Mystical systems
Coven
Direct answer
Coven: A coven is a group of witches who meet regularly to work ritual together; the word was first used this way in a Scottish confession of 1662 and is now the standard unit of Wicca.
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At a glance
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Wicca, Witchcraft, Witch Trials, Wheel of the Year
A coven is a group of witches who meet regularly to work ritual together; the word was first used this way in a Scottish confession of 1662 and is now the standard unit of Wicca.
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How many witches are in a coven?
Coven is an old variant of convent and covin, from the Latin convenire, to come together, and once meant any gathering. Its witchcraft sense has a precise source: in 1662 Isobel Gowdie of Auldearn in Scotland told her examiners that witches were organised in covens of thirteen. Nothing like it appears in most other trial records.
Modern covens come from Wicca. In the form Gerald Gardner made public in the 1950s, a coven is a small initiated group, led by a high priestess and often a high priest, that meets at the full moons and the seasonal festivals. Thirteen is treated as a ceiling, and a coven that grows too large hives off a daughter group. Many witches today belong to no coven and practise alone.
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What sets Coven apart
A coven is defined by initiation and by size. A member is brought in by a rite, taught by the group's own elders, and usually bound to keep its workings private. The group stays small enough to stand in one circle, and by custom divides when it passes thirteen. That sets it apart from an open ritual or a study group, which anyone may attend, and from the solitary witch, who has no lineage to answer to.
- Root: Latin convenire, to come together; cousin of convent and convene
- First witch use: Isobel Gowdie, Auldearn, Scotland, 1662
- Traditional size: thirteen at most; many working covens are smaller
- Leadership: a high priestess, often with a high priest, in Gardnerian Wicca
- Daughter groups: made by hiving off when a coven grows too large
Often mistaken for something else: A sabbat is a festival, one of the eight seasonal meetings; a coven is the group of people who keep it.
The story behind Coven
Gowdie's confessions of 1662 are the first known use of coven for a company of witches. Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) took her figure of thirteen and claimed it for a surviving pagan religion across Europe, a theory historians have since rejected. Gardner drew on Murray, and his Witchcraft Today (1954) fixed the coven as the working group of Wicca. Scott Cunningham's guide for solitary practitioners (1988) made practice outside a coven common.
Why Coven matters
The word carries a history lesson: the neat coven of thirteen comes from one confession and one disproved theory, not from the witch trials as a whole.
How to read Coven
In Wicca it names the group a person is initiated into and trains with; more loosely it is used for any circle of witches who meet to keep the festivals together.
Coven in practice: an example
A newcomer who asks to join a traditional coven is usually asked to wait and study for a year and a day before any initiation is offered.
Where readings of Coven go wrong
A sound coven lets people leave freely and never asks for money, sex or secrecy from family as the price of belonging.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- coven meaning, witches coven, what is a coven, coven of witches, wiccan coven, coven of thirteen
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
How many witches are in a coven?
Tradition says thirteen, a figure that comes from Isobel Gowdie's confession of 1662. In practice Wiccan covens are often smaller, and thirteen is treated as the most a group should hold before it divides.
Where does the word coven come from?
It comes from the Latin convenire, to come together, by way of Anglo-Norman, and is related to convent and convene. Its use for witches dates from Scotland in 1662.
Do you have to join a coven to be a witch?
No. Since the late twentieth century solitary practice has been common and widely accepted, and many people who call themselves witches have never belonged to a group.
