So, after a couple comments on my last post, it was brought to my attention that instead of just talking about a movement, I/We should look into being a movement. After emailing at great length with Jessica we came up with a possible rough outline of a plan. It’s not an incredibly radical idea or anything. No church burnings or burning pentagrams in people’s yards or anything fun like that. We’re simply talking about doing some active networking.
The end result would be a very simple organization/website that other organizations could join where we would help novices to find them as well as be a networking tool for organizations to find shops/retailers for their events or to find other organizations/covens to hold cooperative events with. This won’t be like websites and organizations like witchvox.com because we would be a very active group in trying to find current groups and would require certain very basic qualifications to be met for a group to join our network. Not only this, but it wouldn’t be a simple forum or message board because those never seem to work out and always end up as Christian bashing forums, which I am highly against.
So, here are my thoughts on why there should be some requirements. First off, if there are no requirements, then we aren’t going to be all that effective due to the fact that no one will know whether a group is legit at all. Now, I don’t want any kind of ridiculous or limiting requirements because I don’t want to keep any legitimate groups out. Jessica’s comparison is that if Christianity’s only requirements were the Ten Commandments, would there really be any Christians who would be against them? Seriously, do not murder is probably a good thing to preach. So here are a few ideas of requirements:
You must further the improvement of the Pagan image. This could be anything from opening up and possibly inviting non Pagans to a ritual to simply encouraging members to be active in the public community as well as the Pagan community. I’m definitely up for some suggestions on this.
The members must be legitimately practicing Pagans. This could mean a lot of things such as holding ceremonies at least twice a year or having a solid knowledge of commonly known Pagan ideas (wheel of the year, elements, mythologies, etc.). Again, totally asking for suggestions here.
The organization applying for membership must have a link back to our organization in order to be a member. This is so that members of the organization can find our organization easily and network with non-group members as well as realize that there is more out there in the Pagan world other than their current coven.
The organization must be interviewed by an member of our organization in order to get a good grasp of the ideas and practices of the group so that we can more effectively lead people to groups when they ask. I see this as necessary to being an active group rather than just another forum.
Now here are some questions that I’m really hoping everyone can talk about:
How do you think we can get groups to join?
Should we charge some sort of minor membership fee?
How do we pay the people that devote a significant amount of time to it? Sponsorship by businesses? Advertisements on the website? Those membership fees? Donations (remember that most Pagans are poor)?
So I’m really looking for some comments and ideas from people. This is just an idea right now and I’m seriously looking for some people to step up and throw some ideas out there. Remember, there’s a religious revolution coming and I want to be a part of it. Anyone else that wants to join needs to stop hiding in the shadows and at least show some ideas. If you don’t want to actually comment, send me an email at jrw627@gmail.com but I’d really appreciate some comments so that other people can get ideas and expand on your ideas.
Here are a few links that may be of some help.
https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_wp-standard-overview-outside&nav=2.0.0
This will help if you are low on budget and a none profit
http://www.justgive.org/nonprofits/index.jsp?gclid=CNmlzdr9v5QCFSCcnAodY1oDTw
this is a site you might find useful
http://www.igroops.com/?online_group-P&gclid=CMnr547-v5QCFQGbnAodsipRUQ
or
http://groups.yahoo.com/
And as you know I will help in what ever way I can.
Jenna
How do you think we can get groups to join? advertise as much as possible, even think of saving up and putting ads in the newspaper, fliers, word of mouth, anyone and everyone who wants to be apart of this and has a myspace, post multiple bullitens, comments on people’s pages, and even in e-mails, if push comes to shove, we can go door to door with fliers.
Should we charge some sort of minor membership fee? I don’t think charging a membership fee would bring people to join, instead, make it a free membership, but encourage people, especially the ones who like the group to give donations as much as possible to just better the group and all of it’s affairs.
How do we pay the people that devote a significant amount of time to it? Give them higher tasks, like, say someone came to every outing early, helped set all the needed to be set up, stayed after to help with anything that needed to be taken care of, give them a sort of “promotion”. Include them in planning the next upcoming event, if they’re trust worthy enough, and you do eventually get donations, let them keep in track of the funds with you, or someone else (money should always be handled with two people)
Sponsorship by businesses? Getting sponsors will be hard but not impossible. Sign companies are popular sponsors with minor groups, and when you do get a group together and become legit, you can upgrade to big time companies and even food places so you’ll have food and drinks for the gatherings.
Advertisements on the website? Advertisement on the website would be great. I hope you don’t mind, but i’m going to start posting your bulliten announcements in my bullitens so that way all of my friends will be able to see what all of this is all about and hopefully get them to help me spread the word for you. So basically, if I do that, and get more hits on the website, you advertising on the website would be even greater.
Those membership fees? No membership fees like i said, just encourage donations as much as possible.
