THE OATH

by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717
RikJohnson@juno.com

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"Why are there so few books on Gardnerian Witchcraft or even other British Traditions?" is a question that I hear over and over and over.
The answer is simply that we, as BTW's (British Traditional Witches) have taken certain Oaths that prevent us from sharing the Secrets of our Traditions and these Oaths limit what we can and cannot say to non-Initiates.
Unlike the 'new-age' made up Traditions, BTW is still a Mystery Religion that must be experienced to fully understand the patterns. It is easy to buy a book that 'reveals for the first time ever' the full and complete secrets of Irish, Scottish, Italian, Norse, etc witchcraft in fine detail including the exact secret handshake by which each of these will know each other.
Gardnerianism and it's offshoots is not like this.
The Oath we take upon Initiation requires us to keep the secrets of the Tradition from the profane.

"Well, if this is true, why are there so many websites and e-lists on the subject?"
A good question and one that requires extensive thought.
Although we all take the same Oath, BTW's are, like everyone else, human and so we tend to interpret our Oath in a specific and personal manner. For one person, even admitting that we work naked is a violation of the Oath. For another, this is no longer secret so can be discussed and for a third, it was never covered by the Oath i in the first place.
Each of us is an individual and so each of us sees within that Oath a different requirement.

"But, I read all the time Gardnerians who state that the Oath IS specific and understood by ALL Gardnerians and so anyone who reveals anything is either an 'Oathbreaker or a liar. What gives?"
To fully understand this, let us take an extreme example from another worldview. A thought experiment as Steven Hawkins would say.

Imagine that you are a good christian. You believe in the literal truth of god, jesus and the bible as the word of god. And so anything that opposes this must be wrong (to be polite).
So, you marry in the church and you promise in the temple of your god and to your god and before your peers that you will remain married "forsaking all others...TILL DEATH DO YOU PART"

Think about this for a minute. You so believe in the sanctity of marriage that there is NO reason conceivable to break this vow. EVERY problem can be worked through if you just have faith and the desire to work it out..
Your husband beats you? He's not evil but sick. He needs counseling and after a lot of hard work, he is cured and the marriage is saved.
Your wife is a drunk? Alcoholism is a disease that can be cured in time and with effort. and so on.

You see all around you people who 'pretend' to be christian and take the same marriage vows you do but somehow, they always find excuses to break them.. They cheat (I was drunk/in love/couldn't help myself) on their spouses, divorce (just got tired of marriage) and never seem to try to try to save their marriage or keep their vows.
HOW can these people make such an important promise and then cast it aside so easily as if god meant nothing to them? And still have the nerve to call themselves christians?
Obviously, these people are NOT christians at all. You don't know what they are but christians they definitely are not!

Since these people are probably, at best, frauds or, at worst, evil, you should avoid them for fear of what else they may do. If they can break such an important promise made to god ,then perhaps they also break the commandments. Perhaps they are only being friends so that they can commit adultery with your spouse? or maybe they come over to steal your possessions? or maybe they are even murderers seeking new prey?
If they can break a vow as powerful as the marriage one, what other promises are they breaking? The mind boggles.

Try walking up to any christian who ever got a divorce and try to tell them that because they broke their marriage vows, they aren't christians al all. Chic publications publishes a comic book that proves, using biblical quotes, that catholics are not christian at all although this doesn't seem to concern the catholic church very much.
See what happens when you say that to a catholic priest. He will come up with all sorts of arguments to justify them breaking god's word but all it is a word game because you know that he is a fraud and nothing he can say will explain away how he can recommend that a person break their vow to god and divorce.

Note that so strongly did the catholic church once believe in the sanctity of marriage that when my mother was beaten so badly that my brother was killed by her first husband, that she left and divorced him, the church was so aghast at her breaking her marriage vow that they damned her to hell for all eternity. For all I know she is still burning there for the crime of saving her life and the lives of her future children.

So why would you associate with people who do this? How can any christian be friends with someone who is so hateful and in opposition of gods will? Obviously, you don't want YOUR children exposed to these dangerous people.
So you only associate with people who share your views. This is only natural as if you hate football, why sit around a TV on a beautiful Sunday afternoon watching a couple of dozen people chase a ball and earn more money than most nations? You would rather spend the day with people who perhaps enjoy flying a kite with their children in the park.
And as time goes on, you discover that all of your friends share your interests and beliefs and now you realize that everyone that you know has the standard "Ozzie & Harriet" home and family. You can now state with all honesty that EVERYONE that you know believes in the sanctity of marriage and lives in a household with one husband, one wife and some children.

But what about divorced fathers who raise their children alone?
or what about single mothers who never wed?
or what about gay relationships?
or what about people who cohabit?
or what about group or polyamorous marriages?

The answer is simple. You don't associate with people like these because they are obviously opposing god's will so you don't know anyone like that and even if you did, they are obviously NOT christians so the answer is... All christians are in a nuclear family and NEVER divorce and anyone who does so isn't a christian.

See how it all falls into place? Completely logical and it makes sense and cannot be refuted because it is supported by holy writ. and it completly ignores the reality that there are many kinds of families. You may not like them, you may not associate with them, but they DO exist and are as valid as is your own.

Now lets take this and relate it to Gardnerians.
IF you believe that anything done within the framework of Gardnerian witchcraft is Oathbound, then you will tend to think that anyone who disagrees is probably not a real Gardnerian and you won't associate with them either. And so you discover that all of your friends believe the same way that you do so, and by implication, you can say that ALL Gardnerians believe the same as you do regarding the Oath.
Why? Because you don't know anyone who has a different view and if you did, they are obviously not real Gardnerians so it loops back to ALL Gardnerians believe the same as you.

