Our History

This is a bit about the "Rise of Paganism" in Athens, as well as information on the early years of the group.

Athens, Ohio has always been a hotbed of Paganism, and many groups have come and gone with a few actually staying. In order to understand where our group came from, we must start a bit earlier than Mabon 1990.

Prior to 1990, there were a number of loose, semi-formal Pagan circles. Many of the stories of hauntings of the local cemeteries can be traced directly to an OU student group that took to "haunting" the cemetery. And these stories still persist after 25+ years. There was also an Edgar Cayce study group that seemed to be a launch point for Pagans. On-again, off-again seems to be the best description for the operation of Pagan groups in Athens. The transitory student population generally didn't help the formation of long term groups. There were some older (as in non-college age) folk who occasionally got together to celebrate the Sabbats. A couple of Pagans even attended the local Unitarian Fellowship which was struggling with its own problems of an aging, primarily Humanist congregation.

In the late 80's Bekki Shining Bearhear & Crow Swimsaway formed Horsefeathers!, a local metaphysical shop which became the focal point for a growing Pagan community. Don't look for it now, the store no longer exists. But from Horsefeathers! sprang the Church of Earth Healing, still under the auspices of Bekki & Crow.

At the time of Horsefeathers'! birth, a new local Pagan circle sprang up. Most of the members were friends and had practiced together in some of the other Pagan circles that had existed. This Pagan circle was under the direction of "Liam". Liam had become interested in a new scripted system of Wicca called Grail Quest Wicca. Liam pretty much organized the open circle, running rituals and handing out parts to people who wanted to participate. It was natural that this was so, since Liam was the one willing to do the work in order to keep the circle going. This group was still formally informal. To go to a ritual you needed an  invitation from someone already participating in the group and so the membership changed from Sabbat to Sabbat. Sabrae and Rock were first invited to go to the Spring Equinox ritual in 1990. This was their first experience of working in a group. Up until now, all of their practice had been solitary.

Liam, encouraged by the success of Grail Quest Wicca with this loose group, wanted to form a real circle. So he started putting ads in the newspaper. The first Grail Quest Study Circle met at Horsefeathers! on Autumn Equinox in 1990. After that first meeting of about 20 people, the core of the group, Liam, Sabrae, Rock and a couple of others, held a Mabon ritual. Everything was off to a great start.

The group continued to meet every Sunday night, sometimes for as long as four hours. The advertisements had not just brought out new people interested in Wicca, but practicing Solitaries and a whole crew of practicing Pagans who gamed together, but had never made any local Pagan contacts. We even had one person drive an hour and a half from Columbus every week. The core of the discussions were based on readings from Starhawk's Spiral Dance and usually there was some sort of visualization or meditation. (Grail Quest had an extensive book list that included a wide variety of reading, but the group never made it through the list!) The group did its first ritual together, appropriately enough, on Samhain 1990 with Liam as the High Priest, Sabrae as High Priestess, Rock as the Guardian and Paddy, taking on the role as the incarnate of Kernunnos. The ritual went very well, even though it was incredibly cold.

Meetings continued every week. Meanwhile, Liam was working towards ordination in this system. In January of 1991, he was ready to go through the ceremony, which was held in Virginia. Shadwynn, who was the author and ArchPriest, of Grail Quest Wicca (we called him the pope) was to perform the ceremony. Sabrae and Rock accompanied Liam on this trip.

The experience proved to be enlightening in a multitude of ways. But of greatest concern was being exposed for the first time, to the core of the Grail Quest mysteries, the Mass of the Goddess. Now, Grail Quest Wicca had been practiced in the Athens area for nearly a year and a half, and this important piece of liturgy had never been performed. Why? Well, because only an ordained Priest or Priestess could perform it. Sabrae and Rock had concerns with the text of the Mass of the Goddess after having experienced it, but did not voice that concern to anyone lest they prejudice other folks' own experience of it. At the next Grail Quest ritual, Candlemas, the full ritual was performed, including the Mass. There was a fairly strong reaction to the Mass from other people in the group, especially ex-Catholics, who found the parallels way too close to be comfortable. After a month of discussions, the group decided to divorce itself from Grail Quest Wicca, not just because of that specific text, which was the flash point for opening discussion of other issues of thealogy, but because Grail Quest Wicca incorporated quite a bit of gnostic Christianity and Western mystery tradition -- more than was usual for a Wiccan path. Also, the group had some definite opinions as to the view of the Goddess as presented in Grail Quest. The study group had hopes that some of these issues could be addressed within the system, but Shadwynn was adamant that the text not be changed at all. Left with the quote, "Do it my way or hit the highway" the group found that they would rather forge out on its own. Interestingly, as the study group left the Grail Quest system, Grail Quest Wicca transformed itself into Ordo Arcanorum Gradalis. Needless to say, Liam and Shadwynn were very upset about the group's departure. Liam was insistent that nothing from Grail Quest, now known as OAG, be used in any ritual. So the group found itself immediately working towards crafting their own tradition.

