Pagan Community Notes: Maetreum of Cybele, Pantheon Activist Conference, Brian Dragon, Silver Ravenwolf and more!

84 thoughts on “Pagan Community Notes: Maetreum of Cybele, Pantheon Activist Conference, Brian Dragon, Silver Ravenwolf and more!”

1. This may well make me unpopular but it has been nagging in my head for a while, given the timing of the recent passings this might well seem terribly insensitive too, it isnt intended to be and I apologise if what follows is poorly worded to make my points.

   Does anyone else feel a certain unease at the way it has become more common for people to turn to the various on-line donations websites to pay for stuff?

   Interfaith events, trips to Newgrange, attending conferences and now funeral expenses…aren’t these things we should pay for ourself? If i cant afford to send myself to a cool sounding conference I don’t go, I don’t start asking other people to pay for it especially if they aren’t actually getting anything for their money. Within a small and closer knit pagan community I can see how chipping in to help your friends and ‘relatives’ would work but the wider appeal to the pagan public at large for (sometimes) large amounts of money to get stuff done seems to jar with me.

   • I think one reason why Pagans are often willing to assist with this kind of funding appeal is the sense we have, as a community, that many of our leaders have sacrificed time serving our community with little or no pay–time that could have been spent earning money in a more mainstream line of work.

     I remember how, at one point, I was able to spend an entire workday each week on unpaid Pagan community organizing work. It was very rewarding, and I’m lucky enough to have had both a partner with a reasonable income, and a reasonably well-paid job of my own at that time. I do remember vividly, though, feeling a certain amount of guilt over the time I spent on Pagan community work, knowing that it was essentially time and money borrowed from my family, and at the very time I was raising a child. Braces and music lessons, let alone college, don’t pay for themselves!

     As I say, we were able to swing it. But if we restrict Pagan clergy work and community service only to those who are financially secure, we’re going to lose out on a lot of potentially effective leaders and teachers.

     I know it is controversial, the idea of paying our clergy, and in honesty, I see arguments both ways. However, given the fact that even those who do earn a living from their Pagan service are not earning a generous one, and even those few rarely have access to niceties like health insurance, I think a lot of us feel that some kind of payback is reasonable.

     I don’t think it’s a great long-term answer to the problem of how to encourage people with the gifts and talents we need to continue to do our work. But I do think it’s what we can manage, at this point in time. Down the road? I hope we can come up with more equitable ways to support our leaders and teachers. Any way you slice it, though, good karma is not enough to pay the rent. I completely understand why the appeals get made–and often, funded.

     • Agreed! It may look like begging in some ways, but it can also be a way of successful achieving something as a group. If we actually had the possibility of living in communities where large groups of Pagans are present (which isn’t the case except if you live in a huge metropolis), I am sure people would, just as Cat did, give time or other things back to the community. And I think it’s rather a good thing.

     • Also, it takes a platform like TWH spamming every reader with the appeal to make sure it gets the attention of the relevant community, a much smaller subset.

       • Now that is a good point.

         And a good reason to respond to TWH’s own fund drive; we’re a small community. This is our “paper of record.”

   • I don’t think the problem is your wording. I don’t actually think that there is a kind or civil way to shame a widow for being poor.

     • shame a widow for being poor

       I so understand that. People may live in sometimes abject poverty, or even just having trouble getting by, and it’s not a reason they should be denied human treatment.

     • Thank you.

     • My comments extend beyond the requests for assistance with funerary costs.

       This certainly wasn’t an effort to ‘shame a widow’, the family all had to chip in for my grandfather’s funeral and my nan’s also had to be paid for by the family chipping in..and we certainly aren’t a wealthy family.

       • Because a general discussion of how tacky it is to ask for money is definitely the most important response to be made here. Thank goodness we have watchdogs like you to make sure that in the absence of the kind of charitable or academic organizations other religions have which could give support to Pagan families and scholars, there’s no alternative way to make sure people can deal with crises, do research, or meet with professional peers. We can’t simply adapt to the diffuse and heterogenous nature of Pagan communities by asking directly and letting those who wish to do so contribute; that would be terrible. Surely we must either form bureaucracies or go without.

