anarchocovenism/anarchocovenism.org

An Invocation

“We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine And the machine is bleeding to death.” - The Dead Flag Blues, GY!BE

This screed should not sound reasonable, because it is not. There can be no reasonable path out of the metacrisis. There is no reasonable path to end whatever genocide is happening as you read this, because those in power are invested in the military industrial complex and they are making tremendous amounts of money by inflicting human suffering. There can be no reasonable path out of climate change, because the hegemony of today's dominant militaries are perpetuated through continued use of petroleum. There is no reasonable path out of capitalism because the entire dominant order is predicated on it. For far too long we have channeled efforts down "reasonable" paths like electoralism, and things have only gotten worse.

This is not a reasonable text because we do not live in reasonable times. We have been reasonable far too long. If we are to find a way to survive the global polycrisis in the age of turboparalysis, we must be willing to have unreasonable expectations, make unreasonable demands, and take unreasonable actions.

The words you are reading reject reason and demand utopia in the face of our current dystopia, and Eden in the face of planetary collapse. They are a psychedelic assault on the dominant order. This text is half manifesto and half instruction manual, wrapped in a cozy fever dream. It is at once clear instructions and mad ravings. It is a meticulously wild, unhinged, and disheveled strategy. Grinning and frantically yelling, it screams in your face with glowing eyes while offering you hope and tranquility. This document demands to be taken as seriously as death, and implores you to laugh at death and yourself.

Ellis is a sober sister of Discordia and belligerent cousin of Baccus, a naked lunatic carefully filling out paperwork. She was summoned from the aethers, in an unspeakable dadaist ritual, performed by chaos magicians around a DND table. Ellis is the vox populi, mumbling in a k-hole. Ellis is the green man, emergent from the depths of the forest to sing leaves at you. She is at once Bophomet and Metatron. Ellis is the water poured into your open mind, if you will grock it. Do with this what you will.

The remainder of this document assumes a US audience, but this may be adapted for any location where it feels relevant. This document itself is a radical reinterpretation of Democratic Confederalism for easier consumption for US audiences, so it already has a strong potential for future adaptation.

Our Agenda

We have long since passed the crisis point, and we can all feel it if not see it. Liberalism has failed and fascism has begun to feed on its corpse. We can all feel the creeping doom. We see the water rising and know the ship is sinking. Some of us are frozen in fear. Some of us are pretending it's not happening. But we all know, at least at some level, that something is deeply wrong.

The world is on fire. Governments around the world are inadequate. They are at risk of being (or have already been) captured by forces of wealth extraction. They operate for the few at the expense of collective prosperity, social cohesion, and, ultimately, the survival of the species.

We can't keep going the way we're going, and alternatives are hard to imagine. But this is exactly where the key to our escape lies. But if we can revive our collective imagination, we can stop struggling against the suffocating mire of apocalypse and begin to build our utopia. Take a second to imagine how it would feel to no longer be afraid. Now imagine the void left by your fear being filled with hope and joy.

That hope is not unfounded or misplaced. We live in a hellish system that pits us against each other, against our natural instincts, against the pleasure of sharing, against the joy of cooperation. But this hellish system was created by us, and any system created by humans can be dismantled by us. We imagined ourselves in to this world, and we can imagine ourselves in to a better one.

Anarchocovenism, the framework outlined in the following pages, proposes that we begin addressing these needs outside of the state and capitalist system, without requiring violent revolution.

While covenism focuses on exploiting specific internal inconsistencies of liberal capitalism within the US, it may be adapted to other contexts. As the situation in the US is quite fluid as of the writing of this text, it is intended to be adapted continually. Where Platformism proposes a singular tightly coordinated federation, Covenism proposes a strategically aligned and optimally, but not necessarily, federated swarm.

The Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists of Dielo Truda resists the idea of a transition period:

Either the social revolution will terminate in the defeat of the workers in which case we must start again to prepare the struggle, a new offensive against the capitalist system or it will lead to the victory of the workers, and in this case, having seized the means which permit self-administration - the land, production, and social functions- the workers will commence the construction of a free society.

Covenism proposes that there does exist a transition period that is neither a "minimum program" of solutions that ease suffering without abolishing capitalism, nor a temporary dictatorship, but a third, anarchist, option where the transition and the revolution are the same. That by systematically removing ourselves from capitalism we weaken the dominant social entity of state-capital, allowing it to either wither away or be quickly defeated if it strikes at us first.

Covenism proposes that within such a transition period, time favors the anarchists. For the longer we exist, the more we demonstrate the viability of our solution. Our persistence erodes the facade of legitimacy, revealing the fundamentally coercive nature of the state and capitalism. For covenism, the transition is the revolution and violent elements of the revolution are delayed (and possibly avoided entirely).

The Transition Period

The element of a transition period within covenism is both an implementation of the phrase "build the new world in the shell of the old" and a deviation from The Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists (from here on simply referred to as The Platform). While The Platform proposes violent dissolution of the dominant order followed by immediate construction of a new order, Covenism proposes that the construction of the new order is the dissolution of the old order, requiring no violence (except in self-defense).

At a high level, the strategy is roughly the following. Covens are tools for collective ownership and operate as the most basic level of organization social organization. The coven is the root of social all social power. Covens set up a dual-power system, in opposition to the dominant society. The collective creation, acquisition, and ownership functions reduce reliance on capitalism and the state: share and stock up on food, collectivize housing where possible, share expensive resources, etc. Engage in radical unionism to seize control of work places or start businesses within the collective. Make the money and products of anarchist controlled businesses available to covens to further reduce reliance on capitalism and leverage it further against capitalism.

