Origins and History
The "Coven of the Blue Star", established in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1975 by Frank Dufner, gave birth to both the name and the original membership of what would eventually become the Blue Star tradition. In 1980, on its membership application to the Covenant of the Goddess, the coven described itself (with tongue in cheek) as practicing "Great American Nontraditional Collective Eclectic Wicca". Early hives from the original coven spread throughout the New York metropolitan area.
Tzipora Klein (née Katz), who had joined the coven in 1977, and with her then-husband Kenny Klein, left on a folk music tour after the 1983 release of their cassette Moon Hooves in the Sand, which contained Blue Star liturgical music. The music tour facilitated the spread of the tradition throughout the United States, as the couple helped to found new covens while on the road. In 1992, Tzipora Klein would publish Celebrating Life: Rites of Passage For All Ages through Delphi Press. Kenny Klein published The Flowering Rod: Men, Sex and Spirituality in 1993, also through Delphi Press.
As new covens were formed, it was common practice to include the words "blue" or "star" (Raven Star, for example, or Wolf Star) in the name, but this practice is less observed nowadays. Some groups have used references to stars (Nova Grove, for example, or Polaris Coven), but some simply choose the name that inspires them (Compass Rose, SummerOak, Serenity, or Braided Stream).
In 1991, members of StarFire Coven introduced the Tradition in Ireland. In 1997, the Guild of the Swan Weavers introduced Blue Star in England. In 1998, the Tradition was introduced in Canada by Devyn Christopher Gillette of BarleyMoon Coven.
Blue Star has endured many changes over the years, having a wide-spread, diverse, and autonomous Covens and Groves, with a decentralized hierarchy, it is a Living Tradition. Though there are differing points of view on a variety of practices, and the occasional disagreements among individuals, it is universally accepted that a unique feature of Blue Star Tradition is that it's participants regard each other as Family; and annual convocations are referred to as Family Gatherings, and when together its practitioners feel at Home.
Read more about this topic: Blue Star Wicca
Famous quotes containing the words origins and, origins and/or history:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)