The cover of The Magical Confluence #19. Image by Penny Ochs.
I have a box of papers in my office that I like to look at every now and then; it’s an archive of sorts, a collection of artifacts from what seems to me like an entirely different era of Paganism. The box contains old rituals, festival invitations, newspapers, zines, and even a few decades-old picnic leases for public parks, the sites of sabbats that were held when I was only a few months old. I am a child of the internet, and it can be hard for me to think of what “Pagan community” meant, exactly, in the time before it. But my box gives me a glimmer, sometimes.
One of my favorite items in the box is a run of a zine, The Magical Confluence, which was published by the Earth Church of Amargi quarterly in the late 80s into the early 90s. The average issue runs about 16 pages, all black and white, most of the text obviously produced on a typewriter rather than a word processor. Clippings from local newspapers and national publications like Green Egg tend to make up about half of the content, with the rest submitted by Pagans in the St. Louis community. There are occasionally Far Side cartoons for which I am not entirely convinced Gary Larsen received royalties.
Looking through Magical Confluence #19, published in Spring 1990, I found an article by none other than my father – “AMER: AN OPPOSITION VIEW,” an open letter published in a forum that reached, I’m guessing, maybe a couple of dozen people. He was weighing in on his general distaste for the Alliance for Magical and Earth Religions, an organization that tried to counter anti-Pagan misinformation through pamphlets, press statements, community meetings, and so on. AMER was founded in 1986 and lasted for twelve years before being disbanded. Despite his role as high priest of a long-standing coven in the St. Louis area, my father had little patience for community organizations; he compared AMER’s attempts to bring him and his into their fold as being “bludgeoned with a club.”
Much of my father’s article is inside baseball to a local controversy that happened almost 30 years ago, and even after I asked him for context, I’m still baffled. (It was something to do with Satanists.) But there’s a one section that I have been chewing over since I read it:
If true that AMER’s purpose is “to insure the individual’s right to privacy” then why do you seem to be so hell-bent to convince me that I am wrong to abridge my right of free association. Free association, you understand, is not only the ability TO associate, but also the ability NOT TO associate. It seems inconceivable to some of you that there are individuals and groups who simply ARE NOT JOINERS.[1]
Just that turn of phrase: “some people are not joiners.” My father certainly isn’t one – not just in terms of religion, but everywhere in his civic life. He has never claimed affiliation with any political party, never joined the PTO when I was younger, never been a part of an Elks Lodge or the sort. He is part of a union, but his career compelled him to join it. Even in his magical life, he eventually left the OTO exactly because it was too much of a “joiner” institution for him. If my father bowled, he would bowl alone. That inclination seems common in his generation of Pagans – and perhaps for many Pagans across the board. Our religions, after all, are made up primarily of converts – people who, for the most part, had a reason to reject the institutions of their parents. It’s not really surprising that people who turned away from organized religion might prefer not to join organizations – especially those which try to organize their new, previously unorganized religions.
But – and I realize this is something of a refrain for me – I am not a convert; I didn’t turn away from anything. And just like it can be hard for me to understand how publications like The Magical Confluence connected the Pagan community before we all had the internet, it can be equally as hard for me to understand the way that those who turned away see the world. I struggle with this. Some people are not joiners. Am I?
The covers to both volumes of Our Troth, from The Troth’s website.
For Yule, my parents got me a copy of Our Troth, the handbook published by the Heathen organization The Troth. I haven’t had the chance yet to read through it, as I’m in the middle of preparing to teach the entire history of British literature[2], but just flipping through the book has made me think again about joining the organization. It was a thought I had when I first started thinking of myself as a Heathen in addition to a Wiccan, and had only been reinforced by getting to know some of its members a few years ago at Pantheacon.
But I have never actually gone through with it, even though I see the obvious upsides – a connection to a larger community, the support of an organization that more or less aligns with my beliefs, and a pretty, pretty journal. I suppose part of the reason for my prevarication is that it could end up being an empty gesture – would it mean anything other than a stamp of approval, a sign that I am a Certified Heathen? The other part is the general philosophical stance I have inherited from my parents: some people are not joiners. “Some people,” of course, means “us.” We keep to ourselves; we do our own thing. We keep to the edges, because the edges are free.
I see a debate in the Pagan community – at least the one I can see from my tiny window onto the internet – about what direction we are moving in, whether it’s towards more robust and public infrastructure or a move to remain with the largely decentralized nature of the movement as it currently is. I find myself, as ever, hedging about the middle. I grew up in the relative isolation of a handful of covens, and I know and love that environment; I also remember being a 13 year old kid who wished he could have just gone to a normal kind of church, except with Horus instead of Jesus.
My questioning over whether or not I want to join some organization is, I admit, a rather inconsequential element of that debate. But it’s those little decisions that, ultimately, pull us all in one direction, towards one definition of progress or the other.
[1] Sic.
[2] My department’s British Literature seminar is one semester, Beowulf to present. We go from John Donne to Oscar Wilde in about five weeks. I may keel over at some point.
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“Some people are not joiners.”
Truth.
Live and let live works mostly, until someone tries to speak for people who don’t want someone speaking for them.
And before I tread on someone’s toes, I think I’ll leave it there.
