Okay, so it’s been a while since we last talked about the Movement, and I figured I’d get a bit of brainstorming going on. So here’s how this post is going to work. I’m going to put my very loose plan out and then ask a lot of questions that I’d like some feedback on….on second thought, I’d really like some feedback on anything, but I’m making it easy by putting questions up. So, even if you’ve never posted a comment before, or haven’t ever been a part of an organization, or don’t even think your ideas are good, please post a comment. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and if I could do all of the creative brainstorming myself, I wouldn’t be asking everyone for their opinions. So if you’re even semi-interested, please say something.
So, as I see it, the goal of this organization would be four-fold: networking, educating the masses that we don’t sacrifice children, cooperative research, and giving the members information to study/read/incorporate at their leisure and pleasure. The first and most important part would be the networking because then there would be a large number of people to help with the others. The other three would occur kind of simultaneously.
My very loose plan would consist of
- Someone making a website that would allow us to communicate information as well as begin basic networking.
- Someone inviting a ridiculous number of groups/solitaries via really annoying spam/myspace (that’s how everyone found out about this blog originally…) and hoping we get some of them to join up. At this point, everything is obviously free no matter what the end result is.
- After getting a bit larger group of people together, we hold another much more legitimate meeting to decide how exactly we want to do things.
- Begin creating and posting a much more impressive amount of research/material than is currently posted anywhere else. This means that instead of having a basic wiki page about Chaos Magick, we have a small course in Chaos Magick. Instead of having a page on symbolism, we have a massive, constantly updated list of symbols/gods/goddesses/plants/gemstones/etc. for people to peruse. This of course would be a huge draw to our website and would make a lot more people join it. This would give us more website hits and that would give us more members. Good system, in my opinion.
- We start picking out people that seem to have leadership skills as well wanting to be a part of something, and also who have a good knowledge of current magick. These people could be current coven leaders, current dedicated solitaries, or just that guy who got obsessed three years ago and can’t stop thinking about magick.
- These leaders start doing research and find people that they would like to research with on new topics. After the last comment on Chaos magick, this just seemed like the right way to go about doing research in the magickal community.
- After there are a significant number of people (1,000-2,000 minimum), we can start pushing groups to start furthering our cause by advertising in the papers across the nation for public rituals, asking group members (nicely and without requiring it of them) to get together and do some community service, or something along these lines. I’m just talking about doing some things that will get the word Pagan out there in a very good light.
- After this, who knows? Start schools? Get political? Watch cartoons? I figure there’s a bit of time to figure this part out later…
So I’ve got some questions that I’m having trouble coming up with legitimate answers for.
- How will our networking be different than witchvox?
- What are some ways to advertise to groups and solitaries (let’s try to keep it large scale internet stuff cause I really don’t want to have to drive 2000 miles to advertise to the guys in Canada). I’ve come up with myspace, randomly emailing groups (though that would be a tremendously tedious task and would need a large group of people doing it), and possibly facebook. So anything else would be awesome.
- How exactly will the website be setup? Should it be a forum (not my favorite idea), a system where you enter in your request and the computer spits out your newest best friend, myspace style where you can browse through people, maybe match.com style where you answer a bunch of questions and it gives you people that are similar? I don’t really know what other ways there are, but I’m sure we could come up with some goods ones.
- Again, this is going to be a serious endeavor and some of the people need paychecks. We’re definitely not all independently wealthy, so 20 hours a week is a whole lot of time to put into something that doesn’t pay you anything (even if it is furthering an entire culture that’s been ostracized). Also, remember that websites aren’t free either. Somebody’s gotta pay for the bandwidth, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be the guy who’s working 20 hours a week so you can meet a really sweet Pagan girl or a super cool coven that fits you perfectly. Where are we going to get that kind of money? Newsletters? Advertising on the website? Selling crack?
- What do we do about businesses? I’m sure that every Pagan business in the world will want to be on our site, but do we charge them membership dues? Do we let anybody advertise on there or do we rate them, better business bureau style? I’m not too big of a fan of our organization becoming a yellow pages for Pagans, but then again, I’m not really a big fan of us being a political party that people have to bribe to get good ratings either. I just don’t know where to draw the line.
- Should we rate other things? Books? Magazines? Products?
Well, I guess that pretty much covers it. If you can come up with any other questions, throw them out as well because like I said, I’m not gonna do this alone. If it’s just me being delusional, I can always go read LotR or Harry Potter again. Well, let me know what you think.
Magick for the Real World 
August 1, 2008 at 2:52 am
Okay I haven’t read this all, this is just my impression from the first go over. The thing about all this is that you have to be careful and maybe why you’re not feeling the love as much is that pagans for the most part don’t like organized religion.
