The Adventure Tradition

Adventure Wicca is distilled from our culture's experience over the last thousand or so years. Most of its imagery and symbolism - most of wider Wiccandom's imagery and symbolism, for that matter - come from what we romanticize as a golden age: Western Europe's and Britain's medieval centuries. King Arther opened them; King John closed them. Adventure is an extended-family Tradition that draws from Gardnerian, Alexandrian, the Farrars' and Starhawk's Wicca, and from the ethno-cultural heritage and personal ritual experience of its initiates. Adventure's rituals and coven' selection of ritual sites reflect our experience that our culture's "Code of Adventure" is a viable code by which to live in the mundane world as well as in the magical realms. Adventure uses liturgical material drawn from several Traditions and works in common ways; our sacred images and names come through our common ethnic heritage from the Norse and Celtic; some of our forms are literary derivations.

The concepts of history and literary expression, as well as religious consciousness, are uniquely human as far as we know. Consciousness and our capacity for analysis are among our magical Tools. We feel bound to use them in trust for the rest of Life, the universe, and everything. This means we are obligated to grasp other perspectives than humanity's. Within the Circle and without, we accept that the circumstances of our lives are challenges, and our "lessons" are also magical Tools for us to use in our lives' adventures.

Adventure's consciousness is very much of life's interconnectedness, and that humanity is not more important than other life, but only more responsible. Adventure's style is to approach archetypes through mundane experience, so transforming the mundane, as we believe our forebears did. Adventure covens focus on archetype-evoking experience as an historical, literary and religious metaphor and a connection to Witchcraft-as-lifestyle, and consider it good training for secular life, too.

Adventure's philosophy is frequently couched in camping and other adventurous metaphors as well as in Wiccan aphorisms. Adventure's initiates are expected to develop new expressions of Wiccan teachings, and new insights to apply to mundane life, for we belielve that we will thus achieve the balance we seek. In addition to keeping Feasts (Sabbats) and Moons, we work through art, literature, music and drama to add to the public's understanding of Wicca as well as for our own growth. In so doing, we practice the diversity Wicca preaches. We aim to be grounded in Wiccan philosophy and approach, and be fluent in other religious languages and cultural idioms so that we are able to translate Wiccan concepts and attitudes understandably for the non-Pagan. As travelers on Life's adventure, we must acquit ourselves in many Lands.

In those Lands, kings and itinerant strangers alike, are expected things of, because we see our archetypes in them. (The world didn't call the Kennedy Administration "Camelot" accidentally.) In the last generations, the names of the adventure stories have changed to things like "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" and "Dr Who," but the stories are still about facing the Guardians. The reason the stories are still about facing the Guardians is that life is still about facing the Guardians.