Despite passing out in a locker room last week, thus living out one of the more popular worst high school nightmares, last week proved fairly productive. I’m amazed how much I got to run a strikethrough on!
This week, partly because the Diagram Prize vote closes this week, I must prioritize (if a bit late) a deeper update to Divorcing A Real Witch.com. I won’t have enough time to post a downloadable index for my print book buyers (on the to-do list) but I can at least post a FAQ. From last week’s list, moved over to this week’s:
I am going to work on the overview for that book proposal. One small thing gets steps forward.
Almost done reading the last book on the stack, so I am almost ready to start drafting those book reviews for Facing North.
Dig up an old spell/prayer for Janet Callahan’s Pagan Child’s Book of Prayers. (Due August 1.)
Check my Facebook save list – I’ve been finding a lot more anthology submission type things over there. Eventually I do want to inch towards stuff outside the Pagan market.
New to the list:
Devotional piece to Poisedon for Bibliotecha Alexandrina – it’s due April 1, so an opening salvo of research seems like a good place to start this week.
Sort through some significant blog article backlog. I have quite a few essays waiting in the wings, never yet schedule to post.
In the late 90s and early ‘aughts, I had this Pagan community thing down. I knew what went on online in any semi-public Pagan community. I even enjoyed a membership to a few secret-ish ones. I got my initiations – yes, all three – and then two things happened:
the coven that initiated me fell apart. I heard many things from many people. While I thought I knew what was true at the time, with years, distance and better understanding of why people do the things they do, I am not so sure what parts were true and what parts were drama/outrage addiction. Speculation – or asserting my speculation as fact – serves no one. I don’t really know what happened. I also don’t think it’s all that important.
Covens fall apart all the time. It happens.
I went through a divorce. It was not overtly nasty – but looking back, I was subject to much of the same manipulation that hs been the demon chasing me since childhood. So it was a bad, awkward, painful break. Much more painful than it needed to be.
Itching to be away from the limited job resources of my semi-rural environment, I moved to Minneapolis, taking a job with a local nonprofit. The job expected much – too much – and paid too little. Within two months of my move I developed a chronic illness and only came to a full understanding of their cause and how to manage the illness in the past two years.
While I did work with the Pagan society at the local university, I was constantly conscious not just of my age and experience difference but of my privilege difference. It had followed me through school but it was achingly obvious upon going to the U every week and watching white, middle class young Pagans with educational funds provided by their parents do things like present mangled, inaccurate descriptions of Islam and insist Tantric techniques used during my marriage “weren’t actually possible.” There was lots of drama, most unnecessary, all of it typical of the age range.
I also noticed that while people liked to research Paganism, few seemed interested in practictng it. It was a hobby, a curiosity, a way to learn but not necessarily a means of incorporation into life. It was during this period I came face to face with people in different Reconstructionist movements. They still fit the Pagan umbrella then – those that operated as sort of free-range Wiccans had yet to drive/push them out.
Hard polytheists don’t do it in circles. The problem is that so many others feel entitled to demand that they do.
It was valuable to me, to have not just my beliefs but my capacity for supporting beliefs I did not share challenged.
Then I drifted from the group and it eventually folded. A new U group rose to take its place. I stepped away from them – they were better off growing on their own terms; besides, after I crossed the line to age 30 I didn’t feel my presence was appropriate.
During that time I also helped organize Pagan Pride and I went to whatever public Pagan events and rituals I could. It was the same people in the community, often covering the same topics. It became repetitive in a deep and frustrating way: there is more material written and experimented involving both Pagan faith and occultism than any one person will ever cover in a lifetime. Yet here I was, in absolutely every corner of my Pagan life, repeating the same stuff over and over – not even new exercises on the same concepts. The same fucking exercises.
I also began running into the same social situation over and over: if a person had never seen me before, that person immediately assumed I was a newbie. I had all sorts of things explained to me without solicitation, both online and off. In a local occult shop I picked up an amethyst, only to have another person explain the stone’s properties to me with no inquiry as to my interest in the stone. I posted in a forum to ask about buying art dolls as souvenirs and got long, patronizing instructions on how to make poppets. Because I was not loudly declaring my authority and Very Spiritual life – people assumed I was new. If I said something about my background, I was called a liar.
Notably no one asked me to demonstrate my knowledge or ability. In the situations where I was called upon to do so, those who had questioned my veracity did not apologize when it became clear I do have some magical competency.
What really tore it for me was how I was treated during a crisis.