I mean making paganism a movement of sorts is putting organization to the unorganized. Some love their obscurity.
I was a member to a methodist church once and I got depressed because they had a minister who was great a real open minded nice guy. He was 65 years old and the great power that is the methodist church made him retire. In his place was some younger tool, who I never cared for…
I mean if you got the word out and you did all those things would that be the end result that we could be no better than the methodist church with all their rules and deciding that someone has passed their prime.
August 1, 2008 at 3:04 am
I’m a student web designer. When we think about redoing a website that’s already been done we have to ask ourselves a few questions. Concerning witchvox.
How would you make this website better?
What can you do that they are not already doing?
Is it better left alone?
Yes, all of this would cost money and quite frankly not all the pagans in this world are a)ready to donate to the cause and b) again they like their mystery. they like being the odd religion.
If you’re going to advertise, yes the web is a good idea. You’d have to buy banner space. Place banners up on myspace. I clicked on a BBW personal site that I would’ve never gone to on my own had it not been up on myspace.
Also, if you let anyone on your pagan website advertise then you’ll get advertisements for $9.99 love spell or put a hex on someone for a minimal fee. If you don’t choose legitimate advertisers then you’ll look foolish.
You have to ask, there’s a lot of different people out there with a lot of different opinions about paganism and wicca some of the tempers flare big time.
I like the thought and the idea, but could it really be done…. I just don’t know…
August 1, 2008 at 3:06 am
I know that you’ve recently joined the discussion Missygail, and I’m really glad that you’re commenting because comments are what get ideas flowing around here. I wrote a post about this exact issue about a week or a week and a half ago because a tremendous number of people had the exact same issues. Here’s the link: link.
Basically the deal is that I don’t want an organized religion at all. What I want is simply a central organization that allows Pagans to meet other Pagans easily as well as have a big organization that will work towards dealing with its members issues (much like the NAACP, NRA, and the retired teachers association).
August 1, 2008 at 5:21 am
What about the nonprofit option? Was that previously discussed? Because the organizations listed as examples are all exactly that.
I agree. We certainly can’t underestimate the power of myspace and similar ‘viral’ ads.
It sounds a bit like one of those rotary clubs (Or the Freemasons, etc.). A seat of power for a particular group of people that provides them a group setting in which to share in a common interest as well as look out for the organization as a whole.
Perhaps we should examine them a bit (And their websites) for inspiration?
August 1, 2008 at 8:35 am
First off yes we as pagans tend to be a secritive scocaty and in the end i think that is what hurts us the most atm. No one in the general masses truly understands what our religion is truely all about. I can’t tell you how many times when i told some one that i am Wiccan that they ask is that satinism. In order to educate the masses you have to have front people that are willing to stand up and deal with the critasim that you are going to get. Tho a forum baised website that educates people about the diffrent forms of Paganism may not seem the best idea, but i believe it is. Also have represenatives in every major city(once you got enough people) that would be willing to go out and do work on behalf of the pagan comunity. there are some small pagan baised groups in small cities here and there but in most major cities you don’t truely see pagans going out as a group to say plant a tree (at lest not here in houston). The majority i see intrested in magick and the pagan comunities here are tho that think magick is what they get from shows like charmed. (yes i deal with idots on a day to day baises) you might start out as a small forum baised q&a but as you get larger and have coven leaders and solitary practitioners (or even join with and pitch idea’s to like the Lady Librty Legue). after a while set up a contact list with people that can be im’ed or if they are feeling brave called directly for people to awnser questions. there is a lot of ideas i can throw out there but weather or not any one likes them is question able. just rember “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” it will take time and true effort to cary something like this trew to the point we as pagans won’t get flack for our faith. “Knowing one’s faith is the doorway the true enlightenment.”
August 1, 2008 at 8:48 am
P.S. My feance is currently working on a website right now haveing to deal with insite and asking questions and just general discutions you might wanna see what he says about working with forum baised websites and get his insight on it just eather contact me on my myspace or it was Wraith from the post on nature and scince the other day. he might be able to give you some insite on how to utalize a forum baised website for your purposes. of course i know you get told this by him so i will go a head and stated it. expect alot of crap about this particular subject expecally if you get big cuz you will have to learn to stand firm on what you believe and don’t give up (which is one of my major problems i give up to easly) it will take you about 1 to 2 years just to get the websit up and runing smoothly. but if you wanna know anything just contact him or me. (he uses joomba if that helps any)
August 1, 2008 at 10:59 am
M,
I absolutely would want to go the nonprofit route, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have to deal with money.
