Quote: Dion Fortune, Moon Magic

Wolf Moon Revised Principles of Unity
Version 2.0 - January 26, 2004

0. Introduction

When Wolf Moon began, in 1990, it was with the clearly defined goal of being a working group on environmental magic, with an explicitly activist focus. When we redefined ourselves as a coven in the mid-90s, we gradually came to face the reality that this was too constricting to allow us to be what a coven should be -- a spiritual extended family and nucleus of growth. We needed to be able to bring all of ourselves into the circle, not just our activism. So we made a choice to consciously decentre the activist focus, and expand our self-definition. The environmental focus is still a part of who we are, but it is no longer all of who we are.

One model that we have found very useful in expressing the balance we now strive for is the "three legs of the cauldron" used by the Reclaiming tradition, although we are not a part of that tradition: spiritual/magical development, personal healing, and engagement with the world and the community, including activism.

1. Spiritual/Magical Development

This, obviously, is the primary focus of most traditional covens. Wicca is first and foremost a religion and a magical system, not a self-help technique or political movement. We choose to incorporate the other two "legs" for our own reasons, to meet our needs and reflect our interests and values, but we must not lose sight of the fact that we are a coven, and that spiritual and magical work are our foundation.

We expect all our members to be actively studying and working, both within and outside the coven, to improve their skills and deepen their knowledge in these areas. We encourage critical thinking and reading, self-discipline, deep questioning, serious research, and continual self-improvement.

We reject the New Age-inspired tendency to create cute, fluffy, sweetness-and-light rituals for "healing the earth" or other similarly vague purposes that lack any sort of coherent focus or methodology. We recognize that effective magic requires clarity and specific direction, and thus we will direct our magical work, environmental and otherwise, toward specific issues, in a precise and focussed manner. We will not act rashly or blindly, no matter how pressing an issue may appear to be, but will work to educate ourselves fully about any issue we are considering acting on, both through reading and research, and through meditation and divination.

We also reject the disturbing trend seen among some activist pagans (and non-activist ones, for that matter) of considering magical ethics only when politically convenient. The end does not necessarily justify the means; the best cause in the world does not excuse unethical actions. We will perform no act of magic that is directed towards causing harm to anyone, nor will we manipulate or force the will of any free being unless necessary to prevent serious harm from taking place.

Having stated that, we do recognize that ethics, magical or otherwise, are more complex than many people assume. For example, a lack of action can be an action in itself: by standing aside and knowingly allowing a harmful action to take place rather than acting to prevent it, you may be guilty of complicity as surely as if you participated in it directly. We explicitly reject interpretations of Wiccan ethics that encourage mindless passivity or disallow self-defence or defence of others.

The spiritual tradition within which Wolf Moon began was Odyssean Wicca, but we do not limit our influences or practices to that, or require our members to be actively studying that tradition. We do not even require that members identify as Wiccan at all, and we have had some who did not, but we do require that they be at least comfortable enough with Wicca in general and the Odyssean tradition in particular to accept that that is the foundation from which we started and still a system many of us work within.

We have at times incorporated influences from a variety of sources, including but not limited to chaos magic, Celtic reconstructionism, deep ecology, spiritual therianthropy, and RJ Stewart's Underworld tradition. We believe it is possible to be intelligently eclectic, while maintaining respect for the integrity of the spiritual and magical traditions that we draw on.

2. Personal Healing

We recognize the need to balance outward-directed magic with inward-directed work, both for spiritual/magical development and for personal healing. We cannot work magic and ritual effectively if we are too deeply wounded by the state of the world or our own lives to have the energy to spare. Thus we try to devote a certain amount of our work toward personal and emotional healing and transformation, and consider it a part of a coven's function to offer emotional support to its members.

We also believe that in order for personal healing to take place, we need to be, individually and collectively, prepared to be challenged and tested, and to face difficult issues. Healing is not always a quick, tidy or painless process. In a spiritual context, we recognize that the darker deities are often the ones with the greatest power of transformation, and that the increasing tendency we see in popular books and on the Internet for Wicca and paganism to be portrayed as shallow, superficial, feel-good paths, focussed purely on the light, loving and nurturing aspects of divinity may in fact be antithetical to any real growth, emotional or spiritual. We seek a balanced perspective, encompassing both the light and dark sides of divinity, the world and our selves.

We also recognize that there are limits to how far a coven can go in the realm of personal healing and still remain effective as a coven. We are at heart a spiritual/magical collective, not a therapy group. Our members can offer support to each other, but are not trained therapists, and we recognize that there are many personal problems that exceed our ability to deal with. We do not expect our members to be perfect, but we do expect them to be basically functional and not constantly in crisis. If someone's emotional problems or life crises are too extreme, they can act as a drain on the entire group's energy and impair its ability to function.