After my father died some bad metaphysical stuff happened. I had exhausted all of my own knowledge for dealing with it, I had sought counseling and I still needed help. When I asked for advice, after giving an extensive list of what I had done, I received two responses:
1)pushing me toward Reiki. I am saying it here: Reiki did not fix this problem. Reiki does not fix everything and I am quite tired of how pushy so many Reiki healers are about their practices. Note I am not dissing Reiki. There’s actually the threads of empirical research into its validity. I am, however, dissing the social behavior of many Reiki healers.
2) I had someone tear into me, saying if I was “really” initiated I would “know how to deal with these problems.” That there might be problems I could encounter outside of the Wiccan training I received was summarily dismissed – even though there are Wiccan trads that do not practice magic or deal in the metaphysical beyond God invocation at all.
These things alienated me from both the physical and the online community. When I got involved with my current husband, the attitude that I was somehow doing something wrong by marrying a non-Pagan clinched my feelings of alienation from the Pagan community.
All this and I have yet to attend a single festival or campout. I do not want to sleep under the stars with people who ask me what I did to deserve an aggressive haunting, or why I couldn’t wick the whole situation away with a flutter of a third-degree eyelash.
That and I hate camping.
But my faith in the God/ess has never been shaken. I am still Wiccan. I still believe this religion is my right path.
I just struggle a lot with the other people on it.
Now I often just do my own thing. I love writing about magic – almost as much as I love trying new magical approaches. But the only stuff I know about the Pagan community comes from some local friends who spend way more time on social media than I do. The way the conversation has taken shape while I was going through the process of tearing my life apart and putting it back together is almost like a foreign language now. I still absolutely believe in being supportive when someone converts away from Paganism; it’s happened before and it happens again. I’d rather see a person convert to a faith and be active then stay in a faith where they do nothing and gain no comfort or clarity from it.
I seem to have a fantasy relationship about Internet dialogue that began and ended with logic, with additional information, rather than with someone getting upset and defensive at my challenging their ideas.
Some of this is definitely the idealized memory of my youth.
But there’s definitely a conversation that’s happened when I was off going through what I had to go through. That convo has whizzed right past me. Maybe I don’t know where the club is. Maybe I just can’t stay interested in the conversations. I am definitely not kissing the right asses and I am unlikely to ever know which asses those are, or to ignore them if those holy buttcheeks present themselves to me.
It’s likely a combination of all of these things. So I have missed out – but often enough, I get the impression I am not missing anything at all.
Since I have a book coming out titled “Divorcing a Real Witch” I get asked by a slightly hostile minority: “So what is a real witch?” The only people asking have a clear idea of a “correct” answer in their mind. My initial reaction is amused sorrow. These individuals are so out of touch with overculture – their own culture – that they’ve forgotten that most people still think witches are imaginary monsters. My second is anger – they always have a clear idea that a “real” witch is their tradition or practice, to the exclusion of all others. It’s bigotry in the guise of self-righteousness. ((And by saying so, this particular brand of narcissist will insist that *I* am self righteous because that’s how projection works.))
My qualifications for “real witch” are the following:
Do you practice some sort of folk magick? If yes, then I must consider the next question.
Are you corporeal? If yes, I will ask permission to poke you in the shoulder for just a moment to verify.
Voila! You are a real witch!
It may be inspired by ancient concepts but the people who absolutely insist that it is? They are either loony, or are con artists. I have had it argued that “I just feel it; I just know it’s true.” I believe in trusting my gut. But not only do I not believe that my gut instincts are useful in academic verification – if you can feel what goes on in my gut then I am dead and you need to get your hand out of there – that’s not what “gut instinct” is for. Gut instinct is about the present and the future. The past is relevant to our survival, but not in a way that triggers our nervous system.
The idea that a “real witch” is only a Wiccan – and the only “real” Wiccan is a Gardnerian or Alexandrian version – it’s ethnocentric. It’s racist. It’s exactly the same thing as the Vatican declaring Catholics the only Christians for the same reason – an attempt at control and authority where none applies – and is just about as effective (not.)
It’s just plain fucking offensive. Yes, that’s deliberate phrasing.
