Talk:New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn/Archive 1

Regarding the Conflict of Interest Tag
Yes, I (Nroogdvalkyrie) am associated with NROOGD, as are some of the sources I've gathered material from, so there is a potential conflict of interest. I've tried to be objective, to maintain a neutral point of view, and to gather and cite material from objective external sources where possible, but other than some material by Margot Adler and a little mention by Isaac Bonewits, there isn't a lot of extant published material on NROOGD written by anyone external to NROOGD, so it's difficult to avoid this conflict of interest.

Comments moved from article

 * The pronunciation given is new to NROOGD members in general, at least when sober. :-)
 * Most of the people in the Tradition pronounce it something like Na Roo Gd. Rarely one hears En Roo Gd as the pronunciation. But it is needless to say, a sense of humor is intrinsic in this Tradition. This is not to say the rituals and Iniations are taken lightly.
 * For the history/herstory/her essay/of the Tradition check out http://www.nroogd.org/
 * Be warned that, as of this time, the calendar is not maintained as up-to-date. (unsigned comments by 207.200.116.201)

Aidan Kelly's comments
The following text was added to the article a while ago (this edit) by someone who I presume is indeed Aidan Kelly:
 * My colleague Isaac's observation that the name did screen out some humorless people is quite true, but it was actually chosen in homage to William Butler Yeats, who headed the HOGD's true successor, the Stella Matutina, from about 1900 to about 1922. It was obvious to me in 1967, when I was preparing for my master's orals on Yeats, Blake, and Joyce, that the magical system used by Gardnerian witches was derived from that of the HOGD. It was much later that I learned that the exact pathway by which that system was transmitted was probably via Dion Fortune via Christine Hartley and Charles Seymour, either directly to Gardner, or to Edith Woodford-Grimes, or to someone in their immediate circle of occult friends. The full NROOGD name was devised in a discussion among the group who were creating the first ritual, and was brilliantly defended by another of the founders, the woman now known most often as e.l.f. Silverlocke. We considered ourselves to be unauthorized volunteers for the Gardnerian movement, but having no access to any secrets and having to devise our own rituals, we never claimed our initiations to be equivalent or even comparable to Gardnerian initiations. For the first two years of the NROOGD's existence, all our rituals were public, held usually in public parks, and attended often by hundreds of participants. Our success in being public Witches, rather than secretive, was one factor in the creation of the Covenant of the Goddess as a public "church" for the Craft movement and in the rise of public festivals during the late 1970s. Submitted by Aidan A. Kelly, July 8, 2006.

While I don't doubt that this does come from Kelly, and correctly represents NROOGD history, it is not cited from any verifiable document, and is not suitable for inclusion in the article. This is a pity, because it's useful information. (Although Kelly's take on Gardnerian history is still controversial and should be attributed as opinion, not fact). According to Wikipedia policy, this is unverified original research and as such I have removed it from the article. The best way to get this kind of information included is to actually publish it somewhere else, so that we can verify who the author truly is. Then you or someone else can quote or summarise from that information in the WP article. Also, if you are aware of existing published documents that contain this information, you can quote from them. The point is, the article needs to make it clear where its info came from, so that even twenty years down the track any interested party can follow up and verify its sources. Cheers, Fuzzypeg ☻ 20:25, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Please note:

It seems to me that oral history and/or firsthand information from a group's founder should be considered primary data, whether it has been published elsewhere or not. However, the NROOGD's history has been discussed in Chas Clifton's _Her Hidden Children_ with information derived from my _Hippie Commie Beatnik Witches _ (Los Angeles, CA: Art Magickal Publications, 1995), which was published and circulated as a Book-on-Disc. NROOGD history is also discussed extensively in all editions of Margot Adler's _Drawing Down the Moon_. (I realize that this needs to have the formatting tags inserted, but I am too much of a technological klutz to follow the detailed instructions on how to do that.)

Let me also please note that Frew's attacks on my research are neither objective nor competent. Frew has a personal agenda that has nothing to do with impartial evaluation of my research. He is also an amateur who is woefully ignorant of scholarly methodology, and has been blasted by Ronald Hutton for his attempts to disparage both my and Hutton's work. My research is accepted as the most plausible interpretation of the extant information by the vast majority of Wiccans. It is only certain Gardnerians of a rather fundamentalistic mentality who refuse to be persuaded by the evidence or my analysis of it, and they are noisy quite out of proportion to their steadily declining significance in the Craft as a whole during the last few decades.

(signed) Aidan A. Kelly, Ph.D. —Preceding unsigned comment added by AidanAKellyPhD (talk • contribs) 15:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Capitalizaton of e.l.f. Silverlocke
Appears to be lowercase, according to someone who claims to be e.l.f. Silverlocke. See also

While some sources capitalize, that may be by mistake.-- SPhilbrick (Talk)  00:54, 22 May 2012 (UTC)