The Articles of the Guild, adopted in 1974, run to fewer than two thousand words. They state three aims, one rule of working, and a handful of principles. Everything else the Guild does is an attempt to carry them out.
The three aims
- To practice the art of ritual magic as a craft. The Art is to be learned by doing, tested by its results, and handed on by example. The Guild teaches method. It leaves metaphysics to the conscience and curiosity of each member.
- To maintain a fellowship of peers. The work of each member is to be witnessed, questioned and improved by others who do the same work. No one in the Guild works wholly unexamined, and no one examines who is not also examined.
- To keep and to publish a plain record of method. What one generation has learned, the next should not have to rediscover. The Guild writes down what it does in clear language and makes public whatever can be made public without harm.
The Rule of the Bench
The working rule of the Guild is short enough to be remembered and is repeated at the opening of every Chapterhouse meeting.
Light the lamp. Do the work. Write it down. Compare notes. Claim little.
Light the lamp means that nothing is begun without first collecting the attention. Do the work means that practice comes before opinion. Write it down means that an experience not recorded at the time is not evidence. Compare notes means that a result seen by one person is a beginning and not a conclusion. Claim little means that a practitioner says less than the Record would justify, and never more.
Principles
No creed
The Guild requires no belief of its members and teaches none. It does not ask whether the powers addressed in a rite are gods, spirits, forces of nature, or depths of the human mind. Members hold every one of these views and several others. Each explanation is treated as a working hypothesis, to be used where it is useful and set down where it is not.
Experience before authority
No statement is accepted in the Guild because of who made it, including the founders. The old books are honored as the records of earlier workers and are corrected, where the Record requires it, without apology.
Plain language
Rites worked in the Guild are spoken in the language of those present. Foreign and ancient words are kept only where their sound is itself the instrument, and then their meaning is taught. Instruction avoids the vocabulary of mystery wherever an ordinary word will serve.
Work, not rank
The seven grades record work completed and examined. They confer no command over other members, no claim to special knowledge beyond what has been shown, and no right to deference outside the Hall.
The open and the reserved
The methods of the Guild are open. The identities of its members, the contents of their Records, and the wording of the rites of admission are reserved: the first two because they belong to the persons concerned, the third because an admission is best met for the first time by the one being admitted. Nothing is reserved in order to seem more than it is.
Nothing for sale
Instruction, examination and admission are given without charge. Annual dues cover the costs of the Guild and are reduced or waived on request. No member may sell any working, reading or teaching in the name of the Guild.
The freedom of the member
A member may belong to any other body, practice any religion, hold any opinion, and leave the Guild at any time by a letter to the Warden of the Seal, without explanation and without reproach.
What the Guild asks
In return for what it offers, the Guild asks four things of those who join it: that they keep the daily practice; that they keep the Record truthfully; that they observe the Five Charges; and that, when the time comes, they teach as they were taught.