The purpose of this is not to prove or claim anything. I readily admit that I have a "bastard" lineage in regards to Wicca. I do, however, get a little tired of the US Alexandrians claiming that I'm not really one of them until they want to rake me over the coals for violating their concept of the "rules." When I was in communication with Jim Baker of Du Bandia Grasail in the early 1970's, he was well aware that many early Wiccans had bastard lineages, and that what was important was not that someone could claim proper initiation to higher degrees, but that their Initiation descended from Gerald Gardner and that they pursued the work of Initiation by constant study and practice until they actually achieved the state of Initiation. Unfortunately, too many people today have undergone initiatory rituals but have not gone on to actually attain the spiritual transformation implied by those rituals. The result is a crop of leaders who are short-sighted, narrow-minded and lacking in wisdom and illumination. One should never judge others by the rituals they have undergone, but rather, by the wisdom they have attained.

The Baltimore Alexandrian Coven, founded in 1972, was the first (but unofficial) offshoot of the Boston Alexandrian Coven Du Bandia Grasail. The Boston coven was the first Alexandrian coven in the US, founded by Summanus (Jim Baker), who had gone to England to be initiated by Alex Sanders' coven. Summanus had initiated Carolyn Distefano (Ayeisha) at a New York meet in 1972; her mother, Mary (Morgana), was initiated at the same meet by author Hans Holzer. Ayeisha and her mother initiated me at Hallows 1972. The Baltimore Alexandrian Coven, run jointly by Ayeisha and her mother, did not have an Alexandrian Book of Shadows. Instead, they used a Traditionalist Book of Shadows from the North Haven, Connecticut coven of Gwen Thompson (Minerva). When I parted company with the Baltimore Alexandrian Coven in 1973 and decided to start my own coven, Summanus had Ralph DesRosiers of his Du Bandia Grasail Coven send me a copy of their Book of Shadows . Thus my coven, Dragonstar Circle, was the first Baltimore coven to have an initiatory line going back to Alex Sanders and to use an Alexandrian Book of Shadows. My coven formally started operation in Baltimore at Beltaine 1974.
At my initiation ritual Morgana cast the Circle and performed the opening invocations, but it was Ayeisha who performed the initiation ritual and held my Cords when I wove them together. While on the one hand this means I was initiated by a First Degree Witch, on the other it means that I can nevertheless trace my line of descent back to Alex Sanders and Gerald Gardner. Gardner initiated Patricia Crowther, who initiated Arnold Crowther, who initiated Patricia Kopanski, who initiated Alexander Sanders (to the 2ND; Sylvia Tatham initiated Alex to the 3RD), who initiated Maxine Morris, who initiated Jim Baker, who initiated Carolyn Distefano, who initiated me.
I had been in correspondence with the Scottish hereditary Witch and author, Paul Huson. Huson called the Gardnerians and Alexandrians "newly cooked-up antique witchery" and told me that I should not worry about following their protocols; he urged me to start my own coven based on my own research. Although both the Gardnerians and Alexandrians followed a system of three degrees (some Gardnerians followed two), it was not uncommon among them for someone to be initiated through all three degrees at once (such as Ray Buckland, progenitor of Gardnerians in the US). Also, in some circumstances, a First Degree is allowed to initiate another to the First Degree. However, once I realized that initiation was a transformation that only occurs over time as the result of much effort, and that all valid initiation is a form of self-initiation, and with encouragement from both Paul Huson and Jim Baker to do so, I didn't feel so bad about starting my own coven as a First Degree Initiate.
I discovered that I had read a great deal more about magick than most of the Witches that I met or contacted. In time, I became stupidly condescending towards other Witches. Unfortunately, very few Witches ever gave me a reason to stop to consider them as equals, and then it was usually because they displayed real psychic ability rather than magickal knowledge. Although many of the Witches I knew or knew about were jerks or assholes (or grand high poobahs in their own minds), my own attitude undoubtedly cost me what could have been a few great friendships.

