Before the Order, 2006 to 2010
The Order began as a correspondence.
In 2006 a handful of practitioners, most of whom had spent years in other initiatory bodies, began exchanging notes on their private work. Several had paid substantial fees for graded instruction. Several had sworn oaths not to reveal what they had been taught. Comparing notes, they found that much of what had been sold to them as secret was already in print, that much of the rest was administrative rather than spiritual, and that very little of it was worth the secrecy that surrounded it.
They also found something more useful. The parts of their training that had actually changed them were not the documents, the grades, or the ceremonies of advancement. They were the disciplines each of them had practiced alone: keeping an honest record, sitting in stillness, deliberately confronting what they feared, and examining the beliefs they had been given before they were old enough to choose.
By 2008 the correspondence had become a working circle. Its members met irregularly, kept shared records of their practice, and argued at length. One conviction came out of those arguments and never left: that the most valuable thing a teacher can give a student is the means to stop needing a teacher.
The Founding, 2010
On 2 October 2010 the circle, then seven people, named itself the Order of the Serpent and adopted the statement that became The Shed Skin. It resolved three things that night: that the Order would charge no one for anything, that it would keep no secret teaching, and that no one in it would hold authority over the practice of another. Those resolutions have never been amended, and under the terms of The Shed Skin they cannot be.
The seven are remembered in the Order as the First Circle. At their own request their names are not recorded, and none of them has ever spoken for the Order as an individual.
The circle took as its sign the Open Ring: a serpent that forms a circle but does not close it. The meaning of the sign is set out in The Shed Skin and on The Serpent page.
The First Texts, 2011 to 2012
In 2011 the Order circulated First Workings, a short primer in self-initiation, as a photocopied pamphlet. It carried no author's name and a single line where a copyright notice would normally be: "No rights reserved." Readers copied it, passed it on, and in several cases translated it without asking, which was exactly what the Order intended.
In 2012 the Order wrote The Seven Coils, its map of self-initiation, which describes the stages of the work as conditions a practitioner recognizes in themselves rather than ranks conferred by others.
The Opening of the Archive, 2014
By 2014 the Order had accumulated eight years of letters, working notes, and shared records. None of it had been published. It was not secret in the sense the Order had rejected, since nothing in it was withheld as a privilege of rank, but it sat in a drawer, and the members of the circle at the time concluded that a policy of openness could not coexist with a locked drawer.
In February 2014 the Order published the archive in full, edited only to remove information that could identify private individuals. Against the Locked Grimoire was written to accompany it and to explain the decision. The archive was released as it stood, untidied, and like everything else the Order has published it remains in the public domain and circulates freely among readers. The Library does not reproduce the raw papers. It presents the Order's teaching in its current form, and the texts now in it say more clearly what those papers were reaching for.
The Library, 2016 to the Present
In 2016 the Order established this site, orderoftheserpent.org, as its library. The practitioners who took on the work of maintaining it have been known since then as the Keepers of the Library. The Nightside Record, on keeping the magical record, followed in 2017.
On 1 March 2019 the Order formally dedicated all of its works, past and future, to the public domain under the CC0 1.0 Universal dedication, replacing the informal "No rights reserved" notices that earlier editions had carried. Later that year it published Venom and Remedy, its account of the uses and the limits of transgression.
In 2022 The Seven Coils was revised. In 2025 the Order marked fifteen years. In March 2026 it published the second edition of First Workings, and in October 2026 the library was reorganized into its present form. In November 2026 it published The Blind Maker, its seventh text and the first new one in seven years, together with a set of pages describing the wider left-hand path.
The Order's history is a small part of a much longer one. The story of the path itself, from the schools that gave it a name to the present day, is told on the page Origins of the Left-Hand Path.
Timeline
- 2006
- Correspondence begins among a handful of independent practitioners.
- 2008
- The correspondence becomes a working circle with shared records of practice.
- 2010
- On 2 October the circle names itself the Order of the Serpent and adopts The Shed Skin.
- 2011
- First Workings circulates as a photocopied pamphlet marked "No rights reserved."
- 2012
- The Seven Coils is written as the Order's map of self-initiation.
- 2014
- The Opening of the Archive. Against the Locked Grimoire is published in February.
- 2016
- orderoftheserpent.org is established as the Order's library.
- 2017
- The Nightside Record is published.
- 2019
- On 1 March all works are dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal. Venom and Remedy is published in August.
- 2022
- The Seven Coils is revised.
- 2025
- The Order marks fifteen years.
- 2026
- First Workings, second edition, is published in March. The library is reorganized in October. The Blind Maker, the seventh text, is published in November.