Not a Real Coven?

Not a real coven?

M, (Name withheld to minimize her embarrassment) the self-described witch queen of Warner-Robins has been telling people that the Circle of the Dark Moon is not a real coven, that only she and her husband are true witches, and that our circle is a bunch of upstarts. She’s been discouraging people from attending our classes, signing up for our meetup.com group, and has even threatened members of her own coven with "warlocking" (never seen the term used as a verb before) if they have anything to do with us.

Sounds like somebody’s worried and it isn’t anyone from our circle.

The Oxford Unabridged dictionary succinctly defines a coven thus:

Coven

/kuvv’n/

• noun a group of witches who meet regularly.
• — ORIGIN variant of archaic covin ‘band of people’, from Latin convenire ‘come together’.

Not necessarily an endorsement of being a coven or not but let’s examine what as a group, the Circle of the Dark Moon has accomplished.

• Formed an open circle which welcomes all who have a sincere desire to honor the Lord and the Lady.
• Conduct regular rituals for Sabbats and Esbats as well.
• Established the Dark Moon Tradition (well technically it’s not a tradition yet—we’re shy one circle from being able to call ourselves a true tradition.)
• Opened a Wiccan training school that features classes on a wide array of subjects. See our curriculum page or our classes page for further information about our training courses.
• Initiated the Dark Moon Alliance which is a cooperative outreach program that encompasses circles/covens in the states of Georgia, Indiana, and Ohio.
• Expanded our classroom into the virtual realm where we now offer internet classes via TeamSpeak.
• Established an affiliation with the Aquarian Tabernacle Church.

While it is true that we don’t walk on water. We don’t need to. The seas part before us instead.

Now let’s look at what a ‘real coven’ does according to M.

· Practices secrecy for the sake of secrecy because all those rabid Christians and their witch-hunter friends are out to get you.

Uh huh. M, I bet you’re really sorry that you’re not living in the 15^th century. At least if that were true, then some of your paranoia would be justified.

· Tries to schedule her events to overlap established event dates for other groups.

Unfortunately for you, M, our coven (ooh there I used the word) has so many events, you go ahead and knock yourself out trying to block our dates. Your group really doesn’t have that many events—and oh wait they’re secret anyway (no admittance without someone to vouch for you.) And we all thought that republicans came up with the idea for vouchers.

· Uses her coven to “shop new bods” for her polyamory group.

This last point I really don’t understand. In these days of teacher/student sex scandals (how come I never had any teachers like that when I was in school?), I have to wonder isn’t she worried about someone with a more malicious bent than me sending an email link to her polyamory site to all the local school boards? I can imagine if someone did that M would have a lot more time on her hands to manage her coven. That could be a good and a bad thing.

As I said above M is worried. And I don’t see why. The pagan community can only benefit from having more and more open groups to choose from. Or as one of my teachers remarked why choose? Study everything. Try many paths. As someone wiser than me pointed out—that the pagan community has enough problems without fighting amongst ourselves. I guess we could join the Christians if we wanted to do that.

I already see some positives from having more than one coven in the area:

• M has been forced to bring her group out of the broom closet. Albeit she's only cracked the door ajar. But it's a start. She had to do that out self-preservation since her group suffers from flagging numbers. It doesn't matter if have 102 members, if only 29 of them are active. Our circle has 34 active members, 13 active members in the Akron extension, and another 48 (although the counts from the Alliance website are flaky at best) members from the Dark Moon Alliance.
  
• M has started giving classes (at 2:00 PM Sundays--opposite my internet classes of course. ) She only began giving classes since the word spread of the success of the Circle of the Dark Moon's instruction program. Ah well, it's true that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Ultimately after we’ve laid our wands and athames aside, it’s about serving the Lord and the Lady, about knowing your craft and attuning to nature, and about finding your own path and your own enlightenment.

Enlightenment isn’t a competition, it’s a cooperation.