After the Navy, I had spent my time reading every occult book I could get my hands on, and had a library of several hundred books when I entered the Craft. I had joined the Rosicrucians (AMORC) while in Vietnam, but I needed something more. In 1970, I joined the Theosophical Society, and began taking courses in astrology, tarot and Kabbalah at the Aquarian University of Maryland (AUM). My first contact with Wicca came in 1972, when I wrote to Dionysia (Mary Nesnick) in New York. She turned out to be a renegade who had been kicked out of the Gardnerians as a First Degree for stealing their Book of Shadows, but she did put me in touch with some local Witches, Morgana and her daughter Ayeisha. These two had just recently become Witches themselves at a Meet in New York. When I met them, the mother and daughter had just returned from a harrowing Meet at Mystery Hill (our 'Stonehenge' in America, in New Hampshire), where they found Dionysia and friends practicing black magick.
I was initiated into the Baltimore Alexandrian Coven by Ayeisha and Morgana at Hallows, 1972. I gave Morgana all of my magick books to start a Coven library. We didn't have a Book of Shadows, because Holzer hadn't given her anything. So, we went to visit Gwen Thompson in North Haven, Connecticut to get a copy of her Book of Shadows. I was assigned the job of writing an entire copy of all three degrees. Gwen was a Traditionalist Witch, and she told us that she had received her BOS when she was initiated while serving as a nurse in England. Apparently, Morgana, Ayeisha and I were the only ones favored with this story; all of Gwen's initiates were told that she had inherited her BOS from her father. Gwen's BOS was composed of some Golden Dawn material, including Enochian magick, herbal lore and excerpts from Celtic mythology. Interestingly, her directions for casting the Circle were those formulated by Gerald Gardner.
Gwen was sure that a lot of Witches were working magick against her, especially a Priestess in Minnesota. Gwen had hammered nails a few inches apart all around the top of her inside walls to earth the attacking energy. Between the 'attacks' and her 1st Degree Initiate who had stolen her BOS and run off to New York City, Gwen was really disgusted with running a Coven and bitched about it constantly. The only one of her initiates I met was Owen Rowley of Rhode Island, and she didn't mention having any other members of her group, although I've been told there were some. Gwen had picked up every cat that came her way, and was keeping about 30 of them in a small room in her small cottage. We held a Circle in her yard and she invoked the Guardians of the Summerland to guard us. All of us in the Circle thought we could see shadowy forms in robes moving around the outside of the Circle, and when Gwen banished the Circle, we were suddenly shivering as a wave of cold air washed over us. Gwen sent Ayeisha and me on an errand to Gwen's mother's house around the corner. A light snow was falling, and it was quiet and dark (the local government turned out all streetlights at 9 pm). Ayeisha and I were walking back when we suddenly saw a figure approaching; he wore a long black coat, a large black hat and wore sunglasses, and he was silently gliding toward us -- not walking (no legs were visible), but floating! The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and Ayeisha looked like she was in shock. We turned and ran back the way we had come, and when we looked back, the figure was gone. As we cautiously resumed walking to Gwen's house, we noted that the only footprints in the snow were ours. As we excitedly told our tale to Gwen, she looked disturbed and made some comment about "they're still after me," but would say no more. Instead, she diverted us with tales of the strong elemental activity in the area. As we drove home, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss, which Ayeisha assured me was a sign of having made a real energy connection. The last I heard of Gwen, the health department had shut her down when they found out about the cats, and she was traveling around, hanging in bars. Afterwards, she got herself together again and went on to teach and give birth to other groups, who greatly admire her memory.