That’s a good idea about looking towards the Masons and Rotary Clubs for inspiration. They have been doing something similar for a while. On the other hand, I really don’t want this to sound like some kind of club where you’ve gotta get through the 72 degrees of initiation and then you rule the world through your organization nonsense. This has to be run more like a business than a religious outfit.
Raven,
The trick to everything is not to have a group of 7 guys/girls that stand up for the Pagans. It’s about having people see Pagans doing good deeds and helping the community. Think of the Mormons. No one knows much about Mormons except Mormons, but nobody’s telling their kids not to play with them because all anyone ever sees is Mormons being absolutely upstanding citizens.
I also don’t like forum based websites for a couple reasons. The number one reason is that then you have to have serious moderators to keep everything civil (more people to pay), and you have to deal with continual Christian bashing/Pagan bashing. It stops being useful when the two get on a forum and just talk crap about the other. I’ve seen many a forum become worthless because of it. Also, we stop being such an active group and start to resign ourselves to letting people organize things themselves which in my experience is never a good thing. I think that we should treat it more like a dating/myspace style website where individual people can talk to individual other people or can send out bulletins. Also, they could send out mass bulletins to anyone in their area if they’re having a big ritual or something.
I also don’t want anyone getting phone calls at night from random strangers about Paganism. The people who are running this aren’t going to be super rich, and their responsibilities should show this. If I’m not getting paid more than doctor’s salaries, I don’t want to be on-call 24 hours a day. On the other hand, it would be kind of nice to be able to IM people at certain times of the day. Though, I think that email would be a far better way to go about it because then people could deal with it when they had the time.
Also, remember in all of this that there could be more than 10,000 member (there are estimated to be around 4 million Pagans in the US alone, so the maximum number currently would be 4 million), and that means that there are going to be some bad apples. I really don’t want the entire Pagan image ruined by some stupid kids (or adults for that matter) that constantly troll on forums, constantly give really poor advice, or go out in the communities and make asses of us all. That’s the big flaw in all of this. How do you deal with that guy who’s just ruining things for the sake of it? Because there’s always that guy.
Finally, I really hope that a website wouldn’t take 2 years to get set up. I personally know people that have set up reasonably large websites in far less time. It may be 2 years until all of the bugs are worked out, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have people using it. We absolutely will have to stand firm on everything we do. We’re trying to change the world here. That’s not really something you can let people push you around on, is it?
Sorry for the length, I get carried away sometimes.
August 1, 2008 at 12:27 pm
no it is ok it, i just see that these are the potental problems with doing something like this and i was tring to give the problem and a possable solution to it. our website moderators are totaly volinter baises only they don’t get paid for moderating on the website. most of the websites you were talking about have paid perfetionals working on them in some cases but as for us it is just him and me tring to work on it, tring to get on it’s feet. As far as the critisim no matter what we do we will face criticm from the public, christians, and whatever these are just roadblocks that we as pagans have to over come to see the problems coming we can be bettered prepared for them that is why i said what i said. Maybe i did explain clearly that here is the idea then here is the possable problem with that idea heh. I tewnd to look at the down side of stuff a lot, but i see the good that can come out of it too. You have a great idea. I really like the non-profit orgnization idea, the Lady Leberty Legue is just that but their cause was for fighting to get the Penical to be one of the reconized symbols for soilder’s gravestones. And they succeded threw 9 years for fighting for this cuz they met that resistance they new they were going to face but they kept going and no matter what you may come up with you too will have to fight to keep going it is just you have too keep going and not give up.
August 1, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Raven,
I really appreciate all of the ideas and comments you’ve been posting. It’s refreshing to see someone think about this stuff as much as I am. I absolutely understand how things could take a really long time if you were working on them by yourself or with your partner, but I really really hope that it’s not just me that wants this to become a reality…and who knows, maybe one of those people is a professional web designer?
We absolutely will face criticism, I’d just like to dodge as much of it as possible by having an organizational front rather than a personal front. I’ve also been talking about pushing this whole thing pretty hard. I know that I spend at least an hour and a half a day on the blogs and brainstorming about stuff (minus those days off where I’m enjoying being social).
Again, I really think that the problem with the other organizations is the lack of membership and activity. Everyone’s part-time in them, and I absolutely don’t want that to be the case here. The lawyers that work for the NRA aren’t part-time, and why should the key players in our organization be? It just seems silly and inefficient.
The groundwork has already been laid out for us already. We’ve made the big steps: Wicca is a recognized religion in the military and people are allowed to wear a pentragram as a religious symbol while in the military, Myspace has Wicca as a religious option, you can have a pentacle on a gravestone, there are famous singers that are Pagan, etc. All we have to do is the last big push to make it known that we can be good productive members of society so that the “normal” kids are allowed to play with our kids and no one gets fired because they’re Pagan.