Wiccans do not have a corner on witchcraft, historical or modern. It’s a new religion, less than 100 years old and no one has managed to dig up archeological evidence to suggest otherwise. More important to me, there’s nothing wrong with Wicca being a new religion. It’s the insistence on ancient blah blah that makes it smack of charlatanism and undermines the real spiritual benefits of the practice. Yes, there’s a whole bunch of “on high” stories among the monotheists or “just always was,” from older religions. Please. Someone just made up all those stories or really exaggerated something that did happen. ((Fine, I don’t have a citation – but neither do they!)) It might have been a well-intentioned metaphor. It might have been a bid for power. It had no relationship to the very real spiritual experiences people who subscribe to those religions practice. The same is true of Wicca. Union with the divine is powerful – religion is just the stuff we make up to get to that union.
If you want to verify that I have the initiations I say I do, that’s fine. I learned long ago that having a 3rd degree in Wicca does not always an expert in magical arts guarantee. I certainly can’t call myself an adept and the other 3rds I know may be fantastic community leaders but themselves admit that their superpowers are more organizational than metaphysical. Wicca, these days, is definitely more of a religious focus once you get past 1st degree basics – and it’s my opinion that beyond that level, it’s stagnating.
If my initiations are more important to you than what I’m actually saying or how I’m behaving– or if you won’t even consider what I have to say unless you consider my initiations “valid” – then your priorities are wildly out of order.
Hierarchies may be a way of managing an organization, including a coven, as it grows. But expecting that hierarchy to apply outside a coven – to confer so much authority that you can say something isn’t Wiccan because you didn’t give it permission to be? Uh uh. That approach is what we call “personality disorder in action.” I consider someone using the phrase “NeoWicca” a warning sign about that person because there’s definitely an exaggerated sense of self-importance and grandiosity behind declaring an entire other group of people you’ve never met or have barely interacted with illegitimate.
To be clear, I am not saying, “Anyone can say they’re Wiccan!” I’m saying that a person’s tradition of Wicca is NOT the way to determine whether a person is or is not legitimate. A person’s behavior and practices are. What goes on this checklist is best left to academics, preferably anthropologists. Also, Wiccans are not the only witches and saying so repeatedly does not change that. The witches may call themselves other things, and witches are not the only magic practitioners. We don’t have the whole list and witch is a reasonable shorthand since every culture (as far as I know) has a word that is the direct equivalent of “witch.” Cultures that have more than one type of practitioner also often have words to distinguish types – for example, in Spanish there’s curandero/a, brujo/a and diablero/a.
There are plenty of arguments pro and con for traditions in Wicca. They do lend stability, continuity and in healthy hands the protection of a community. The cons are mostly what comes out of them when handled by unhealthy people: stricture, dogma clung to over reason, authoritarianism when a high priest or high priestess thinks that her word as the Goddess should continue outside of the ritual circle. My experience has led me to believe that people who address their psychological issues before assuming a mantle of spiritual leadership are rare in Wicca. I hope that my experience misleads me on that – but even so, it means that I favor solitary work over coven work. A community would be nice but as far as I can tell, only groups are available to me – pockets of people with a few similar beliefs who wants me to set aside my most powerful differentials in favor of group-think. Group-think is a path that leads away from growth.
This does not mean I eschew associating with people within traditions. I have friends who have participated in traditions for years, who love it, live it, obviously thrive in it.
But once in awhile, when discussing magical practices that we can – that aren’t oathbound – things get a little weird.
There seems to be this idea that the Laws of Tradition (or a tradition) are also the Laws of Magic/Laws of Physics.
They are not.
For example, with my upcoming rebirth ceremony, I have had to ask if this changes the astrology of my natal chart. Will I no longer be a Scorpio? Will this shed the scapegoat lining, the never-ending games of who controls who that haunts every Scorpio I’ve ever known?
The answer from a few of my tradition bound friends was: “Well, it depends on your tradition.”
I can see a tradition saying “You can’t change your name.” That’s policy –and a good one. The name changing can get pretty ridiculous, more about not liking who a person is than about assuming a full identity. Since I don’t subscribe to a separate magical persona – I am just as magical as Di Rajchel, fatshionista as I am Diana, Wiccan, or Ms. Rajchel. It’s all fluid and comes from the same store of personality, connection to the earth and love.
But to say it depends on my tradition is to say that my tradition, the covens I used to work with, determine how the celestial laws or even the laws of physics apply. Now, if you don’t believe in astrology and it’s coven policy only to use astrology as a sort of filing system, that makes sense. But to some extent I do believe that there is something to astrology, that planetary influences may not determine my fate but are the container that shapes it.
