Paths of Practice — Who Belongs and How
Hand — Self Initiation
For the self-dedicated who wants to be conscientious of how they live and what they consume but cannot farm. This initiate's whole rite is purification: realigning sleep with the sun, fasting, rebuilding the gut and the body, deep-cleaning the environment, discarding what dulls the senses or the self. In the absence of one-on-one connection to land and livestock, the relationship is built instead through supporting those who hold it — buying from tradition-aligned farms, upholding their work, following the Cosmology and Code in spirit, showing up to festivals and community. This is not a lesser rite for folks who cannot participate in "field work" — it's the correct, complete rite for where they actually are, and its form of connection is real, not pretended. A Hand a critical part in the tradition.
Practitioner — Field Initiation
For the self-initiate, solitary, raising their own livestock for nose-to-tail processing on their own land or its equivalent. This dedication carries everything Hand Initiation does, plus direct, ongoing relationship with animals and land — tending, breeding, slaughtering, preserving, done by their own hands under their own roof. A field initiate is a Practitioner.
Steadmate — Coven Initiation
For practitioners who come to the farm itself and are taken in as a Steadmate. This initiation adds fasting and farm labor alongside raising and butchering an animal under direct guidance, and initiation into the coven as a body, not just the tradition as a set of beliefs. This is the only initiation that grants coven membership; it is not the only initiation that grants legitimacy.
No level of initiation outranks another in sacredness. They differ in scope of contact, not in seriousness of intent — a self initiate who has truly killed the old and rebuilt their body and space has done real work, not a smaller version of someone else's initiation.