Publisher's Synopsis
HCBW is a social history of the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn during its first decade, from 1967 to 1977. The NROOGD was founded by a group of friends in San Francisco as a way to participate in the new Witchcraft movement begun in England by Gerald Gardner. The NROOGD ar first was a "Pagan occult study and dancing society" that held Sabbats in public parks in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1969 NROOGD members formed their first coven, which evolved into a family of a dozen Gardnerian-style covens during the next decade. It has always held Sabbats open to the public, a practice that help inspire the Pagan festivals that began to proliferate in the late 1970s. In the mid-1970s, working with members of the Feri and other Traditions, NROOGD members participated in a series of extraordinary meetings that led to the formation of the Covenant of the Goddess, the first national church for Witches, in 1975, an event here documented in detail for the first time. Although Aidan Kelly, one of he founders of the NROOGD, is the primary author, HCBW contains contributions by another dozen NROOGD members, describing their experiences in the NROOGD and in the Craft, as well as how those experiences changed their lives. HCBW includes scripts for the basic NROOGD Sabbat ritual, which has influenced Craft rituals widely for the last four decades, and for the Sabbat held at Mabon to commemorate the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece, one of the NROOGD's most unusual celebrations.