A few people who had left the original study group, came back when they heard that Grail Quest had been abandoned. The group performed a breaking away ritual as part of Spring Equinox 1991. Turbulent times followed as the group struggled with its identity. A decision was made early on to work only with consensus voting rather than majority voting. This can be a very long and painful way to do things, but we have kept the system to present day. Liam remained within the group, but his presence was uncomfortable, as it was clear that the group's path and his was rapidly diverging. Beltane of that year was pretty exciting, as the men and women held separate mysteries after the Beltane ritual and then came back together the next day to do a maypole and a Mayday ritual.

After the group performed a spontaneous self-dedication/initiatory-type ritual,  Liam left the group and tried numerous times to start new local OAG groups. That Liam was very good at organizing such groups speaks of his strengths. That most didn't want to stay within the OAG system speaks of its narrow perspective.However difficult it was for Liam to find people to join him in OAG, his organizational talents often led to the formation of new Pagan groups. (Thus earning him the nickname, "Liam Paganseed".) In 1994 Shadwynn published a book about OAG called The Crafted Cup. The study group gets an infamous mention in the book as the group of Pagans too immature to deal with the Christian imagery in OAG. It never seemed to occur to the OAG folks that not choosing to use Christianity within a Pagan tradition is pretty normal! And it does sadden us, however, that the many concerns of the study group got boiled down to that one issue and that our concerns surrounding the view of the Goddess seemed to vanish utterly.

By June 1991, some of the OU students who had been with the group graduated and moved on. One guy was kicked out for being way to cool and spooky and other severe misconduct. We gained a member who was to stay with us for a long time - until his marriage years later. We had to deal with issues of sexual misconduct with another member. It was turbulent, frustrating, exciting and fun all at the same time. The group worked on its charter, our guiding document, and also was writing and performing rituals. The real core of the group started coalescing in Autumn 1991. Work on an initiation ritual commenced that winter, along with the first initiation tests. We initiated our first members in the Winter/Spring of 1992.

Since then we have had good times and bad times. We have ranged everywhere from the requisite thirteen people to as few as four. We have alternated between periods of openness with invited guests at Sabbats to very closed periods with initiated and probationary members only. We started a training circle for newbies. We battled an evil woman who used Paganism to harm and manipulate people. At one point some of our members were the ones responsible for holding most of the open rituals in Athens. In 1993, members of our group (along with Liam and others) started attending the Unitarian Fellowship and helped to form the Athens Area CUUPS chapter there, which has now turned into The Circle of Gaia Dreaming. It was/still is considered to be an important outreach group, especially for students who can't make the long-term commitment to a coven or other group.

The details of the past few years we will skip over - mainly because they consist of the regular ebb and flow of membership that all groups go through as their members grow and change. Suffice it to say, that we are still together, still working as a family. I should say closer than a family, because we choose to make these ties together. Coven work can be the most difficult and the most rewarding work of all.

In June 2003, we took a large step and initiated a wonderful person into our tradition, but not into the coven proper. You see, she is from Texas, and has started her own coven there in the "Celestial Tides tradition". Although they make changes with the system to make things work for them, we are honored that they chose to make our system theirs.

On Mabon 2003, Celestial Tides celebrated its 13th anniversary. Many old/original members made it to Athens for the celebration. There was lots of nostaligic storytelling from those that were there. For the newer folks, they finally got to meet some of the people they had only heard about! It was a great evening!
 

 This page was updated on June 28, 2004 .