One reason I was drawn to this path is that I could explore my spirituality on my own. I could become my own Priest/Priestess. I could commune directly with the Divine. Yet, even as a Solitary, I can and DO participate with the larger Pagan community. The Internet makes this easy. I can add my perspective on controversy. I can celebrate our common triumphs and mourn our common setbacks and tragedies. I can find a feeling of kinship with Pagans who live all over this lovely planet. After all, we are existing in a period of history where more people can communicate with each other than ever before. And our planet needs us to work together for the good of all, including the planet itself. This is the most important way to work together…in the service of our planet, of the Spirit, however we define that. I am still not a “joiner.” Yet, when I want to, I can and do “join” my energy with other positive energies that work together for the good of all, according to free will. The beginning of the Age of Aquarius speaks of GROUP ENERGIES and my teacher Jane Roberts has written of groups being formed ORGANICALLY when needed and disbanding ORGANICALLY when not needed. New ways to work with group energies are also being invented! My goal is to keep my solitary nature (which I need to stay in touch with the Divine) and also to work with group energies when necessary. It’s a balance and can be a joy….and also can be very effective magic!!!
Jane Roberts was a remarkable woman. I have every book that she and Seth wrote and it has made me look at the world from an entirely different point of view.
There’s a huge difference between joining “some organization,” as you put it, and being part of a community. Offices, titles, bylaws are all fine in their place, but actual community is made of different stuff: human friendships, forged one by one, in a matrix of respect that supports that.
I have been a member of several overlapping spiritual communities in my lifetime, from the tiny bootstrap coven that first initiated me, to the Pagan church that felt like the reunion of a large family whenever we met, an annual invitation-only Pagan event that, in its heyday, was likened to a Pagan Brigadoon… and to my current “long-distance romance” with most of my Pagan communities, and weekly involvement with my Quaker meeting. Even now, I maintain friendships with most of the people I was close to in those communities, and my closest friends are all linked to one or another of those circles that formed around the warm hearth of community.
I’m aware that there are a lot of Pagans who are uncomfortable with face-to-face Pagan connections, and with some reason: a lot of the public institutions that form a way in to community are managed by some pretty dysfunctional people. (One reason I’m so deeply grateful for the ones that are not run that way!)
But also, life in community chafes us, rubs us the wrong way, and otherwise knocks our rough edges off. It’s not comfortable. But sometimes, it’s not comfortable precisely because it is such a powerful part of a spiritual journey. Before I joined a coven, I was an anxious, brittle, defensive mess of a human being. Being with people who loved me, and who could point out when I was being a bit of an ass, but who were also there to accompany me through the best and worst of my spiritual journey, helped me a lot. It is because of face-to-face community I ever managed to grow out of that anxious, icy girl I used to be into something a lot warmer, kinder, happier, and more secure. I don’t think that I, at least, could have become spiritually mature without a Pagan community around me, in all its messy glory.
I don’t say it’s impossible to be a Pagan without being in community with other Pagans. But I will say, based on what I’ve learned over my lifetime, I think it’s impoverishing to have to try. And also, to paraphrase the Mark Twain quote about the difference between “schooling” and education, I think we’d do well not to let our institutions interfere with our being in community.
Loved this! THANKS for sharing…
Just a thought, but you could try it to see if it’s a thing you want to be a part of. Even someone who isn’t a joiner in general can sometimes find a group that works for them. And if you try it and it doesn’t work for you, then you leave. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody’s chaining you to the group forever.
I tend to be a loner and I need a lot of time for myself. I am comfortable alone, never feel lonely. My father often thought I was anti-social. No I just have very limited social needs.
I like being on the outside. I enjoy visiting but I need to be able to go away and stay away for long periods of time. I would never survive in a town. I would not be happy in any organization that I could not get away from often.
Now that’s a voice from the past! I was asked to serve on AMER’s Advisory Board in the mid-1990s by Kiwi Carlisle. Though I’m not a joiner, either, I eventually decided to serve precisely because AMER wasn’t limited to defending Wiccans, Witches, and other fairly respectable kinds of Pagans, but intended to defend all magical and/or earth religions, even Satanists and the like. It seemed very important to me not to throw any part of the magical and/or earth religious community under the bus, just to defend the other parts, as Peter “Pathfinder” Davis and several other prominent Pagans were arguing at the time.
See http://bradhicks.livejournal.com/443883.html?thread=8265451#t8265451
The AMER pamphlets were/are some of the very best I ever saw anyone publish on behalf of religious freedom for all magical and/or earth religions. Mostly they were written by Kiwi and/or by Brad Hicks. They can still be found on-line at the web-site cited by Eric. It’s good to see they remain available, though times have changed greatly over the last 20 years or so.
Hail Eric!
Yes, I understand. My parents were not joiners, either. One of the things I learned quite clearly from them is that just because everyone else is doing something doesn’t make it right, or necessary, or even interesting. My mother often wished for more social connections, but she was married to a man who could and often did upend anything from a kaffee klatsch to a civic meeting with a few words. They were words she knew were usually right, and necessary, and certainly interesting. And she was no icon of conformity, either, although her style was different from his. We lived close enough to sociability to know what it was, and we also knew that it was something beyond our reach, if we were to choose to reach for it.
And I am not a joiner, either. You may think that strange, given my current position as Steersman of The Troth. But, as I often tell people, The Troth is not a sect. We are a group of Heathens with a wide variety of specific beliefs who agree to keep talking and listening to each other. There are boundaries, but they are intentionally wide. We work at keeping it that way.
There are challenges in maintaining a religious organization that does not have some specific touchpoint of belief. The Troth is for people who are Themselves First, and then come to Be Heathen Together.
Would I like to see Eric O. Scott as a Troth member? You bet! And that will always be Your Choice.
Best regards,
Steve
—
Steven T Abell
Steersman, The Troth