After I was initiated, Ayeisha told me that the first time she and her mother had come to meet me, she had thrown up in the street afterwards. I was horrified until she explained that this was the result of the two of us exchanging so much energy it had overloaded her physically. Naturally, when we went to Long Island to visit an Alexandrian Coven run by Gwydion and Ayeisha threw up on the way home, I was jealous! Later, when we visited an Alexandrian Coven in Sommerville, Massachusetts, she threw up again after meeting the High Priest. At this point, I decided that Ayeisha was a bit too open to outside psychic influences.
Back in Baltimore, Morgana and I were having a difference of opinion about what belonged where in the BOS. It was a strange position to be in, having more magickal knowledge than one's HPS. I had a lot of notes about Kundalini Yoga, which I felt was a good technique for developing spiritual power, but Morgana argued that such knowledge belonged only in the 3rd degree (and by extension, that I shouldn't have it!) Ayeisha had left her husband, and she and I had moved in together in a one-room apartment. She spent a lot of time at her mother's place, which was where we held our Circles.
Once, when Ayeisha was coming from her mother's place to meet me against her mother's wishes, I waited for hours at our rendezvous, then gave up and went home. The next day, Ayeisha told me that her mother had worked magick to keep us from getting together, and that as a result Ayeisha had fainted and remained unconscious for hours while crossing a field on the way to our meeting. After I found that Morgana had lied to me so she didn't have to accept a visit from me, I let her know how unhappy I was about it. Shortly afterward, Morgana moved without warning to a new house, broke off all contact and has refused to speak to me since. Effectively, I was kicked out of the Coven, although I didn't realize it for some time because Morgana didn't bother to tell me. Eventually, I heard that she had bought a house and I tracked her down through real estate records. When I went to her new house, she wasn't there, but Ayeisha was, and she told me that I was no longer welcome. That was the end of my relationship with Morgana, except, of course, she did have my library and my measure. To say I was upset would be an understatement, and Morgana's negative comments about me to other Witches made me even more upset.
Some time later, Ayeisha called to let me know that Summanus (Jim Baker) from Du Bandia Grasail would be in town with a traveling antique gun show, and she asked me if I would go with her to meet him at the Fifth Regiment Armory. Jim, known as the Alexandrian scholar, was in the process of making a new translation of the Chaldean Oracles for publication. When I later started my own Coven, he put me in touch with Ralph DesRosiers, HP of Du Bandia Grasail, and through Jim's intercession on my behalf I received a xeroxed copy of Ralph's Book of Shadows (which turned out to be in Jim's handwriting).
From 1974 to 1976, I taught four semester courses on Witchcraft at the Johns Hopkins University's Free University. After I had taught three courses, the local newspaper published an article about me and my classes; suddenly a lot of people knew that I was a Witch. The JHU Chaplain's Office, which oversaw the Free University, summoned me to explain my beliefs. About a dozen people were seated on a raised dais in shadow, while I had to sit in a single chair placed lower down on the floor. It felt like the Star Chamber of the Inquisition. I was grilled for about an hour, and when they found that I didn't worship the devil, I was allowed to continue teaching (although, I was required to change the name of my course to remove the word Witchcraft). So after teaching a semester of 'Ancient Mystery Religions and Their Rebirth,' which didn't mean anything to people looking for Witchcraft, I was out of there.
In 1974, I gathered some interested students from my first class and we formed the Baltimore Basque Coven (later to become the Coven of Kamber, 1975, the Magickal Arts Guild/MAGI, 1978, and finally, Dragonstar Circle, 1980). We met every weekend, every new moon, every full moon and every sabbat (and not on the nearest convenient weekend, like many nouveau or less committed Witches). Along the way, I joined the ESP Lab run by Al Manning (Thor), and I was subsequently initiated into the astral Ishtar Coven there. At the astral meets, I learned many things that helped me with both my personal and my coven work.
