Church of All Worlds Ceremony Advancing Members from the Seventh to Eighth Circle

The Church of All Worlds Ceremony Advancing Members from the Seventh to Eighth Circle is a staged initiation in which a prepared group of Seventh Circle members enters a more advanced level of practice. Through an invocation, a changing priestess image, and the candidates’ passage into a Garden tableau, the ceremony makes religious advancement visible as a transition from watching to belonging. Ben Caxton witnesses its decisive spectacle but leaves before the initiates complete their passage.

Preparation and Membership

The ceremony belongs to a church organized into nine circles. Its advancement is not presented as an automatic reward for attendance: Mike Smith assesses possible candidates during public meetings, where apparent miracles and a carefully paced presentation introduce newcomers to the church. The selection process is gradual, with prospective members observed for their readiness before they are invited farther in. The Seventh Circle group at this ceremony had already been identified for promotion.

The circles mark distinct stages of participation rather than mere titles. Patricia Paiwonski explains that members may learn Martian, receive instruction, and progress through inner circles before reaching the Nest. Mike may sometimes recognize an individual as ready to share water before the usual stage; Sam and Ruth, for example, received that invitation upon entering the Third Circle and later became a priest and priestess. By contrast, the group at the ceremony was a Seventh Circle cohort whose members were all expected to advance.

The church’s gradual structure also distinguishes a public-facing service from its more intimate practices. At a meeting, Mike performs limited miracles and invites those who truly wish to learn to enter a circle; the audience is not told about deeper circles until it is considered ready. That selective disclosure helps explain why the advancement ceremony is both an event for candidates and a revelation of a more developed religious world to Ben, who is present as an observer rather than as one of the Seventh Circle initiates.

The Ceremony and Its Vision

When the lights return, Ben sees Jill Boardman positioned above and behind Mike Smith. He initially suspects that the image is a stereoscopic illusion, but Jill looks directly toward him and smiles. Mike begins an invocation that names a maternal sacred figure and describes unity through a sequence of identities. As the names change, Jill’s costume changes with them, transforming the ceremony into a visible progression of religious images rather than a single fixed representation.

The invocation culminates in Jill as Mother Eve. Ben’s attention leaves the spoken words as the scene presents her in a Garden beside a tree entwined with a serpent. Jill gently smooths the serpent’s head, then opens her arms toward the assembled candidates. The Garden image gives the advancement a clear dramatic shape: the candidates are not merely told that they are approaching a new circle; they are shown a threshold and invited to cross it.

The first candidates move toward Jill. Mike prepares to receive the first woman in the line, and Jill is to welcome the first male candidate. As each is kissed, the candidate’s robe vanishes. Ben does not witness these actions: Patricia Paiwonski brings him away before the sequence continues, so his account of the event is strongest at the level of the invocation and the candidates’ initial approach, not the full initiation.

Ben Caxton as Witness and Outsider

Ben recognizes Jill and is drawn into the scene, even while he tries to account for it as a technical trick. He considers approaching the platform to test whether she is physically present, but decides not to disrupt Mike’s presentation. His attention therefore holds two positions at once: a skeptical observer looking for an explanation, and a participant emotionally affected by Jill’s appearance and the welcoming gesture she offers the candidates.

Patricia’s intervention makes the limits of Ben’s participation explicit. She leads him away so the advancing members have time to reach the Temple of the Eighth Circle. She says there would be no physical harm in entering the space, but doing so would interrupt Mike’s work and unsettle the candidates’ state of mind. Ben is invited to join the initiation because he is already Ninth Circle, yet Patricia also notes that he has not learned Martian and would find the proceedings confusing. He leaves with her to retrieve Honey Bun rather than joining the ceremony.

That departure is not the same as rejection. Elsewhere, the Nest’s initiation is described as the point at which new brothers—usually a couple—become forever part of the community, and Ben is told that the Nest already regards him as belonging even though his welcome service has not yet been held. His position at this ceremony is thus deliberately intermediate: he has a place in the community, but has not undergone this particular collective rite.

Water, Commitment, and Belonging

The broader meaning of advancement is clarified by the church’s water-sharing practice. Jill and Mike describe sharing water with Patricia as a serious, enduring bond of trust and partnership, while making clear that she need not accept it if doing so would conflict with her faith or conscience. Patricia chooses to join them, and the shared glass becomes a sign that spiritual membership rests on consent as well as communal recognition.

The Nest’s later welcome service gives this progression a collective form. Candidates enter the Innermost Temple, where a central pool serves as the setting for their reception. Ruth recalls that she and Sam were frightened before their own initiation, despite wanting to join; when the group called them to share the water of life, she entered the pool and understood herself as having joined the community. Her account presents the ceremony’s threshold not as a mere change of rank but as a movement into shared life, sustained by language learning, discipline, and help from other members.

This context makes the Seventh-to-Eighth-Circle ceremony one stage in a larger sequence, rather than an isolated pageant. The staged Garden draws candidates forward, while the circles, instruction, and eventual water-sharing service give that visible invitation a continuing social consequence. The church’s public performances may begin with Mike’s miracles and theatrical skill, but its deeper progression depends on candidates choosing to learn, advance, and enter the community.

Significance

The ceremony brings together religious spectacle and organized recruitment without making them identical. Mike’s public presentation can use performance to attract and assess an audience; advancement, by contrast, is reserved for a group already considered ready. Jill’s changing sacred identities give the rite an expansive symbolic vocabulary, while the orderly movement of candidates and Patricia’s careful removal of Ben show that the community also regulates who participates and when.

Its most consequential image is the open-armed figure of Mother Eve. The scene makes invitation visible, but Ben’s departure preserves the distinction between witnessing a threshold and crossing it. The ceremony therefore dramatizes both the church’s power to turn ritual into belonging and the gradual, selective nature of that belonging: the candidates approach, while an observer who is already connected to the Nest remains outside this particular initiation.