No Wiccan tradition can create laws about how that works. No tradition can write bylaws stating how the starry heavens may affect my life. They would just as well declare that gravity no longer applies to third degree initiates. You can say it, you can believe it if you want, but a tradition declaring such a law will not make it so. Religious and tradition laws are just that – laws that apply to a specific way to carry out a religious practice. It only applies to the people that wish to do things according to that tradition or religion.
Tradition is a code of behavior and an approach to ritual. It does not define the mechanics of magic. It does not dictate the rotation of the earth. The belongs to physics alone.
Yet there is this thinking that tradition does get to define things like whether a ceremonial magic ritual is allowed – not based on whether it will work, or solve a problem but based on whether it suits a tradition.
Over the years I’ve seen/heard a lot of ridiculous things in the name of magical wisdom. Druids can’t circle with Wiccans, becuse the “energies don’t mix.” Really? I have yet to go to an open circle that ended in an explosion because Wiccan and Druid energy mixed. Now the styles of ritual are very different – you pretty much have to agree to one form or another to keep from ending with a robe on fire. While I have experienced discomfort as a guest at one Druid ritual it had more to do with low blood sugar, dehydration and a very packed private home. Public rituals run by Druids I’ve attended since have gone just fine. I even had wonderful spiritual experiences. Nothing exploded because a Wiccan entered their rites.
Because my church involvement is my frame of reference, it is where I draw the parallels. Traditions have laws of conduct in addition to the Wiccan Rede (and version they use), Sabbat calendar and focal deities. Churches, similarly, have principles of worship/philosophy in addition to the ten commandments and the Be Attitudes. My old church really liked the Apostle’s Creed – which is not found in the Bible but a later creative adoption. Similarly, lots of Wiccan traditions recite the Charge of the Goddess (I don’t, I see it as something other than ritual material.) But just as the Christian denomination I once attended to only laid out the laws of my conduct and the format of their own church services, the Wiccan traditions I have participated in only defined the conduct of their coveners. Christianity does not define the conduct of Yahweh, nor does any magical tradition define the functions of the laws of physics.
I’m sure I’ll have this conversation again in the future, but I felt it necessary at this point to lay out the distinction.
Wiccan event in the US. Own work by Ycco. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tradition is a big deal among Pagans. Your tradition defines your religion, how you practice, what you practice, your morals – sometimes even your lifestyle. It’s divisive and inclusive all at the same time.
That way of casting a circle, that method of purification, that ritual for blessing an athame – there is more than one way to do all of those things. Do each one according to set words, set rituals – each one of those steps and choices makes up a tradition.
It’s also an artificial construct. None of these rules are divinely handed down. They are created by people, guided by the gods or not, to deal with immediate concerns. Sometimes the practice stays after the concern has gone. Sometimes it creates additional concerns.
I’ve always found the popularity of tradition in a religious grouping that cherishes so much nature peculiar. Tradition isn’t physics. It’s not about whether the magic works or not – it’s about upholding inventions that work until they don’tanymore. Some traditions, even among Pagans, go so far as to say things like “Christian prayer doesn’t have power,” or “Science will catch up to magic!” as part of their official beliefs. It’s strange, inappropriate to the big picture religious people ostensibly uphold. Sometimes it feels like the clamor for tradition has gotten so loud that few people actually practice any actual magic – it takes too much energy to practice a tradition instead.
I’ve always seen tradition as a double-edged sword.
It preserves. It also limits. Limitation can help set boundaries. It can also prevent learning when applied wrong.
The insistence that tradition matters isn’t appropriate to all situations. To insist on following a “tradition of my ancestors” would be as much of a disaster as declaring Christianity the state religion in the US. My ancestors did a lot of stuff that does not fly in the 21st century. It served then but just because it did doesn’t mean it applies to now. Oh, some stuff does – like pausing to remember the ancestors. But reliving their lives does not seem like a good way to learn anything.
To insist that one Wiccan tradition is more correct than the other also troubles me – it seems that if the gods show up, it’s not for the page justification or because the athame got dunked in the chalice just right.
English: The sculpture of the Wiccan Horned God at the Museum of Witchcraft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It probably started with a misreading of Scott Cunningham. The etymology of “Wicca” – the whole “witch-uh” “Oh, a witch!” thing went through the filter.
A few folks reading bought into the following fallacy flow, and thanks to the double-sworded gift of the Internet, the fallacy spread:
1)Wicca means, more or less witch.
2)Wicca is British, and witch is a British word.
3)PROFIT! ((this is a South Park reference, not an endorsement of the ridiculous idea that American Wicca is a way to part teenagers from their money))
4)Wicca is the only kind of real witchcraft.