 

Our Coven was experimental and innovative from its inception, and a series of Enochian Workings commenced at Winter Solstice 1974 culminated in contact with "that part of the Oversoul which makes itself known as the Dragon." Subsequently, the Dragon revealed a magickal system called the "Fourth Mythos," which consisted of a Tree of Knowledge which accompanied the Tree of Life. During 1975, Ayeisha served a three month tenure as acting High Priestess for our group, using the name Alicorrn. She informed me, somewhat mysteriously, that my group was her "ace in the hole." By early 1976 we had fleshed out the magickal system given to us by the Dragon into the Mysteries of KAM, after the eldritch tradition associated with the Draconian magickal current and the secret mantra which triggers the Dragon-Fire or Risen Kundalini.
At Beltain 1976, I incorporated the first legal Church of Witchcraft in Maryland, the Church of KAM (Keepers of the Ancient Mysteries), with two members of my Coven (Volk and Sebastian) and a member of the Temple of Set in Washington D.C. (Alan Friend). Our Coven became the first Order of the Church of KAM. A few months later, our Coven Dream Master began having a series of dreams about adventures of our spiritual selves in other planes, codified by Sebastian Myrrdyn as the Liber Eschatus . Over a period of several years, he had almost two hundred dreams, and we gleaned a great deal of spiritual knowledge from them. Often the dreams would mirror events in our lives here that were unknown to the Dream Master. The dream adventures were indications of a struggle for spiritual development that was occurring on another level, and more than anything else indicated that the Work we were pursuing as a group was having the desired effect.
We established the Draconian Council in Maryland at Hallows 1976. The purpose of the Draconian Council was to explore the manifestations and expressions of the Draconian magickal current. One of our projects was, the Ordo Wyverni (Order of the Serpent of Bliss), which included over a dozen Dragon groups across the United States. Following our interest in the Dragon, we became immersed in our new magickal system and the dreams to the exclusion of outside activities, and at Beltain 1977, I gave the charter for the Church of KAM to Ayeisha so that she could bring together local Witches and pagans under a single banner (as well as to heal the breach between us). She and her mother had formed several pagan study groups into covens. We thought things were going to work out when we were invited to a Yule Party in Columbia, Maryland, where Ayeisha's groups and friends were mingling. However, Ayeisha answered our questions about inclusion in the Church non-committally. Later, we discovered that one of our members had overheard one of Ayeisha's people saying that Mandrake (me) was a powerful, evil magician who was stealing Ayeisha's powers and killing her in the process! Ayeisha broke her word to create an all-encompassing organization, and later told me that she had ensorceled me into giving her the charter.
In February, 1978, we attended a regional Witchmeet held at the Sheradon Hotel in Washington, D.C. by Gavon Frost. At the entrance, Mrs Frost tried to keep us out, claiming we were one of Ayeisha's covens. Ayeisha was already there, but apparently the Frosts didn't want her to have any re-enforcements to face the large number of their own people present. I met Sybil Leek, and she knew about a dream I had had the night before about the two of us, wherein she was an inn-keeper of the Mysteries and I was a teacher riding a Dragon! Unfortunately, a train had recently derailed near her home, covering her with toxic gas. She looked very ill, and died soon afterwards. The day the train wreck occurred was the target date set by Frost for his followers to attack Sybil because she had publicly called him a fraud. I wasn't as upset about him being a fraud as I was about what he was doing to little girls with dildos in the name of the Craft. The death of Sybil Leek was a great loss for the Craft, more than most will know. The Meet turned into a circus, with Gavin Frost grabbing Ayeisha by the throat and throwing her to the floor, while Frost's people were calling everyone else names. Interestingly, on 22 February, our Coven Dream Master had a dream about Frost; it is included in his dream diary .
