Up until now in my spiritual life, I’ve always been solitary (other than my aunt, uncle, and a few very close friends) to the point that I kept all of my books/tools locked in a trunk unless I was using them. The sad thing is that I really wanted a community that I could share my beliefs with and to get some help when I wanted advice. My aunt and uncle have been there for me for a long time, but because I “apprenticed” under her, we share extremely similar views and that’s not always what I want. I’ve needed a larger group of people who had views on Magick that I’d ever even thought about. Because of this, there was a part of me that was always envious of Christians because they all have their churches and they can always talk to their friends because the majority of people are Christian, so it’s easy. I’ve thought about it a lot and finally realized something, they’ve got a heirarchy that allows this and pushes for this.
The Pagan community prides itself on allowing anyone to believe their own beliefs without judgement, and while this may be good, there seems to a lot more difficulty in creating a community because of it. Pagans are taught not to push their religion/spirituality on anyone else and this keeps our communities small and isolated. I know that many Pagans do not believe that we should ever push our religion on anyone, but we have to look at the consequences of this. Paganism is a quickly growing religion because it’s the exact opposite of Christianity and people are losing faith in Christianity. The only problem is that most of these new “converts” become solitaries and never come into contact with other people of their faith. Imagine it, you live in a farming community in South Dakota and want to meet new Pagan people. What would you do? You could drive the three to four hours to the nearest major city and join a coven/meet-up group or just suck it up and be happy with online groups. Now the Christian next door only has to drive 20 minutes to the nearest church, so that family’s got a spiritual community and this is key to spiritual growth for a person. Without my aunt to talk about Magick with, I’d probably have kept the ideas and never practiced anything.
So what do we do about this lack of connection between the groups? The options include being the evangelical Pagan that we’ve all been pushed not to be, having groups search out other groups and create a “web” of small groups that work independently of each other while still keeping in contact with each other, expanding the sheer numbers of Pagans, or to make it alright for every Pagan to be out of the broom closet. These are really the only options I can think of and if you can think of others I’d love to hear them. For any of these options to work, there are two very key things currently missing: spiritual leaders and a web of communities.
Currently, the spiritual leaders worry about furthering their covens or groups and that is all. No one has thought about the guy in South Dakota that’s living the life he’s always wanted as a farmer. He doesn’t want to move to the big city because he’s completely happy to live out there and farm every day. He loves being outdoors and being around the animals, and he loves the actual hard work that he does. What I’m suggesting is that the Pagan community needs a leader or group of leaders to work towards actually furthering the Pagan cause for that guy in South Dakota or for the kid who feels the call towards Paganism but is living in a Southern Baptist household. These people need their “churches” and their communities that will support them in their spiritual pursuits.
We need leaders that will show them what Paganism is and that it isn’t a bunch of people sitting around a fire sacrificing babies and animals. We need these leaders to push people to accept us and our beliefs rather than pushing us off as freaks or weirdos. We also need them to help show people that it’s alright to come out of the broom closet and that there are lot more Pagans out there than they realize. Sure, we’re a minority but I’ve met a lot of in the closet Pagans in the past couple months completely randomly. It’s the fact that everyone’s in the closet that keeps the communities from forming. The leaders also will have to form these communities, and I’m not saying that they need to start the same covens in all the major cities because that’s simply not the Pagan way. What I’m saying is that they need to meet the natural leaders in the cities and towns and help them to organize. This would require a large network of leaders and could in fact reshape the American ideas once Pagan morals were pushed at least a little bit.
I could not agree more with your entry. I have always wished to have the availability of
speaking and sharing with others, and lets face it for some people the fairly empty feeling you get online just is not enough. On your thought of getting leaders together and then going with the groups I think is good but why not just have it start with other pagans. I honestly think from there the leaders will prevail. There could be a message board for every state and others can sign up under their state and then when there are two that are within a reasonable distance they can get a plan to meet. Yes, yes, I know it is important to be careful before you meet strangers off the computer but that is why people will have to use there better judgment.
I feel the same way as you do. I grew up in a catholic household and just recently told my family the truth. The first thing I was called was a satin worshiper. After explaing everything my family still is a little distant, but my friends respect my beliefs. As what your talking about. We need a place where pagan’s can come worship, practice there craft, and young believers can come learn the laws. The problem is some people see this and think there will be another Salem witch hunt. what really needs to be done is we need to take a stand and show people that we are still around and we aren’t going anywhere. Hell if there be something other then a church or a sinigog. (I can’t spell) We should have a place to practice and worship too.