5)Also, it is by default exclusively British. (Sometimes they don’t get this far. Which is good for American Eclectic Wiccans who also exist.)
It’s not that other traditional Witches aren’t massively ethnocentric (and that’s a Very Bad thing), it’s that people nowadays have crazy short attention spans. They learn something once – and even if they learn it wrong, it’s stuck as an accepted fact. Certainly there’s some neurology to the situation, too. A weird synaptic byway fails to form that extends it to “oooh, that’s just one kind of witch.”
There are other kinds of witches in every culture. Witchcraft and shamanism are cultural universals – not just in the folklore, where their powers are exaggerated to meet with the exaggerated power of every other character in the story. Every culture known has need of the archetype, some way to bridge the shadowy gap the unifies the darkness we face to survive with the bright reasons we wish to survive.
Perhaps it’s time to re-read Carlos Castanedea. I think a good dive into the mythology and folklore of South America and Africa might do us a world of good. I don’t care if they’re not the stories of my people – my people were Polish freedom fighters, con artists, criminals, geniuses, and every single one of them aimed for plausible deniability. They still do.
We need to hear the other stories of the other witches, the ones that fought just as hard and just as dark. We need to know the visions of the other shamans, the worlds traveled and the battles fought.
Wiccans are not the only witches. And those that identify as Traditional Witches – theirs is far from the only tradition. There are other witches, other traditions, darker skinned, more ancient, where there is no room for ego because it’s all taken up by the will to survive. Some of those witches are European, too. Some of them come from places we only know about peripherally.
But let’s not assume that “Wiccan” means “witch.” “Wiccan” just means, well, “Wiccan.” The witchcraft might come with it… but let’s not assume it’s the only kind in the world.
BERLIN, GERMANY – MARCH 31: A volunteer lights one of 5000 blue and green candles in an eight-meter shape of Planet Earth in front of the Brandenburg Gate during Earth Hour 2012 on March 31, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. According to organizers, Earth Hour 2012 has participants including individuals, companies and landmarks in 147 countries and territories and over 5,000 cities agreeing to switch off their lights for one hour. The Brandenburg Gate, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Big Ben Clock Tower in London, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and the Empire State Building in New York are among the monuments whose operators have agreed to participate in the demonstration. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Wiccan lottery winner Bunky Bartlett learned a few things the tough way when he actually hit the lotto. 5 years after his 2007 jackpot, he was down a few million but hadn’t lost everything. As he summarizes offering help and getting blamed for failure, he concludes “One of the mistakes I made was giving money to help other people realize their dreams instead of my own. “
This has become my mantra while navigating a Pagan world that wants me more now that I’m nearing 40, and navigating a professional life that is beginning to bear some carefully guarded fruit.
Put your own dreams first.
Because, really, we’re told story after story about how it’s good, and virtuous, and important to put the dreams of others first. Certainly kindness, sharing, and helping community members out are all good and virtuous things – but when we are sacrificing our entire good to help another person out (who may or may not be in a position to pay forward or return the kindness) we aren’t strengthening the Pagan community. We aren’t strengthening ourselves, improving our family’s lives, or making the world safer for Pagans.
We’re weakening it.
Some of the misleading ideology rife among us traces back to Christianized thinking – the tale of the widow’s mite stayed with me for many, many years into my Wiccan practice. Only in recent years did it occur to me that there is no follow-up to that tale of her giving her last two coins: it very likely ended VERY poorly for her. Jesus might have been pleased, but he also didn’t make any definite moves to protect her from starving to death or being thrown in debtors’ prison. Someone thinking well of you does not keep you well, although it can contribute if it’s a relationship you’ve built up over years. But for one hit scenarios where you never see the person again? That good opinion does very little. If you’ve ever seen a Presbyterian parking lot in Indiana, you know that not all Christians interpret this parable as literally as I did.
I’m part of the generation where conversion to Paganism usually came from an active life in another religion – and like most US Americans, it was conversion from some denomination of Christianity. Re-acculturating how I share resources and which I keep for myself is something I’ve never thought through as well as I should. For example, signing over your entire social security check to keep a Pagan resource center afloat may seem like a grand gesture, but it’s actually the worst kind of martyrdom (and martyrdom is A BAD THING.) You’re cheating yourself of much-needed resources that, managed well, ensure your future and your ability to live day to day. Yes, the Pagan movement needs some infrastructure, but you don’t build that infrastructure by ripping pieces off the foundation of your own house.
