The paper explores how succession of leadership is negotiated in the contemporary moment in Sufi communities in Afghanistan. Based on 22 months of in-country ethnographic field research (2016-2018) among all three major Sufi associational communities (tariqas/turuq) active in Afghanistan, the paper explores a specific Sufi group and their path to establish a new tariqa after the death of their leader/pir. The paper draws both on original field work based on qualitative interviews and participant observation as well as on archival material and analysis of the group's own writing and literature. Where do the possibilities and limits lie in envisioning a new path for Sufism in the modern world without being accused of innovation by outside groups or other Sufis? How is tradition constructed and re-envisioned in the collective history writing and self-publishing of this community? What is the place of secrecy and public image among various Sufi and non-Sufi groups, religious foundations and councils? And what place do religio-cultural configurations such as dreams take in divining authority and leadership, or circumventing it? The paper takes a comparative view, both historically in terms of patterns of succession as well as ethnographically to other groups which negotiated succession after the place of the pir was vacated. It looks at the rules of the game and how far they can be bent with adapting to new leaders both in terms of levels of orthodoxy and questions of gender, before someone points them out as broken.