My Essay on "The Tenets, Virtues ..." of the Craft

[SoulFire]

I have an essay on "The Tenets, Virtues, & Other Pagan Principles" (at my blog), which BigAl suggested I crosspost here. Enjoy!

B*B

[Nocturnal~Witch]

They seem to be primarily Wiccan based, no?

[SoulFire]

Originally Posted by Nocturnal~Witch

They seem to be primarily Wiccan based, no?

I would say the Virtues certainly are, as the stem from The Charge. It's arguable whether the Tenets are Wiccan per se, since they originated from Sybil Leek's famtrad and she does not trace her lineage to Gardner; the Tenets are not part of the traditional Wiccan Book of Shadows.

But since she came from the Horsa coven in the New Forest, some consider her BTW anyway. I don't, because in her book The Complete Art of Witchcraft, she makes a distinction between the Gardnerian tradition and her own branch, saying it "was about like the difference between the Anglican Church of England and the Episcopal one in the United States" (page 15).

"I suppose like many others I was guilty in leading an insular life in the New Forest in England. We did not particularly care what was going on in the other covens; one of the reasons why witchcraft survived in those secret societies was that we all minded our own business. The affairs of our own coven were more important to us, the affairs of others were incidental. When it finally came to the surface, witchcraft in Britain seemed to be in two distinct main camps, although now there are more divisions" (14).

Another reason I do not consider Sybil or Horsa to be Wiccan is that Wicca is orthopractic; whereas, the Horsa tradition was orthodoxic—you had to accept a belief in certain doctrines, such as the Tenet of Reincarnation, to be considered a witch in her coven. There are other differences (such as Horsa worked robed; Gardner's coven worked skyclad).