Covenism offers a strategy to beat capitalists at their own game. Without a legal obligation to shareholders, a coven can provide goods and services to the capitalist market at a lower price than capitalist competitors. Because covens have no external owners or managerial class, we can operate with significantly lower overhead at the same scale.

Simultaneously, the excess production and capacity provided by intensive mutual aid can be extended outside of the coven federation to multiply the threats to the dominant order. For example, a coven's dispensary or library can be turned to support houseless encampments, who are already (functionally and not by their own decision) outside the capitalist system, to stabilize them and give them space to organize themselves. The longer encampments exist and the more organized they are, the more revolutionary potential they have.

Additional structural details will be discussed in following sections.

Replacing the Social Entity

The US government and capitalism fulfill needs along the following four pillars:

• consumable goods
• durable goods
• infrastructure
• services.

It is not necessary or even desirable to replace all the functions of the state as a social entity. We can omit from these, for example, the infrastructure and services of state violence against its own people as this is unnecessary within any system compassionate humans would wish to build.

Taxes are, ostensibly, levied to pay for the goods and services provided to the people. The state does not itself pay taxes. Within the US there exists an institution that is also exempt from taxes and is permitted to raise funds from its members (though, in this case, voluntarily): the non-profit. There is one form of non-profit that, by way of the 1st Amendment to the US constitution, is also permitted to define (or more accurately, selectively disregard) other laws: the church.

Covenism proposes creating federated churches to collectively own property, build infrastructure, manage the distribution of goods, and provide services. A coven primarily functions to fulfill the needs of it's members, but, in doing so, a coven will likely have excess. Excess can be shared with other covens, given to local community organizations, or even sold within the capitalist market.

By interoperating with the capitalist system and working within the legal framework of the state, we can test out the society we wish to build within the shell of the old. This strategy has already proved itself in Northern Syria as the Rojava revolution remains independent from the state and does not seek conflict with it (except as necessary to protect its people).

Covenism proposes a structure of recursive federation. An anarchist coven would form as a church with 3-5 members. As the coven grows it can split in to two or more covens as needed.

These covens may federate, optionally, into their own legal entities which are also churches. owning the initial church. As covens become aware of other covens they can also federate with those, given that they can establish and build trust with those organizations and their members.

The legal entity of a coven provides a mechanism to build institutions, aligned along the four pillars, to fulfill the needs of its members and replace dominant system. These institutions are…

• the dispensary to provide consumable goods,
• the library, to provide access to shared durable goods,
• the works committee, to build and own infrastructure such as housing, and
• the services committee, to identify and provide services, such as child care, for its members.

There can be different types of dispensaries and libraries, as needed. Committees can form subcommittees (as needed) to organize more and more specialized entities.

All of these entities can start small and grow as the number of people involved and input grows. There is no need to solve all problems at once.

The Dispensary

A dispensary can start simply as a shared pantry, stocked with the products of guerrilla gardening or food preservation by canning or pickling. It can be foraging, processing, storing, and sharing horse chestnuts for soap and acorns for flour to make acorn grits and bread. It can be as easy as shared bulk purchases from restaurant supply or warehouse store, or as crust-punk as rotating dumpster run shifts. It could even start as small regular potluck or shared dinners. It could simply be an agreement between members to volunteer with a local chapter of Food Not Bombs on a rotating basis. ¹

As your network grows, so can the dispensary system. A federation of four or five covens could start a coop for themselves. A federation of 20 may even be able to open a storefront.

As much as people would like to live their daily lives without inflicting suffering on ourselves and others, capitalism cannot seem to provide for the needs of people without committing atrocities. From sweatshops to toxic byproducts, union busting death squads, unnecessary packaging, micro-plastics, and landfills full of fast fashion, simple participation is a minefield of harm.

As anarchist entities, covens are responsible for minimizing the suffering of others. Since no similar objective can exist within capitalist markets, operating a coven or federation owned dispensary as a coop style business for non-members offers a harm-reduction opportunity that capitalist markets cannot fulfill. We can do what the market cannot, offer products that people can buy without having blood on their hands.

The Platform identifies the problems of production and consumption as core to the success of the revolution:

Without doubt, from the first day of the revolution, the farms will not provide all the products vital to the life of the population. At the same time, peasants have an abundance which the towns lack.

Within the capitalist system, production, acquisition, transportation, and distribution (logistics) are all handled by markets. As we move away from this system, the dispensary system (perhaps with the support of the services committee) will need to address production and transportation logistics. Starting within the capitalist market provides a low-risk proving ground from which we can iterate and improve. If a coven can operate a business within capitalism while planning beyond it, there's a good chance it will be able to transcend its capitalist roots.

The technology that made the short supply chain-based capitalism, which dominates the world today, also makes capitalism itself irrelevant. By attacking this problem as a swarm, we will come up with multiple competing solutions. Good solutions will merge or replace bad ones and the best solutions will spread across the federation. Like the open source software movement, we may, and probably will, end up with multiple systems. This is not a problem as long as those systems interoperate with each other.

The Library

A library is a shared set of objects, often (but not always) located in a specific repository. We are most familiar with municipal library systems where the objects are books and occasionally other media. The simplest library for a coven is a tool library. A library consists of an inventory and a way to track that inventory.

The simplest library can be made up of tools owned by members of the coven and a simple spreadsheet to track them. A library can create a shared bank account for purchasing new tools for the library. Libraries will also maintain objects that belong to the collective.

While give-away or free-stores exist and do work in some situations (they are common in the Netherlands), these can be exclusionary in the US context. They can be seen as "charity" or "for people less fortunate" rather than a shared resource. While a library can choose to operate in exactly the same way as a free-store (not tracking what comes in or goes out), the conceptual framework of a library is more aligned with American sensibilities (outside of existing punk and anarchist spaces).