         • You’re making a good point: There’s no Pagan “Church” or “Clergy” that is established enough to provide people in need, even within their own community, with practical or financial support. Hopefully we’ll get there one day (the one thing we should take from the christians) but until then, people will have to use diverse means to face adversity.

         • The word “tacky” is yours, Sara. While it’s possible to read that meaning into Linguliformean’s words, I don’t know of any reason to assume that was what he meant, when he has just said otherwise, explicitly.

         • Disclaimers aren’t get out of jail free cards. Just because you say “no offense” or “I might be seen as insensitive, but” or “I’m not racist, but” doesn’t actually make it Ok to say whatever follows. It merely indicates that you knew better, but chose to do it anyway.

         • Actually why cant we form bureaucracies? Why cant we set up credit co-operatives to cover this sort of thing?

         • No reason, except they don’t exist currently and in order to help people with needs NOW you’d have to have a time machine. Whether or not that’s the best solution to the problem is another matter…but honestly, no one would stop you. You are free to form a co-operative to cover funeral expenses, and other people are free to crowdfund them. Freedom is a beautiful thing.

       • And yet is certainly is shaming to the widow, and you did SPECIFICALLY mention funeral expenses in the comments of a post where the ONLY fundraisers mentioned were for funeral expenses.

         • “Interfaith events, trips to Newgrange, attending conferences and now funeral expenses”

           directly quoted from my post.

         • One of these things is not like the others…

         • Even if it was *totally* like the others, what business is it of anyone’s to tell other people what to do with their own money? If you don’t want to support a crowdfunding effort, then don’t, for whatever reasons.

         • In the comments on an article where ONLY funeral expenses are mentioned “and now funeral expenses” makes you sound like even more of an asshole than it would if the article mentioned other fundraisers, too, but it is ALWAYS shaming to the people doing it to say “You shouldn’t be doing this thing, that’s a bad thing to do” and when you say to the bereaved that they shouldn’t do something to care for their dead, it makes you a major asshole. Widows may not be the ONLY people you are shaming, but you are SPECIFICALLY naming them among the people you are shaming

           Yes, now I am shaming you. Shame on you, being an asshole about people who are grieving. You shouldn’t be doing it, it’s a bad thing to do.

         • Did I specifically say “You shouldn’t be doing this thing, that’s a bad thing to do”? no, I didn’t. At all.

           I really think you should stop reading way too much into this and then formulating ad hominens on the basis of those little inventions of yours.

         • I really think you should learn what implication means, and also what ad hominem means. You don’t have to say the words “this is bad and you shouldn’t do it” to indicate that you think it’s bad and one shouldn’t do it. You were pretty clear that you didn’t like it and didn’t think people should do it. Everybody else understood that you were saying that. And an ad hominem attack is when you discount what someone is saying on the basis of something personal about them. I, on the other hand, drew a conclusion about you, personally, based on what you said.

           Oh, and by the way, the construction “Interfaith events, trips to Newgrange, attending conferences and now funeral expenses” carries the implication that the last thing on that list was just too much, was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and usually it implies a progression from bad to worse, that the last thing in the list was the worst in the list.

           What you said absolutely had the effect of telling everyone here that it was not ok for bereaved people to ask their community for help with paying funeral costs. It absolutely had the effect of shaming them. If that’s not what you meant, then you should apologize, but it’s exactly what you communicated to a whole bunch of people. Witness all the people telling you you’re wrong and that it was awful to say.

         • If you want to get technical, you also didn’t tell people to pour hot sauce on their genitals. You didn’t say a lot of things, but *technically*, if one has the cognitive abilities to read between the lines, they can see what you clearly implied all over the place. Stop hiding behind a technicality cos your opinion is so reprehensible that people are calling you out.