For those following my work with Money Drunk, Money Sober you already know it’s been a long road with lots of mistakes, and lots of childhood conditioning to overcome. While most Pagan traditions usually speak to a period of “stabilizing” or “Earth element work,” there is a tremendous amount of defeating crap, much of it rooted in a misunderstanding of money and its place, still woven into the Pagan acculturation process. What’s worse, is most of the absolute defeating crap is upheld as a value or a virtue. That’s as insidious as a bad thing can get.
English: Primary School in “open air”, in Bucharest, around 1842. Wood engraving, 11x22cm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It must be that time of year. A few folks have approached me in the past three months about teaching them about “Pagan religions,” and while I’m not averse to taking students, it’s a lot of energy for very little reward on my own part. I’m not someone who finds the “joy of teaching” a privilege or a reward … I find it a drain. A drain I rather resent. At the same time, there are people that come to me that really do need a teacher, who are like me and don’t fit with a tradition in the traditional sense, or who really just want to learn enough magic to do what they need to do to make their daily life functional. I don’t necessarily enjoy the approaches, but I also won’t turn away people who a)genuinely need some help b)are willing to make the changes to make that help matter (this is not the same as doing it my way, though those resistant to change might read it that way) and c)are mature enough not to blame me or project onto me when it comes to the fucked up religious and spiritual messages they’ve internalized over the years.
My requirements:
If you’re genuinely serious, compatible, and willing to commit, you must:
1)Complete the Artist’s Way. You don’t have to do it in the allotted 12 weeks, but you do have to do it. As you do the program, you will start to see why, yourself.
2)Complete Money Drunk/Money Sober – the less fucked up you are, the better you’ll do with any endeavor.
3)Present me with a proposed syllabus of what you aim to study after you have completed the first two requirements.
This will take you at minimum 6-9 months. And I would insist you do that before I even consider putting you on a dedicant year. And I don’t do it the way covens do with dedication leading to initiation. You do a dedicant year, and then you do a pre-initiate year, and THEN there’s initiation. My religion and magical practices are serious stuff that changed my entire life. I’m not going to fuck around with any Playgans.
I can initiate you into Wicca, but I have obtained no other initiations that I can confer. I am not associated with any traditions at this time because there are no Wiccan traditions that really fit who I am as a complete adult. There is no regulatory system determining what initiations are valid or are not, so if you go through all this with me and then move onto a coven, you’ll most likely have to go through their entire training system from the beginning as well – as you should. Wiccan traditions are not the same as simply being Wiccan.
If you ask my permission first, I will answer questions you have about Paganism. What teaching I do generally comes through writing. While I have in the past taken 1 on 1 students, I don’t normally.
Why I don’t take students in most cases
Why?
I’m following my new rule of looking to my own needs first. When you’re just starting out in Pagan study, or in anything, you don’t even think about the needs or realities of the people you want teaching you. That’s normal, and many react badly when they’re turned down because they want what they want for themselves so badly that it doesn’t occur to them that the person they want teaching them always has to do so at some personal cost that is physical, emotional, financial, and time-consuming.
My primary reason for turning away formal students right now:
I’m still looking for a suitable, on-my-level magical working partner. It’s my unicorn, my holy grail, my TARDIS. I’ve muddled along with working partners that I’ve had to teach, but you can’t have a wholly healthy friendship and spiritual connection with a person AND be their formal teacher – not until you’ve had a few years of space between teaching relationship and personal friend. Both my parents were public school teachers at various points in their lives, and it was visible to me every day how even twenty years after a kid graduated from high school, that power dynamic never faded. Right now there are bugaboos – if that person is in a coven that does oathbound stuff, inevitably something we’re doing will come into conflict and from my point of view, unnecessary, “those people are controlling assholes,” conflict. Of course I can’t know the other side other of the situation, and except when it comes to protecting the identity and safety of your fellow coveners or preserving the sanctity of initiation, most secrecy is a load of steaming bollocks. I’ve also been informed that my choice to be public about my Paganism risks making other coveners I’ve been involved with publicly identifiable – another load of steaming bullshit.
My experience with covens has led me to feel that for whatever reason, when I personally get involved with a coven I will be treated with disrespect and my voice will go unheard or be silenced when I do speak my mind. I am well aware this is not the case for other coven members, but this is how my two coven experiences have gone thus far, and I have zero interest in repeating that pattern further. So while I don’t object to a prospective partner being involved with a coven, I generally anticipate some coven-based interference that I’d rather not deal with.