Simple, isn't it. And it ignores the fact that there are Gardnerians of differing working methods all over the world and very few of them accept the same narrow view as you do.

Example, there are two major e-lists for Gardnerians today. On both, the same Gardnerians attacked the founders of Gardnerinism as 'Oathbreakers and liars' with such vehemence that many people simply left in anger. Imagine a christian priest stateing in church that jesus was a fraud and a murderer and should not be followed. Same thing.
In fact, one of Gardner's High Priestess' (who may be expected to know what Gardner thought and how he worked) mentioned this and was driven from that board, never to return.
So people with a more balanced or liberal view are publicly attacked and insulted by the fundamentalist Gardnerians to the point that they say "f*** it!" and leave in disgust.

And the fundies win again.

Now we can get to the actual Oath itself.

Before we can actually discuss if anyone is breaking the Oath, we must first determine exactly what the Oath is! Now, I am not going to quote it here in it's entirety for reasons that may seem conflicting but one can find similar Oaths in Sheba, Farrar, Holzer and any author who has ever written anything about Gardnerianism or Alexandrianism or described a Gardnerian/Alexandrian Initiation Ritual.

Esentially, the Oath states that we must keep the secrets and it tells us how and to whom to reveal said secrets.

Now, for the purposes of supporting my argument, I immediatly went to my Book of Shadows and re-read the Oath to be certain that I got it right. Then I read my copy of Gerald Gardner's Book of Shadows and compared them. Identical! Then I went to my copy of Doreen Valiente's Book of Shadows and the Books of Shadows of a half dozen Gardnerian Wiches in the United States. All identical be they British or American, Founder or Downline.
Fnally I compared the Oath to those in the published literature and found that all supported each other in that they all required us to keep the secrets with the same or similar wording.

BUT

In Not one of the many Gardnerian Books of Shadows that I possess, either secret or published, nor in any of the Gardnerin offshoots such as Alexandrian, Protean, Mohsian nor such nor in any of the published literature is there ANY list of what these secrets are!
How can we keep the "Secrets" if we don't even know what the "Secrets" are?

The Hard-Gard answer is simply "Everyone knows what they are and if you don't, then you are obviously NOT a real Gardnerian."
My response to that is "Crap! You don't know either and are trying to cover up your own ignorance!"
How can I say his? Easily! Those who argue hardest for the obviousness of the Secrets have never seen the Boks of Shadows of either Gardner or Valiente, both of whom are the founders of our faith and so may be assumed to actually know this better than someone a dozen generations downline. If you want the truth about a matter, you go the the source and in this case, the source is sitting on my bookshelf.

The next argument is that the list of Secrets is Oral teaching and has never been written down.
An acceptable argument on the surface so once again we must do a thought experiment to understand this.

If you make a grocery list and read it to ten different people, you will get ten different bags of groceries. Then if you tell each of these ten people to recite their list to ten more, you will have a hundred different bags. And after a few generations of this, if you get these thousand people together in one room to try to recreate the "actual and original" list of groceries, maybe 10% of them will come out alive with a dozen different lists, each of whom will swear that they have the real one.
It's called human nature. Unless it is written down, it won't be remembered.
So following this, if Garder told one of his many High Priestesses exactly what he felt was a secret and she told her Initiates that list, eventually someone downline will change the list because:

1. she doesn't understand why *** is a secret so why act a fool and pass it on,
2. she thinks that the list is incompete and *** should have been secret from the beginning so she adds it,
3. she misheard and thought *** was ****,
4. she learned the list as an Initiate and now years or decades later she has a memory lapse

When you make a claim as to what IS Oathbound, it is imperative that you be able to support your claim with hard evidence or be quiet and allow others to believe differently.

Now that have shredded the Hard-Gard arguemnts for a uniform and well-known Oath, let me backpeddle a bit and state that I, personally, believe that there are some things that should be kept a secret. But not becuse they are Oathbound (Which as we have seen is difficult to show) but because they make sense.
I would argue that the main reason for keeping a secret is to avoid harming the innocent. And that keeping a secret that everone knows does, at best, make you look like a fool and so, by association, makes all Gardnerians look the fool as well. So here is my personal list and you are free to argue with me.

1. the Legal names and/or addresss of any Witch with the exceptions of:
   those like myself who have chosen to be public
   those who have given permission at that time to that person for that specific reason
2. anything in the Book of Shadows that hasn't yet been published
3. the Craft Names of any witch
4. the Secret Names of the Gods
5. details of magickal or ritual workings including specific spells and who was there.
6. the location of any covenstead unless permission is given by the HP & HPS
7. the dates and times and locations of any ritual prior to that ritual
8. anything that my HP & HPS tell me isa secret while I am a member of their coven

Now there are thngs that some Gardnerians consider to be a secret but are common knowledge to anyone with a library card and so consantly claiming that these are and will always be a secret makes the maker of the statement look like a fool. These include but are not limited to:

1. ritual nudity or lack thereof within the Tradition in general (note, specific covens and rituals and witches fall under #5 above)
2. the published portions of the BOS
3. the names of openly public witches

What is the conclusion here?
That there IS an Oath that we all take.
That no one knows exactly what that Oath covers.
That anyone who tries to argue differently is deluding themselves and you.

Any Gardnerian who wishes to refute this paper is welcome to submit an article and I will publish it intact... though I reserve the right to make editoral comments at the beginnng and end.

To contact me or to request topics to be covered, send to RikJohnson@juno.com
by: Rick Johnson
PO Box 40451
Tucson, Az.
85717

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