Exegesis On The Wiccan Rede

All religions began with somebody's sudden flashing insight, enlightenment, a shining vision. Some mystic found the way and the words to share the vision, and, sharing it, attracted followers. The followers may repeat those precise and poetic words about the vision

until they congeal into set phrases, fused language, repeated by rote and without understanding. Cliches begin as great wisdom - that's why they spread so fast - and end as ritual phrases, heard but not understood. Living spirituality so easily hardens to boring religious routine, maintained through guilt and fear, or habit and social opportunism - any reason but joy.

We come to the Craft with a first generation's joy of discovery, and a first generation's memory of bored hours of routine worship in our childhood. Because we have known the difference, it is our particular challenge to find or make ways to keep the Craft a living,

real experience for our grandchildren and for the students of our students.

I think the best of these safeguards is already built into the Craft as we know it, put there by our own good teachers. On our Path, the mystic experience itself is shared, not just the fruits of mysticism. We give all our students the techniques, and the

protective/supportive environment that enable almost every one of them to Draw the Moon and/or Invoke the God. This is an incredibly radical change from older religions, even older Pagan religions, in which the only permissible source of inspiration has been to endlessly

reinterpret and reapply the vision of the Founder (the Bible, the Book of the Law, the Koran, ... ). The practice of Drawing the Moon is the brilliant crown of the Craft.