You’re really just interested in dabbling
Don’t fucking waste my time. I don’t care if you don’t like reading books.
Your boyfriend/girlfriend is an asshole
Sadly, I’ve had to have students drop because they just couldn’t get their non-Pagan partner to trust them. The worst was the girl who was convinced I was out to have sex with her boyfriend. I do NOT have the bandwidth for that kind of drama, especially of the “I imagined it so it must be true,” kind of bullshit. If you’re in a relationship like that, you’re in a bad relationship, and you need to sort that out before you go pursuing a religious path that will alter your place in society.
You’re still focused on a previous religion, or you just want to piss someone off
My religio-magical practice is not petty, and is too important to constantly refer itself to Christianity, monotheism, or the usual patriarchal clutter. If you’ve got something to prove, don’t prove it to me – all you’ll do from my perspective is demonstrate yourself to be a jackass.
You don’t want to feel uncomfortable
There’s bad uncomfortable i.e. “I’m being taken advantage of” and “this is new” uncomfortable. You need to be mature enough to know the difference before you pursue any magical practice.
The vast majority of people that approach me fall in the “no” category for the above reasons. You need to demonstrate you’re serious, because otherwise, you’re not just treating the material dismissively – you’re treating medismissively.I’ve had enough of that shit from people that were ostensibly my teachers in the past – I’m certainly not going to tolerate it from teachers OR students now.
It’s the reason I insist prospective students do the Artist’s Way first. This way they’re clear with themselves what they’re really trying to do, and since about 98% of the time Paganism is a possibility and not an answer, they can define their paths for themselves by following Cameron’s program. Honesty takes courage, and most people try to defer telling the truth which makes it worse and worse until it blows up. If you have the right attitude – “I want to learn, I won’t be good at everything, and I need to speak up right away if this isn’t right,” is hugely important in the spiritual work that I do.
And if you haven’t figured it out yet, if you’re just looking to smoke up and camp out with a bunch of hippies, I’m the wrong person.
English: Detail of Reconstruction of the Acropolis and Areus Pagus in Athens Deutsch: Ausschnitt aus der Idealen Ansicht der Akropolis und des Areopags (vorne) in Athen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I don’t want to talk about my religion over a beer, or in the middle of a bar night. I just don’t. Ever. I make exceptions to this for bars full of Pagans.
I’ve had many MANY people ask me about my faith when there’s booze and people around, and it usually ends with some “let’s put on a show,” crap where the conversation is never completed and it’s very clear to me that the person was interested in appearing interesting, not in having a real discussion. On occasion, I get someone with hostility issues who wants me to be a performing monkey.
The whole thing is just really disrespectful. I dislike feeling disrespected.
I am an out Pagan. I am an out Wiccan. I am not necessarily a loud and out person. I don’t hide who I am from anyone, but until my religious practices offer something relevant and helpful, I don’t bring them up.
I did not choose to be Pagan, or Wiccan. I was called to it. My life would have been easier if I could have chosen otherwise. I’d be living the miserable life of quiet desperation my mother and her family approves of, and I could sustain myself off of constant body shame and my family’s soul-destroying version of approval. It would have sucked, but it would have been easier.
My coming out experience has been compared by a lesbian who is also Pagan to what it’s like for a gay person to come out – and it’s usually the same Bible thumping bullshit behind the bad behavior on the part of the people that you have come out to.
My religion, and my magical practices aren’t affectations. I am not Pagan just so I can appear interesting at the bar. I do not write about Wicca as a portion of my career pie because I want to shock the world with my witchy nature. I’m quite confident that I’m plenty interesting without my religion working its way into the picture. I am a woman of many interests, and consequently many joys. I am happy to share them, and I want to know what your joys are, too. But that better be a two-way street. The new narcissism is the only thing that bugs me more than the new, hate-based atheism.
I am also atypical on the Pagan/Wiccan spectrum. While I’m not opposed to common Pagan practices like camping, I genuinely don’t enjoy them. I don’t even like wearing tie-dye, although I’m down with recycling and upcycling – and I totally get that the environmental interest is actually a newer aspect of the faith I practice. I see no spiritual value in remaining poor. I don’t want to get back to nature or live on a farm – most farms are environmental disasters, and the rural life has been romanticized to the point where it’s as unreal as the witch in the fairy tale. I don’t see how I can do more for the earth by refusing to engage her gifts to heal myself and I sure as hell don’t see how choosing to disempower myself when She saw to it I was born into one of the richest countries on Earth. I keep the secrets I’ve been asked to keep, but I believe being too secretive is paranoia, which is in itself an actual illness.