       • You also had a family with plenty of people who could afford to “chip in”. You fail to realise that just because you did doesn’t mean that everyone else does.

     • I disagree, actually. Linguliformean spoke of feeling uneasy with the increasingly common phenomenon of public appeals–and spoke of his concern that raising the issue would be mistaken for insensitivity, given the fact that two recent appeals have been for funeral costs. At least, that’s how I read his comments.

       And while I have supported a number of these appeals, and I see their usefulness, I also share Linguliformean’s concern–or at least, I have a concern of my own. I fear that relying on online fund raising to support our leaders and our infrastructure actually makes it hard to set financial priorities rationally. By which I most assuredly do not mean that it’s “irrational” to support people after a tragedy. I do, however, think that we risk a situation where it’s easier for a well-known Pagan public figure to get expenses covered for a trip to a historic site of early pagan worship than it might be for a less well-known Pagan, who may have done yeoman service on a local level, to get very basic emergency needs met.

       I don’t think we’re yet at a place where we can, for instance, create an insurance trust for Pagan clergy, as some mainstream clergy have done. But there is a danger we will not even think about it, if we get too comfortable with “crowd-sourcing” as the way to meet our needs.

       I often see Pagans left with no yardstick to measure worth within our communities except fame. I fear this does feed into that.

       Which in no way negates the validity of appealing for or providing help to our members when they are in need–particularly when the need is at least partly a result of service to our community.

       It’s not those in need who need to question this way of operating–it’s all of us.

       • Agree. I think it’s a good idea to ask about these online fundraising platforms and the uses to which they’re being put, but this was for me a definite case of right site, wrong time.

         • Not sure I’d go that far, Northern_Light. I’m not dissing those who have made this platform work for them. I just think that trying to fund Pagan community via crowdsourcing is akin to financing a public school via bake sales. We need to do better.

           Again, I’m not suggesting it’s “irrational” to request funds via crowdsourcing. But it is irrational for us to come to rely on it as a community. That’s my meaning.

         • I’m just saying that I do think a wider discussion about crowdfunding is in order, but this isn’t the right place for it. I’d love to comment on quite a few posts on this thread but I really do feel weird enough about someone’s funeral being the launching pad for it that I won’t. (But that comment of yours about “no yardstick to measure worth except fame” had me nodding vigorously.)

         • I must demur. I think this is a very appropriate place for this discussion, given that the management put up a post that included crowdfunding in a Pagan context.

         • …of people’s funeral expenses. Speaking as someone who knew one of the people who just died, I am finding this conversation hideously disrespectful, all around awful, and downright mean.

         • If we conceal what others may find distressing it will simply fester. I appreciate and indeed to some extent share how you feel.

         • I don’t agree. There actually are some thoughts people should keep to themselves. If more people understood this, the world would be a better place.

         • Evidently we must agree to disagree. It is not justified to silence some for the comfort of others.

         • No one is being silenced. Being told that other people find your thoughts unconscionable and think less of you for expressing them is one of the possible consequences of opening your mouth. Also, just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean you should.

         • Being told others find your thoughts unconscionable is only possible if you express them.

         • My apologies Sara. I did not know either of them, and perhaps I’m feeling more distant than is warranted. (What I am NOT feeling, however, is any disrespect for the bereaved…. just a desire to see us move into a world where we support one another rather better than we do at the moment.)

   • Has it occurred to you that many people *can’t* pay for such things, because, you know, poverty? Obviously you’ve never been in a position where a relative has died and you could not cover the funeral expenses. Yesterday’s story about potter’s fields demonstrated quite clearly what happens to the dead when they cannot be given a private burial.

     As for trips and conferences, there are many very valuable members of our community who have a lot to teach us and the world but struggle to attend such things due to finances. Helping them out helps us all out in the end. Their contributions are worth the donations.

     • Yes it has, my family has been in similar situations.