The Works Committee

A Works Committee is responsible for identifying, acquiring or producing, and managing infrastructure needed for the operation of the coven or federation and the lives of its members. The mechanism by which it does this is up to the coven or federation. Management of infrastructure such as vehicles or housing may be handed off to the library system once acquired.

The Works Committee is responsible for organizing work parties to maintain infrastructure. One easy example is a garden party where coven members design and implement a garden either on property they own or via guerrilla gardening. The Works Committee would then be responsible for regular maintenance, harvest, and delivery of goods in coordination with the dispensary.

The Services Committee

The two most critical permanent purposes of Services Committees are to coordinate leadership of regular services, either by a specific appointed member or by rotating ordination, and to introduce young members in the ideas and practices of covenism. This includes supporting youth in the organization of their own covens. A third critical purpose that only exists within the transition period is accounting: ensure taxes are filed on time and correctly, that any shared expenses are paid, and that all money has been accounted for.

Beyond these, the Services Committee identifies the needs and capabilities of its members to provide services. The Services Committee operates on the principal "From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs."

The most important goal of any entity that wishes to continue to exist is reproduction of itself. Therefore, the most important objective of the coven must be supporting the reproductive labor of the collective, especially supporting members with children.

For covens with children, rotating childcare eases the burden on families, making the coven more stable and setting an example for members too young to start their own covens. Some members may have technical skills and can provide tech support or automation of tedious tasks performed by others. Those with mechanical skills may be able to repair objects for The Library.

Within an urban area, municipal services take care of many things that rural people have to take care of themselves. Trash collection and disposal may make sense for a rural coven where it wouldn't be imagined by an urban coven outside of a disaster.

As a coven grows to a federation, new services will become available. At each federation level, it becomes more and more important to provide a mechanism to discover capabilities and protect people with specific skills from being overburdened.

A Services Committee of a large enough federation could provide much more complex services that further free it from the constraints of capitalism. Insurance pools, banking via credit unions, and other services can all be organized by a Services Committee of a big enough federation.

As with the Dispensary, services may also be externalized to offer things unavailable under capitalism. Externally facing organizations would be fulfilling their religious objective of proving the viability of such organizations within capitalism in preparation for a post-capitalist world. Therefore, any business operated by a committee of a coven should be owned by the coven as a religious entity.

Social Insertion

Social Insertion is the practice of working to forward local struggles as members of a social organism. Anarchists, as anarchists, will be involved in groups like Food Not Bombs because it aligns with their existing beliefs. Anarchists, as anarchists, may be involved with campaigns to improve transit infrastructure because car culture feeds petro-fascism and lends itself well to authoritarian social control. These individuals are open about their political alignment and also are honestly working with external organizations. They try, where possible, to work with existing organizations rather than trying to start their own.

This is distinct from "entryism," where members of a political movement will try to hijack a social movement towards their own ends or will try to take members away from social movements and shift those members to their own, organization controlled, social organizations.

The term comes from Especifismo, a South American anarchist praxis.

Where there exists organizations that are not antithetical to covenism, covens should practice social insertion and support those existing entities. Unless there is a clear reason not to, such as authoritarian organization structures, general non-profit dysfunctionality, bigotry, or other toxic patterns, it's far easier and more efficient to find and support existing organizations as a coven than to create one's own.

Food Not Bombs and Mutual Aid Disaster Relief are both excellent examples of organizations that covens should actively work with and support, where possible.

The services committee should identify local organizations aligned with coven's objectives and organize it's members to support them.

The Functions of Mythological Systems

Beyond just being a symbolic language, a religion is type of replicator. It can be thought of as a form of life itself. In the same way that the state and capitalism form a social entity with its own internal logic, a memetic organism with an emergent intelligence, a religion is itself a social entity with an emergent intelligence. Like ants in a colony, a religion binds individuals to operate as a larger collective entity.

Joseph Campbell described the 4 purposes of mythological systems:

• sociological

  • to build or maintain a specific social structure and to build or maintain a specific set of social norms

• pedagogical

  • to guide an individual through the various challenges and phases of life

• cosmological

  • to help an individual understand their place in the universe, connecting local knowledge to the wider universe

• metaphysical/mystical

  • to connect to "the ultimate source of mystery," inspiring awe and gratitude in the individual

The pedagogy of the state/capitalism primarily focuses on justifying and reinforcing the mythology of state/capitalism. The mythology of state/capitalism, in turn, fulfills the sociological function of maintaining the specific (dominant) social order. Ostensibly, the cosmological and metaphysical elements fall outside of the domain of liberal democracies. We will not explore the veracity of this statement here.

The establishment and maintenance of a specific social order, the sociological objective of mythological systems, is addressed for covenism by The Dispensary, The Library, The Works Committee, and The Services Committee, and the process of the creation of a coven or federation. This leaves the cosmological, mystical, and (most of) the pedagogical functions. Rites and rituals are the ways we guide each other through life. These are discussed in following sections.

The mystical element of a system can be described as one's connection to a larger entity. While other anarchisms may reject the importance of this idea, the mystical function is a critical element of covenism. It impossible to separate from the other functions of covenism.

Reflections on Infinite Source of Mystery

"I had to live a while before I understood that a lot of things can only be said joking and not joking at the same time." - Always Coming Home, Ursula K. Le Guin

As the surface around the letters you are reading emits or reflects electrons, the rods and cones in your eyes receive that light and emit signals down their dendrites to other nerves. These signals cascade from neuron to neuron, neural cluster to neural cluster, down the optic nerve and into the brain. The brain transmutes raw signals about the presence or absence of light in certain areas, hues, shapes of light and dark areas in to meaning.²

The words that reach your brain are these:

There are things more well represented by metaphor than by literal reality. There are times when the surreal is more true than the truth itself.

