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The 1734 Tradition

The 1734 Tradition was a tradition established between 1960 and 1970 by Joseph B. “Bearwaker” Wilson in the United States. In his own words:

Its essence, it contains the teachings given to me by three sources. The first of these is a person who I will call Sean, who was my first teacher and who grounded me in the oral traditions of his family. Later I engaged in correspondence with Roy Bowers (alias Robert Cochrane) who, with Sean's approval and guidance, supplemented those initial teachings. The third source of inspiration and personal guidance was Ruth Wynn-Owen [a Welsh actress], the matriarch of the Y Plant Brân [a Hereditary Family which claims descent from the Welsh mythic hero Bran]; Sean provided the basis, Roy provided some magical and mystical clarification, and Ruth provided a seasonal construct.

It is a mystical witchcraft system considered by modern scholars to fall beneath the Cochrane branch of Traditional Witchcraft. Unlike many strains, however, Joseph Wilson never intended it or its materials (but especially not his correspondences with Robert Cochrane) to be “secret”. Nor was it ever intended to be hierarchical, or have an initiation or even a lineage structure.

A member does not need a pedigree of initiations leading back to Wilson, Cochrane, or Tubal Cain and Naamah, in order to be true to the 1734 Tradition. Instead, initiation into the 1734 Tradition has, traditionally, only consisted of a “kit” that contains copies of Roy's letters, an introduction to the spirits, and "a boot in the rear"; as Wilson notes:

There is a spiritual initiation, [and] an introduction to certain spirits and lineage. It doesn't come about as a result of physical ritual. It comes about by actual contact with the spirits.

Those who are grabbed by the Spirits of the tradition are those who are 1734. It is the methods of teaching, the philosophy, and the Spirits that are important within the tradition, not who initiated who, or how. Any physical initiation rituals themselves are merely inductions into the group itself, and nothing more. They are not spiritual initiations in and of themselves- which is in direct contrast to Wicca and unique even among many branches of Traditional Witchcraft.

The ‘legitimate tradition’ of 1734 [then] is in the heart, not a lineage. It is the process of turning dross into gold, and acquiring wisdom that matters. Its focus is on bringing about a change within the participant through work with certain elements that may be vaguely similar to the Zen Koan -- but which are certainly different from that. This is sort of an accumulation of, or a creation of, a "personal power" which comes about not from what you know, but from what you are.

Sean called the way of developing it, learning to think in "poetic logic". Roy referred to it in his letters to Bill Gray as "abstract thinking" and related it to the alchemical process of turning dross into gold. It's a means of strengthening oneself and in the process of opening oneself up in a manner that allows communication with spirit and spirits without delusion while maintaining control. In a nutshell it is the skill of understanding and communicating in the language of poetic metaphor, the true language of the spirits.

A few people can do this naturally, some have some talent at it that can be awakened and used, and some will have to work very hard to even get a glimmer. This is what Cochrane was referring to when he wrote that: ‘A Crafter is born not made, or if one is to be made, then tears are split before the Moon can be Drawn’.

An interesting facet of the 1734 Tradition is the explicit prohibition against oaths. This is explained by the fact that an oath is a solemn, formal declaration or promise to fulfill a pledge- often calling on God, a god, or a sacred object as witness. As Wilson explains that this was explained to him:

If you take an oath what you are doing is saying that under other circumstances you can't be trusted to keep your word. [And] if you have to require an oath from someone it means that you don't trust that person without Divine compulsion. If that's the case, you have no business being that intimately involved with them in the first place.

This was later confirmed similarly to him by Cochrane in a letter, via teachings from Cochrane’s own mentor.

Main Sources