Secrecy in the Old Craft
By Niklas Gander
April 3, 2005

“Hey, let me show you what I got just the other day,” my friend of 16 years told me in his living room. “It’s really complete, and it’s been edited with footnotes by this guy named Niklas!”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked. My mind was racing, as I knew there were precious few traditional Crafters that shared my name.

“Yeah! Here. Check this out,” he said. I thumbed through pages that I was all too familiar with, since I was the person who had originally compiled the version of the (non-Feri) Book of Shadows that he was exhibiting to me. How did this Book get out of my control? How did it make it into lineages that I’m not even connected with? How did it even make it out of my own personal coven? Questions for another day, I’m afraid. It seems in this day of information technology, this kind of situation is endemic. Books of Shadows can be downloaded from the internet by folks who aren’t even initiated, never mind affiliated with the traditions that I have worked.

But, you may ask, what’s the big deal? Aren’t we past the days of persecution, when having someone’s personal Book of Shadows would incriminate both the holder and the writer? Isn’t it wonderful to be able to share freely the lore that we have, to enrich the greater Craft community?

That’s what I’d like to address in this little missive to my Feri community. If we are indeed past the Great Persecution, then why not share our Secrets widely? If the True Mysteries cannot ever really be told, only experienced, then what’s the big deal about sharing rituals, initiations, transformative rites with anyone who happens to show an interest? On the other hand, who does it serve to share lore indiscriminately with people ill-equipped to handle that lore, and unable to appreciate the years of work and ritual intimacy that it takes to prepare one for that lore? How can we be certain that those we share lore with are of the type of people that we can trust with it, that we can trust that they will know how to hand it on with integrity and respect for its power, who can truly even understand its power apart from wherever else they may have “read” it?

I remember when Janet and Stewart Farrar published the dual volumes The Witches’ Way and Eight Sabbats for Witches. I thought at the time that it was tremendously daring that traditional Witches would publish what they claimed were secret passages from their own Book of Shadows. At that time, it was purely from a perspective of oath-keeping that I held this attitude.

Then I saw the result it was having in the larger Craft community. People were reading these books and thinking that they indeed understood the experience of this material without ever having undergone any of it. It was all based on a cursory reading of it, and not an experience of it. As a result, many “eclectic” (book-based) practitioners were left with the idea that they knew enough about Traditional Craft that the experience of it was left redundant. They already had “the idea” of what the ritual was all about. Why bother to experience it in a larger traditional context, when they could rewrite it and create an all-new and improved version that no one had ever seen? As a result, many have “adopted” traditional material without the experience of traditional ritual to inform it. Many have developed such overwhelming confidence in their “knowledge” that Wicca and Witchcraft generally threaten to become just as monolithic as Christianity has been during the last millennium, when doctrinal knowledge squelched the mysteries to be found in personal ritual experiences.

I’m troubled. I feel I can no longer share my secrets, my passages from my Book of Shadows, with someone with whom I do not share an initiatory and instructive tie. Why? Because too often (read: Always) it becomes a file folder or a section in a three-ring binder, a curiosity, that then gets handed on without any attempt to understand either the experience or the spirit in which it was handed on: from closely-held and treasured tradition to profaned, commercial-grade curiosity.

And what about those folks whose interpretation of their oaths permit them to share more liberally than I would myself? How long does it take for me to get to know someone’s intention before I can actually share in good conscience? How long does it take to prevent my friend (who has no Craft initiatory connection with me) from having a closely held BoS carefully redacted by me and showing it to me in all ignorance?

Then there’s that sticky wicket called “ego-gratification.” How many times are we tempted to share with others something that is “just so cool?” Do we wish to impress someone by sharing with them lore that we might have created, or perhaps that we might have redacted? I remember talking to a Craft High Priestess in New York who once told me that she wanted to share traditional material with a particular someone only because he was a Big Name in the community, and wanted his adulation. She regretted it later, just as I have regretted sharing material with some folks before I knew thoroughly their intention.

What is it that is to regret? The loss of the opportunity for someone to experience a rite without preconceptions about what it is “supposed” to be; the misunderstanding of the written word when the experience within ritual would have clarified its intent; the revelation of lore outside of a training context, thus making that lore just one more piece of lore for a file cabinet or three-ring binder, not even grasping its original meaning or intent. And finally there is regret at making a chance for the satisfaction of real intimacy into some kind of intellectualized informational commodity.

Perhaps more than any other tradition, Feri is an Oral Tradition. What’s that mean? I personally think that it means that in order to really grok the “information” you’ve got to undergo the “experience.” That’s not something that is possible just by reading a book, or some poetry, though that might help. Ultimately, there’s a relationship with the lineage that is made with the connection to a teacher, one whom you’ve evaluated and found wise and careful.

So, I’m thinking that sharing lore is vastly overrated. The real truth comes from our interactions with God Herself, and with our own Holy Guardian Angel, our personal Muse. If we find that we have connections with Feri brothers and sisters, then we can circle together and get to know each other and share accordingly. But I no longer feel any expectation to share the lore that I have won through hard work and sweat with someone just because they claim kinship or just because they ask. That is not helping my brothers and sisters of the Craft. That is only harming them.

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