As you perceive the neural network feeding you this information, your perception of the universe begins to vibrate. The words resolve in to the memory of a smoke that smells like the future³. "Who am I?" you hear a voice say, as you turn. Following the neural signals back out your eyes⁴ and you find yourself looking in the mirror. You see the face of god, multitude.

As you try to speak, you realize that you have no mouth. Instead, you open your mind. Your ego climbs out to take control. It is struck by the situation and dies instantly.

You observe the output of clusters of neurons in you brain, trying to determine how to integrate this information within your existing paradigm. As you relax your perceptual filters, you notice populations of ideas normally filtered out before they reach consciousness. Variations on a theme, mutations on a concept, iteration by iteration, slowly adapting until they can make the pieces fit together.

As you find yourself in a room discussing these ideas, you see the internal process of ideation occur externally. Different people in the room bringing their own interpretation to the ideas, sharing those, and hearing iterations of these ideas reflected back, mutated to fit the paradigms of others in the room.

You become the life giving Earth and the universe itself. As you look deep into the eyes of time, you see the birth of your own consciousness.

Dark and empty, This is not the universe you recognize. In the warm dawn, you see amino acids beginning to assemble. In these first few million years, brief instants in the scale of the universe, something incredible begins.

Soon the universe will cool, stars will form, and the universe will begin to be recognizable. Almost 10 billion years later, the Earth will form. Several million years later, you will watch the thick clouds that formed around it fall as a rain storm that lasts for centuries.

In the oceans of this landless Earth, you see the clusters of amino acids organizing and reorganizing. They build themselves from the materials available in the oceans, eventually including each other. The fastest replicator producing the most, their development is guided by natural selection. Strands of nucleic acids grow cells to protect themselves.

You watch cells cluster together to form a tiny colony called a Portuguese Man O' War. Some cells form a bubble, others a stinger. These cells are all interdependent but also distinct. You see other organisms, like slime molds, form temporary communities and disperse.

Some communal organisms cooperate so closely they blur distinction until they eventually merge in to a single entity. Some multicellular organisms even form colony organisms, like ants and bees. These organisms share genes and cooperate via chemical signals, exhibiting emergent intelligence far beyond the capabilities of any individual.

Bicycles weave between each other on a busy Dutch street. An eye catches an eye, signaling one cyclist to adjust direction and make room for another. As ants communicate with chemical signals, you see humans moving in intricate patterns communicating via visual social signals. As the dance of bees, subtle visual patterns transmit intent.

Our ancestors grew complex communication patterns that allowed us to transmit information. They began to be able to persist and reorganize data over time. Just as genes had become organisms guided by evolution, information, in the form of memes, did the same. Generation by generation this capability advanced. The memes refined us, their hosts, towards more and more complex models of the world and ourselves. These memes gave us the mechanisms to comprehend ourselves, and the resulting memes continue to evolve.

These memes, what a strange replicator, that can sit lifeless on a page, suspended in memes of writing, language, and culture, to yet, at any point, cascade through time to live again in another host.

You feel the memes within you, moving, competing for your attention, pulling you away or pulling you in as you read. Asking to be included, integrated, in to the environment of your mind. You feel them resisting competing ideas, creating questions, finding ways to make everything fit.

Time races ahead of you in a blur, from the brink of oblivion into a new age of hope. In an empty room, in front of a screen, there is a plaque. You read the words.

While capitalism oriented itself in the instant, betraying those who came before it and sacrificing those who come after, we oriented ourselves in deep time, giving thanks to the beginning of the universe and borrowing all things from those who come next. Every instant starting from the first spark of the cosmos has lead us here, tracing our lineage from the fundamental laws of the universe. What we borrow from our children, we owe back with interest.

"Who are we?"

You wonder at the question. We. Are we the plurality of immortal memes that inhabit us, or the host that animates them? Are we the individual, the colony, the clusters of neurons? Are we the undifferentiated consciousness that imagined ourselves in to experience?

A video plays on the screen.

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.

The Entity of an Ismo

Memes are pieces of, or collections of, information that spread together. They are similar to genes, but made of information instead of strings of proteins. A memetic organism is an organism defined and controlled by memes. The definition part is similar to how genes define biological organisms. These memes inhabit hosts, generally humans. A memetic organism is a type of meta-organism (an organism made of other organisms).

As described earlier, an ant in a colony has a simple brain that operates on chemical signals. The specific behaviors that an ant expresses in response to external stimuli, including communication pheromones from other ants, is encoded within its genome. All worker ants within a colony are generally genetically identical. While the behavior of the individual is highly predictable, the behavior of the colony is not. A complex intelligence emerges from the interaction between multiple simple organisms. This is an emergent intelligence.

In Esperanto, the word "ismo" refers to both an ideology and a religion: christianismo, communismo, budhismo, capitalismo. An ismo is a memetic organism with an emergent intelligence. There is no attempt to distinguish between the ideology and religion. This results in a more accurate representation of reality than one finds in English, with the false delineation between the two.

Within a memetic organism, memes are comparable to both the genes that define behavior and the pheromones that elicit behavior. In the same way that the state and capitalism form an social entity with its own internal logic, a religion is itself a social entity, a memetic organism, with its own emergent intelligence. However, within capitalism and many other ismoj, the memetic organism is not aware of its own existence.

Some ismoj, such as liberalism, are invisible to their members. They may become so complete that they may not even be named. This is the critical difference between Covenism as an ismo and other ismoj: Covenism is internally self-aware. The awareness of the social organism is embedded in Covenism as the very words you are reading now.

