History of the Guild

The Guild is not old, and it has never claimed to be. Its history is that of three people, one upstairs room, and fifty-five years of work written down.

The Thursday Workroom, 1971-1974

On the evening of Thursday, September 23, 1971, the night of the autumnal equinox, three people met in the workroom above Ambrose Tolland's bookbindery on Lantern Court in Baltimore. Tolland had bound and repaired books on ceremonial magic for collectors for twenty years and had quietly practiced what he read. Imogen Castellane, a classicist, had come to him to have a volume of late antique ritual texts rebound and had stayed to argue about its contents. Margit Anselm, who taught astronomy at a city high school, had been brought along by Castellane to settle a question about the reckoning of planetary hours.1

They agreed that evening on an experiment. They would meet every Thursday, work one rite from the old sources exactly as written, and each keep a separate written record of what was done and what followed. After a season they would compare the three records and discard whatever none of them could confirm. They called the arrangement the Thursday Workroom. By the spring of 1972 there were seven at the table; by the end of 1973, nineteen.

The Articles and the name, 1974

The comparison of records proved more fruitful than any single rite. It showed how much of the received tradition was ornament, how much was copying error, and how small and sturdy was the part that remained. In 1974 the members set down what they had learned about working together in a short document, the Articles of the Guild. The Articles fixed the three aims, the daily practice, the keeping of the Record, and the rule that advancement would rest on work examined by one's peers.

With the Articles the members adopted a name, the Sorcerer Guild, and elected Tolland the first Guildmaster. The first seven Apprentices under the Articles were admitted at the autumn equinox of that year.

The Common Book and the first Chapterhouses, 1975-1985

Instruction in the early years passed by word of mouth and on loose typed sheets. Castellane began to gather and revise these sheets into numbered Papers, and in 1979 the first collected edition was mimeographed, then sewn and cased in Tolland's shop, as the Common Book. It has been revised four times since and remains the core of the course of study. The Guild's journal, The Guild Record, first appeared in 1976.

Members who moved away from Baltimore wished to go on working. The Articles were amended in 1977 to allow seven or more members, a Master among them, to be chartered as a Chapterhouse. The first was Meridian Chapterhouse in Chicago. Tidewater Chapterhouse in Savannah followed in 1981 and Cascadia Chapterhouse in Portland, Oregon, in 1984. For members beyond the reach of any Chapterhouse, Anselm began in 1983 the instruction by post that became the Hearth Course.

Lantern House, 1986

By the middle of the 1980s the room above the bindery could no longer hold the Convocations. In 1986 the Guild bought a disused schoolhouse in Frederick County, Maryland, and named it Lantern House after the court where it had begun. The Mother Hall, the library and the archive of members' deposited Records have been kept there ever since. The bindery itself closed on Tolland's retirement in 1988.

Across the water, 1987-2002

Saint Lawrence Chapterhouse in Montreal, chartered in 1987, was the first outside the United States, and Greywater Chapterhouse in Edinburgh, chartered in 1991, the first outside North America. Others followed in Tucson, London, Utrecht and Melbourne.

Tolland died in 1994, having served twenty years as Guildmaster. On his death the General Convocation limited the office to two terms of seven years and elected Castellane to succeed him.

The Reform of 2003

The Articles of 1974 provided for five grades. Thirty years of deposited Records showed that the middle of the course was too steep: many Apprentices who had done well failed at the long step to Journeyman, and failed for want of intermediate work, not of ability. After four years of debate the General Convocation of 2003 adopted the present scheme of seven grades, each under one of the seven planets. The old second grade was divided into Scribe and Artisan, and the grade of Keeper was placed between Journeyman and Master. No member lost standing by the change. It remains the only substantial revision the Articles have received.

The Guild today

Castellane retired in 2008 and died the following year. Anselm, the last of the founders, died in 2017, having revised her tables of the hours into her seventy-ninth year. The Guild they left is larger than they expected and, we hope, not very different in kind. It now numbers about nine hundred members.2 Since 2020 Workrooms have also met online, which has brought the course within reach of members in places where no Chapterhouse is ever likely to stand. The fiftieth anniversary was kept at Lantern House in September 2021. The present Guildmaster, Rosalind Achterberg, was elected in 2022.

A chronology

1. 1971

   The Thursday Workroom first meets above the bindery on Lantern Court, Baltimore.

2. 1974

   The Articles of the Guild are adopted. Ambrose Tolland is elected first Guildmaster.

3. 1976

   First number of The Guild Record.

4. 1977

   Meridian Chapterhouse, Chicago, receives the first charter.

5. 1979

   First edition of the Common Book.

6. 1983

   Margit Anselm begins instruction by post, later the Hearth Course, and issues the first Tables of the Hours.

7. 1986

   Lantern House is acquired as the Mother Hall.

8. 1991

   Greywater Chapterhouse, Edinburgh: the first charter outside North America.

9. 1994

   Death of Ambrose Tolland. Imogen Castellane is elected second Guildmaster.

10. 1998

    The Guild publishes its first website.

11. 2003

    The Reform: five grades become seven.

12. 2009

    Death of Imogen Castellane.

13. 2017

    Death of Margit Anselm, last of the founders.

14. 2020

    The first online Workrooms are recognized by the Council.

15. 2021

    Fiftieth anniversary Convocation at Lantern House.

16. 2022

    Rosalind Achterberg is elected fifth Guildmaster.

The Guildmasters