Coven of the 13 Moons Update 1/16/08

It has now been 4 months since our Coven has been formed. What started out as just a High Priest (HP) and a High Priestess (HPS) has now grown to 4 Dedicated members plus 4 members working towards their Dedication to the Coven for a Grand Total of 8! In the beginning we had our trials and tribulations with people wanting to join us because they just wanted to be a Witch without the necessary work that comes with it, but they were weeded out and what we were left with is an awesome group of people that I am proud not only to call my Covenmates, but my Family!

We had people wanting to join us because they thought it would be cool to be in a Coven, but again when faced with the amount of work that came with it, stopped participating. We had people try to join under assumed identities just to be assholes & start trouble, but their IP address (their fingerprint of the Internet) gave them away. We had people wanting to join because they thought that a Coven would solve all their issues, but they also were denied because that's not what a true Coven is suppose to do, that's why there are wanna be Covens and Covens for "Fluffy Bunny Pagans". We had people sign up to join, their applications looked great, but they must of gotten cold feet because they never showed up at any meet & greets that we had or once they were accepted, they never responded to any emails or never posted anything, so they were let go. And finally, we had the True Seekers, as Gavin Frost put it as quoted in Ray Buckland's book, Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, "the shining ones--if you are lucky you will find (one or two) who are candidates for a real coven." And Buckland continues to say "These will make it all worthwhile." In our case we have found 6 besides us for again a total of 8!

We have come to a point where now we are going to have the members of our Coven take on certain roles such as Bard, Purse Warden, Wayfarer, and so on. We already had our Maiden, Papisa step up and assume her role to take the place of the HPS for our last Dark Moon Ritual because our HPS, Berkana, was sick. Papisa did a great job leading the Ritual for her first time. This is a direct reflection of the training that she has received, so Kudos goes out to all!

Our Coven is a great mixture of people who said that what drew them to us was the no nonsense approach that we have posted in our description on the various sites that we are on, the DVPN, Witchvox, and Yahoo. It was said to me in the beginning by a former colleague that in my description where I said what kind of person we were looking for was too harsh and very negative. I stood my ground and said that you run your coven your way, and I will run my Coven my way! I don't want or need the drama of people wanting a quick fix to their lives, people that are in this classification only bring negativity to a group. The people that are here now with our Coven again said that the no nonsense approach and the fact that we will accept only people 21 and older was a major plus and that we don't accept people with issues was what they were looking for within a Coven. True Seekers are here to learn, not to be members of an on going Soap Opera. I love the fact that everyone is on the same page and that we all jive. If problems do arise once people are in a Coven, then we will deal with that as it occurs because we are a family now and that's what a family is for.

We are now approaching full capacity. Where a true Coven has 13 members, the practical number lies between 8 and 10 due to space constraints. If all our functions were outside or I owned a huge mansion or a large piece of property that I could build a physical temple on or have enough room for outside Rituals, then we could operate with 13. My hopes are that down the road, I will have enough money saved so that me and my wife could buy some property up the mountains, then we could have a retreat house for the Coven and then we could possibly grow to 13 because all the Rituals would be outside, but for now, I think we will cap off at 8, possibly 10. If we get a person who does knock our socks off, then we would have to figure out a way to include them. In a couple of years when members start to hive off and form their own Covens, then we will have room because our Tradition will have grown and then could start accepting more members, but until then like I said, we will be pretty much at capacity and will literally have a full house. Also before I get attacked with questions about what if a person in the Coven has kids that want to be a part of things, that point is covered within our By-Laws, and in order to see the By-Laws, well you just need be a Coven member to find out.

Blessings of Darkness and Light,

Caedmon
High Priest
Coven of the 13 Moons
NE Philly