Yes, I have a passion for occult material. Yes, I have a love for a not-merciful but not-malicious divinity. (Perhaps because that describes me, too.) My kitchen is packed with herbs and things I grew for the most part intentionally. I am a witch because witch-ness feels right inside and outside my body. It’s the only approach to God that has ever felt right. It has nothing to do with feminism (to me, feminism is simple self-preservation.) It has nothing to do with rebelling against my former religion – I loved blocking out the constant yapping of the pastor and listening to what God had to say, streaming through the stained glass windows and showing me prayer forms in the movement of the trees, or when the Bible would flip open to the passage I most needed to see.
My acts of faith are not acts of rebellion and anger. The things I create, the spells I cast, the prayers I speak every morning and night – they are out of a fundamental, physical need for me to do these things. I need to pray this way. My body needs it. No other prayer form has fit. Christianity itself never chafed, but the God-fearing Christian act was worse than a leather miniskirt. I’ve had direct spiritual experiences with Mary, Jesus, even Yahweh. But the way it’s practiced has always felt unfitting, and there are huge chunks of it both in the Bible and from the mouths of its leaders that I sense are outright lies just for the sake of keeping power, in that selfish way people do when they’d rather have their way then actually do what is good for the situation. What religion worth two lightning bolts would be about a God you’re afraid of? That’s baboon mentality – which only gives yet more credence to evolution.
My religion isn’t just something I have ideas about. And thankfully, it’s not a religion that requires me to be right about it, so I’m under no pressure to teach or seek converts. My religion is an integral, possibly physical, part of who I am. It isn’t fandom, or me talking about the cool Doctor Who plot of the week. It’s the core of how I get myself in harmony with the rest of my life.
I’m not about to devalue that by treating it like bar entertainment fodder.
I have over years been referred to anything on the gamut from "flaming Pagan" to "in the broom closet behind the vacuum cleaner." Really, I fall somewhere in between. I’ve outgrown the belief that immediately announcing "I’m pagan!" contributes anything to the world. I think my current attitude was inspired by some dear friends who are gay, who chose to come out to me after I knew them as people – so my context for these individuals is "This is this person, who is like this, and has these values, and who is also gay." It’s worked well for me as a Pagan who lives in the mainstream, too – and in one work situation years ago, it saved my ass. Another woman training for the same job decided to be "out" as a witch in the most obnoxious way possible, even following one coworker to the library and announcing to him she was reading up on witchcraft (This was the guy who wore the "Lutheran for Life" T-shirt. So oh yeah, it was her harassing him for his beliefs with her beliefs, no question.) I was called in as one of the sane and stable in our work group, and when they brought up the witchcraft thing I was there to say, "I believe that too, and you know me and know my values." Because it was me – and my coworkers knew me – they decided to leave the religion out of their complaints, and it worked just as well because then the badly behaved coworker was removed and I didn’t necessarily need to be in or out of the broom closet. I was Diana, who was really smart and fast on the phones. Oh, yeah, I don’t think she’ll do the church group thing, but she’s good to work on Sunday.
It worked out well for me in that respect.
I also don’t go in for a lot of American Pagan stereotypes, or I’ve outgrown them. So here’s a loose list of things common to neopagans that I happen to not share: 1. I hate, hate HATE J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s bad, laborious writing and it bores the living hell out of me. 2. I think corporate life and thinking has some good things in it worth saving, although corporate culture does need a serious realignment – and corporate personhood needs to die, NOW. 3. I try to avoid wearing black t-shirts or broomstick/peasant skirts. It’s too much of a stereotype, and is actually a subvert reference to body image issues. 4. I hate camping. I mean HATE it. I even tried it again, like I do beets every few years, and I will take a hotel any day, thank you. 5. I believe – and prefer the idea – that Wicca is a modern religion, not a stone age cult. I think that the stone age cult stuff smacks of chicanery, stupidity and low self-confidence. 6. I enjoy science fiction, but I hate Star Trek with a burning passion. Making Star Trek references results in me finding excuses to leave, usually leaving a dust cloud behind me. 7. I believe in being personally organized, and I believe the "herding Pagans is like herding cats" is the statement of those who have not bothered to learn basic organizational skills. 8. I have no fantasies whatsoever about the past being better than the present. It’s all a work in progress, emphasis on progress.
