I hope it doesn’t come across as simultaneously subversive and arrogant if I say that I presently don’t need any sort of figurehead in this life to follow; if I do need such, then the Goddess and God will point me in the direction of the right person. Of this I am sure.

Change is wonderful, terrible, necessary. It is the means by which we understand life to move forward.

What you see as a plethora of creative voices sounds wonderfully right to me. And authority does breed dissension, as I suppose it must when you think about it.

I believe one of the strange things about Wicca is that there isn’t currently a recognised authority; and even Gardner, while the instigator, and the main publicist, never really had a firm and autonomous grip on Wicca from what I can make out!

Although I am not a Wiccan, nor even a Pagan, I think that much of what you write here applies to religious traditions/commuities in general. In Christian terms, perhaps the idea of the Incarnation led to a vast range of opinions in reaction to what was perceived as a cosmic event. Kind of like ‘hey! what was that? It was an amazing outpouring of grace. What does it mean?’ And at that point comes the detailed argumentation and the ultimate development of an ‘orthodoxy’.

In Islamic terms, the appearance of Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the Quran caused a similar creative explosion – although, given our current climate, I should be very wary of combining ‘Islam’ and ‘explosion’ in the same sentence. At any rate, this accounts for the later development of different schools of thought – Sunni and Shi`a, and within these broad traditions, of a whole range of different groups – with very different ideas and methodologies.

Perhaps entropy is a feature of all religions. Or, perhaps, it might be better to see it as a plethora of creative voices talking about a shared original inspiration – Christ (as) for Christians, the Quran for Muslims and nature in all its glory for pagans/Wiccans (if that seems an oversimplification, it is not meant as one – I simply don’t know enought). With regards to authority, the moment someone becomes authoritative, it seems to me, another refuses to accept that authority and thus begins a counter-movement/group.

Just a few thoughts.

Abdur Rahman

I’m not sure there is one who claims that title; Julia Phillips believes the most likely successor to the headship at least in terms of scholarship would be Janet and Stuart Farrar, and now of course Gavin Bone. By the nature of the system, there’ll be those who disagree!

I think you’re right about the hierarchy. You can see the sort of stultifying effect a rigid heirarchy has in some of the more organised of the world religions. Not something we need to emulate nor work towards.

‘Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society’ is the sense in which I refered to entropy – I’m clearly! not a commentator on Thermodynamics, knowing less about that than just about anything else. And I agree, Wicca cannot be considered a closed system – it would be pretty pointless if it was!

Entropy also implies energy; there’s a great deal of latent energy in Wicca and its developing forms.

I agree that schism can tear enough holes to let light in so an organism like Wicca can grow, but can we say its been preserved? Or has it had to evolve away from what it was intended to be, to survive?

And in the end, I’m interested in the base facts of human nature – that when you have a group of people all united under one cause, you inevitably get schism and dissent. Schism in this instance was not a requirement nor a wanted outcome of Gardner’s work; but it has furthered the cause of Wicca. Or perhaps we ought to say that Wicca has furthered its own cause, despite the internecine strife.

According to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, entropy (the level of availability/unability of the systems energy to do work) of a closed system increases over time, until such point that the system effectively is no longer able to produce work and breaksdown; now theoretically whilst we could say that Gardners’ Wicca is in it’s purest form is a closed system, that wouldn’t be an acurate representation; new members are being initiated into covens, each bringing their own energies to the system. In addition members of the Wiccan traditions have brought ideals and concepts out into the wider populace, this effectively ensuring that the system is not as closed as it would initially seem.

It is the acts of schizm and growth that has allowed Wicca to survive, the ability for disorder and sponateous change that has allowed the system to grow and remain at least partially open thus reducing the overall entropic effect. Had it remained totally closed I suspect Wicca wouldn’t have made it much past the 1980’s and the beginning of the end of it’s first generation.