Ritornare a la Voce di Nox
The purpose of this page is not an act of retribution to any of the involved people, but to serve as a warning to other practitioners who are looking for guidance on their path.
If you are interested in joining the NROOGD community in general, or a specific teaching coven in the San Francisco Bay Area, please contact me!
The people at the festival were very friendly, and though the planning for the ritual, we found out, did not go very smoothly, the ritual itself was wonderfully done. While there, one of the vendors mentioned that he would be starting a NROOGD teaching circle and invited the group of friends with whom I was attending to participate in the teaching circle, if we were interested. Several of us from this group were interested in learning a Tradition, as we had been practicing with a Reclaiming influence, but not with any specific Tradition in mind.
I only had the opportunity to ask one other NROOGD member his opinion of the “High Priest” my group had met. This other member recommended the High Priest as a teacher.
My involvement with the NROOGD coven lasted from August to January of 1998. In that time, several things occurred that made me realize that not only was NROOGD not the path for me, but that the “High Priest” leading the coven was only in it for his own self-fulfillment.
At our first informal gathering, the High Priest disclosed to the coven that he, at this moment, was not supposed to be teaching the Tradition because he only had is white cord, not his red cord, as dictated by the Tradition. He assured us, however, that before he initiated us into the Tradition, as “necklace initiates,” he would be invested with his red cord. It was not until much after the fact and all the members had been initiated that he brought to the group’s attention that he still did not possess his red cord.
Over the following months, it became very clear that our High Priest was overly self-invested in the success of our coven. Nearly every occasion of our meeting included his berating his previous partner (also a NROOGD member and the original founder of the coven) and other Elder members of the Tradition. Part of the reason he chose to head up this coven was to show up his previous partner and other members of his (our) mother coven.
Our High Priest made off-handed suggestions for unsafe magickal practices, specifically, not cleansing items when they were to be used for a different intent. On several occasions, he would break the circle during grounding by leaving the room (and cast circle) and then returning. We all knew when he was having a bad day because the energy he brought with him into circle was cold and dark and worked as a void which drained the rest of us. While we all have bad days, the point of entering circle ritually is to break our connection to the mundane world. If we are unable to do so, and that inability effects the energy of the circle, we put the others present at risk. An experienced practitioner of any Tradition knows enough to know when her/his presence in the circle is unsafe because of personal energy. More accurately, an experienced practitioner is able to cast off their negative energy so that it effect neither her/himself or the circle as a whole.
We went against the Tradition, and instead of copying, by hand, our own Book of Shadows from our High Priests’s copy, he provided us with a copy that was not produced by him, and mostly from unknown origins. As we began to read through this Book of Shadows, the coven had questions regarding the Tradition, including altar location and orientation within the circle, and the use of specific tools when casting directions. Our High Priests insisted that the way he was teaching was correct and that, in general, the Book of Shadows he had provided to us was “full of mistakes.”
I read that while a necklace initiate is an initiate of the Tradition, s/he cannot be a member of a coven. Meaning, since the High Priest was the only member who had a cord beyond the necklace initiation, he was the only member of our “coven” who could be a coven member. When I asked him about this incongruency in practice, he never answered me.
When our “coven” would attend other public ritual, or schedule to, our High Priest was insistent on the group arriving and leaving together. When we could not accommodate him, he refused to attend the public ritual. When we did attend as a group, he would introduce us around to other Tradition members, but made sure that we did not seek these people out to talk to them one on one. His preference for our group to have no other contacts to other Tradition members became incredibly clear when his mother coven expressed an interest in attending one of our rituals and he denied them access. I believe that the Elders of the community began to question his ability to teach, and/or questioned the fact that he was teaching despite not having the authority to do so. Further, it is very common and generally acceptabed that a mother coven will check in with any daughter covens, from time to time, to insure that all is going well.
My final decision to leave the group came when one of our member suffered a horrible house fire that left her homeless. While she had friends and family to support her, it was still a tragic event in her life and she was lucky to have survived. After learning of the incident, the High Priest made no attempt to contact the member to express condolences, let alone call the group together to provide a more organized effort (either physical or spiritual). In my opinion, he went against exactly the role of what a High Priest/ess is supposed to provide: guidance and support in the spiritual world as well as the mundane and the fostering of community within a coven.
I write this document to illustrate some of the warnings signs I saw and ignored in my time with this group. I ignored these warnings because I truly enjoyed the other members of the group and was eager to learn a Tradition.
I have learned from this experience that I should always trust my gut feeling about some one or a situation and I hope that anyone who reads this can learn from my mistake.