       On the question of trips and conferences, what do you get out of them? For instance, Patrick McCollum has had a couple of request to send him to interfaith events around the world and I am wondering if this has any effect in the US do you think? What have the tangible benefit actually been for the pagan communities in the US from this?

       It’s a totally alien thing to me in the UK, we simply don’t do the public appeals for things like that in the pagan communities.

       • Personally, I do think that McCollum’s requests are in a different category, and on that one I’m more inclined to see things from your perspective. But I think that sending Rhyd Wildemuth to Newgrange or helping folks who are presenting at Pantheacon and trying to get there is a different story.

         Many of the individuals who end up asking for money are folks who work tirelessly and thanklessly in the social work/social services field, where they’re contributing more to the community and to the world at large than they are ever compensated for and the nature of the work and pay-scale is such where they will never be financially comfortable. As someone who has no problem acknowledging that I’m lucky enough to be employed in an industry (tech) where I am compensated well and the work isn’t back-breaking, I feel that its my duty to help those in the community who are contributing to making the world a better place much more than I am and yet still struggle in ways that I don’t. What social workers and activists do is much more important than the work that most of us do, and I think that needs to be acknowledged.

         I would also point out that in the UK, its much easier to meet your basic needs and have a little extra if you work a decent job. The working poor in the UK don’t struggle like the working poor in the US do. Europeans understand the importance and benefit of an actual social safety net, which is rapidly becoming nonexistent in the US. The US is a country where people have to crowd fund to save a relative’s life due to cancer.

         • I would also point out that in the UK, its much easier to meet your basic needs and have a little extra if you work a decent job. The working poor in the UK don’t struggle like the working poor in the US do. Europeans understand the importance and benefit of an actual social safety net, which is rapidly becoming nonexistent in the US. The US is a country where people have to crowd fund to save a relative’s life due to cancer.

           This, SO MANY times over. The US minimum wage is US$7.25 or the equivalent of £4.49. The UK minimum wage is £6.50, the equivalent of US$10.47. That’s two VERY different numbers, last time I checked, isn’t it? Sure, the working poor n the UK may struggle in comparison to many other **in the UK** –but when compared to the working poor of the US, the UK’s working poor are actually doing rather well on about 35% more income (and something that’s actually a living wage).

         • Cost of living is significantly less in the US. Comparing poverty in different places seldom works very well.

       • I think it comes down to if you don’t want to give don’t *shrugs* some of us feel lead to give to different people for different reasons. Not everyone has family or friends who can help out for funeral expenses. Some people feel like they might gain something from giving even if it is the joy that you are doing something kind and don’t expect anything back in return. You can either give or not give that’s up to you. I wouldn’t judge if you did or didn’t that’s your personal choice. I don’t ever feel like I need to “get” anything in return for giving. Sometimes it’s just the right thing to do.

       • I think it’s a cultural divide.

         In the UK, even our right wing politicians often seem to be left of the US centre.

         It is hard to really comprehend just how little of a safety net the average American has, compared to our more socially aware culture.

         • Absolutely. What American considers ‘left’ is very centrist, and the American social safety net is absolutely in tatters. I meet a lot of Europeans who consider themselves to be conservative who are actually a lot more liberal (and a lot more reasonable) than many American liberals.

         • It is true that the consensus over here is very much one of Social Darwinism, and at a level which has not been seen since the 19th/early 20th Century industrial age.

         • Yes, and the inability of most to see the errors in that way of thinking is leading America down a very ugly road right now. Its only a matter of time until there is mass social unrest as a result of such attitudes.

         • Every way of thinking has errors. No matter what path society takes, there will be those that disagree and dissent.

           There is no right or wrong, only perspective.

         • I disagree. Allowing fifty-million citizens to suffer and go without basic needs while the top earners pay next to no taxes and demand cuts to welfare is wrong no matter how you parse it. Morally, ethically, logically. Condemning the poor for being lazy and blaming them for their lot while refusing to recognize structural inequality or the role of privilege is wrong no matter what.