I think it would be enough to simply remove the fear of admitting what you believe. I, for one, will gladly admit what I am when asked; but then I am usually unable to explain what this actually entails because the subject is changed for being to awkward or because the other person immediately starts to inform me of just why I am going to hell. If people were less afraid to admit what they believe, or even to search within themselves for what they believe (rather than automatically conforming to the major beliefs around them), then we would find ourselves surrounded by quite a few pagans.
The meeting place is a wonderful idea, and in some places it does exist. I was quite surprised to find out that there is a Unitarian Church in Jacksonville, FL where any religion is allowed and no one may supress another’s beliefs. There is also a pagan community that meets their regularly for rituals and such, and as far as I know there hasn’t been a big protest (but then, it is kind of shrouded in nature and less noticeable). The problem with meeting places stems from getting the word out about them.
[...] pagan community, in dribs and drabs currently, but it seems to me to be picking up momentum. I read this post from magickforthemodernworld, in which there seems to be a call for some kind or organisation, some sort of concerted outreach [...]
Hi MFTRW; I read you post with interest as it had bearing on one I was writing from an opposite standpoint – I linked to you, I hope you don’t mind. I think this is an interesting debate. Blessings, TGW.
Greetings MftRW, I found your blog through The Green Witch, who I read regularly.
I have to say that in the UK, where we are, things are very different and our society is much more secular. It’s ironic really as your constitution separates state and belief and ours binds it with a monarch who heads the church. In reality though, there are very few of the fanatical Christian evangelists in the UK that you have over there, so attitudes are very different.
I am out of the closet, totally. I don’t go around announcing what I am, any more than I would if I were Jewish, Hindu or Moslem, but I live very openly in my beliefs.
I have to, politely, disagree with you. The Christian hierarchy and structure that you look at with some envy was set up 400 years after Christ, and it was an attempt to consolidate a vigourous, rapidly growing religion, just like The Craft is today. Before that first conclave, there were as many views on Christianity as there are on Witchcraft today, with different paths, opinions and sects.
The effect of the structuring of Christianity was to give leadership possibly in the way you ask for it, and seeming cohesion. The net result was to begin the process of ossifying the religion, creating a climate where money and power became more important than spirituality, where people were told what to believe and kept apart from their God by the intervention of the clergy. Is that what we want for The Craft? I’d say not.
We may be disparate, we may pull in different directions and it can get lonely working on one’s own, but given the alternatives, I’d take that option every time. There are already too many personality cults within Wicca and The Craft in general and let’s not forget that power corrupts. There are certainly good people who can take a lead, but there are as many self-serving egotists who would repeat all the mistakes of history over again.
I live rurally, though clearly it’s not as remote as somewhere like South Dakota, yet I find myself surrounded by people who are either Craft or very sympathetic to what I believe. I am lucky too, in that we have a great community at whitewicca.com that is supportive of solitaries and provides a cheery place to meet up and learn from each other. That is sufficient for me, though I’m pretty independent by nature.
I do worry about what would happen if we try to become an amorphous mass – I think we would loose all the things that make us special and different from the major world religions – which is why we don’t belong to them!
That’s just my opinion. Bright blessings, S
I really didn’t get the impression that MFTRW was trying to say we should run out, become the Romans, force 20,000 different sets of beliefs into one, hurt, threaten, and kill in order to make others believe that there is one way or the highway (to hell) and then sell snake oil and forgiveness to the masses (with a high price tag). I wouldn’t agree to that either.
I do agree that if we had a popular leader, or two or three, who united us in numbers and purpose, our voices could be heard as one (or two or three) and we could create social safety in those numbers. My immediate family has never been prudish about what i believe, but then my parents went into the wild to teach school in Kotzebue, Alaska, 28 miles above the Arctic Circle in the largest native village to date. They did this in the 50′s. They weren’t exactly mainstream, but still, my mother looks at me blankly when I talk about my beliefs and gets a look of relief when I mention the possibility of going to the Buddhist temple nearby. She just has no reference point from popular culture for it. But what if she did?
There are plenty of religions that are not considered safe and acceptable by the dominant Christians in this country, but because they are widely known, widely practiced, and widely discussed, the likelihood of my local Baptist minister uncle giving the “going to hell” talk to one of them (ie: a Buddhist, Muslim, or Jew) is slim to none. But what would he say to me if given the opportunity?
