So, last week I wrote the following article on 1734, the method or Rite or path or what have you that I prcticed....
Here is daunting title! Young Tradition is a form of 1734, and I think in the past I may have set out to explain what 1734 is, but there are two things about this, firstly almost because it is counter to religions of orthodoxy, most traditions and lines in the Craft do not offer hard explanations of what they are, and then the truth is that explanations of what 1734 is are actually pretty poor, and while some of this is by intention, some of it is simply by lack of skill and not enough thought. So, right here, for my good more than anyone else's, I will attempt some small explanation of what 1734 is, and what it is not.
Firstly, it is the American form of what is known as Cochrane's Craft. It is a wisdom tradition: the word witch is such a vague and overarching term that it is as unhelpful as it is helpful. Cochrane as well as his immediate British heirs in The Clan of Tubal Cain are very careful about wording what they do and what they are. "We are what would have been called by some, witches". Cochrane's Craft is concerned primarily with wisdom in the occult as well as the common sense, connection to the Ancestors and ones spiritual kin. The magic that occurs is part and parcel of the greater goal that is often referred to as the Great Work, Cochrane's Craft is concerned with the getting of wisdom from all the traditions that have never left us from nursery rhymes and fairy tales, to Greek myths and the Bible. Part of that wisdom is called magic, and can be accessed through what some call magic, but the aim of anyone in any Cochranist path is not to be called a witch or to achieve magical powers. Get wisdom to live wisdom, walk in love. Do what is given you to do. And though I say magic is not the sole goal, magic is certainly part of the path, though the emphasis on wisdom and vision will certainly change the focus and the idea of magic is 1734.
Before we move onto our second point it must be addressed that while the scholar Ronald Hutton flatly calls 1734 the American form of Cochrane's Craft, and I side with him, some will correct us saying 1734's founder is Joe Bearwalker Wilson and it is not Cochrane Craft. They are mistaken. The official webpage for 1734 lists it as "the Authentic method of Cochrane AND Joe Bearwalker Wilson." I haven't bothered too much with Wilson because according to him the difference between 1734 and anything else that came form Cochrane is the influence of two people none of us knows who contributed no rituals and no theory, a Ruth and a Sean, and an influence that isn't detectable is no influence at all. The only extensive body of work used in 1734 is Cochrane's letters and Cochrane's riddles and theories which means that 1734 is Cochrane's Craft.
Secondly: 1734 is not pagan. There is no hard and fast definition for what pagan is and because of that I will say neopagan, But there are certain trends that tend to reflect it: the worship of nature, or the statement that one worships nature. The belief in a Great Goddess or a lesser God and the invocation of the Earth as that Goddess, the idea of "working with" or "invoking" deities which one "dismisses" when he or she is done with them, in fact a small idea of divinity that sometimes can be whittled down to no idea of it. A resistance to or ignorance of the major religious traditions of the earth--not simply the monotheistic ones, a shallow White-Centric cobbling together of other religious paths and a solely white understanding of them, the emphasis on magic over wisdom and in magic as reliance upon the shallow self and the ego, and a dismissal or demotion of ones gods. I am not blind, I see that what began as an explanation of paganism can be seen as nothing less than a serious criticism of it. It is biased. I am biased. I am critical of it. Pagan worship seems like a post Protestant, post atheistic invention whose emphasis is not on wisdom, and not even on nature so much as a white person's view of nature. I have little feeling for it and am not part of it. I also admit that there are some people of a much more spiritual bent who would call themselves pagans, especially in the Spanish world, but I wonder if they would call themselves neopagan or find themselves at home among most pagans north of the equator.
1734 IS a devotional path. On the occult tree, 1734 is linked more to Asatru, Vanatru, and other restoration paths including that of the British mysteries than it is to Wicca as most people know Wicca or paganism or what most people mean when they say Witchcraft. Though there are covens and gatherings and solitaries who regard themselves as 1734 and none is beholden to the other, even the ones whose traditions have descended from others, what they all have in common is the feeling of purpose, a devotion to living in the light of some form of the Divine. Regardless of how the Divine is interpreted, be she a form or several forms of Divine Mother, the Holy Daughter, the Father, the Beloved, be the divine in many forms or one, in some way we are devoted and consecrated to that Divinity. Even if in 1734 we do call upon what might be known as spirits or ancestors or sprites or saints for that matter, they are invited into the temple, the family setting, for they are part of the family. They are not dismissed, and they are not instruments of our purpose. I would say, and this is my interpretation and may only stand in Young Tradition, I am always the assistant mage. At my altar the chief priest is the Divine One in the form of Mage and teacher who, for convenience, we will call Hermes.
There is a great blessing in this. I was raised Christian and my references tend to be fairly Catholic, but I remember listening to the Hindu Bhagavan Das talking about altar building. He said the problem with us is we make ourselves the center of everything, what about me? what about me? what about me?
"Put your load on the Lord," he said. "Put it on Krishna, put it on Jesus, put it on Buddha. He can do it. Take the focus from yourself."
This good old wisdom is sorely missing from paganism and pagan witchcraft. I heard a witch saying, "Oh, I don't pray to my gods. I treat them like teachers, the way you have an instructor for one class, and then you move on." This is poor understanding both of god and teacher. Traditionally one's great teacher, one's guru, was treated as God and revered as God, even seen and experienced after death. So, God is always the object or worship because and not in spite of being the Teacher.
.... I ran the following to another practitioner--and it is not a wide practice--and got in return, a lot of bitchiness for not actually seeing things the exact way he saw them. When I said we were all entitled to our differences I got more bitchiness and swift ostracization. It was similar treatment that made me begin this page when I first began 1734, and at that time, I was tempted to leave that path, to give into anger and hurt and walk away, This time around I realized that, in the intervening nearly two years I have built a solid path and one that is actually far removed from where I began. The value of 1734 was that it had never been developed and was a very bare set of scraps from which much could be made. The weakness was that no one seemed to be making much of it and those who did, were swiftly treated poorly. Well, now we have made of those scraps what we were given, and what we were given and what we created is in the article above, but this blog is no longer 1734. It is not even Cochrane's Craft. It is its own thing now. It is the Young Tradition. It is the Alchymical Rite..
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