         • Disagreement is fine, but that does not change the simple fact that morality is very much a relative concept.

       • Why do you care what OTHER people get out of it? You get nothing out of it, so you don’t give. OK, fine. Nobody’s twisting your arm. Other people clearly DO get something out of it. Why do you care?

       • It’s a totally alien thing to me in the UK, we simply don’t do the public appeals for things like that in the pagan communities.

         You know, I’m getting awfully tired of other Brits claiming that things they dislike are somehow foreign concepts in the UK. Searching IndieGoGo (one of the more popular crowdfunding sites), for “pagan” and narrowing it down to campaigns only in the UK, several items come up. Maybe these are not very well promoted in pockets of the British pagan community where you interact most, and obviously none of them have been promoted on The Wild Hunt, but clearly this is NOT a foreign concept to British pagans.

         The lines between US and UK culture are not as thick in this areas as you may want to believe. Please take your thumb out of your arse.

         • Hey you know what, I did that search too!

           I got 4 items.

           One was someone wanting to get filming equipment to make some documentaries, someone wanting to improve their on-line service and someone doing an MSc in Ethnobotany course needing help with a project, the fourth was for a horror film with pagan in the title. Funnily enough the MSc one i would help out with be because it has the potential to throw up interesting results and ties in with a project we have done where I work, i may well have met the student through my work too.

           hardly people asking for money to go to a conference is it?

         • And? So what if they were? Take your thumb out of your arse.

         • “but clearly this is NOT a foreign concept to British pagans.

           The lines between US and UK culture are not as thick in this areas as you may want to believe”

           And yet doing what you suggested shows this is pretty alien at the moment in the UK, none of the projects I can find using pagan, witch or witchcraft got funded and the vast majority got hardly any funding at all. Therefore there is a big difference in this between the US and UK, contrary to what you have said.

         • There’s also a big difference between US and UK minimum wage, as has already been pointed out. But hey, clearly that’s not at all relevant, now is it?

   • Thinking about it, I can see a lot of value to be had in a charity dedicated to helping with costs for such things as funerals.

     How many people would be prepared to donate on a regular basis to an organisation that offered “crisis grants” to those members of the community that are in need?

     • I would agree, but I would also argue these recent cases and many others like them should serve as a wake-up call to all of us.

       As Samhain is upon is, it’s a good time to engage our own mortality. Unless you’re truly trapped in lifelong deep poverty, there is really no excuse for “not having time to prepare” for funeral expense and arrangements. We have this idea in the U.S. and Western Europe that we’re exempt from death until at least our late 80s or when we feel we’ve accomplished everything we want, whichever comes last.

       It ain’t true. A good rule of thumb is: If you’re 40 or older, you should assume you might croak by the end of business tomorrow. Because you might. I’m 44 and in good health, but I assume it’s all borrowed time from here on out. I hope I get 50 more good years, but I’m not banking on it. I’ve had plenty of friends much younger than me go. When you die and no plans have been made, your friends and family are chum in the water for funeral directors, and it’s a huge stress on top of everything else. Take some time to research the costs and options, put things in writing, and put aside a few bucks a month toward a plot or whatever can be pre-arranged.

       • Excellent point.

     • I think I would. I might only manage $5/month, but it’s better than “a poke in the eye with a sharp stick”, something my husband seems to say a lot.

       • There’s about a million people identifying as some form of Pagan in the US (according to Wiki). Imagine if 1% of them donated to such a charity at the same rate you could manage.

         That’s US$50,000 raised a month. Take about 30% for admin, and that’s US$35,000 net a month.

         From what I gather, from a brief search, the average funeral could cost up to US$10,000.

         So, if that initial giving is accurate, you could see seven funerals paid for every two months.

         • I think you’re on to something here.

         • It is easy to criticise, but being constructive requires thought.

           I figure that it is about time I started being more positive in my criticisms.

