darkmoon', well, it provides a nice balance to the brightness of the fire aspect of the first name, does it not?
Mist objected to this because she thought 'silver' was only for women. She also objected because it was a 'coven thing'. Never mind that it was a 'coven thing' I thought up, it was just plain nasty of me!
More came at Moon's ordination (an ordination that had been pressed on Dawn, but that's another story). Moon was made a Priestess (despite the fact that they already had Mist, who was supposed to fill the role) and after the short ceremony we sat down in the Temple (at the time it was in Dawn's TV room) for a discussion. About me, it turned out.
Mist and Moon felt that I was being far too autocratic. I thought I called all the shots, apparently, and I had insulted them time and time again. On September 8th, when Dawn ordinated me as Priest for the Temple, I had turned to clean up the ritual area and had thoughtlessly asked Mist of set up the altar, and had then said she'd done it all wrong and rearranged it (nevermind the fact that Mist, it seemed, had no idea of how to do such a thing). I had ordered her around like a slave (asking nicely for her to ring a bell while invoking Water is slavery, it seems). I also had the audacity to doubt her when she talked about the 'astral' things she had done. Everything she had seen (a wide, wide variety of things, such as Elliot smacking people she didn't like around, Sam walking around making faces at us, her own death while listening to The Host of Seraphim by Dead Can Dance, a Mut, etc) had been gone over before, and I was mean enough to take what she said with a grain of salt. If Christianity has taught me everything, it is not to accept everything someone tells you as truth. I didn't accept everything she said as Gospel because it sounded to preposterous. I don't really believe it when someone says she sees the Gods left and right, making them do things for her, like helping with math problems or having a pencil roll off a table. Such activities didn't strike me as very reverent. She said she had the right to do these things because she was Elliot's daughter, as she said.
And on and on it went. For about an hour and a half, I was subjected to a quick succession of strident statements regarding my stupidity, cruelty, rudeness, and self-importance. I was so full of myself, I made the posturings of power-mad emperors look humble. Battery after battery of pre-loaded grapeshot tore apart the thin defences I hastened to construct. It was like the Inquisition. I was given no chance to say anything in my own defence.
Then, after the last cloud of pent-up loathing had been fired, and we adjourned, me feeling pretty low, it happened. I was sitting in the gazebo with Dawn and Mist. Mist delivered the most vile epithet against me I could imagine at the time.
She said I was 'from Sam.' She implied that I was a Christian spy! Me, the person who despises Christianity for what it has done to he people of the world! I actually reeled. I felt physically sick. I wanted to vomit. I hardly paid attention to Dawn's defending of my position, and I numbly left the gazebo for the room with the altar. Dawn asked me to tell Moon that she was wanted. I was hoping for silence and solitude. Knight and Moon were in there, and I told Moon that Dawn wantd her. I told Knight was had happened, and I sank down into deep thought.
Clearly, this had been in the works for quite some time. I understood if Dawn had kept this from me. Evidently secret discussions had been going on, and I knew that if they had been told to Dawn with confidence, they were to remain in confidence until the confiders were ready. I might even have forgiven the long, abusive tirade against me, but the last revelation was too much to bear.
I never found out what Dawn said to Mist and Moon in the gazebo, and I doubt I ever will. SOme things are destined to remain secret.
Secretly, I began gathering my grievances against Mist and Moon, and I sent out small feelers to monitor the political climate in the group. Knight, I found, had sometimes felt the same as I did. I slowly found that Dawn was frequently annoyed at their activity and their claims. However, it was next to impossible to get at her when Mist and Moon were not around. Every time they came to Dawn's house for Temple, I actually felt a wave of depression wash over me. I became miserable in their presence, wondering what they were thinking, and if they were plotting again to destroy my reputaion in the group. When I could talk to Dawn alone, I did, and she agreed with me about a few of my points.
The night we set up the Temple came. Knight and I stayed at Dawn's. We had noticed earlier that Mist and Moon hardly ever went into the basement. They said they felt an 'evil presence' because the dog never went down there. They failed to note that the basement was the realm of the cat, Ewok (or Eee Eee, or Veev, or Yub Yub, or Eee, and so on. We plan to make him the Temple familiar eventually). The only reason they would go down there was to play a song they made up.
Moon would play the guitar, and Mist would play the drums. Together they would sing this repetitive song. Moon has a nice singing voice, but their lyrics were horrible:
Why does the world suck so fucking much?
Fuck you, God! Fuck you, God!
And so on. There were lines that Sam had 'stolen their daughters' and that 'Xastur is their friend now, and she's faithful and true.' I must explain this. Xastur is a being from the Simon Necronomicon, a 'foul Demoness who slays Men in their Sleep, and devours that which she will.' They never found that out. They thought Xastur was a Goddess, but I can't remember how they came by this. The fact remains that it is dead wrong.