Donations (remember that most Pagans are poor)? i’ve covered this before, lol, just make sure that you encourage donations but don’t make people think it’s mandatory.
Jenna, thank you very much for your continued support, and I will definitely end up using quite a few of those links. I really don’t think I’ll be to the point of actually creating a website for a while because there’s a lot of decisions that will have to be made before that can even be thought about.
Jessie-Lynn, I’d rather not do things in quite such an inefficient manner. I’m thinking something along the lines of how can we convince all of the online groups to join up. Everything’s probably going to be done via the internet for a long time and then individuals can contact businesses, organizations, and individuals however we decide at that point. I think that those would be very reasonable ideas for that point in time, but I’m really looking to go nationwide from the beginning. I’m looking for more of suggestions as to why these first organizations should join us.
Also, I really am looking at this in the big picture, as in there will be people that devote their 40 hour work week to it. So how do you pay someone a reasonable wage (remember we’re trying to stay away from making more Pagans poor) to do a very important and stressful job when you aren’t really making much money? And donations only go so far when a community’s poor.
On the whole having a free membership, I’m pretty split on this one. There’s the part of me that thinks that nobody in their right mind would pay a college kid to network them with a bunch of other groups when they could do it themself (though they aren’t…), and so nobody’d join. At the same time, I know that if nobody pays any money then they really have no commitment to the organization and that’s also one less way to pay those people that are devoting their work week to the organization.
I’m probably going to do advertisements on the website, but they rarely pay all that much from what I understand. It’s usually like $.05 a click and that’s not much at all. Even if 1000 people clicked the ad, that’s only $50 and most websites don’t get even close to the 10,000 hits a week that would be the very minimum to pay someone a weekly wage. I know that I’m ecstatic that my blog’s gotten 500 hits in the past 2 weeks.
So, very good comments and I’m going to be greedy and say I want a lot more than this. I’m not going to be able to be on much tonight to check on things, so tomorrow morning I hope to be pleasantly surprised.
Thanks a bunch, I’m excited.
I feel like we need to back up a little. Groundwork first. That means determining a concept and purpose for this organization should we move forward with it. The ins and outs of advertising, etc. will follow, only if we know what we are doing first.
If we determine exactly what our purpose is/would be and how we would like to accomplish it (vaguely) then we need to also determine if there isn’t someone else doing this already, such as (I went looking) the Pagan Federation and Circle Sanctuary. So here are some important questions.
Is this a ministerial/spiritual organization that would be a network to share things among smaller groups?
Is this an educational organization that without the spiritual aspect that is stictly devoted to networking and educating?
Is this an activist group that will eventually provide legal assistance on related issues?
Or, more simply, are we trying to create an umbrella church web, an educational/networking group, or a pagan rights activist group?
I feel some tug-of-war, some inner fears pertaining to each possibility, but keep in mind that based on Christ’s teachings and what they decided in the days of the Roman’s, after all the persecution and judgement, we now live in a world where there are as many different Christian denominations as there are different religions, probably even more. We are NOT trying to tell people what to believe and what not to believe, but simply looking to align and connect, with no hierarchy, as a means of creating a greater cause (that of educating the public) and uniting in movement.
Whoever is interested in this, it is really important that you focus on what you want to accomplish by doing this, personally and nationally. Share those things, if you would, so we can get a base of where we are.
After that is determined, if we articulate what it is we are trying to do and how, then we should move on to deciding what kind of organization this would be legally. Non-profit? For-profit (much easier to have a for-profit organization than a non-profit in terms of the amount of work it requires– this doesn’t mean it has to be a greedy org. that doesn’t use the profit for worthwhile investments)? No business declared, just paperwork and donations?
In the beginning, it may be that we just need people to get on the bandwagon without asking for money, but at some point, regardless of what business status we had, we would need to have membership fees in order to fund broader projects. Otherwise we would just be a local group.
Just some things to think about.
Look through these sites thoroughly to determine if/why these organizations aren’t doing what we want to do. If they are, then based on what we have expressed, the desire to educate and unite, we should stick to our word and join one of these organizations and become as active as we can be.
http://www.circlesanctuary.org/index.html
http://www.us.paganfederation.org/index.html
I’m glad to know these organizations already exist. It doesn’t negate our momentum or purpose here, but if they are doing what we want to do and we truly just want organization, unity, education and activism, then we should put our egos aside and lend a hand. If, on the other hand, they are not doing what we want to do or how we want to do it, then we should let these organizations be educational for us to try see what we like about them and what we don’t like about them.
And to day i was looking around and found this i think that it could be vary helpful to some of us and i also think it is touching allot of different bases. http://www.witchvox.com/
You can count me in. I like the idea of good PR being a requirement. Your earlier reference to the ten commandments got me thinking about the Wiccan’s Rede. While it was written in the middle of the twentieth century, it contains a lot of good guides for practitioners. A code of conduct based along those lines might be a good place to start as far as member requirements go.
