Organised Chaos

Imagine that you wished to establish a magical order so that people could come together to practise and explore a new type of magic.

You would need people to take on various administrative and organisational responsibilities.

You would need to establish a system of magical progress and attainment in this new type of magic.

At the beginning you would have insufficient human resources to accomplish this at a stroke so you would have to make a compromise: -

To establish a structure you would have to give out positions that represented both administrative and magical roles and responsibilities, somehow fudged together.

Thus your organisation would begin as a de-facto Oligarchy and the means by which people acquired various grades and responsibilities would remain far from transparent.

Eventually the organisation would require reform as it began to suffer the strains of members becoming disaffected with the obviously fudged grade structure that it needed to get it started.

The required reforms would simply separate administrative from magical positions and give proper definition and credibility to each, thus: -

A) Administrative positions would become subject to periodic democratic election, thus giving them a Proper Mandate. (Even though where electorates remain small and friendly one would expect most elections to pass unopposed).

M) Magical grades would become subject to peer review, with at least some independent review from someone in a distant temple, and grade awards would depend on the completion of an agreed program of work at minimum, plus other work of choice. This would restore to such traditional grade terms as Initiate, Adept, and Magus, a Proper Recognition of Merit and Accomplishment.

Reform always brings some pain and sacrifice and some hard work, but complacency kills eventually.

Any order which does not move onto Phase 2 of organisational structure will remain hamstrung by the Oligarchical fudges used to create it, and suffer from disaffections amongst its members which keep it small and fractious.

Peter J Carroll.