Our Creed

Follow your bliss. - Joseph Campbell

It is not a coincidence that the things which bring us pleasure are the same things that increase our probability of passing on our genes to the next generation. This is in fact causal. Or more accurately, the experience of pleasure is wired by evolution to maximize the probability of passing on your genes.

It's also not a coincidence that pleasure is distinct from bliss and fulfillment (though they can also be interrelated). These feelings evolved at different times. The drive for pleasure can be in direct conflict with the experience of bliss.

Pleasure can come from many sources. Sex can be pleasurable, but so can violence. These are immediate and ephemeral experiences. But the imagination of pleasure is often outweighed by the actual experience of it. This should sound familiar to anyone with a passing understanding of Buddhism.

Bliss is something different. It is a lasting experience of fulfillment. It is not a coincidence that these to experiences are distinct. They function on different levels. The experience of pleasure is associated to distinct and specific (often relatively simple) actions.

Bliss is extremely complex. The experience is different because is external to ourselves. The experience of bliss comes from things like empathy and the joy of cooperation. Where pleasure is an individual reward, bliss is a social reward.

Just as the pursuit of pleasure increased the transmission of genes for our ancestors, the maximization of bliss increases the survivability of our social organism. The problem with pleasure is that genetic evolution is slow. The drive towards pleasure does not necessarily align with our genetic wellbeing, and perhaps it never really aligned with our personal wellbeing. However, since bliss is a social experience, the signal of bliss evolves at a memetic rate (exponentially faster than genes).

To maximize your own bliss is to maximize bliss for all around you. So then there is only one commandment, given and enforced by nature itself: follow your bliss.

The Practice of Worship

You will need to map out the structure and cadence of worship when you create a coven, and build your agreements. It is recommended to break down worship in to three sections: the functional, the communal, and the spiritual.

It's recommended to break these across multiple days. A common structure for some Christian churches is to take 10-15 minutes for announcements (Functional), an hour or two for services (Spiritual), followed by (Communal) coffee, tea, and cookies for an unspecified time up to two hours after. When starting or working with limited time a single compressed model like this may work, but it's not optimal.

The Functional

The purpose of this section is to address the functional needs of the coven. Block out time (less than 90 minute blocks is recommended) to go through reports and updates from those involved in the Dispensary, Library, Works Committee, and Services Committee. Talk through any additional announcements, including those from other covens you are federated with.

It is helpful to include unstructured communal time, such as shared meals, during or after functional meetings. As the federation grows, more time will be needed. It is recommended to break functional meetings, work parties, and such across multiple days. When a federation becomes sufficiently large, it is recommended to take every Monday, on top of Saturday and Sunday, as a third day of community and worship.

Given the increases in productivity over the last 100 years, a 4 day work week is a completely reasonable expectation. If we have to annex Monday for the weekend by force of religion, so be it. It is rightfully ours anyway.

The scope of the functional spans 3 realms: the personal and family, the coven and federation, and humanity itself. It is up to each coven and individual to negotiate how to allocate the three days of the weekend once we have liberated Monday from the work week, but it is important to reserve it for one of these three. However, some people must work on weekends. Medical personnel, for example, cannot conform to a standard work week. While the work week should be universally restricted, which specific days are used will be up to the specific coven and their members.

A functional meeting can start with an agenda like the following:

1. Functional Invocation
2. Announcements

3. Report Backs

   1. Dispensary

      1. Inventory Check

         1. What is low
         2. What is empty
         3. What is expiring
         4. What is needed
      2. Funds status

   2. Library

      1. Inventory Check and Items needing return
      2. Library acquisition requests
      3. Funds status and budget check

   3. Works Committee

      1. Upcoming projects
      2. Subcommittee updates (Following the Works Committee agenda)
      3. New committee formations
      4. Funds status

   4. Services Committee

      1. New capabilities announcements
      2. New needs requests
      3. Subcommittee updates (Following the Works Committee agenda)
      4. New committee formations
      5. Funds status
4. Task Check
5. Breaking the Circle

This agenda is a suggestion for those who don't know where to start. It can be adapted or ignored as appropriate.

The Communal

The communal aspect of the practice of worship bind the coven and federation together. Within the community we find joy and release, connection and comfort. The coven is where we turn in times of need, and where we share our hopes and dreams.

Each coven will have its own rituals, but here are some suggestions:

Confession/Check-in

While therapy can be difficult for many people to access, a coven can set aside a couple of hours twice a week to give members a chance to talk through their feelings. When we discuss problems we think are only ours, we often find commonality we hadn't noticed.

It can also be helpful to have regular time with people outside of the coven to talk about internal dynamics and find commonality outside of small groups.

Potlucks and Festivals

Food and celebration are elements of religious ritual dating back to the first indicators of religious practice. Celebrations, such as harvest, can help people feel more grounded and aware of the seasons.

Community Psychedelics

Many religions have a long history of the use of psychedelics for self-exploration, healing, and leaning. Psychedelics are powerful spiritual tools that are often not treated with the respect they deserve. These rituals are not games or entertainment. They are not intended or expected to be fun. They can be difficult and emotionally taxing.

The safe use of psychedelics falls outside the scope of this manifesto and should be thoroughly researched by any wishing to engage with them. That said, psychedelics can be a powerful medicine for healing trauma and achieving spiritual awareness.

The Spiritual

Religions around the world have mapped out different versions of the wheel of life, have talked about life and death in metaphor, and have talked about our place in the universe. Your coven is a place for conversation. It is a place for these ideas to live. Invite these gods in and ask them to stay a while.