           I am a fan of infrastructure, but I feel I may not have elaborated how I can see infrastructure working.

         • Hum…but isn’t that our dear Léoþ who, just two days ago argued against the concept of “Big Tent Paganism” ? I don’t criticize you, also I know you’d not be affected considering that you live in the UK, but still, I find it interesting that, you, of all people, would suggest this (rather interesting) idea ;).

         • It is Lēoht, not Lēoþ. Lots of people read the H and the T the wrong way round.

           I make the suggestion because I think it is a good step forward. I don’t have to be part of a group to support it.

         • Oops, sorry for butchering your name, I was certain (at first glance), that would be a voiceless dental fricative… does it (“ht”)has any letters or signs in Old English?

           Also, I agree that one can make proposals for the good of others, but I still read that fact that you proposed it as a sign that you might not be as distanced as you might sometimes appear to be.

           Or it’s just me and the glass half full.

         • No special character for “ht” in Ænglisc.

           I think your glass is twice as large as it needs to be. 😉

           If I had no interest in the community, I wouldn’t be on here, would I?

           For the record, I also support gender equality, despite being a straight guy.

         • “just two days ago”? HAHAHA!!!

   • Without judging the merits of this one case, I think there is a perfectly valid broader discussion to be had about how we understand and practice sustainability in the pagan community.

     It is true that in the past 6 or 7 years, the bottom has fallen out of our economy and almost no one is unaffected by that. At the same time, modern paganism has had something of a cultural allergy to money for decades. Anyone can suffer from situational poverty. If you’re born into it, or beset with physical or mental illness it’s a hell of a hole to climb out of. Disasters can reduce even well-off folks to poverty, at least for a time.

     Poverty can also be structural, and this, I believe, is one of our community’s deepest problems. We’ve developed a kind of collective ethic which says life shouldn’t be about money (good wisdom in that), and extrapolated that to mean we don’t have to think or worry about money at all. Everybody wants to have programs, and buildings and events. Everybody wants to be a full-time teacher or priestess or facilitator or author, or autodidactic scholar, or poet, or bard or eco-activist or interfaith ambassador (we seem to have a whole aspiring State Department these days).

     That’s great, but no one seems to have a financial plan for how to make that work other than the constant appeal to that mythical race of benefactors called “somebody” or “the community.” At any given time, and even in much more flush times, there are a lot of outstretched hands. I don’t have a problem with crowdsourcing appeals per se. They’re a great way for people to vote their priorities with their wallets. I’m more concerned that we as a community or movement have “normalized” poverty. We’ve sort of internalized and accepted the notion that poverty is an inevitable aspect of being pagan – that poverty is, if not cool and chic, a badge of authenticity. The subtext is that real pagans don’t climb a corporate ladder or build a 401K or stay away from the festival circuit for a couple years to get their lives in order.

     When I say we’ve normalized poverty, I don’t suggest that it should be stigmatized as some sort of WASP-ish character flaw, only that we acknowledge that poverty really sucks, and it’s not something to celebrate or aspire to or settle for. It will seriously degrade your quality of life, probably shorten it by years if not decades, and it will ultimately limit your ability to translate your spiritual values into real-world action.

     • I hear that, but I think that the phenomenon you’re describing is different than actual poverty. There’s a difference between eschewing the system for reasons grounded in pagan issues around money and those who truly struggle with little options or a way out, and I think that both categories are present in our community. i think that those who try to come off in the poverty-as-chic vein are not truly poor the way most of us define poverty.

       i have a friend who’s a vendor in the festival scene, and one of the things she tells me about the most is the pagans who will come into her booth, go on and on about how ‘broke’ and ‘struggling’ they are, but they’re still buying hundreds of dollars’ worth of pagan froo-froo. That’s not real poverty. That’s someone who thinks that coming off as broke makes them ‘authentic’. That’s different from those who get paid minimum wage as social workers and need to raise money to even GET to those festivals, where they aren’t buying any froo-froo at all. Sometimes its hard to be able to tell the difference, but its important to remember that those are two very different scenarios.

