Ordination and the precepts established therein can be paramount in our lives. People who have been ordained act as spiritual, physical, and psychical support for others. Such roles are eminently social and are sustained by (at least) the group consensus. In Pagan and witchcraft communities, regular claims to ordination are made. However, my question is; by whom or by what are they ordained? To what extent are they familiarized with that spiritual, physical, and psychical care? The Church of Witchcraft recognizes the need for care and focuses on the quality of that care with an eye toward consistent improvement.
Much of witchcraft is populated by solitary witches. In my practice, I cannot be ordained in my own modality of witchcraft because there is no depth of meaning to the testimony. I can only provide claircognizant channeling (and this source is dubious at best) as the source of the testimony. In the context of the Church of Witchcraft, I can claim such ordination because that ordination was politically affirmed by a group of both non-secular witches and secular people. Witches I regularly support during my ministry affirm my testimony when they seek it, and I subsequently provide it to them. Communal acceptance of my role is the charge, or the orders, by which I hold merit (Congar, 1984).[1]
Witchcraft and systems that seek to organize it (like any other organization) similarly rely on testimony. You may have heard about those who provide that testimony. Some of the roles that are relevant to witchcraft that provide testimony are preachers, priests, priestesses, shamans, and teachers. Sometimes we use the word guide to indicate a sense of an external direction finder. We seek professionals and experts that are “…good informants in their specific domain of knowledge.” (Leefman and Lesle, 2018).[2]
You can be a dedicant to your specific entity(ies) or a philosophical approach that may comprise your iteration of witchcraft. Ordination is another matter entirely. The ordination, or sanctifying process, is by nature eminently social. As a solitary practitioner, being ordained is immaterial. If you were to worship in the same or near similar manner with at least one other person, who then went on to spread the word you both share; where would that authority come from? It would either come from the external powers/entities to the first person or the authority would be passed on from the first person acting on behalf of sanctification to authorize the second person to do the same. Ordination is social.
Religion is at its core, a group of like-minded people who share the same or similar beliefs. Witches share similar beliefs and, by this alone, for me, it reaches into the realm of religion. That kind of system is important to the development of the spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being of others. If I am seeking someone who can speak with a degree of authority on those aspects, I want that person to be an expert. There are credentials for psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, social workers, theologians, and philosophers, and the credentials provide that token of socially derived expert testimony that can speak to their respective fields. Especially when they are needed to support someone. Bandying about random ordination that has no aspects of these kinds of education focuses (traditional or otherwise) minimizes the value of ordination and its necessary role in witchcraft.
Hierophant Aindreas Dounyng
[1]Congar, Y. (1984). Note sur une valeur des termes “ordinare, ordinatio.” Revue des sciences religieuses 58, 7–14.
[2]Leefmann, Jon & Lesle, Steffen (2020). Knowledge from scientific expert testimony without epistemic trust. Synthese 197 (8):3611-3641.
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