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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
- Eventually I developed an initiation ceremony to admit people into our group. Among the first we
initiated were Poke and Jay Runyon (a political "reciprocal" initiation), and Dave and Ann Finnan.
After the initiation ceremony I'd chip off a small piece of that stone and give it to our new initiates
as a memento of the occasion. I used to joke about the stone being the "True Stone of Scone"
upon which the ancient kings stood during their coronation, and that whoever had it was the true
leader. I didn't realize anybody would take that seriously, especially since I had that habit of
chipping off pieces of it for people to have. After initiation I'd also make sure that the people had
copies of the booklet that I'd created and let them know that part of our work would be to
investigate that material and use it as a source for learning.
During 1974 and 1975 I concentrated on developing the system that I called "1734", though we
called our working group "The Pantheon". Mara and I made frequent trips to Oakland, California
and were involved with early discussions for the formation of what became Covenant of the
Goddess. I chose not to continue association with that group because of their insistance on
requiring acceptance of "The Wiccan Rede" as a condition of membership.
During 1974 I wrote a column for Gnostic News, an occult newspaper published by Llewellyn
Publications. I stopped writing for Gnostica shortly after Isaac Bonewits became an editor there.
He rejected one of my columns on the masculine and feminine mysteries as not being Politically
Correct. The information he rejected is basically the same information about the masculine and
feminine mysteries found in Roy Bowers letters to me.
That same year Margot Adler sent me one of her lengthy questionnaires while she was
researching for Drawing Down The Moon. I was very uncomfortable about that questionnaire since
it was slanted to present a picture of the Craft that I didn't agree with. It was also slanted to support
Margot's political views. I choose not to participate or be interviewed. Regardless, Margot used a
portion of one of my Gnostica News articles as the introduction to one of the chapters in her book.
Mara and I had a very stormy relationship, and although we were married at the Autumnal Equinox
in 1975, by the Winter Solstice of that year our marriage and relationship was pretty much over.
1976 was a stormy year. I lived with Joanna, who eventually became my third wife, began the long
process of teaching her 1734, and eventually taught her the ceremonial magic methods I'd learned
from Poke Runyon and the OTA. We would occasionally attend OTA functions, alternating dates
with Mara so as not to cause conflicts and emotional discomfort. During that time Joey and I
became friends with Dave and Ann Finnan. David was unemployed and having difficulty in getting
a job, so I helped him to get a job as a Field Engineer with Savin Business Machines, the same
company I worked for.
By early 1977 Joey and I moved back into my house in Sunland and started to conduct circles of
our own and we attended circles at Dave and Ann's house on a reciprocal basis. I considered
David to be my best friend, and Joey was absolutely enamored with Ann.
So many things happened that relate to everything in the next few years it's difficult to sort them all
out so that everything makes sense.
During the next couple of years our relationship with David and Ann remained fairly close. In some
ways we cooperated with each other completely, in others we had a sort of friendly rivalry trying to
gather new people into our respective shared circles. Eventually they attracted a young US Marine
fighter pilot with a boisterous personality. Frank got on Joey's nerves and she really didn't want him
involved with our circle, but she put up with him for the sake for peace for a while. Then at one of
the circles at our house Frank did something that pushed Joey past her limit. At the time for
personal libations frank went up to the altar, lit incense, but instead of pouring a little wine into the
libation bowl, he poured it onto the floor and thus onto Joey's white carpet. That was just too much
for Joey she didn't want him back in our house, and didn't want to associate with him at their
house. Although he apologized profusely and attempted to make things better, clean the carpet,
and so forth, Joey wouldn't have any of it. We stopped attending their circles because of that, and
they stopped coming to ours since he was no longer welcome there.
In other ways our friendship seemed to remain stable. David and I were still on friendly terms at
work. Joey and Ann still had telephone conversations and socialized in other ways. We continued
to meet each other and be pleasant to each other at the ceremonies we went to with the O.T.A.
One day, I believe it was in late 1978 or early 1979, David and Ann came over to my house while
Joanna was away. I was busy with something, working on one of Joey's rose /rock gardens I
believe. Anyway, we chatted friendly enough, and they said something about wanting to use my
infamous stone for a Roebuck initiation. I gave it to them and told them that if they found it useful
they could have it, as I didn't intend to be using it any more. I later found out that they thought that
when I gave them the stone I "turned 1734 over to them."
