Adventure Wicca

Campsight was the first Adventure Wicca coven. Dissolved at Bride, 2004, Campsight is succeeded by Hearth's Gate Coven, formed at Samhain, 2003. But we don't believe these are the only Adventure Wicca covens. If you think your coven is following this Tradition -- read on to find out -- ....

Wicca recognizes the forces of nature as sacred; and calls all that is eternal and generative "Goddess," and all that dies and is reborn "God." Adventure is an archetypical attitude, a relationship to life, the universe and everything, and a mode of interpreting experience.

Adventure is defined -- and recognized -- by synthesis and innovation, and it challenges strictly regulated experience and "establishment" interpretations of experience. It is the nature of Adventure not to decree but to set out from doctrine, convention, and ease, and to make camp in the woods beyond. Adventure is an extended-family Tradition that draws from Gardnerian, Alexandrian, the Farrars' and Starhawk's Wicca, and from the cultural heritage and personal ritual experience of its Initiates, as well as from medieval Anglo-Celtic history and literature. This Tradition chooses to approach life as an adventure -- as Joseph Campbell put it,, to "live mythically."

The religion of Wicca provides its thealogy, yet the Adventure Tradition does not govern the details of ritual. An Adventure coven has a complete Book of Shadows, yet many rituals and most magic's are modified or created especially for the Circle in which they're done, by the people doing them. While what goes on in one coven of a conventional Wiccan Tradition is not very different from what goes on in another coven of the same Trad, what goes on in one Adventure coven can be different in a number of ways from what goes on in another: In how the Circle's cast and called, what pantheon is honored, how the group relates to its wider community, how magic is done, and how guardians are confronted, each Adventure coven is unique.

This is so because the Adventure Tradition relies upon individuality. Look at life: diversity rules! Listen to adventure stories about merry bands: the individual members have diverse backgrounds, for this ensures any group of a wide range of resources and powers. Every Adventure coven's chosen idiom -- scholarship? healing? minstrelsy? public service? education? camping? -- is unique. Adventure's covens are linked through our common sources for image, ritual and metaphor --Wicca's Anglo-Celtic heritage and Witch-lore, including ancient Celtic material and stories, Arthurian legends and Robin Hood's; even Frodo's! Adventure's foundations are a brave (pure) heart, a hospitable camp (home, hearth, heart), and the urge -- no, the calling -- to see what is around the next bend.

We're reconnected to the natural world and to our ancestral heritage when we adventure -- in Campsight's case, into the mountain campgrounds in Southeastern Arizona; but there are many other environments that offer similar opportunities. By facing physical challenges in the woo-ids, we can also reconnect with the spiritual dimensions of our lives. What we call the Code of Adventure is a viable code to follow in the mundane world as well as in magical realms.

The principle business of Adventure is the confrontation of guardians. Ulysses' voyage home, Gawain's engagement of the Green Knight, Robin Hood's checks of the Sheriff's abuses of power -- these are all confrontations with guardians, both individual and social. Like water trapped in polar ice caps, our energy can be unavailable to us, frozen by our fears and prejudices. The energy reclaimed when we confront our fears and prejudices -- our guardians -- fuels our transformations, both personal and cultural.

Adventure's Quest is to keep (and/or restore) balance. Our effort is ever to balance the long and short views, the immediate and the historical, the personal and the public, mortal and eternal, sacred and mundane. Would that this were as glamorous as it sounds, but the most practical way to achieve balance is to grow up, be fully individualized. Our proper field of action is the whole wide and deep universe, but, in practical terms of ordinary consciousness and society, we're naturally focused on the here and now -- which is, fortunately, wide and deep enough to keep us occupied for many lifetimes.

We take consciousness as one of the magical Tools the God/dess has given us, and we are mindful of the need to balance its dual aspects of reason and insight, just as we're aware of the need for other facets of our lives to be in harmony. This perspective keeps us focused on our quest for balance, personal and planetary.

In addition to keeping the Feasts (Sabbats) and Moons (Esbats), we grow through art, literature, music, and drama, using our cultural experience to add to the public's understanding of Wicca. The Adventure Tradition is grounded in Wiccan thealogy and philosophy, but followers also make it a point to be "conversational" in other religious languages and socio-cultural idioms. Thus, we're better able to translate Wiccan attitudes and concepts for other neo-Pagans and for non-Pagans; this deepened understanding helps us navigate our own inner realms more effectively, too.

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 focuses on camping and other non-ordinary, archetype-evoking experience. Adventure's style is to approach archetypes through mundane experience, so transforming the mundane, as we believe our ancestors did.