My two cents on that subject is just that we make sure to leave room for other pagan traditions, as well as a non-conflict clause for other, more established religions.
Coincidentally, contemporary christian churches might make a good business model for us. As long as the location in question has enough locals that are at least curious about the practice of the old ways and about magick, then donations of time and of money should follow. (Notice though, how the Bible contains so many helpful suggestive verses about giving money to the church. I think we’d like to avoid this sort of perversion.)
All you really need to do is make the meetings feel like a spiritual home for participants. Attending a few Protestant meetings (Open-mindedly and keeping a low profile on your own beliefs.) to see how it’s done in various settings could go a long way towards the future of our chapter or organization.
Many churches sell literature and other media that allow the curious to further educate themselves.
The distribution of pamphlets and such would probably only work in a place where pagan practices are more acceptable (i.e. Scotland/UK, not so much here.). Also keep in mind that most pagan imagery is seen as teen-trend, pop culture candy rather than serious spiritual iconography.
The big breaks for most startup churches, from what I’m told, come when a wealthy member or coalition of members get together to fund the endeavor.
Website ads can’t hurt. There’s plenty of gothy/witchy/pagany websites out there that wouldn’t mind a link exchange. Reading some online guides about generating revenue in this fashion might open up an unforseen opportunity in this matter. (I would do so myself, but I’ve precious little time tonight.)
While I’m at it, Wikihow had the only non-gimmick guide to church-starting I could find… Here’s the link.
Let us just keep in mind that our goal should remain in education. Money is not our objective, merely the means to an end. If we fail in this, we might as well have never started.
Just searching on-line you can find lots of pagan groups, heck just look at witchvox. Some active, some not…. Make sure you have the strength and hunger for this…otherwise your going to start something and leave it’s shell as a headstone in the fad cemetary.
As long as we’re not messing with what people can/can’t believe, I think it’s a great idea. It gets a bit lonely when you don’t have other pagans to talk with, especially when you live in an area where that belief system is looked down upon. An online community seems to be a great place to start; and I believe that by uniting we may be able to get a more realistic pagan image out to the public and thus lessen the fear of those still hiding in the broom closet.
Unfortunately, it does seem to me that things don’t really start getting accepted until they make it to popular television, especially reality TV shows. The more appearances a lifestyle has, the more acceptable it becomes. Just look at homosexuality, it’s all over television now, and more and more people are accepting it. Pagans have been featured on shows such as Wife Swap, but so far it seems they’ve been given a very poor image. It may take getting the right kind of people on television to give the world a better view of us.
Other than that, all I can suggest is that you don’t make a mandatory fee for members; I think that’s more likely to chase people away than invite them in. Other than asking for donations, though, I’m not really sure how you could go about getting money, or how much we’d really need it honestly.
Hi, it’s the lunatic again…lol, well.I had a conversation awhile back with a christian friend of mine about what i can’t remember, but i interrupted him and asked what the definition of pagan was…not just for him. I wiki’d it and the definition was basically any non-christian of judaic religion was condisered pagan…since there are so many religions or spiritual followings of people like as shamanism, anamalism and the such that people still to this day subscribes to, we as people should first define ourselves, define our beliefs, because pagan is just too broad. It brings to mind burning and “brooms” and like you said sacrificing babies. I understand that pagan is a belie….well, i don’t really know, i think it’s a belief in nature the real world not just a myth…although there are mythic ideals that have real connections for people. I hope you understand that statement…please forgive me, i’m left handed and i’m a gemini…so i get air-headed at times, just ask jessica. regardless, I personally would not want to be called a pagan because of the negative stigma, i’m less religious and more spiritual i guess. I suppose that’s why I am asking for some other “label” other than pagan. Actually what is pagan really?
Hey there,
Jessica clued me into your blog and this is the first chance I have had to get to look at it. I have to say this has been a long time coming and what a great job. It looks fantastic!
Okay so onto your idea about an organization.
I don’t know that charging for membership is such a snazzy idea. Like you said most pagans are poor, donations to keep a website up and going would be a good idea.
As far as a website, it could be a bulletin board (not forum) where other people/ or organizations post links to their websites.
I am totally down with furthering the pagan image as being part of the requirement. To take it one step further you could organize meet ups with all local groups to network.
Just some thoughts.
PAGAN….from that bad 80’s version of Dragnet;
People
Against
Goodness
And
Niceties.
good luck with the website.
I’d like to mention that the author of this website is a relative of mine and that’s why I get to bully him around and say whatever I want or exceed my common courtesy word limit. Just FYI.