We are not currently at “respectable religion” status, frankly, because we like our secrets, we like feeling like not everyone believes what we believe b/c what would we be, this group of social misfits who didn’t fit into the norm, if our beliefs also became mainstream and acceptable? Then, perhaps, more would join us and we would sink back into the corners of Wallflower City once again, becoming invisible, hiding and fearing something new. It’s my opinion, though most pagans would tell you they’d like to believe what they believe openly and without repercussion, that we fear losing what gives us a place in society as much as we fear being found out. The trouble with taking paganism out of the broom closet as a whole would be making sure we had a group that was willing and making sure that we wouldn’t all lose our social status, fringe as it may be. It’s my opinion that we all need to step up to the plate, lead where we can. I say this knowing how far I am myself from fulfilling that but there has to be a starting place, a seed from which to grow. I’m a willing participant in this movement if others want to go too.
But how do we start? Where do we start? And who starts it? Right here. This post. This discussion. Personally, I’m emailing MFTRW today and opening that dialogue. If there is a train that is going, I want to be on it. And not everyone has to go. I’m not Wiccan and don’t want to be Wiccan, but I have to admit that I blatantly benefit socially from their organization, popularity and numbers. Others will benefit from what we do and no one is required to come along. But what if you could? What if this core group could start it? Would you want to be a part of it? I would. I really don’t want to miss the train if it’s going so I feel a sense of urgency about it.
I too, was going to point out the consolidation of Christianity as an example of a pagan consortium going awry.
However, a sense of fellowship and community was an important part of the old ways. There should be something more than there is.
Unfortunately, the ideas and beliefs of pagans today are far more disparate than Christians ever were. There is no ‘original’ paganism. It is a religion defined by the individual’s preferences.
That being said, the unifying attribute of all of these is the practice of the Craft.
Perhaps it would not be inappropriate to create a community that allows the different ‘voices’ of paganism (Old Celtic, Norse, Coptic, etc.) to meet and compare notes on spiritual practices.
After all, if magic is universal, it has no cultural preferences. The Ancient Egyptians had different practices from the Germanic peoples of Eastern Europe, but, at least as my theories lean, employed the same forces.
This would unite the wildly-different philosophies that comprise neo-paganism under one collective banner. Governing procedures would be democratic, each group represented by a single representative, no matter how many groups are present (Perhaps shown in major divisions by source region and then further into sub-cults [Seidr as a division of Norse Paganism, for example]).
It avoids the forced assimilation/cross-contamination that affects Christianity while still bringing pagans together in a place where they can share facts and ideas without fear of prejudice.
In my mind’s eye, it grows into a sort of grand consortium of pagans who maintain meeting halls in which to discuss the differences and similarities of their philosophies and practices, socialize, and of course, practice magick in safety…
So I’m mainly going to comment on Jessica’s and M’s comments. I really don’t want to debate with Green Witch and Mereth because I’m really kind of interested in this idea of actually creating a core group that would help to unite the completely disjointed groups of Pagans at least in the US. I really don’t have any idea how Pagans are looked at in other countries, and if it’s anything like how Mereth describes it, then they have little to worry about.
I believe that Jessica may have a very good idea about moving forward and actually trying to get something changed. I’m talking about actually getting a group together thats main goal would be to loosely tie together these isolated communities as well as enhance the national views of the Pagan community. I’ll be brainstorming tonight and emailing back and forth with Jessica in order to come up with some sort of extremely rough plan of attack and see what everyone thinks about it.
Remember that what I’m talking about is not to create a new Roman Catholic Church with a Goddess or God instead of Jesus and the Christian God. I’m talking about creating a network or “web” of communities so that the people that feel qualified to be teachers and role models for novices can actively do that and so that the novices can find their way with a little light shed on some good places to look for their paths. Remember that Pagan paths are never straight and never follow any other person’s path, so no one can truly guide anyone completely.
Think about this tonight and tomorrow and make sure to read tomorrow’s blog. I’ll be wanting anyone who wants to get on the “train” to be commenting tomorrow.
I wish you very well in your endeavours – Goddess speed your way!
Faith is what you make of it and how it is used. Faith is a fundamental part of human desire to believe in something. To believe there are beings out there that will help control our lives, how they will play out, when all along it is us who control much, the Gods n Goddesses are there to guide, comfort and provide hope. Ultimately we decide our faith through the world around us. The old ways are much more solid than many know or choose to believe in. An open heart and mind brings much to those who seek faith…
This sounds fantastic! Good for you, you should absolutely make the change you wish to see and not closet up your books and tools! Our missions seem to overlap; I can’t wait to hear more from you!