       Most of the pagans I know who I consider to be truly in poverty either are dealing with disability and/or illness, were born into poverty and have been unsuccessfully trying to escape that trap for their entire lives, or work the kinds of jobs I talked about earlier.

     • i would also add that some of the more well-known members of the pagan/polytheist community who truly do experience poverty actually have a demonstrated a greater ability to translate their spiritual values into real-world action than most of us have, due to their own life experiences and the wisdom that was gained by those experiences.

   • I make distinctions among fundraising and crowdfunding appeals on the basis of the purpose and the recipient.

     Benefit concerts to pay the medical bills for musicians happen all the time, because most musicians live hand to mouth. In a country without much of a social safety net, if you want good music, this is part of the deal, and people don’t usually criticize the musicians for not working straight jobs and keeping up their medical insurance, nor do they criticize the organizers of the benefits. Indigent pagans who have been contributing members of my community, same thing, even if I think they made some impractical life choices.

     Crowdfunding somebody’s trip to give a presentation or represent a community at some public event is something you contribute to if you belong to the community in question and/or admire the individual who’s asking for the money and want them and their ideas to get wider exposure. If you don’t care about that, there is no reason to give them money.

     If some group wants money to buy land for a pagan center, library, temple or what have you, I’m more likely to contribute if it is not too far away for me to visit.

     Contributions to a memorial or historical project, depends on how much I care about the person or the history. I’ll never sit on that bench in Central Park, but Margot Adler is someone I had respect and affection for.

     If someone sets up a charitable foundation or non-profit for some pagan purpose, i’ll judge it by the same standards I use for contributions to other charitable organizations: how is it run, who decides where the money goes, what percentage is spent on fundraising and overhead, etc.

     As to funeral expenses, it might be time to revive the nineteenth-early twentieth century burial society, or encourage people to buy funeral insurance, or take a look at how some other religious communities have taken care of their dead and come up with pagan implementations of those.

   • It seems to me that the framing here misses the point somewhat. A lot of the discussion has focused on poverty / means / charity and so on.

     The purpose of crowd sourcing and crowd funding is to broaden the participation base (not necessarily the contribution base) via an egalitarian process.

     Crowd sourcing allows participants to contribute monetarily or in – kind to the success of a effort. Crowd funding is a limited form of crowd sourcing focused only on monetary participation.

     Either way by contributing to these efforts I am building personal connections to the experience. It provides me with an opportunity to contribute a little and yet participate fully. Broadening the base is just good economics in that it allows for the aggregation of market influence by the general public as opposed to those who gain influence by accumulating wealth individually.

     My opinion is that it doesn’t matter to me the financial state of the requestor. I as easily fund the well off as the struggling, and participate equally in both.

     Lastly, crowd sourcing participation seems to me to build stronger emotional connections and increased comfort levels that help overcome fear and may result in crowd funding participants taking the next step and becoming local leaders for an idea, who then in turn may offer others a chance to join in.

   • People have long held other kinds of fundraisers for all of these things, both formally and not. Crowdfunding sites just get the word out farther. If you don’t want to donate, don’t, but don’t shame anyone else for asking. ESPECIALLY about funeral expenses. Wow. Funerals are EXPENSIVE, and are why many people have life insurance — to cover the tens of thousands of dollars this can cost. Cremation is the cheapest you can go with. Objecting to grieving people asking for their communities help when they can’t afford the most basic of care for their dead because our society is HORRIBLE about death. Wow.

   • May I say that in the case of significant public figures, such as Peter Paddon, what he gave to the wider Pagan public over the course of the last 30 years, and in particular over the past 7 years with his podcasts, video casts, world-wide teaching coven and such merits MUCH more than the $7,000 being asked. The years of podcasts alone, which are free to everyone, are a wealth of deep information and a resource used by hundreds or perhaps even thousands of people worldwide; and if those were financially remunerated every time someone listened to them, it would be at least $7,000 and much more.

