Quote: J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages

According to the hazy recollections of Mom Wolf...
 

Wolf Moon originally began in 1989 or 1990, though not really as a coven per se. At the time, it was more of an informal gathering of pagans, mostly from the Wiccan Church of Canada, who had an interest in environmental issues and wanted to explore using magic in that context, as well as rituals to deepen our awareness of nature. I was the one who started it, but a number of people were involved and it operated collectively for the most part.

Over the first few meetings, two things became evident: that some people were much more serious about making it an ongoing commitment than others, and that nearly everyone was already way overcommitted and spreading themselves too thin -- an occupational hazard of being part of a large, active and diverse pagan community. So while we did have some excellent rituals, and a certain amount did get accomplished (including putting together the initial version of the principles of unity we still more or less follow, and which appear on this site), eventually it fizzled and after a couple of successive meetings where no one showed up but me, it was placed on hiatus for an indefinite period, in April 1991.

There were a few sporadic signs of life over the next couple of years, including a small series of peace rituals during the Gulf War, but things didn't really start up again until the summer of 1993, which is what we usually count now as our starting point. At that point, I and one of the other members of the original Wolf Moon and her significant other were freshly covenless after another group that we had been part of, which had been important to all three of us, had disbanded. This left us feeling somewhat adrift; we were all part of the larger WCC community, and involved in doing public Craft work, but all of us had found that public work on its own wasn't that fulfilling and we needed someplace that could be our hearth and home within that larger community. As we were commiserating about this one night in the parking lot behind the WCC's Toronto Temple during a fundraising party, the aforementioned significant other spoke the fateful words: "Why don't you start up Wolf Moon again?"

We went back inside and began looking around at the assembled revellers, trying to decide who else might be interested in a group like this. By the time we left, we had four other people who had agreed to give it a try, so the seven of us assembled a few weeks later at the temple the couple had in their house, and did a ritual to try and stop the aerial shooting of wolves in Alaska. Everyone clicked together really well, and despite the shaky start we'd originally gotten off to, the group now felt more solid than ever before. Over the course of the next few meetings, seven became ten as two more of the original members came back and another new person joined, and ten we stayed for some while, until a few people wandered off, bringing the group down to 6 or 7 members, which we've averaged for most of the years since. At some point, we began referring to the original working group and the reformed group as "Wolf Moon Mark 1" and "Wolf Moon Mark 2".

But in late 1994, deep divisions developed over the question of whether we wanted to be a coven, in the sense of a close-knit, committed group that would be the primary spiritual focus for its members, or a loose working group more like Wolf Moon Mark 1 had been. Some of us felt that when we had reformed the group, it had been with the clear intention of forming a coven to replace the one that the three of us who reformed it had been in previously; others felt either that this had not been clear, or that the decision hadn't been well thought out. After a somewhat acrimonious debate, we split down the middle, with those who didn't want to be a coven leaving and those who did staying, with a renewed sense of commitment and a clearer idea of what we wanted to be. This seemed like a dramatic enough break that we decided we were now Wolf Moon Mark 3.

Since then, people have come and people have gone, and there are only two members left who have been present since the very beginning, but there hasn't really been any transition dramatic enough for us to say we've definitely moved on to Mark 4. The changes we've been through since 94 have been more evolutionary than revolutionary. Among them have been that we don't focus as strictly on environmental/nature concerns any more: though that's still a strong part of who we are, it isn't all of who we are. As the group and the people in it have matured, we've felt the need for more balance and less of a single-issue focus.

We've been through a lot over the years -- new members coming and old members leaving; couples breaking up, new couples forming; people changing traditions, teachers or sexual orientations; becoming priesthood; struggling with graduate school or depression (both frequent occurrences amongst our membership); and much more. Sometime, the summer before last, our tenth anniversary slipped by without us noticing (otherwise we would have had a big party).

And no doubt the years to come will continue to be interesting...

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Last modified: Nov 13, 2005, 10:40 PM