Anyway, they would go into the basement and sing this song. They wrote the words down and left them in the room which was destined to be the Temple (which was alos where they played their music). That night, Knight, Dawn, and I had listened to this song a lot, and I had endured a bit of abuse from Mist and Moon. This time, it was about how my life was so much better compared to theirs. Obviously, having your mother die when you are seven isn't much important compared to your father when you are ten or so (as was the case with Mist). She didn't know anything about my life, but she decided her life was full of horror and depression. I was also weary of having to move stuff aside in the TV room for ritual. So, I suggested, after Mist and Moon had left, that we clean out the room where they made their 'music'. It could be a two-pronged attack, I reasoned. We would have an attractive, permanent Temple, and we could put the musical instruments away so they would never find them and not be able to play them.
The words to the song were a casualty to the garbage bag. A lot was. The cleaning took us three hours, from two in the morning to five thirty in the morning. We breathed a sigh of contentment, and let out some happy laughter. We talked about the things that annoyed us about Mist and Moon, and said that we never would have been able to clean the room with them there...or at least, they would have been no help. They would have complained about boredom, or tiredness, or we didn't need to do it, or why should they do it? They were Goddesses, after all. The Monday after, I went with Dawn and I bought more candles and things.
Wednesday, Samhain. Mist spent the day with Dawn to prepare. We came to Dawn's house ready for a feast that was to be prepared, and to mourn the passing of the God, in the inaugral ritual of the Temple.
It was practically magical. The room was ablaze with fifty dollars worth of candles, the pentacle on the floor gave its muted reflection and the CD player whispered at us with the beautiful, repeated Chant of the Paladin by Dead Can Dance. We didn't use The Host of Serpahim because the effect we feared it would have on Mist. We wore black, or as close to black as we could get. The ritual started.
First, I raised the Circle. Mist and Moon were interrupted in their private conversation by the tip of a wooden sword passing between them. Dawn told me to call Gwynn app Nudd from the West to enter the Circle. I went and was blocked by Mist, and asked her to move. She treated me to a stare of ignorance and rage that I dare ask her something. The look quite clearly said 'How dare you speak to me, you little worm?' I waved her aside and called the Wild Hunt. I was shaking with rage now. Mist and Moon were having a nice little discussion about something. Reverence seemed to be called for, but I dared not say anything.
Did I mention that they said absolutely nothing about our fabulous new Temple?
Afterwards, a few days later, Dawn called me with frantic news. Mist and Moon had decided to leave and start their own coven. The Gods had told them to do it, it seemed. Heedless of the fact that they knew next to nothing, or that you need three people to be a coven, they leapt wildly into the gulf of leadership they knew nothing about.
A few days later, they totally threw everything we taught them out the window. They said that Elliot was mean and nasty, and that Sam was a nice person, and that a cult had been trying to brainwash them.
Oooo-kay.
So, me and Dawn and Knight were on our own, just barely a group. We stopped calling ourselves a coven and began calling ourselves the Temple of De'eme. My name was put in the front page of the coven Book of Shadows and the wayward Witches' names were crossed out. On Yule we renovated the Temple again, adding Elemental altars and tidying things up a bit. Dawn changd her name from Silver Dawn to Simbi Dawn, reflecting her interest in Vodou. Knight changed his name to Absinthe Zonbi. It turned out that Mist and Moon had chosen the name for him. Absinthe's attendance was sporadic, but to fill the gap, we gained a new member, Kali, Air of Vivacity. Kali is very entertaining, and actually gave us Yule presents, which we hadn't thought of. Me and Simbi got gifts for her and Absinthe, but receiving gifts hadn't crossed our minds. In February we grew again, with the addition of Chasca Bluestar. Me and Simbi made ourselves robes which make us feel rather professional. And Simbi set up a series of altars to the lwa.
And then we found out that Mist was very, very sick. It also turned out that the reason for their sudden hatred for us was very close to home.
Absinthe had been on MSN with Mist, masquerading as Simbi. He'd said a lot of nasty things, and they had decided to go because of what they thought Simbi was saying.
And now? Well, Mist is still recovering, and we think that they'll come back. But this time, Simbi has decided that they'll have to actually learn what they need to know, including the fine art of responsibility and taking care of yourself. Simbi has quit smoking, and we hope that Mist and Moon will do the same. We also hope that they won't do any more drugs. And that they'll treat people and the Gods with more respect, and learn some ethics, starting with 'an it harm none, do what ye will.'
We hope.