Roderick, the very associations you have with being called pagan are the very reason we want to have an organization such as what we’ve described. People are not educated on what it means and that would be part of the mission of this organization. Those of us that call ourselves pagan use that word b/c either there is no other word to describe us (other than heathen, wiccan, witch, wizard, magician) and of the other words we can choose from, often pagan is the most benign. The thing you should consider is that if you fit the definition of pagan, pagan defined by those who are informed, not fearful, and choose to use that term as a label for what they are, then you should either accept that label and use it or acknowledge that your fear of the label may indicate you are still attached to other beliefs and other societal expectations that make you something else all together. But that fear and those negative associations are the very things that keep many pagans in the broom closet.
Rob, it’s nice to see you on the board. Also FYI for those reading, Rob is my husband and is out to sea for a long while, and that makes him an in-law to the author of this blog, but I don’t know if he gets the same priveleges I do. But back to your comments, Rob. First, the verdict is still out on whether pagans are actually poor as a whole. That’s been a topic of discussion, but it’s both a stereotype/myth and possibly a reality that may or may not influence decisions in this possible venture. The issue with not charging for a membership is that there will be a whole lot of activity, eventually, that will have to be paid for. We’re talking about having people be officers of said organization and eventually this thing would be big enough for those positions to be full-time (or why else do it? we’re talking about changing the world here right?). There would be very active networking and education, probably a lot of printing to distribute info. locally and nationally and all this costs money.
So, here is the thing. No one has to join in order to benefit. If we created this org. and did what we are talking about doing, it would be quite an enormous venture with part of the mission being to redefine the connotations of the label “pagan” and make what we are doing commonly known enough to no longer ignite fear and create images of human/animal sacrifice. All that said, having a business membership would need to have certain benefits that made the membership worthwhile. Having an individual membership would also need to have it’s benefits. Most non-profits have newsletters or magazines that are published and distributed as part of their membership/donation. I’m sure that would be part of it. But no one would HAVE to join. And that means there would need to be a good reason to become a member and pay a nominal fee such as $5-15/year. The Pagan Federation is $50/year but I’m not willing to pay that for an organization that I have never seen in the media, in local pagan events, or that doesn’t do more than network. If it does more then it doesn’t say so on its site. That’s quite a lot of money, and that’s not what we are talking about.
But these are the kind of things that need to be addressed to even determine if this is something that SHOULD be done. And it still needs to be determined whether there is room for what we are talking about among all the other modestly known organizations.
Jessica, I understand the stigma in relation to society…i understand the “pagan” label is the only thing that we as a people who do not believe in like i said the most poplular religion…my question is…organizing, first of all…needs somewhere to start, right…and wiccans could organize easily because they have a defined belief system that has borders or dogma. christians can organize because of the same, are you saying that would be the purpose of this org? To define and set what it is to be pagan? I don’t know alot, but I would assume that many people who consider themselves to be pagan may or may not have the exact same belief structure as you or i, but because they are not christians they fall uner the term pagan…or am i just adding too much thinking in this? And, from reading here, having a set of rules or regulations, small groups would have to adhere to, would that go against lots of pagans beliefs? Just asking.
Roderick,
I don’t feel like neopaganism is actually as wide as you perceive it. Whoever it was that you asked and they said that pagans were anyone who wasn’t Christian is not up to date. The word pagan comes from the European, pre-Christian peoples and means, basically, “country dweller”. The people who believed the old, polytheistic, nature based beliefs the longest were the people who lived in the country (in Europe, where the Romans were invading/assimilating) and were harder to access by the Romans. So the word “pagan” became synonymous with those beliefs– the pre-Christian, European, polytheistic, nature-based beliefs. Technically speaking, those of us that call ourselves “pagan” are actually “neo-pagans” b/c we are resurrecting beliefs/practices/mythologies that were dormant, dead, or hardly practiced. Being pagan does NOT refer to being Jewish, Muslim, or any other monotheistic religion. Wicca is a pagan denomination that has organization, structure, particular sets of beliefs. It’s like being Methodist instead of Baptist. Christianity and Paganism are both “religions” and within that there are denominations of beliefs/practices. Since paganism is polytheistic it would be difficult to define what we worship or who, as we don’t typically “worship” any deity, but honor and rever them and that reverence could be extended to any number of hundreds of deities. You CAN, however, define the CHARACTERISTICS of paganism even if you cannot define who they follow or what they practice.
We would not be creating rules. We would not be defining what paganism is and thereby creating limitations. We would simply be DESCRIBING that which already exists in broad, easily understood terms in an attempt to teach new, less judgmental associations with the commonly used terms (pagan, neopagan, Wiccan, etc.).
You do not fall under the term “pagan” just because you are not Christian. That is as far from the truth as many other judgments and simplicities that are taught from a place of fear and ignorance.
Ok, got it…thank you. Now i understand that part.