NROOGD symbol

About the NROOGD

The NROOGD tradition of the Craft originated in 1967 with a group of friends. E.l.f. Silverlocke was taking a class at San Francisco State College which gave her the assignment of creating and leading a ritual. She came up with the idea of recreating a witches' sabbath, using the printed sources available at the time, primarily Robert Graves, Margaret Murray and Gerald Gardner. After doing the ritual several times, they began to feel the effects of it, and decided to create a group and train others in its performance. The name they chose for themselves, New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn, is a play on the attitudes they had toward what they were doing and upon their spiritual antecedents.

The mother circle of NROOGD hived off daughter and granddaughter covens, which trace an unbroken line of initiation and share a common liturgy. Covens are autonomous and recognize one another's initiates. The tradition worships a triply-aspected Goddess and various forms of the God derived from ancient Greek and British mythology. Coven esbats are usually held skyclad, and focus on the working of ethical magic and the celebration of the divinity of each participant.

The core NROOGD ritual, written by Aidan Kelly and others, is made of poetry and charms, and begins with a line dance in the form of a spiral inwards and then outwards, representing death and rebirth. The ritual is sometimes led by three priestesses and a priest. NROOGD covens in the Bay Area cooperate to present public (clothed) ritual celebrations on most of the sabbats, for the benefit of the greater Pagan community. Every fall, NROOGD enacts a ritual at the seaside inspired by and commemorating the Greater Eleusinian Mysteries of the Hellenic world.

Most NROOGD member covens are located in the San Francisco Bay Area. There are also NROOGD covens elsewhere in California, the Pacific Northwest, and the East Coast. There is no central authority nor spokesperson for the tradition

And for your enjoyment, here are some pictures from NROOGD events in the Bay Area.

A longer description can be found, along with other definitions on COGWEB.

Back to the Trine Home Page
Back to Fairgrove Conjureworks