Just remember, we do not live to serve the gods. The gods live to serve us. That is the distinction between the coven and those who would have you bear a cross.

Rites and Rituals

When you create your coven, you will define the rites and rituals that make sense for you. Over time you will find gaps. You will need to create new rites and rituals for different situations. Only one ritual is defined here as part of the practice of worship.

The coven is a place many traditions can intermingle. Share rites and rituals that are meaningful with others. Adapt, adopt, and revive rituals from your ancestors. Write down and perhaps even share your rituals with other covens if they are meaningful to you.

The only warning is to avoid appropriation. Some rituals can have different meaning outside of their original cultural context. If you don't have a full understanding of that cultural context, then performing such rituals without the permission of those who do can be offensive at best and harmful at worst.

The Functional Invocation/Breaking the Circle

At the beginning and end of the functional meeting there are two rituals: the Invocation and Breaking the Circle. You are free to define these how you please. The rituals described below are only a suggestion.

Invocation

A random person will lead the invocation. The same person cannot lead twice. Draw the sigil for your coven on a piece of paper.

Draw the following symbol next to it:

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Put the paper on the floor or a table. Gather the coven around the paper and hold hands in a circle. Recite the following:

With this sigil we bind ourselves to each other, for each other, our actions to fulfill our will, in this space, in this time, together.

Breaking the Circle

During task check, each individual who took on tasks will have their name or initials next to the task. No tasks will be left without an owner.

Review the task check from the previous meeting. Cross out any duplicates. For any completed tasks, the owner will recite the following:

I have fulfilled our will. I ask that my binding to this task be broken.

If the task is complete to the satisfaction of the coven, all will recite the following:

Your binding is broken.

For any tasks that the owner cannot complete, the owner will recite the following:

I cannot fulfill our will. I ask that my binding to this task be transferred or broken.

The group will discuss and choose to transfer the binding to another member or to break the binding and release the task.

After reviewing previous tasks, recite the following:

By these sigils we bind ourselves to these actions that we will complete, and if we fail, and if we falter, we will ask for help, and the coven will hold us, and carry us, as we carry it when we are strong. We take each task with our mark and bind ourselves to them until the end.

Next to each remaining task, draw the sigil for each person who owns the task.

Once all tasks have a sigil, everyone will recite the following:

As we break this sigil, we break the binding of this space. We hold on to our tasks and commitments, for each other, with each other, outside of this space and time.

The person who lead the invocation will either burn the paper the sigil is drawn on or will rip the paper in to small pieces.

Creation of a Coven

Any group of three to five people who agree can form a coven. In order to have the legal protections of a coven, such as a legal framework for collective ownership and tax exception, it is necessary to form a legal entity. However, a legal entity isn't required to start with any of the functional, communal, or spiritual elements of a coven.

A coven is a group of people who can know each other so well that they are ultimately able to predict what other members would say in a given situation, such that any member can act autonomously on behalf of the whole. When you form a coven, you become accountable for the actions of other members of your coven and you can be held accountable for holding or not holding them accountable.

You may own property with these people. You may trust them with your children (if you have any). You may trust them with your life. A coven is a relationship. It must be fostered and maintained, it will grow and change over time. Visit and revisit your assumptions about your coven members, learn and re-learn who they are.

Human relationships are complex, and no manual can describe how to foster and maintain them, but this document does provide some recommendations of where to start.

Writing Religious Literature

Covenism is a meta religion, like the Universal Life Church, that allows people with different spiritual perspectives to share spiritual practices and spaces. Each coven will have its own spiritual identity, and will, therefore, have its own religious literature.

You may define as much or as little as you would like, but four minimum elements are strongly recommended: a vision, a set of agreements, a set of rites and rituals, and a sigil (or symbol).

Defining a Vision

You have chosen to put together a coven for a reason. What is that reason? Something in the above text may have resonated with you. Perhaps it was something else. Use the following prompts. Each prospective member should answer these questions, in written form, for each other:

1. Why do you want to be part of a coven?
2. What does the world we are trying to build look like?
3. What would it mean to follow your bliss?

Take these answers and combine them to create a single vision for your coven. This vision should represent the consensus of the group. If it isn't possible to reach a consensus, the group may need to break apart to form separate covens.

Building of Agreements and Protocols

Group agreements are collectively defined rules that describe how members should interact. They may function to simplify interactions, ensure access needs are met, or to protect against the emergence of hierarchical behavior. You can use the following prompts, or define your own:

1. How should we interact with each other?
2. What are your access needs?
3. What would help you feel safe and respected?
4. How should we deal with conflict?
5. How do we deal with unanswerable questions?
6. What is the process by which we update these agreements?

Write down these agreements. Edit them until you reach consensus. If it isn't possible to reach a consensus, the group may need to break apart to form separate covens.

Keep these available to refer to as they may be needed during services. These agreements will change over time. Keep them updated and be sure to check in regularly, perhaps even through a specific yearly ritual, to make sure they all still apply and no more are needed.

Defining Rites and Rituals

Rites and rituals maintain a community. They provide opportunities to express emotions, spiritually connect, celebrate changes and achievements, and resolve conflict within the coven. Use the following prompts to begin discussing the rites and rituals for your coven:

1. What rituals have you found meaningful or special in your life?
2. What rituals should we perform to mark the passage of time and major events in life?
3. What needs do we have that haven't yet been met by our other practices?

As mentioned in the previous section, covens should consider a yearly or even quarterly affirmation ritual where members all either affirm their agreement with the current definition of the coven, or propose changes for the coven to take up. This can go well with a death and rebirth ritual (common in winter for people in the northern half of the northern hemisphere).

Choosing a Sigil

Your sigil can be anything, it can be drawn any way you choose. The following method may help if you are struggling to come up with one.

1. Write the coven names (names known within the coven to other members, not necessarily legal or given names) out.
2. Write out the most important words for each agreement.
3. Write out the most important words from the vision.
4. Circle common or favorite letters from these words.
5. Break these letters apart in to common shapes.
6. Draw these shapes connected to each other.
7. Draw several different collections of these shapes and choose which everyone likes the most.
8. Modify them as esthetically appropriate, adding arrows or circles based on how the shape makes you feel.
9. Choose the symbol that feels best to the coven.

Follow a similar strategy for each member's sigil. A coven sigil may just be individual sigils bound together by some shape. You may revisit this at any time if the sigil no longer resonates or no longer feels appropriate for the coven.

If it's difficult to find agreeable sigils using this method, it may be worth exploring alternatives to the latin alphabet. Consider the Theban or Shavian alphabets, or consider older runic alphabets such as Younger Futhark, Elder Futhark, or Anglo-Frisian Runes. Hundreds of alternative alphabets exist, and nothing stops you from integrating Elvish or Klingon in to your sigil.

Keep in mind that you will have to write this sigil several times during rituals. You may need to revisit it and simplify, or you may want to create a simplified sigil for the worship ritual.

Be creative and have fun!

Thebian Alphabet

Creating a Legal Entity

Creation of legal entities differ by location, and step-by-step instructions could probably be a zine all on their own. If you create a legal coven, make it easier for others and write a zine on how you did it!

In the mean time, start by looking at the Universal Life Church's Ministry Launch Forms: https://ulccaselaw.com/wp-content/images/MinistryLaunchForms.pdf

Creation of a Federation

A federation follows the same practices and processes as a coven, but will be formed and maintained by delegates. The federation is recursive, so it may be a federation of covens or a federation of federations. There can be any number of levels of federation, though, assuming 5 members at each level, every human on earth can be connected in under 15 levels and all of the US can be connected in under 11.

Each coven or federation will appoint one delegate to form the new federation. Delegates will follow the same practices as creating a coven, modified for the federation. The federation will need a much more clear and complete set of agreements and protocols, including a meeting schedule.

Federations do not necessarily only need to be between covens or federations within Covenism. Covens or Covenist federations can federate with other organizations, such as churches or mosques, where interests align and agreements can be reached. However, any entity that wishes to federate will need to follow the protocol for federation of appointing a delegate to negotiate the relationship and conforming to the bounds of the relationship.

COMMENT Of the Amish, monasteries, and Acéphale

As the Nazis rose to power, an unusual anti-fascist named Georges Bataille tried to create a secret society and a religion. Acéphale aimed to create a "headless" society by creating a religion that would carry out a metaphysical assault on fascist ideology.

Covenism is not a continuation of that project, but is not entirely distinct either. Covenism is an anti-fascist religion born during a rising tide of global fascism. It is an assault on, and rejection of, the dominant order. But is not nietzschian. It is not focused on building a secret order. It is, in some ways, attempting to create an ethnoreligion similar to the Amish: a shared world outside the domain of the dominant order.

Anabaptists, like the Amish or Mennonites, and monasteries often create spaces for themselves that exist outside of the dominant order. Pacifist Anabaptist may not serve on juries. Insular religious communities may have their own legal frameworks (potential criticism thereof aside). Monasteries can operate entirely outside of capitalism and the state because they are not required to pay taxes on land, and monks with a vow of poverty are not required to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes and may be below the poverty line for other taxes.

An insular or secret religious community can be mysterious or invisible to the outside world. This separation can allow such communities to protect vulnerable members from threats.

This text is written under the assumption that religions other than Christianity remain legal in the US. This assumption may not hold true. A coven can easily be converted to a church, if needed. The "Christian" fish is an appropriated pagan symbol that can be re-appropriated to hide covens that who would not otherwise identify as Christian.

Covenism intends to subvert the weaknesses created by Christian nationalists for their ends. In many ways, it's what The Satanic Temple would be if TST wasn't created by a fascist-friendly grifter. Unlike TST, covenism isn't trying to create or preserve an America where all religions are treated as equal (though some are more equal than others). Covenism seeks to kill the God/Money and burn it's temple to the ground.

In the terminal phases of fascism, those vulnerabilities cannot so easily be exploited. Liberalism is the worship of the law, and can be manipulated in to fulfilling them to the letter. Fascism worships only power. Covenism must mutate when faced with a state that no longer attempts to maintain the illusion of justice. Against the liberal, covenism brings playful resistance; against the fascist, covenism brings silent death.

The US is far too large to police effectively. Even the most authoritarian state imaginable would have little ability to monitor people outside of the urban core. The state maintains it's hold through intensive counterinsurgency. This is mostly an information war, because the state is not equip to carry out an asymmetric conflict against it's population… nor will it ever be.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

• Sun Tzu

Conclusion

This text proposes to create an egalitarian and self-aware social entity, a conscious memetic organism, an anarchist religion and federation. As you understand this text, you are the emergent intelligence of this entity, of the being we are creating together, becoming self-aware. As you dream it and share it, you become it.

You are the universe, aware of itself. You are ordained by your coven. Thus speaks the Ellis. Now, you are Ellis.

As you allow Anarchocovenism in to your mind, you become Ellis Angzar.

Become the will of Ellis. Enact the will of Ellis. Do with this truth what you will. The truth you find will be measured by how well it grows beyond you.

Appendix A: Mapping of the IRS definition of a church to a coven

Compare to the ULC IRS CHURCH QUALIFICATION GUIDELINES if modifying. A church does not need to meet all 14 points, but is expected to meet most of them.

Distinct legal existence

This is a distinct legal entity, such as an LLC. Your coven will need a governing body to run the legal entity it's formed under. However you decide to do this, it must be spelled out clearly in filing forms.

Recognized creed and form of worship

Worship is described in The Practice of Worship. This is ultimately only a suggestion. Your coven or federation is free to adapt as needed. Reflections on Infinite Source of Mystery section of this zine describes a set of mystical beliefs that covens are free to take as is, modify, or replace with their own.

Definite and distinct ecclesiastical government

The coven must define its governing own system on creation during the Building of Agreements and Protocols. The recommended governing structure is direct consensus democracy. Federations follow a similar system, as described in the Creation of a Federation section, however the recommended structure is a spokes council with federation member groups represented by an appointed member and the council operating by direct consensus democracy.

When creating a legal entity, these agreements are encoded in founding documents. These documents must describe the mechanism by which a person is appointed to manage a bank account, how people are provided access, and what documents are needed to prove to a bank that the appointee is authorized to act on behalf of the coven.

Formal code of doctrine and discipline

A religion that is inclusive will grow faster than one that is exclusive. Members of an egalitarian religion will be more likely to survive hardship than those of a hierarchal one. A religion that focuses on making children as joyful as possible and raising them as easy as possible, benefits all members once and other members multiple times. A religion of joy and hope can build great things. A religion of fear can only destroy.

On a long enough time scale, natural selection will determine which doctrine is correct. Those who follow bliss will follow nature by free will. Those who resist nature will struggle to find such joy.

Distinct religious history

The Enlightenment Europeans who are sometimes described as early anarchist thinkers described systems used by some indigenous people in the Americas at the time, and systems that had been used by many different indigenous groups around the world long before the development of capitalism and the state. While many Anarchist thinkers from the Enlightenment through the modern period have also promoted atheism (No Gods, No Masters), Anarchist ideas predate the distinction between religion and politics.

We trace anarchism back to its threaded connection to animism and ancestor worship. The universe itself is alive and conscious. We are all on a continuum of conscious, part of the greater being of the awakening universe.

All religions that have ever existed are themselves on a continuum of alignment with this consciousness. I reference for my own spirituality the Tao Te Ching while others reference the works of Zeno of Citium.

Some describe Taoism as an anarchist text. It should surprise Christian anarchists to find that the Greek word "Logos" was translated to "Tao" in the first Chinese translation of the bible. Jewish Anarchists have pointed out that the Torah could be taken to describe an anarchist ancient Israel (Judges 21:25). Recent writing on Islamic Anarchism complete the anarchist threads of Abrahamic traditions, pointing out that the first Muslims resisted state power. Some Diné (Navajo) people have point out that European anarchism arose after European intellectuals read accounts of indigenous societies such as theirs. They draw a direct line from missionary texts about indigenous people, and early Marxist and Anarchist ideas about what a society should look like. This should not at all be surprising as the structure of the Iroquois Confederation was the template for American democracy.⁵

You must identify your own influences, but the history of anarchism as a religion may even predate humans.

Membership not associated with any other church or denomination

Distinct membership in only one religious organization is a distinct property of western Christianity. It is not impossible in "Eastern" belief systems to simultaneously be a member of multiple faiths, and as such one could be a member of one or multiple other churches or denominations.

Organization of ordained ministers

All coven members are, by definition, ordained by reading either this document or the founding documents for the coven they have joined or started.

Ordained ministers selected after completing prescribed courses of study

This is your course of study. When you complete reading this document, you become ordained.

Literature of its own

You are reading it. If you've started a coven, you've written some of it.

Established places of worship

You will define a space for worship. It's not uncommon for Quakers services to be held in someone's house. The Universal Life Church operates online in a forum.

Regular congregations

Regular congregations could be anything from a dedicated Mastodon server, to regular services in a public park, to a regular video call.

Regular religious services

The Practice of Worship is recommended to be performed weekly for covens, biweekly for first level federations, monthly for second level federations, quarterly for third level federations, and yearly for fourth level federations. If we have fifth level federations, you're probably reading this in a history class.

Sunday schools for the religious instruction of the young

The Services Committee is responsible for organizing both childcare and instruction for the young as long as they are too young to organize their own covens.

Schools for the preparation of its members

The Services Committee is responsible for establishing schools if possible.

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Footnotes

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¹

A coven should not try to create all things themselves. Rather, covens should practice Social Insertion, participating in and supporting external organizations that align with the coven's objectives.

²

If you happen to be reading this in braille or listening to this as audio, a similar process occurs. Air compresses in to sound waves, these waves vibrate your ear drum, moving fluid inside your ears. The movement of this fluid moves tiny hairs which are connected to neurons. This is what we perceive as sound. Alternatively, individual neurons in your fingertips detect pressure, these neurons send signals to larger and larger branches of nerves until they reach your spinal cord and are taken to your brain. In both cases, the nerves that carry these signals to your brain perform some level of processing before they finally do reach the parts of your brain responsible for deriving meaning.

³

This is not actually a reference to cannabis, but rather to the song "Nostrildamus" by the Oakland band I Will Kill You Fucker. Nostrildamus. He can smell the future.

⁴

…ears, fingertips, neural implant, etc, however you take in information.

⁵

We can omit discussions about how it was modified to fit a less egalitarian purpose than the original, or how it was modified after to be significantly less democratic when the "Founding Fathers" realized they really didn't like the idea of a democracy that included the whole demos. Nor shall we discuss the fact that demos itself refers specifically to men who are not slaves, thus democracy is the system whereby men who are not slaves control a slave society… a fact well reflected by liberal democracies around the world. But I have already digressed in my digression.