Our Arrival at Our New Covenstead

In 2009, I moved into a lovely new house. Joined by my partner, another couple and a fifth friend of ours, we settled into this house to make it a home. We had been very discriminating in choosing this house. Not just any place would do for our purposes. We needed more than a dwelling capable of housing five men. I had been teaching a small group of Seekers for a few months at that point, and intended on building a coven, bringing the lineage of Oregon's Thalia Kyraphia to Georgia.

So, this home needed to be more than just where we lived - it needed to be a covenstead.

I knew I'd found the proper place when I walked into the den. This so-called "den" (which was quickly dubbed "the cathedral") was a massive room, with huge vaulted ceilings. At one end, with hardwood flooring, sat a fieldstone hearth, with a massive mirror above it. This mirror, which was framed in oak and carved with hand-sized oak leaves and acorns, literally stopped me in my tracks. I stared at it, dumbfounded - the oak has always been of significance to me in my own spiritual growth, and here I was, looking at my own face reflected back at me, surrounded by oak leaves.

The other side of the den was floored in beautiful, deep red tiles, and featured a set of massive picture windows that gazed out onto the back yard, with about an acre of tall trees and beautiful green foliage. Only a small portion of the back part of the property was what I would call a "lawn" - the rest of it was wooded, with a scattering of oak and other trees, a trellis-arched swing off to one side, and at the far end of the property, a small stream that burbled merrily over the rocks of its bed anytime it rained.

Paradise. I had to have it. Fortunately, my soon-to-be housemates agreed, and we all sat down to see if we could make it happen financially. In the meantime, my partner and I took a flower from the tea rose bushes up front, and a stone from its yard, with which to work some magic to bring us home to it.

Now, it is tradition in our line to name a covenstead. Many of us have used "[Something]haven," in honor of the first of our covensteads, Rookhaven, in Southeast Portland, Oregon. Well, we struggled and struggled forever, with no luck coming up with a name for our new home. We were happy to be there, though, and content to let the subject percolate.