Similarly, we believe that while a group can offer support, and rituals can be directed toward solving personal problems, ultimately each individual's emotional healing is his or her own responsibility, and if a person is not willing to follow up and do the work that is required in his or her own life for the issues raised in the coven context to be resolved, then for the group to continue trying to help that person is futile. The coven can offer support and assistance in emotional healing, but ultimately the power, and responsibility, are in the individual's own hands.

3. Engagement with the World

As followers of an earth-based spiritual path, we recognize that spirituality is not something that occupies a separate space from the rest of life, divorced from the "real" world. Everything we believe, do and experience on a spiritual level has its reflection in the physical world and vice-versa.

Our beginnings as an ecologically focussed working group were grounded in the conviction that in light of the current ecological crisis, everyone on earth has a responsibility to be aware of, and to take action to change, the state of the environment. As pagans, who worship nature and natural forces, we have a particularly strong reason to be concerned. And as people who work magic, we have means of creating change at our disposal that the ordinary environmentalist does not. Though activism is no longer as central to our focus as it once was, this remains a strong belief for most of us.

We also recognize, though, that there are many ways of creating positive change in the world, and that not all of them fit into the commonly recognized definition of activism. Many things, from living one's own life in a responsible and ethical manner, to creating works or art, music or literature that challenge conventional dogmas or inspire action and transformation, to bringing up children with reverence for the earth and the life on it, can be ways of trying to change the world. We still very much encourage our members to be engaged in trying to make the world a better place, but the scope of what we consider to be effective ways of doing that has broadened.
 
We do not believe that there is any one slate of positions members must take on contemporary environmental and political issues, or any specific political ideology that they must adopt. In fact, if you were to ask any three of us to define ourselves politically, you would probably get four different answers. We do believe in making the links between seemingly separate environmental and political issues, but recognize that no two people will make those in the same way and that there is plenty of room for legitimate debate on most issues.

Members need not be activists in the common sense of the word, but as with Wicca, they should be comfortable with the sort of activism Wolf Moon was founded on to be able to accept that it is a part of our foundation, and that many of us still do that kind of work, so there will be occasional rituals with an activist focus.

We respect the right of any member to disagree with any or all of the other members on any issue they wish, and to decline to participate in any ritual with whose aim they are uncomfortable, without feeling pressured to participate or agree. However, if a member finds they are in disagreement with the other members or the work that we do as a group the majority of the time, then it is probably better for them to find another group whose ideals more closely suit their own.

4. Our Name

We have chosen the name Wolf Moon for our coven, for several reasons:

The wolf is a threatened species, extinct in many of its traditional habitats and endangered in many others. It is a creature that, like wild nature itself -- and like magic and paganism -- has historically inspired both fear and awe, is a subject of both fascination and misunderstanding, and because of that fear and misunderstanding has been persecuted and nearly destroyed.

The Moon is considered by many to be the source of magical power, and governs the subtle tides and cycles of nature and the human mind and body. In the hostile dualism created by Western culture and religion, it is linked with the feminine principle, the unconscious, and nature, the things whose place in the balance must be reasserted if the relationship between humanity and nature -- or for that matter, much or humanity's relationship to itself -- is to be healed.

The Wolf Moon, in the lunar calendar used by many pagans, is the "extra" moon in a year, the moon which does not fit in with the standard lunar cycle. As such, it is magically the best time to do work oriented toward the breaking of old habits or destructive patterns, freeing oneself from a negative cycle. At a time when the human species as a whole is locked into a variety of destructive patterns and cycles which, if unchecked, could lead to social and ecological collapse, the energies of the Wolf Moon seem very appropriate to evoke. It also seems appropriate to the character of the coven as it has evolved, in that we tend to be predominantly people who question authority, reject dogma, and frequently find ourselves viewing things from "one step back and two to the left" -- or from a slightly different perspective than everyone else.

In some versions of the calendar, the Wolf Moon is specifically indicated by a month with two New Moons rather than two Full Moons. The New Moon is a time of darkness, of turning inward, facing unpleasant truths, and reevaluating where you're going. Again, this seemed very appropriate, both for the times in which we live, and for the character of the group as it has developed over the years.

5. Final Words

We are accepting of pretty much all sexual orientations involving consenting adult human beings, and over our history have had a high proportion of gay, lesbian and bisexual members. Consequently, we tend to be less polarity-oriented than the Wiccan tradition from which we evolved. We do not object to people using gendered polarity as such in ritual, as in a priest and priestess co-leading, or a god and goddess being called together, but neither do we require it. We do, however, avoid elements of ritual that portray heterosexuality as being inherently better or more sacred than other forms of sexuality.

Finally, although these principles may come across as very serious, we believe it is absolutely essential to have a healthy sense of humour. Ours may tend to be a little on the dark side, not to mention often cynical and irreverent, but it's a very central part of who are, along with respect for the trickster archetype and appreciation of a certain level of creative chaos.

View our original principles from 1991