Tenets
“Tenets” comes from the Latin, “tenere” meaning “to hold.”
The intention of this page is to provide the seeker with insight into what we believe, what we hold to be true, as followers of the Craft of the wise. The Craft is a path of personal experience and learning, not of dogmatic belief. Yet we do have common beliefs and practices that bring us together.
What we practice, what we “craft” together, is followed meticulously out of respect of our Tradition and in the cherished knowledge that what we do now, has been done since time immemorial, and thus are we linked to the commonality of the human experience in search of the deep meaning for our place in the divine Cosmos. We are specifically linked to the priests and priestesses who guided others on this mysterious, but compelling, journey.
We follow no specific documented revelation, but emphasize the inherent divinity of all people and things. Through ritual, we learn, we commune with the Divine and, mostly, we work to remember who we are.
For insight into more on our beliefs and principles, please visit the House of Ravenwood website.
I do, from time to time, come across poetry and quotes that point toward the fundamental questions and underlying truths of our humanity, especially those that I feel underscore the inherent virtue of and knowledge that comes from approaching a spiritual path, of any faith, with openness, integrity, strength of will, and softness of heart.
“Believe nothing,
No matter where you read it
Or who has said it,
Not even if I have said it,
Unless it agrees with your own reason
And your common sense.”
—Buddha
“This is what you shall do:Love the Earth and the Sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body…”
—Walt Whitman
“What do we wish? To be whole. To be complete. Wilderness reminds us of what it means to be human; what we are connected to rather than what we are separated from.”
—Terry Tempest Williams
“Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the man but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it – at which point they can become human too.”
—Bayard Rustin
“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”
—Abraham Lincoln
“That I feed the hungry, forgive an insult, and love my enemy – these are great virtues. But what if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and most impudent of offenders are all within me, and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness; that I myself am the enemy who must be loved – what then?”
—C. G. Jung
“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started. And know the place for the first time.”
—T.S. Eliot
"When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment or how to rule their world... healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world."
—Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche