Out on a Limb
By Erik Nielsen Jan. 1997The Verbena have been around almost as long as humans have been walking upright, but this proud old heritage has not made the recruitment of younger members an easy task. Indeed, as the Conventions have become more powerful and more successful in promoting technology and science as the panaceas for the world's ills, young people are more likely to view the Verbena craft as too simplistic or savage for the modern world. Some of the more old school Verbena are quite willing to accept this attitude on the part of the youth; they believe that true Verbena are born, not recruited. Some of the more liberal Verbena, though, have become worried over the shocking decrease in Verbena numbers. To help bridge the gap between today's wayward youth and the almost primeval Verbena Craft, some of these new school Verbena have stepped up their recruitment efforts.
One of the Verbena's most successful recruiting programs has been the Out on a Limb Program. Designed by a former inner city High School Counselor, the Out on a Limb camps take a certain number of troubled students from inner city schools out to summer camps in the Rocky Mountains. Over the next six weeks, the students are broken into groups of nine where they learn basic survival skills and take part in self-confidence and teamwork building exercises. The most popular of these exercises involves falling backwards from an elevated platform into the arms of one's teammates. Each group is led by a Verbena (or Verbena Acolyte) facilitator and three peer counselors (each of whom is a graduate from a previous Out on a Limb camp). Extensive effort is focused on building a can-do spirit in the participants, but no one is forced to participate.
The first two weeks of each camp are usually a tense time. Some of the participants are members of rival gangs, and racial tensions sometimes run high. The staff work to circumvent these problems, however, by using peer counseling and a little Mind magick to smooth things out. By the end of the two weeks, most of the participants are fairly willing to work together. Those who are not are at least usually content not to disturb the fun of the others. Given the small numbers in each team, the peer counselors are able to give a good deal of attention to each participant, and even the hard cases tend to get into the spirit of the thing within a month.
During the day, the participants are kept busy learning and doing. As the participants are expected to help with cooking, preparing and cleaning, they have very little idle time. At night, everyone gathers around large campfires to tell stories of the days' activities or to sing songs. Some of these songs and activities, like herb gathering or the nature hikes, are based on Verbena Craft and lore, but the facilitators take great care not to overdo it. The camps are genuinely for the inner city kids.
The recruitment part of the camps actually takes place after the participants leave. Every year, some promising former participants are invited back as peer counselors. These candidates are the ones who reacted well to the more Verbena aspects of their camps. These counselors arrive two weeks before the participants and receive a rather exhausting crash course in first aid, counseling and survival. Their energy levels are kept up through herbal infusions and liberal, coincidental uses of Life magick. At night, the counselors also gather around campfires to tell stories and sing songs but this time, the facilitators tell much more Verbena-oriented stories. After the six week camp, the counselors stay another two weeks, learning even more sophisticated means of survival, interpersonal communication, and first aid. They are unknowingly also given subtle magickal aptitude tests by the facilitators. Those few who pass these tests are put into a special group which is taught by the oldest (or wisest) Verbena at the camp. At the end of the two weeks, the counselors head back to school.
Of course, two weeks is hardly enough time to fully indoctrinate new Verbena, so those students who reacted sympathetically to the Verbena lore and did well on the aptitude tests are marked for return invitations the next year. Those counselors who both possessed a high magickal aptitude and have finished high school are given the option of staying in the Rockies until December. Those who choose not to are allowed to return home, whereas those who choose to stay enter the next stage of Verbena recruitment.
By the time a counselor has both passed the aptitude tests and worked through one (or even two) camps, she probably has an inkling of what her teachers believe. The next few months are a delicate tap-dance as the Verbena attempt to ease their new potential recruits into the full-fledged Verbena mindset. The facilitators and their potential recruits from all of the various Out on a Limb camps hike deep into the Rockies to a well-hidden Verbena enclave. At this camp, they are given classes in Verbena philosophy and cosmology (usually thinly disguised as a Wicca-like nature worship) as well as more metaphysical classes on becoming close to nature and what it means to truly live. The Verbena who run this uber-camp boast a 99% success rate in converting potential recruits over to Verbena Craft or loyal Verbena Acolytes. Those unfortunate few who balk at the last moment have their minds wiped and are dumped at bus stations miles away with just enough money to get home.
The climax of the camp is the feast of Samhaine. At this time, those recruits the teachers plan to Awaken are separated from the others. Those whose Awakenings are viewed as doubtful or even dangerous are put into a deep sleep. The initiates are given a large feast and then stripped of their clothes and told to run for their lives. They are given a half an hour head start, following which they are hunted by the Coven. When they are caught, they are symbolically killed, which often entails real massive bodily damage. This damage is, of course, healed immediately afterwards. The resultant shock of betrayal, utter terror and ultimate bloodlust as the initiate fights to hold onto life with every power at her disposal leads to a violent and complete death and rebirth into Awakening.
Following Samhaine, the newly Awakened Verbena are relocated to other covens around the world, where they are taught the ways of the Verbena and magick in more detail. Those who could not Awaken just yet but are totally sympathetic to the Verbena worldview are welcomed as Acolytes. They often also relocate to wherever they may be needed.
The following Spring, of course, the camps are cleared of their winter snow and prepared for the next batch of participants and possible recruits.
What follows is a character background wherein the idea for the Verbena camp first took root. Some of the details have been changed, but I think the feel is much better expressed here.
Although the actual Out on a Limb camp was, in fact, an outreach program designed to reach and turn city kids from possible criminals into people with hope and something to live for, the peer counseling program had been designed and run by a small Verbena cabal. The camp provided them with excellent screening and recruiting facilities, and the legitimacy of the program provided an excellent cover for their anti-Technocratic activities. The first step was the Out on a Limb camp, a screening process. The second step was the counseling program, designed to feel out possible recruits for magickal aptitude and the right attitude. The program focused on survival skills as well as counseling skills. Even if the potential recruits weren't apprentice material, they left the camp with a distinctly hopeful and confident attitude which translated into more anti-Technocratic activities.
Brian's group was unusual, in that three of the thirteen counselors actually ended up being recruited into the Verbena, including Brian. The thirteen counselors were broken up into separate groups of twos and threes and were assigned to actual camp staff, those who would really be running the camp. They had two weeks of training, mostly in first aid and crisis management. At night, they would gather around the fire and tell stories and sing songs. The camp staff, the cabal, worked a little magick into the night's festivities to see who would react to it. At the end of the week, a much tighter unit, the counselors were ready for the six week-long camp. Although the counselors had their hands full taking care of the participants, their nights were again taken up with the songs and stories, which became more and more Verbena oriented as the camp progressed. By the time the participants had graduated and returned, the lore of the Verbena had become second-nature for the participants, although most of them would never have recognized it as actual lore. To ten of the thirteen, the songs and tales were campfire material. To Brian and two others, the songs and tales had struck a chord.
After the participants left, the program became more rigorous. The counselors were taught basic survival and foraging skills. Brian and his two magickally apt colleagues, Mary and Rachel, were relocated into a separate group of their own, where they could be free to ask questions about the disturbing dreams they'd been experiencing and the strong resonance they'd been feeling when reciting or singing the lore. While most of the other groups' education focused on self-reliance, Brian's group's staff member, a veteran Verbena named Dawn, instructed the group on more metaphysical matters. She interpreted their dreams and told them bits of lore that were more secret than the campfire songs and tales the others had been told. As a result, Brian's group became very close-knit, but started to drift away from the other groups. And while both Mary and Rachel were curious about the tales Dawn had to tell, Brian began to feel that this was the reason he had been led here. He began to feel that this was where he belonged, where his destiny was leading him.
Brian and Rachel, both young and from similar backgrounds, fell in love. Mary seemed more occupied with the wildlife than romance. All three, though, shared dreams that told of things to come and things that had been.
Time passed and the dreams became more intense and more real. In Brian's case, they sometimes became hard to distinguish from reality. Dawn respected these fugues, as she suspected that they were manifestations of Brian's lightly slumbering Avatar. The other Verbena were beginning to remark on the seeming strength this unsuspecting youth possessed. Summer passed into fall and the Rockies became colder. The first snows were not far away. At the end of September, the other groups were sent home with promises of coming back the next year or joining other camps. Brian, Rachel and Mary stayed. When the other counselors had gone, the cabal closed up the camp and hiked deep into the mountains, foraging and hunting and living off the land. The three new recruits, not quite Acolytes but not exactly untouched anymore, were required to pull their own weight. Relying on their own bodies and teamwork, the three learned what it meant to really live.
The cabal made camp deep in the wilderness, well away from hunters, hermits and nature lovers. They spent the time teaching the three youngsters the lore they would need. Some taught herbalism, others tracking and hunting, still other meditation and philosophy. By October 31, Samhaine, Brian had gone from a street kid struggling for another chance at life to a confident, brave follower of nature's ways. What had seemed strange and frightening before seemed wondrous and exciting. And then, that night, as the sun went down and Brian felt prepared for whatever could happen, the cabal prepared them for their final lesson. Their clothes were stripped from them, and they were given an hour's head start before the cabal began hunting them, a re-enactment of Herne and the Wild Hunt.
Excitement turned to fear, and pride turned to ashes as Brian leapt and lurched, nearly blind, through the freezing, pitch- black woods. Rachel and Mary ran off in separate directions in the hope that the cabal would only follow one of them at a time. The woods gave way to a freezing stream which Brian traveled until his feet became numb. Then he doubled back, but this time on the other side. His fear and adrenaline fought back his weariness as what seemed like hours slipped past. Just when he thought he'd run himself into the ground, he heard the mad cry of the cabal, and his weariness turned to frenzy. They were closing in on him, and the woods would not protect him much from their savage pursuit.
Suddenly he broke free of the trees and tumbled down a steep embankment and fell into a freezing but shallow river. He sputtered his way to the surface and, at that moment, the clouds that had hidden the moon parted, and the full moon shone down on him, revealing his pursuers breaking out of the woods on all sides of him, their eyes glowing red, their knives flashing in the moonlight, yet covered in blood from recent kills. Brian knew then that Rachel and Mary were dead, and that he was next, and he threw back his head and howled out his soul, a howl that shook the trees and made his pursuers pause. And drawing on his own will to live, his refusal to accept a futile death either on the streets of his home town or here, skyclad, knee-deep in freezing water, and his grief at the deaths of his teammate and the woman he loved, he called out to the Wyck, to the moon, to life itself, and let the magick of the woods reshape him.
He stood before the cabal, a hundred and seventy pound well-muscled wolf, and howled his rage. They howled with him, and then fell on him, their knives flashing. As their knifes tore into him, he howled once more, and then became himself. They picked him up out of the river (itself a node, though he hadn't known it), and laid him out on the bank. He came to a moment later as they lay their hands and herbs on him. He watched with a kind of shocked complacency as his wounds became scratches and then merely scars and pucker marks and then disappeared altogether. But beyond his flesh he could see the patterns being woven back together. He could see the patterns that made up the cabal, both their own patterns and the patterns they had forged between themselves. He could see each person's true forms, not simply their earthly manifestations, but their spirits, their essences. And he opened his mouth and howled again, but this time with joy at the life he had been reborn into. And the cabal, including Rachel and Mary, who had died and been reborn as well, howled with him.