In April of 1978, Ayeisha sent me an invitation to a regional WitchMeet to be held at Patapsco State Park. She said she had received psychic information that a disease from which she was suffering was tied to her relationship with me; that ages before she and I had been a single soul which had split apart, each part going its separate way. As a result of this split, she was now suffering from marfans, a disease which splits the cells of the body. Ayeisha said that a big decision would have to be made by her soon which would control her ability to determine the course of the illness. I took the invitation as a sign that she wanted to mend fences. However, as I later found, we were being used as pawns in a game of one upmanship between Ayeisha and her mother, Morgana. As the saying goes, the exhilaration of having been invited to the Meet turned to ashes in my mouth. I discovered at the Meet that Ayeisha had invited us without the knowledge of her mother, who was openly hostile to our presence. In fact, Morgana was so upset by my presence that she left the Meet. (We later learned that Morgana subsequently worked a spell to send me to a dead letter post office box in California.) We were introduced to Rhiannon of Silver Wheel Coven in Pennsylvania, whom Ayeisha had enlisted to protect us from any evil magick sent our way by the other participants. A large number of feminists and lesbians had been invited, and I was not treated very well by most of them; they seemed to feel it necessary to point out to me that I was a man, and therefore by their definition someone who treated women badly. As an ardent proponent of equality for the sexes, I was very upset by this. My fiercely independent wife was also greatly offended by their attitude and thought they were crazy. Alexandria, who led Foxmore, a coven of male homosexuals, ran around trying to take photos of all the Witches; many of them (including Ayeisha) ran when she came near (taking photos of Witches was frowned upon at that time). The Meet focused mostly on social and political issues instead of Witchcraft, while an undercurrent of magickal politics was obviously being played out; thus, it turned out to be nothing more than a nerve-wracking experience and a waste of time. The one thing about the trip that impressed me was the site; Patapsco State Park was a great place to have meetings, with pavilions you could rent and bathrooms nearby. We had many Meets of our own in the park in later years.
At Winter Solstice, 1980, our Coven published a sixty-page journal of dreams, psychic phenomena and various tidbits of research, called Dragonseed, which we mailed out free to over three hundred people all across the U.S. and around the world. We were kicking off our new magickal adventure, Dragonstar Circle, a circle of modern eclectic magick.
In March of 1981, Ayeisha called to inform us that Jim Allen and Selena fox of Circle of Wisconsin were having a local Meet in Baltimore, at the Banana Moon Cafe in a church basement to promote paganism. Ayeisha opposed their coming into her turf and let them know, but they came anyway. We went to support Circle's right to be there. At the Meet, Ayeisha dropped a bombshell, accusing Circle of knowing that Gavin Frost's people were responsible for a series of animal mutilations in New Jersey, and still carrying advertizing for them. Selena denied having any such knowledge and demanded proof, which Ayeisha could not produce. Rick Allen (Jeremiah), a pagan who had invited Circle to Baltimore, decided to form his own group, called the Maryland Pagan Alliance, and he asked me to look into the accusations of animal mutilations. I contacted Margot Adler of New York, author of Drawing Down the Moon, and she told me that she knew of no evidence linking the four persons convicted in the case to Frost. In any case, she pointed out that it was not reasonable to blame Frost for the actions of any of his affiliates.
When we heard that a Mid-Atlantic Pagan Council was being convened in Philadelphia early the next year by the Maryland Pagan Alliance, we decided to attend. It started snowing as we drove through northern Maryland, and by the time we reached Pennsylvania the snow had accumulated several inches. The meeting was held in someone's house in a residential area and the place was packed with pagans of all sorts. The only real Witch I met there was Ray Buckland (Robat), the English Witch who brought Gardnerian Wicca to the U.S. I had met Buckland previously when I visited his Witchcraft Museum on Long Island, and I shared his frustration in having to deal with all of the strange young people who called themselves pagans. No doubt, he was used to dealing with pagans who were students of Witchcraft, and therefore respected him as the authority he was in the Craft. Although the purpose of the Meet was supposed to be the working out of some type of pagan manifesto to which everyone could agree, it was more like a free-for-all where variety was an end in itself. In the end, the main movers of the Council decided to get together and issue their own pagan manifesto, calling it the result of the Meet. At Beltaine 1982, Rick Allen's circle, Silver Web Raith, turned against us because we rejected the ideas of his wife, Jeannie King, who served as High Priestess of Silver Web but knew little about either Wicca or magick. Like KAM, with whom he allied himself, Rick began spreading lies about our group, so we withdrew from contact with him as well. Another group started by Rick Allen, Earth Song, broke up over internal disputes. Some of its members founded the largest pagan group in Maryland, the Free Spirit Alliance. Rick left Maryland, and the last I heard, the FBI was watching him because of political activity involving the Native American Church and peyote.
