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Coven
A coven () is a group or gathering of witches. The word "coven" (from Anglo-Norman ''covent, cuvent'', from Old French ''covent'', from Latin ''conventum'' = convention) remained largely unused in English until 1921 when Margaret Murray promoted the idea that all witches across Europe met in groups of thirteen which they called "covens".Murray, Margaret (1921). ''The Witch Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology''. Modern paganism In Wicca and other similar forms of modern pagan witchcraft, such as Stregheria and Feri, a coven is a gathering or community of witches, like an affinity group, engagement group, or small covenant group. It is composed of a group of practitioners who gather together for rituals such as Drawing Down the Moon, or celebrating the Sabbats.. The place at which they generally meet is called a covenstead. The number of people involved may vary. Although some consider thirteen to be ideal (probably in deference to Murray's theories), any gro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Covenstead
A covenstead is a meeting place of a coven (a group of witches). The term relates specifically to the meeting place of witches within certain modern religious movements such as Wicca that fall under the collective term Modern Paganism, also referred to as Contemporary Paganism or Neopaganism. It functions to provide a place for the group to conduct rituals, undertake lessons and recognise festivals. It can also be referred to as the home of the coven. A group's covenstead is often a physical geographical location, however it can also be a concept such as an astral temple. A covenstead is commonly located in the house of the priest or priestess or a member of the coven, but it can also be a public area such as a park or a room in a community building. An appropriate location is selected depending on a number of factors including the size of the coven. The types of covensteads recognised by practitioners have developed over time as technology and the various denominations of Neopagan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wicca
Wicca () is a modern Pagan religion. Scholars of religion categorise it as both a new religious movement and as part of the occultist stream of Western esotericism. It was developed in England during the first half of the 20th century and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon a diverse set of ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for its theological structure and ritual practices. Wicca has no central authority figure. Its traditional core beliefs, principles, and practices were originally outlined in the 1940s and 1950s by Gardner and an early High Priestess, Doreen Valiente. The early practices were disseminated through published books and in secret written and oral teachings passed along to their initiates. There are many variations on the core structure, and the religion grows and evolves over time. It is divided into a number of diverse lineages, sects and denominations, referred to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coven Of The Far Flung Net
Universal Eclectic Wicca (UEW) is one of a number of distinctly American Wiccan traditions which developed following the introduction of Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca to the United States in the early 1960s. Its corporate body is the Church of Universal Eclectic Wicca (CUEW) which is incorporated and based in Great Falls, Virginia. It is particularly noted for its early Internet teaching coven – the Coven of the Far Flung Net (CFFN), and for its inclusive approach to solitary as well as coven based practitioners. History Silver Chalice Wicca What was to become UEW began, in 1969, as the core coven associated with the Silver Chalice Land Trust; an intentional community based in Westchester, New York. Silver Chalice had a diverse membership drawing from both Dianic and British Traditional Wiccan backgrounds. It was partly as a response to this diversity, as well as a perceived need for reform in Wicca, that their High Priestess, Jayne Tomas, began to create a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Church Of Universal Eclectic Wicca
Universal Eclectic Wicca (UEW) is one of a number of distinctly American Wiccan traditions which developed following the introduction of Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca to the United States in the early 1960s. Its corporate body is the Church of Universal Eclectic Wicca (CUEW) which is incorporated and based in Great Falls, Virginia. It is particularly noted for its early Internet teaching coven – the Coven of the Far Flung Net (CFFN), and for its inclusive approach to solitary as well as coven based practitioners. History Silver Chalice Wicca What was to become UEW began, in 1969, as the core coven associated with the Silver Chalice Land Trust; an intentional community based in Westchester, New York. Silver Chalice had a diverse membership drawing from both Dianic and British Traditional Wiccan backgrounds. It was partly as a response to this diversity, as well as a perceived need for reform in Wicca, that their High Priestess, Jayne Tomas, began to create a body ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaret Murray
Margaret Alice Murray (13 July 1863 – 13 November 1963) was an Anglo-Indian Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, historian, and folklorist. The first woman to be appointed as a lecturer in archaeology in the United Kingdom, she worked at University College London (UCL) from 1898 to 1935. She served as President of the Folklore Society from 1953 to 1955, and published widely over the course of her career. Born to a wealthy middle-class English family in Calcutta, British India, Murray divided her youth between India, Britain, and Germany, training as both a nurse and a social worker. Moving to London, in 1894 she began studying Egyptology at UCL, developing a friendship with department head Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her Junior Professor in 1898. In 1902–03 she took part in Petrie's excavations at Abydos, Egypt, there discovering the Osireion temple and the following season investigated the Saqqara cemetery, both ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witch-cult Hypothesis
