After years of formal and informal study and practice of comparative religions, we, the founders of the Sacred Well Congregation concluded that mutually exclusive sectarianism practiced by established hierarchical religious groups and orders were detrimental to the human Spirit and irreverent to the Divine Reality that is both immanent and transcendent throughout the Universe. Since we hold and believe that it inheres within the Divine Soul of each human being to seek spiritual transformation and reunion with the Divine Reality, and since the existent sectarian faiths and practices fail to provide adequate means and moral guidance to those ends, it became incumbent upon us to form the Sacred Well Congregation during the One-thousand Nine-hundred and Ninety-fourth year of the Common Era.
The Sacred Well Congregation is not a new religion. It is a deliberate return to an older form of worship, faith, and practices that honor the Divine Reality that exists both within and without, and promotes individual spiritual growth and development.
The Sacred Well Congregation is unfettered and independent, and while it may conjoin with other groups, traditions, or religious bodies for certain Celebrations and Rites, it recognizes no religious authority, and owes no allegiance to any group, body, or organization beyond its autonomous membership.
The Sacred Well Congregation is non-Evangelical and non-Sectarian, and recognizes and acknowledges the validity of differing faiths and practices as separate pathways to the same ultimate end.
The Sacred Well Congregation is an Earth-based religion that venerates the Divine Reality in the observance and celebration of the mysteries of Nature.
The Sacred Well Congregation makes no claims to be a "revealed" religion, and therefore has no dogma, irrefutable written body of scripture, or infallible temporal authority. True worship is regarded as an inward rather than outward spiritual manifestation.
Therefore, The Sacred Well Congregation worships in public and in private, alone and in groups, under the canopy of Nature, or under artificial structure. The local congregation may consist of one person, or any number of persons affirming this Declaration. Membership in the local Congregation is informal and unbinding, requiring only the free and voluntary acceptance of the Five Tenets of The Sacred Well Congregation as a rule and guide for faith and practice. Stewardship of the local Congregation is exercised by a Cleric or Council of Clerics who together and individually bear fiscal and spiritual responsibility for the conduct of worship, Celebrations, and Rites, and administration of the Congregation. Clerics will be appointed by Proclamation of Ordination issued by the Council of Clerics in the name of the Congregation. Clerics will accept no compensation for religious or spiritual services rendered to the Congregation or members thereof. Members may petition for ordination after demonstration of knowledge and commitment to the precepts and spirit of the Tenets, and genuine desire to serve humanity. Clerics are expected to promote the Tenets by example and deed wherever they may be. They will observe the Rites of Seasons in solitude, or in group, and will provide, without binding fee, legal and social functions of Clergy according to custom to all who petition at times of birth, marriage, death, or spiritual crisis. Each Cleric is recognized as free and unencumbered, and may develop his or her own spiritual practice, in concert with, or apart from the Congregation by whom he or she was Ordained, and may choose to practice alone, or to form an independent congregation, be it on a synchronous or divergent path.