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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
- The next few years were difficult. Joanna and I now called the circle that met at our house the
"Temple of the Elder Gods" (TOTEG). I talked Joanna into working with me to use TOTEG to
experiment and find ways to do exactly what Longwalker, Sean and Siobhan, Roy, and Ruth. It
wasn't easy. It meant that we had to do things that others found to be upsetting, like intentionally
avoiding culturally specific names of any kind, whether they be Greek, or Egyptian, or Irish, or
Welsh, or Norse, or Caananite, and on the same hand intentionally avoiding the specific rituals that
were a part of any of my Craft heritage. The challenge was to connect directly with our ancestors
and the Gods and to discover ways that were appropriate to them based on where we lived.
This experiment, this philosophy, was the reason that many people who had been regular at our
circles stopped attending. We dropped from about 20 regulars, to about four almost immediately.
It disappointed me, but at the same time it was okay. Many of those people wanted a "Celtic"
group anyway, and I couldn't provide that, and never wanted to provide that.
While this was happening others would come to me and ask me to initiate them and teach them
"witchcraft", in particular 1734. Most were disappointed when I told them that I was focusing on
other things and suggested they go elsewhere. Bonnie Crowley was one who continued to ask me
for initiation, and in 1980, against my better judgement (and in hopes that she would not bother me
any more) I finally broke down and gave her an initiation and copies of the letters Roy Bowers had
written to me and Norman Gills. She in turn initiated her husband. Although I tried to give her the
oral tradition that went along with those documents as well that seems to have gone in one ear and
out the other.
The first few years of trying to go back to basics, so to speak, were filled with mistakes on my part.
I felt it was necessary to strip away all of the cultural "baggage" that we had accumulated and start
from scratch. The problem was that I also felt that we needed a framework of some kind to build
upon.
Looking back, I realize that I still didn't have the courage of my convictions. I didn't really know what
to do. I still felt the need for a foundation, a framework on which to build. I went back into my past,
to 1969 And 1970 when I was forming Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland with Tony Kelly in
England, and helping and encouraging Ed Fitch to develop Pagan Way in the United States.
As a little background here: I recognized the Triple Goddess - Nymph, Mother, and Hag -; and the
Dual God - Sky Father, Horned God - and had asked Tony Kelly, my partner in the creation of
Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland to invent names for them that were not based on any
historical culture. The names he finally was satisfied with were Mab (Nymph), Mabh (Mother) and
Maghu (Hag) (based upon the "ma" sound as being kind of a universal root word that babies use
for mother in most languages) for the three forms of the goddess and Pahh (Sky Father/Sun/Apollo
type) and Bririn (Horned God/Wild Nature/Dionysus type) for the two forms of the god (again
based upon the "p" and "b" sounds as the root of what babies use for father in most
cultures/languages). For the record I wasn't really satisfied with those names because of the Welsh
idiosyncracies that Tony used in spelling them. While you'll probably be able to figure out what
Mab sounds like, the other goddess names need some explanation. Mabh is pronounced with a
broad "a" like the "a" in "father" and "bh" pronounced like a "v" so it would be Mah-v. And the
"ghu" of Maghu is pronounced like "oo" in "ooze" so that would be Mah-oo. While Pahh is pretty
straightforward, Bririn is pronounced by rolling/flapping the r's and the first "i" pronounced like the
"i" in Machine and the second i like the 'i" in "in". So it would be Brreerrin. (sigh). Tony said the
name made him think of pan pipes playing in the forest.
Back in those days I held circles every month at my home in Bicester, England. These circles were
open to everybody. I had developed a simple ritual that we used in those circles that basically used
the artificial names that Tony had developed.
I adopted that ritual, in a slightly modified form, as well as those Goddess and God names for us to
use in the new TOTEG circles.
Our focus, during those few years, was to develop a personal connection with and understanding
of the Goddess and God. We did this, by using a series of guided meditations I conducted using
variations of the methods I had learned from Dr. Mordey. We went about this methodically, doing a
circle once per week, and focusing on a different aspect each week for a couple of years. At the
end of each circle we would each tell the group what we had experienced and saw during the
meditation.
I made it a point not to make any specific suggestions of what the participants would see
regarding the particular aspect of the goddess or the god in their meditations. It was fascinating to
see how the visionary experiences people had changed over the course of the season - how we
were tying in to the nature cycles of Southern California rather than adopting those from some
other part of the world. It was also fascinating to see how sometimes after each person had
shared their experience with the group, that each one had received a snippet of a plot, and when
they were all put together they made a complete little story which fit in with the time of the year and
could easily be adapted as a seasonal ceremony! That was very exciting!
