CUEW Triad

The name “Coven of The Far Flung Net” came in an instant, when we were discussing turning the comprehensive course into an internet course of some sort. The idea was to provide a virtual coven, a place for people to study and debate, argue and learn, as was generally expected for the beginning students in UEW. We found, much to our surprise, that many of our students were interested in starting even before we had the material fully online. We knew, even if our elders didn’t, that CFFN was going to be the thing that took UEW from a struggling tradition with a handful of remaining practitioners to a vibrant, multicultural and international community.
It would be a lie to say that we had the full support of UEW. UEW had schismed a couple of times before the 1990s, over several points which today seem ridiculous. For example, in the early 80s, a significant portion left over the use of the word Wicca. For those unfamiliar with that debate as it stood at that time, the so-called “real Witches,” the same people who today want to call their beliefs Wicca and ours “Neo-Wicca,” had gotten it into their heads that “Real Witches” used the term “Of the Wica” or “Wicca” and pronounced it Wee-sha. To call your practice “Wicca” or yourself a Wiccan (“Wicken”) was to open up ridicule, since you were “doing it wrong.”
My elders didn’t hold much truck with the nasty types that were trying to dictate what others could call themselves, and went to Wicca, over Witchcraft, and Wiccan, over Witch, to make it clear that they were not the same as those nasty types of the past. I came into a UEW that was largely decided on such things, and a few other debates, and also decimated as a result of schism after schism.
The benefit, of course, was that we went in knowing what we believed with the excruciating detail of an oft-schismed group. We had had debates, and had agreed that some points were set in stone and others were open to discussion, and CFFN started as very much open to discussion, with many early UEWwies outright leaving in disgust over the concept. (To read an example, from a UEWwie that did not leave but is uninvolved with UEW as it now stands, visit this link:http://www.angelfire.com/rant/ingwitch/net.html) Placing some of the UEW material behind passwords, later, would help some of the more aggressive complaints, but more importantly would put an end to the early virtual covens that popped up with our material, although they still occur with a reduced frequency.

Part one: Scope
The idea was set that CFFN would have a limited scope. We teach that every student is something the teacher must take some responsibility for, not just some responsibility to. We realized that the online format meant that we had to read text, so we used the entrance assignment to limit ourselves to students who we felt could get the maximal benefit from a text-based system. People who had their papers rejected for grammar often threw tantrums, asking us who the hell were we to judge them. The worst one was a truly atrocious paper from a person who not only failed to convey her point of view in anything resembling standard grammar, but clearly did not understand the assignment itself. When we passed a polite thanks but no thanks to us, she stated that she was an English teacher, and we were terribly unfair and mean.
To learn in CFFN, a student would have to read a post in English, do research online and off, and respond in English. Without the ability to understand the assignment, do the assignment as directed and submit the assignment, a student could not be accepted into CFFN. With the ability to do this small thing, a student shows not that they know all there is to Wicca, but just that they are prepared to learn in the format of CFFN. It is an imperfect screening, but it certainly helps.
Other groups that came after CFFN have chosen to test a student’s dedication by expecting a student to pay for instruction or jump hoops to earn a scholarship. The problem with this, of course, is that when you take a student’s money, you are agreeing to teach them. In the history of CFFN, two people have been asked to leave, and a third left before we could ask. All three times, these people were evaluated by the group to be dangerous to the continuance of CFFN. If we took money, we would’ve never been able to cut these folk out, because the one with the purse strings is the one in control.
The scope of CFFN was limited in size, by language and in how far one could go through UEW with it. By limiting the scope, and not claiming to be the one stop shop for learning all that Wicca was, we could provide the services we were capable or providing, to students that were probably capable of learning, and change things as we desired, as the needs changed. What is perhaps most interesting about CFFN is that despite going through several permutations-pods, clans, groups, etc.-the CFFN that works now is pretty darn similar to the CFFN in 1997, where all papers went through me.
We also limited our scope by teaching only UEW, which is a rational tradition that is internally consistent. Other groups that have come and gone in the time we’ve existed have make the mistake of, for example, claiming to be the ancient tradition of the creator’s family while telling students to read Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon, or telling students that Wicca is a religion, and “testing” them in their techniques of spellcasting or astral projection-concepts that aren’t religious in the slightest.