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A rough draft of the spiritual autobiography of Joseph B Wilson. The history that lead to Toteg Tribe.
Copyright 2003 by Joseph B Wilson
- That same week Special Agents Green and Jones of the OSI called me into their office. They said
that they heard I had some problems, and maybe they could help me -- if I was willing to help them.
I asked them what they wanted. They said they were not interested in my religious activities since
they had already investigated my involvement in that and found nothing wrong. They also
apologized for the Staff Judge Advocate's highhanded treatment of me when I first arrived, saying
that he had absolutely no right to do what he did. They said they wanted me to continue my
activities with Pagan Movement since that put me in the middle of the Hippie counter-culture. Then
they asked if I had ever heard of the P.E.A.C.E. movement.
I said everyone knew about anti-war protesters, their activities were in the news every day. They
explained that what they were interested in was a specific group lead by an American exchange
student at one of the colleges at the University at Oxford. He'd started this group and was
recruiting people from on base to participate. Instead of "peace" the initials P.E.A.C.E. stood for
"People Emerging Against Corrupt Establishments." They suspected that members of his group
were not non-violent anti Viet Nam war protesters, but were involved in such activities as the fire
bombing of the base dining hall which had occurred the month before. They wanted me to attend
the meetings of his group and report what I observed to them. After they showed me evidence that
convinced me that the financing for the P.E.A.C.E. movement came from the Soviet Embassy in
London I agreed to attend a meeting.
My motivation was a combination of feeling the pressure of being blackmailed and an immature
"James Bond" excitement over being involved with an under cover espionage activity.
I attended every meeting and reported my observations to Green and Jones every week.
Whatever else he was, the local leader of this P.E.A.C.E. movement whom I will call the Oxford
Student was a master at manipulating groups to do what he wanted yet make them think that it
was their idea in the first place. One of the ways he would do this was to say something like,
"Some of us were discussing what we should do about such and such or so and so. Here's what
you suggested." Then he'd sketch out three or four "ideas" all but one of which were logically
flawed in some obvious way. Of course the group would all agree on the logical one, which was the
one he wanted. I never found anyone who was in on the "some of us were discussing" aspect of
things. I also learned that several of the people who attended those meetings were in trouble with
both military and civilian authorities. One was nick-named Razor for his tendency to carry a straight
razor as a weapon. I worried about him and his friends discovering what I was doing.
Pagan Movement was growing into a specific new non-initiatory religious tradition with a strong
British flavor. We recognized the Earth as Goddess, and personified Her in triple form as Mab
(Maid), Mabh (Mother), and Maghu (Hag) -- corresponding with the three obvious seasons of
Spring, Summer, and Winter. God was recognized in two aspects, one as Pahh the Sky Father
(intellect) which gives energy to everyone (similar to Apollo, Lugh, Balor, Mabon or the sun gods of
various other cultures as well as rain and thunder gods, and the other as the Bririn the Horned God
(emotion) with a lusty animal nature (similar to Pan before he became a simple goat-god, or
Cernunos of Celtic myth).
This orientation, along with the fact that we refused to import any occult practices (we were not
opposed to occult practices, but felt they should arrise from within, not be imported from without)
as being foreign to our objective, and in particular refused to accept the Qabalah since it's origins
were in the Middle East, and not Great Britain, offended some members who dropped out.
One of them, John Score, formed his own group which he called Pagan Front, as a screening for
people interested in Gardnerian Wicca. I didn't mind, because I thought that the more groups there
were the more alternate religions such as mine would be tolerated. John, on the other hand, was
so upset he refused to speak to me again and returned all of my letters unopened. Pagan Front
later became the Pagan Federation.
While I conducted monthly circles (I don't like to call them ceremonies or rituals, because they were
certainly not formal or rigid in that respect) Tony and his wives, Pat and Betty, worked on
developing Seasonal Ceremonies. These ceremonies were not to be based on the calendar like
other traditions, but on the development shown by Nature -- the Flowering of Spring, Ripening of
Grain and Fruit in summer, Harvest, and so forth. We felt that these Seasonal Ceremonies should
be celebrations which included a psychodrama of the celebrants enacting in theatrical form what
nature was doing. All of the seasonal celebrations were done on Tony's five acre farm land in
Wales.
