The Five Types of Activities in a coven:
In general, when a coven meets it is focused on at least one of the following activities. Each of these activities represents different needs of the coven and its members. The first three represent things important to all covens, the last two represent things that may help the coven run well, but are not vital. The distinctions I have made are mine alone, but I think are generally easy to distinguish and don’t represent a massive reinterpretation of coven nature, or anything like that.

These five activities are:

“Business” stuff- things regarding the running of the coven.
Religious Stuff- the rituals the coven uses and similar things
Educational Stuff- things involving the learning and teaching aspects of the coven.
Group-Building Stuff-activities designed to facilitate working together
Fun Stuff- stuff with no purpose beyond having a good time.

Business Stuff
A significant part of running a coven consists of coordinating schedules and maintaining a basic sense of rules, and that’s what comprises the bulk of the business of a coven-setting and keeping a calendar, as well as meeting places, financial arrangements [chipping in for pizza, candles or electricity, for example] and other stuff. Calendars are a big deal, as are house rules for the meeting space, and if they are not set down on paper before the first meeting, they should be by the second.
Many covens have a practice of public service, such as donating things to food banks or clothes to the needy. This should be decided on a by-group basis, with a lot of research, and once decided, a regular status report on these activities should be given, either in the form of an active meeting or some sort of newsletter or email. It’s important to crystallize why you are doing this, so don’t be afraid to sit down as a group and think about why you are doing community service, and make sure that if it’s time to change why and how it can be changed.

The last type of coven business is coven movement. This includes physically moving the meeting place to moving people in and out of the coven, and in ranks within the coven. If the procedure for doing so it not established by your tradition, a coven business meeting will be needed to establish such policies, and more meetings may be needed to serve as maintenance for these policies. Often the business stuff can be accomplished in the first few minutes of a coven gathering, but big business stuff, such as organizing an event, often requires its own meeting. Since this business is often vital, many covens find it necessary to place the business stuff in the first five minutes of the gathering, or as soon as everyone arrives. Often people are on Pagan Standard time, arriving whenever they feel like it, and this can be disruptive. If it’s a problem for your group, discussing how to deal with it should be a part of the Business stuff. In so-called Traditional Witchcraft [Wicca based on Gardner and Murray] business meetings were regularly called esbats, and ritual meetings were termed sabats, but today many groups have their own definitions of these terms, and rather than weigh in on their proper use, I will disregard them altogether in this piece.

Religious Stuff
The most obvious part of a coven is the religious stuff. These are the practices of the coven, and are probably the chief reason for its existence. The gathering to worship the gods in groups, an extension of personal practice, is an element Wicca shares with many other religions. Your worship community is a community, and you are part of it. Religious “stuff” can be further broken down into three categories: rituals, rites and workings.

Rituals are worship acts that serve as “pure worship” they are not based on the cycles of the moon or sun, nor are held for any reason other than a desire to gather together and worship in unison. They make include circles, praying, singing or feasting, as well as other activities designed to work with the relationship between humankind and the divine.

Rites are rituals that occur at special times, such as holy days, or at changes in one’s life and may include elements listed above or other things deemed appropriate by the group.

Workings, which are not practiced by every Wiccan coven, are rituals with the intention of changing something, either through magic or via directed prayer. These include rituals for healing, justice and the betterment of the world, and vary drastically from group to group.

These things may be combined into one ritual, or broken down into three smaller rituals during a coven gathering.

Educational Stuff
More controversial, in many ways, is the educational stuff part of a gathering. This can include adult religious education, or RE, as well as the education of children. Depending on group, the education of children may be prohibited or limited.

Often people are afraid of RE, because their experience with group RE is limited to Bible study, but it can be a vital part of religious life. Knowing what your religion, and your tradition, teaches, is a vital practice, and even if the RE is the form of one member reading on what an aspect of the religion means, it can help you understand your religion more. A few brave groups will outright debate the issues, and the ability to do so respectfully is an awesome ability that few covens can master.

RE takes two forms, In-tradition and out-of-tradition. In-tradition RE is about how your tradition does things and why, including how, if in any way, your tradition varies from an original tradition. For example, most UEW teachers teach a lot about Gardnerian Wicca, even though they don’t follow it, but since it’s taught to instruct about their tradition and how it came to be, it’s still in-tradition RE.

Out-of-tradition RE is founded on the principle that truth can be found in many places, and generally involves so-called pure learning. This is information that won’t help you beyond the knowledge it imparts to you about mankind in general.

Ideally, RE should be about 75% in-tradition, with the out-of-tradition stuff used as a supplement. When these percentages are reversed, it often becomes confusing for the student. RE should involve what the coven believes, in some manner.

How this is done is a sticky subject I won’t broach. I like the use of a curricula, personally, with coven members studying on their own and coming together to discuss it, with a knowledgeable leader providing guidance, but that’s a result of the experience of trying to fit into covens for traditions I wasn’t cut out for and seeing the stuff that stuck-UEW-as superior.

Group-building Stuff
This category is much more optional that the others, but is often a great way to help the group work together. It is the usage of techniques designed to promote group cohesiveness, such as group field trips, working days and adventures, things with no relation to religion, like playing capture the flag or paintball, designed to provide entertainment while helping the group find their own strengths and weaknesses.

Trust-building activities, such as using a rope-course, or playing games where a person is lead, blindfolded, by his friends, are a good type of group-building, as many Wiccans have come from religious backgrounds where they’ve lost trust in co-religionists. This can even be expanded into family-type activities, as the coven is often a type of replacement family. Both of these require care because the line between tight-knit religious family and exclusionist cult can sometimes be very fine.

Perhaps less extensive are sharing-type group building activities, such as those when someone shares their feelings or history. This may or may not include so-called workings, where magic(k) or meditative practices are used.

Fun Stuff
Whenever you have a group together, there is often a desire to have entertainment. This can be in the form of feasting, games, even the manufacture of crafts. Obviously this is self-explanatory.

A Sample Night at Coven X
Coven X was created in the late 1990s, and as of this writing [2004] has operated for several years under the same set of rules. As a result, the business stuff is truncated. This is presented in the form of a schedule, so that one can get an idea of what might-might-be involved in a coven gathering.
6:30 PM: Stated time of gathering. Appetizers and coffee/soda available in the kitchen. Each arrival brings a dollar for the communal food fund and a dish for the meal.
6:45 PM: Entire coven arrives. [As a coven with many years, extreme lateness isn’t a problem.] Hanging out.
7:00 PM Coven moves into a pre-arranged space, and sit in a circle. Discussion of business arrangements occurs, as well as a sharing of news.
7:15 PM Coven slips into its “RE mode” as an appointed person discusses the tradition of the coven. The topic of the night is the history of the founding of the tradition, and an older coven member, who was a part of the early tradition, discusses personal memories of the early days. A question and answer session follows.
7:45 PM Coven casts a circle, practicing communal worship.
8:00 PM Circle rite ends, and coven begins communal meal. [potluck]
8:30 PM Some coven members leave, others gather to watch a movie.

The above is just a sample. One of the best coven meetings I’ve heard of actually consisted of everything above before the circle [although the RE was different] followed by a circle then gathering around to watch a football game, with wings, beer and pizza. This, while seemingly irreligious, was actually reflective of the culture the coven existed within, and that act of gathering for the game, despite being secular, was all about being a family and people who share more than just a religion, but also a background and a locality.


Copyright notice:
©2004, Kaatryn MacMorgan and CUEW
This article is distributed for the sole purpose of helping Modern Wiccans It may be reprinted ONLY with the permission of Kaatryn MacMorgan. This is required reading for some second circle students in UEW.

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