March 8, 2001
Well, just after I wrote this stuff, we had Temple. In attendance were me, Simbi, and Kali. We have decided that Absinthe will not come to Temple again, and we also found that Mist doesn't want to be friends with Simbi after all. We've also decided that we'e going to start up the coven again, and do the Temple thing later, when we've got more people. And we think we're going to do alright...it's just that the Temple was more of a sort of 'church' thing, and the coven will probably be like a youth group. We want to teach each other about herbalism and divination, cord and candle magic, the use of poppets, and so on. More of the practical stuff, since Kali and Chasca don't know all that much about actual spellcasting, and they need to learn. Think of it as a kind of educational institute.

Well, there it is...a short history of the group to which I belonged. It's not pretty, I know. I realized that almost immediately, when I asked for admission into the coven and was shot down by Mist and Moon without Dawn's consent. I saw the power issues. I saw a lot. Dawn saw it too, but she didn't want to destroy her friendship with Moon and Mist, and I didn't want to force her to choose between me and them.
As for running a coven, I have one very important suggestion. Read Covencraft by Amber K. It deals entirely with running a coven, and tells you ideas for setting up a covenstead, finding new members, and more. I think it's a must-have for anyone considering starting a coven or joining one.
Aside from that, I think that you should have clearly defined roles, and making sure that everyone does their duty. That means that the Priest and Priestess clean up the ritual area, with the Maiden, if you have such a role. Everyone obeys the HPs in coven matters, and her decisions are final. If there is a need for change, first talk it over with the people who need changing, and choose a new HP/s by vote, or the Maiden and Summoner take on the roles. Do your best to ensure that there is a coven Book of Shadows, and have everyone copy it out into theirs, or another book. Have different religious texts. This way you can fight fundamentalism efficiently. Have at least one Bible. Have at least one person who knows it well.

Those Damned Fundamentalists!
The fundamentalist is the coven's worst enemy, and you have to be able to quell them. In the event this happens, and your group is under attack, you might face violent discrimination, spying, and more. If everyone in the coven is out of the broom closet, then they've lost one way of attack and gained another: They can't destroy a family or friendship through forced un-closeting, but you'll be public.
You can try and fight fire with fire. Invite them for an inter-faith meeting. Chances are you won't have company, but if it makes you look more open, credible, and friendly, go ahead. If the community dosen't like the attacks on their Witch friends, it's all the better for you! Make sure that the town knows what Witches really are! If you have a few public Sabbats and Esbats, and people see that there's no black goats, descration of the Host, reciting prayers backwards, and other things linked to a Black mass, how will they react? If nobody gets sacrificed on an altar that isn't a naked woman, and the knives are blunt, and you wear green or blue robes, what evidence have they? What can they do if everything seems perfectly nice and happy? Granted, I don't think skycladding would be good in these circumstances, and the symbolic Great Rite may be a better choice, and the scourge could be put away for a short time, but you don't have to use them all the time, do you? Or you could forget about them. Invoking the Horned One might be a bad idea. Try 'Green Man' or 'Antlered One' or something.
Another choice besides complete openness is to vanish. Sink underground, and follow what the Book of Shadows says. Don't speak of the Craft, don't let on that you're in a coven. Whenever discussion of Witches comes up, speak of wizened hags on broomsticks, or the sexy Witches on TV.
Possibly, a public-awareness campaign might help. Speak of the Burning Times. Tell people about the Inquisition. Let everyone know what really happened in Salem. And make sure that the town knows about what happened to Tempestt Smith. Run classes, have public rituals, and be as nice to everyone as you possibly can to make yourself look good, happy, and caring. Write letters to the newspaper. Go on public-access TV or on the radio. Publish pamphlets. Contact anti-discrimination organizations, like the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) if you live in the US. When something pisses you off with its misinformation, make a fuss and let your voice be heard! Get on the town council, have inter-faith meetings and go to inter-faith meetings, and DON'T BE WIERD Don't do the Laurie Cabot thing and prance about in a black robe with a broom. Don't talk about the secret messages only you recieve, act like yourself and not like the stereotype. In other words, don't be a sellout. If you acted like this because it's the way you really are, then get on people's good sides and be the 'town characters'. And don't be a fluff-bunny. Don't go on about how Nature Is Wonderful and that the Goddess's Creatures Are Love. Nature is nasty too, sometimes worse than people. A hurricane give shit-all about the spotted owls in the forest it levels. A lightning bolt could care less about the fish it zaps when it hits the sea. The Goddess is the rose, the puffy cloud, and the Moon, but she is also the thorn, the pile of manure, and the bloody fang. That's what a Dark Goddess and Crone are for. The same for the Dark God - he is Death, Anubis, Hades, Set, and so on. 'I am the death that must be so that life may continue, for behold, life is immortal because the living must die.'

Hmmm. That was rather bilious, wasn't it? Sad but true.

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