August 2, 2008 at 5:29 pm
i have read some of the comments above and a wee bit of the post. on picking people who have leadership skills….. i think people are getting the wrong idea. these people aren’t actually leaders, they should simply be people who go out, dig up information and run the web-site. i really think the idea of a sort of “Paganspace” is genius. i would love to be able to log on, and research the spell i would do that day. i think that one on this web site would be able to keep it’s secrecy. secrecy is, after all, inbred in a pagan’s DNA…. but i would like this to be the stepping stone in recognition of our religion. there are many pagan web sites but not like the one you speak of. this feels much bigger in my mind’s eye. keep up the awesome ideas…..don’t let the negative energy get you down.
-Raven
August 3, 2008 at 9:28 am
I’m still cloudy on the “why” of this movement. You want something large with a great and positive presence, because the smaller pockets of groups just aren’t getting the message out, but then you say you need to gather up these smaller groups to help. I am not against what your doing at all, and I think it would be great, but I would hate to see people waste alot of energy into this grand effort if it’s not going to be a reality, and I think you have to start small and local before going grand and national, but it looks like your doing it the opposite. I hope it all works out for you and you’ll get some local michigan suppourt from me. I just believe in realistic baby steps.
As for missygail and the methodist above; sounds like she went to my church, we had the same problem.
Peace,
August 5, 2008 at 12:11 am
Misterbooks,
Well, I think that the why seems pretty clear to you. We’re trying to create something that can stand for Pagans and also help Pagans find other people to connect with.
The real problem I think you have with it is the fact that we’ve got a truly incredible goal in mind. Yes, it seems like an impossible task to create any kind of organization that would unite a scattered people to help themselves. Yes, it seems like an impossible task to create an organization that would have enough clout to make political moves. And yes, it seems like an impossible task to change the world.
But it’s been done before hasn’t it? Every organization, every movement, and every world changing event was started by a small group of people that needed things to change. Yes, it will take a ridiculous amount of work, and a lot of organization, and a lot of different skills, but wouldn’t it be worth it? Wouldn’t it be incredible to have small Pagan groups in every town?
Think about it like this, about 1.5% of the population is Pagan. That means that in your 15,000 population town that there is an average of around 225 Pagans. Yes, in smaller towns the average is much less, but even if it was only 30 Pagans, that’d be incredible wouldn’t it? You’d never be able to find them though because almost all Pagans stay in the broom closet. I’m trying to bring them out of the broom closet.
This can’t happen from small to big though. It’s been tried over and over again. How do you bring people to the cause? Advertise? How do you bring the ones still in the broom closet out of hiding? I wouldn’t have done it. But I absolutely could do it online. I could give my support online all the time, but I was completely scared of being out of the closet in the real world because then people would find out. Granted, I’ve dealt with that, but it involved moving and having all of my friends move as well. Once a group can get enough members, the ones that are out of the closet already can start making pushes in their communities and some of the ones that are hidden in the holes will start coming out. Not only this, but the only way to make changes in the nation’s eyes is to be a national group.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” -Ghandi
August 5, 2008 at 2:13 am
Going through some of the other comments and wanted to add that I would personally love some place to go within the community to meet other pagans. I’m a member to several yahoo groups that are pagan organizations, they do meet ups, but I end up being too shy to go, because I don’t know if I’ll know anyone there.
A place that’s welcoming and has someone to help you would great for your social outcasts like myself.
I have pagan friends on myspace and elsewhere who are kinda pushing me in the right direction with books to read and such, but half the time I don’t feel like I have that time to read.
I sometimes think it’s unfair that I can go to any church in the area and learn all about the bible, have scriptures spoken to me… but I can’t find this with paganism. I can’t just absorb what a high priestess has to say about paganism, because there aren’t any spouting sermons from their altar.
I keep thinking that if I win the lottery (big dreamer I know) I’d love to build a community center for the pagan community. Not so much a church, but a center. Anyways, if I ever do win the lottery I’ll so donate to your cause.
About websites. I can offer my services. I’m a novice website designer. I’ve taken tech courses in photography, website design, web programming, and this year I’ll be in a digital media course.
I can design a website in a few months. I’m not good at the higher languages, such as javascript, SQL, or PHP… etc. But I can do html like there is no tomorrow and I’m getting pretty good with CSS. I don’t need a design editor, I can do it all in code.
That being said I’m also well versed with Dreamweaver and Flash. I’ve created websites with pure code, in dreamweaver and in flash. I also am fairly capable in graphic design.
Just putting the skills out there, if you need some help.
–Missy