KAM remained the dominant force in Maryland Witchcraft by dint of its aggressiveness and 'political' activity, which included contacts with Witches in other states and the publication of its newsletter. The true nature of KAM was not discernable in its newsletters, though they did repeat a myth concerning their origins in issue after issue. This myth traced their beginnings to 1970, although neither Morgana nor Ayeisha were initiated or practicing Witchcraft at that time. There were no "Elders of several recognized traditions" who came together in Maryland, as they claimed. I was the one who coined the term 'Keepers of the Ancient Mysteries (KAM)' in 1975. The training course for KAM initiates they published in their first issue also borrowed heavily from one I had previously written. When I asked Ayeisha how she thought she was going to get away with such a blatant lie, she told me that she had objected to it herself but was overruled by Morgana and the others. The KAM newsletters, which began in 1977 when I gave the charter for the Church of the Keepers of the Ancient Mysteries (KAM) to Ayeisha, were - like the KAM covens in Maryland - completely dominated by women. One has to look long and hard through the several years of the KAM newsletter to even find a mention of men in KAM. I received complaints from as far away as Florida about the activities of KAM members; reportedly, they visited Florida and told Witches there that only KAM people were real Witches! I also heard horror stories locally, of groups being attacked and broken up by KAM. I experienced such things myself on a number of occasions.
When I first met Ayeisha, she was a normal enough person and not the 'resident evil' she appeared to become in later years, when she spent her time hanging in bars with lesbian KAM members and harassing other bar patrons because they were male. In between bouts of this obnoxious activity, she manipulated other KAM members into undertaking magickal attacks on other local magickal groups who were not in KAM. The core of KAM consisted of nine groups: the Coven of KAM, ruled by Morgana and Ayeisha; Nea Elefsis, ruled by Antigone; Sekhmet's Seka Coven, ruled by Angelique; Amber Wings Coven, ruled by Artemis; the Greenstone Coven, ruled by Aurora (these were all Maryland groups); Crystal Coven, ruled by Etidorpha (California); Crescent Coven, ruled by Jayne Alcott (New Orleans); the Fellowship of Pan, ruled by James Darwin (Houston); and the Coven of Aradia, ruled by Carol Wisewoomon (Minneapolis).
Although Ayeisha had demonstrated psychic abilities to me on many occasions, she told me that her mother Morgana was more powerful psychically. Between things Ayeisha told me and dreams that various members of my group had over the years, I came to believe that Morgana had forced her daughter down the dark path, which brought harm to many people and ultimately resulted in Ayeisha's death. For this I can never forgive Morgana. When Morgana left Maryland, the KAM covens began to wind down, and with the recent death of Ayeisha from marfans, the Fox covens have become the dominant Witchcraft community in Maryland. This community originated with Alexandria, who was a close ally of KAM from the beginning. Otherwise, there appears to be only a handful of other covens in Maryland, plus a few dozen pagan groups.
These are just a brief sampling of the experiences I had in the Craft, but they give an idea of what I experienced over an eleven year period. Eventually, I decided that there had to be something better than the Craft. After our group ended in 1985, I spent a few years searching and studying, when suddenly I had a series of dreams and 'revelations' about something I had written off years before as gibberish (sorry about that, Al Jabir!): Alchemy. Suddenly, it began to make sense to me