Coven number of persons involved may vary. Although some consider thirteen to be ideal (probably in deference to Murray's theories), any group of at least three can be a coven. A group of two is usually called a "working couple" (regardless of the sexes). Within the community, many believe that a coven larger than thirteen is unwieldy, citing unwieldy group dynamics and an unfair burden on the leadership. When a coven has grown too large to be manageable, it may split, or "hive". In Wicca, this may also occur when a newly made High Priest or High Priestess, also called 3rd
A Community of Witches South Carolina Press in their series on 'Studies in Comparative Religion', and in his preface to the book, the series editor Frederick M. Denny referred to it as the "sequel" to Berger's earlier work. In their preface, Berger, Leach and Shaffer discussed the Pagan Census and how it had been used in producing "A Community of Witches"; they noted that at the time Berger had originally written the book, "the rest of the data had not been completely processed, cleaned, and analyzed. Unlike that book, which relied primarily on her ethnographic research in the northeastern United States and an analysis