     There is also a difference between a public Pagan leader and myself going to a conference. I go to a conference for personal enrichment. A public Pagan leader goes to a conference to develop the Pagan world and culture.

     This goes right back to the reluctance of Pagan culture to pay for anything, to expect very high quality leadership and teaching and counseling and even products without offering anything back, and also expecting this high level of productivity while the leader is working a full-time job.

     I don’t think we should be examining the appropriateness of these requests. I think we should be examining deeply why they are necessary.

     • I look forward to a day when we find ways for everyone who participates in a conference (or a retreat, festival, or gathering) to develop the Pagan world and culture. And when everyone, public Pagan or unknown, gets enrichment from doing so, too.

       I guess I’m saying I’d like to see us become much more “leaderful” than we currently are. Though part of that, Anna, I completely agree, will be giving thought to why requests like these are necessary–and how else we can keep the wheels going ’round on the Pagan bus…

       • Yes, but there are leaders, and then there are Leaders. Some are brighter lights than others and always will be. I was a significant leader in my multi-county area for a decade. I’m proud of that time, but I’m not in the league of people who are nationally known, and that’s okay.

   • I personally think crowdfunding is a wonderful way to pay for all such things in that it allows us to help the causes we are interested in with no obligation to help those we aren’t. A pagan teacher in my area put out the ask to go on an international spiritual trip. I decided I benefited from her having such a trip and added to her fund. When a pagan teacher I admired died I added to his funeral fund – it’s a hell of a lot more practical than sending flowers.

     It feels a lot better than passing around that collection plate to the congregation and making everyone pony up on a weekly basis with no say in how the money is spent.

     • Though the downside is that many people we’ve never heard of perform vital services every day. Who keeps track of a competent book-keeper, for instance? Generally speaking, it will be the charismatic ritual leader of a group, or a well-known author and speaker, who is recognized enough to support via crowd-sourcing.

       But often, it’s the quiet competence of people who keep good notes and budgets that separates a thriving institution from one that fails. (Of course, good charismatic leaders understand that, and find ways to make sure that the needs of those less in the public eye get met, too. I don’t mean to imply otherwise. But it is a limitation of this particular model.)

   • The reason I shell out $$ to support the travel of people to conferences or pilgrimages that they otherwise might not be able to afford is because their work is valuable to me and I am enriched by the results of their travel in their resulting writings and other religious work. I also do not think that these kind of experiences should be restricted only to those who are able to amass the considerable resources required. If they provide enough of a service to their community that the community is willing to support it, then I see zero problem with it. It is a fair trade.

2. Dragon’s funeral expenses were fully funded three HOURS later, not three days 🙂

   And the legal issues for us are all resolved. Basically, once a judge actually looked at the evidence, it was done.

   • Are you referring to the Maetreum of Cybele case? If so, that’s great news. I hope more detailed coverage will follow.

     • No, I am referring to the situation mentioned above wherein a politician took a restraining order out on my SO, a reporter. Said politician made a complete ass of himself in court and it was thrown out.

       • Thank you for the clarification. I’m glad to hear that, too.

3. Regarding the entire issue of Silver Ravenwolf, as most of us who are regular readers of TWH know, she was not singled out. Many people have fought and lost – and others have won. Thanks to the LBGTQ community, appeals can be made to get Facebook names back. On August 29th I lost my name – I blogged and commented about it (twice) and managed to get my name back. The instructions are there. It can be done. It takes tenacity and determination. The problem that I have seen for those who are moaning the loudest about persecution are usually the ones that are all too eager to play the victim card.

   The instructions – and the real reasons as to why FB is pulling this now is in the link below. (Hint: It is NOT about religious persecution).

   http://fannyfae.com/2014/10/21/losing-your-facebook-name-getting-it-back-it-isnt-really-about-you/