Secrecy And The C-Word
by Blayze

What is so very bad about a mystery tradition keeping secrets? To my mind, part of working within a mystery tradition is unlocking secrets, working through information and experiential rituals and concepts until the mystery is revealed. I have been in the position of having information handed to me and also of having to go deeper into a mystery by myself. Yes, often someone else provided the key, but going through the door and actually experiencing the mystery for myself, lead to a greater understanding of it. I know which method I prefer.

Mystery religions, paths, traditions - whatever, work with many layers of understanding and experience. Let me use an analogy of working with the Wheel Of The Year. The first time one dances the wheel, you tend to gain a surface level understanding, you may understand the celebratory aspects, feel a connection to the energies and maybe a great sense of joy or other strong emotion that is a key to that particular Sabbat. The next time you work the Wheel, your understanding and involvement increases, you begin to understand what lies behind the celebration or ritual, it may become easier to tap into the energies and a vague outline of patterns emerge. Work the Wheel for a couple of years and each time there is more understanding, different perspectives gained and you begin to be able to distinguish and sense the differing energies leading up to. and post. the festival. Those patterns you only glimpsed last year and now more solid and make much more sense. You can actually work with them now. Actually writing a ritual, working for, researching and merging with a Sabbat concept to the point where you can actually give a mystery key to others, allows you to go behind or into the mystery on yet another level again.

Mysteries, like secrets, can take a long time to unlock. There is a reward there, but that isn’t the only reason we delve into the mystery. When you GET it, the knowledge and understanding becomes a full mind, body and spiritual experience. You also tend to never forget that mystery either. 

Now given that many mysteries take time to unravel or unlock, that they sometimes need a key and also require a lot of work, doesn’t it make sense that a mystery tradition would not hand that knowledge out to anyone who had not been prepared for it or had not worked through the various levels of the mystery itself? Most mystery traditions are set up to give participants that experiential mystery training. There is an egregore to work with as well as supervision, and the wish for the participant to experience as much as an epiphany as their peers have before them. Just handing the knowledge over really does not achieve anything.

Now for many people, working within a group framework is not something they wish to do, they have their own path and do not wish to participate in, or follow, a particular set tradition. That is all well and good, but by choosing to work in a solitary situation they have ALSO chosen not to work within the framework of a tradition. So why moan and groan about a tradition not handing all of the information over? You can’t have it both ways. Purely solitary paths and purely group traditions are very different beasts.  They work along the same lines up to a point, but then, by their very natures, they diverge.  

It is, of course, very possible to work with mystery as a solitary practitioner. It is just that the experience is different, though no less valid.  So why spend time bitching and moaning when you could be out there creating your own experience!

Personally, I work in a teaching group, a closed initiate group and by myself. They all give me different experiences and a different mystery perspective.