Sodality of the Tor

The Sodality of the Tor - also called Spiral Walkers or Witches- are a Legacy among the mages of the Thyrsus path who place the power of the Supernal in the natural world and draw down a divine aspect of the moon into themselves in the style of british witches. They deal heavily with Fate.

Mindset
The witches of the Sodality teach that the human soul can embrace godhood only when the soul sets aside the conscious mind. They believe the Supernal is not transcendent, grandly beyond the human understanding; rather, it is immanent, found within all things wild and natural. Thus, by casting aside the reservations and fears of the conscious mind, and allowing the unconscious and primal side of the self free reign, the Awakened (and some gifted Sleepers) can touch the divine. Mages outside of the Sodality sometimes believe its devotees give themselves over to possession. The truth is more subtle. A Sodality mage never actually loses consciousness during these rites, though her experience may be so overwhelming that she does not remember everything that happened. The witch who draws down Divinity is herself, but not -- her essential self remains, but has expressed itself as a divine being, in the same way that her essential self is normally expressed as a human being.

Mages who know the Sodality only by reputation often believe the Legacy recruits only women, since classical and modern pagan thought treats its primary symbol as feminine. Other mages believe the men of the Sodality "draw down the Sun" in a fashion different from the Legacy's women. Neither of these misconceptions is true. Though Western occult systems call the moon a feminine symbol, witches (a term applied to both men and women) of the Sodality know that the moon is properly a symbol of ecstatic Divinity, a symbol under which the gods of all Dionysian expressions of religion gather.

The Sodality operates in groups called covens. A coven usually consist of one or two Sodality mages leading several more un-Awakened members. The mage serves as the High Priest or High Priestess who performs the sacred rites and teaches the Sodality's doctrine that magic expresses the inner divinity of human beings. However, magic is not Divinity itself: Sleepers can experience moments of godhood, too. At the Legacy's core, the base interaction among members of the Sodality is between the teacher and apprentice. This one-on-one training is the social foundation for interaction among the members of this Legacy -- members are known by their initiators, and most members of the Sodality can quote their "lineages" back to the 1800s and beyond