The witch-cult hypothesis is a discredited theory that states the witch trials of the Early Modern period were an attempt to suppress a pre-Christian, pagan religion that had survived the Christianisation of Europe. According to its proponents, the witch cult revolved around worshiping a Horned God of fertility, the underworld, the hunt and the hunted, whose Christian persecutors identified with the Devil, and whose followers participated in nocturnal rites at the witches' Sabbath. The theory was pioneered by two German scholars, Karl Ernst Jarcke and Franz Josef Mone, in the early nineteenth century, and was adopted by French historian Jules Michelet, American feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage, and American folklorist Charles Leland later that century. The hypothesis received its most prominent exposition when it was adopted by a British Egyptologist, Margaret Murray, who presented her version of it in '' The Witch-Cult in Western Europe'' (1921), before further expounding i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amber K
Amber K (born 9 July 1947 in Bronxville, New York) is the Pagan/Craft name (pseudonym) of Kitty Randall, an author of books about magick, Wicca and Neopaganism, and a third-degree priestess of the Wiccan faith. She was initiated at the Temple of the Pagan Way in Chicago, Illinois, and served on the Council of Elders there, and has taught the craft throughout the United States for over 30 years. She has served as National First Officer of the Covenant of the Goddess for three terms, and is a founder of Our Lady of the Woods and the Ladywood Tradition of Wicca. She has worked with various Neopagan organizations such as Circle Sanctuary and the Re-Formed Congregation of the Goddess, and a Grey Council member of the online Grey School of Wizardry founded by Oberon Zell Ravenheart in 2004. She is the executive director of Ardantane, a non-profit Wiccan and pagan school and seminary in northern New Mexico. Family Amber spent most her childhood growing up in Chicago. Her father was a R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feri Tradition
The Feri Tradition is an initiatory tradition of modern Pagan witchcraft. It was founded in California in the 1960s by the Americans Victor Henry Anderson and his wife Cora Anderson. Practitioners have described it as an ecstatic tradition rather than a fertility tradition. Strong emphasis is placed on sensual experience and awareness, including sexual mysticism, which is not limited to heterosexual expression."The Faery Tradition" ©1988, 1995, 2000 Anna Korn The Feri Tradition has very diverse influences, such as Huna, Vodou, Faery lore, Kabbalah, Hoodoo, Tantra, and Gnosticism. Definition Scholars of Paganism like Joanne Pearson and Ethan Doyle White have characterised Feri as a Wiccan tradition. The latter noted however that some practitioners of modern Pagan Witchcraft restrict the term ''Wicca'' to British Traditional Wicca, in which case Feri would not be classified as Wicca; he deemed this exclusionary definition of the term to be "unsuitable for academic purposes". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witches
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have used malevolent magic against their own community, and often to have communed with evil beings. It was thought witchcraft could be thwarted by protective magic or counter-magic, which could be provided by cunning folk or folk healers. Suspected witches were also intimidated, banished, attacked or killed. Often they would be formally prosecuted and punished, if found guilty or simply believed to be guilty. European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. In some regions, many of those accused of witchcraft were folk healers or midwives. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment. Contemporary cultures that believe in magic and the superna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witchcraft
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have used malevolent magic against their own community, and often to have communed with evil beings. It was thought witchcraft could be thwarted by protective magic or counter-magic, which could be provided by cunning folk or folk healers. Suspected witches were also intimidated, banished, attacked or killed. Often they would be formally prosecuted and punished, if found guilty or simply believed to be guilty. European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. In some regions, many of those accused of witchcraft were folk healers or midwives. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment. Contemporary cultures that believe in magic and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Witch
Witchcraft traditionally means the use of magic or supernatural powers to harm others. A practitioner is a witch. In medieval and early modern Europe, where the term originated, accused witches were usually women who were believed to have used malevolent magic against their own community, and often to have communed with evil beings. It was thought witchcraft could be thwarted by protective magic or counter-magic, which could be provided by cunning folk or folk healers. Suspected witches were also intimidated, banished, attacked or killed. Often they would be formally prosecuted and punished, if found guilty or simply believed to be guilty. European witch-hunts and witch trials in the early modern period led to tens of thousands of executions. In some regions, many of those accused of witchcraft were folk healers or midwives. European belief in witchcraft gradually dwindled during and after the Age of Enlightenment. Contemporary cultures that believe in magic and the superna ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wheel Of The Year
The Wheel of the Year is an annual cycle of seasonal festivals, observed by many modern pagans, consisting of the year's chief solar events (solstices and equinoxes) and the midpoints between them. While names for each festival vary among diverse pagan traditions, syncretic treatments often refer to the four solar events as " quarter days", with the four midpoint events as "cross-quarter days". Differing sects of modern paganism also vary regarding the precise timing of each celebration, based on distinctions such as lunar phase and geographic hemisphere. Observing the cycle of the seasons has been important to many people, both ancient and modern. Contemporary Pagan festivals that rely on the Wheel are based to varying degrees on folk traditions, regardless of actual historical pagan practices. Among Wiccans, each festival is also referred to as a sabbat (), based on Gerald Gardner's view that the term was passed down from the Middle Ages, when the terminology for Jewish S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
