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As a Pagan, one of my values is education. Humans have an immense capacity to learn.
Now, if you believe in the Burning Times, a lot of knowledge was supposedly lost to the ages. People could not maintain an oral tradition, they could not write anything down, nothing could be made public, everything was locked away and hidden from plain sight.
I used to believe very much in the Burning Times, but as I grew older and read more history, political and religious, it wasn't really that much of a Big Deal. Yes, people did lose their lives in the Inquisition and the witch hunts, but it wasn't so much witches or Pagans who were specifically being hunted down. It was people who owned land the Church wanted. It was people who were heretics in the eyes of the Church. It was people who just weren't liked by their communities. I don't know if the common '6 million' figure is accurate or not, but a good number of innocent people lost their lives due to (to borrow a phrase from Rob Zombie) superstition, fear and jealousy.
I know that in some African countries, people do still lose their lives for practicing, or being accused of practicing, witch craft. In some more conservative areas of the U. S., occult and psychic stores are vandalized and protested into closing up shop. I've been pretty much a west-coaster all my life, and luckily I have never encountered persecution. I've met a few Holy Rollers who were obnoxious beyond belief, but I've always had the rare privilege of being a 100% out of the broom closet Pagan. When I was a teenager, I was quite militant about it. I wore enough pentagrams and crystals & mojo bags to ensure my death by drowning if anyone pushed me into about a foot of water, I had the ACLU's phone number memorized, I could quote state statutes banning witchcraft from the birth of the nation, I lobbied for looser regulations on psychic arts business licensing (in Clark County, it's a time-consuming, rigorous and expensive process to prevent con artists from taking advantage of people), I wore robes in public.
Today, though, anyone with an internet connection or a library card can obtain a great amount of information about witchcraft and Paganism. I think in all total, there are probably more Pagan forums, commercial occult & psychic stores, occult websites, etc. than anything else online except maybe porn. Hel, there's even Pagan-centric porn out there (no, I'm not counting this one website Rob & I encountered featuring 'vampire lesbian nuns sucking Satan's big red cock).
Bearing all this in mind, I think the Pagan community as a whole does not place enough value on passing on information. There are many who complain of poorly researched and written books, the abundance of 'Witchcraft 101' books on the market, the 'fluffy bunny' take on Paganism that many of these poorly researched and written books have. But, when it comes down to it, very few people are willing to teach. I used to complain about this one AOL chatroom called 'Ask a Witch'. I don't know why the majority of people were in that chatroom, other than to pounce on the unexperienced & unsuspecting & make them rue the day they ever tried to ask a witch anything. I can understand that yes, in a situation like that, it is going to attract a lot of people who either want love spells or want to murder someone. It would be like me throwing a hissy fit anytime anyone asked me where the restrooms were at the Excalibur. Just because 15,000 people have asked me that doesn't mean that it's not the first time they all asked that question. They honestly didn't know where the bathrooms were (even if they were standing right in front of them) & I happened to be the closest thing to an employee they saw walking by. People also tend to forget that they were new once, too.
I think bad attitudes chase people away from exploring Paganism on a deeper level. They get kicked around so much when they first discover it that mistreatment turns them off & makes them wish they had never gotten the urge to explore it in the first place. I know Paganism is not evangelical, we don't get gold stars for converting people to the pack, so to speak. But if a person walked into a Catholic or Christian church, or a Jewish or Muslim temple and asked someone there to tell them about this God they'd been hearing so much about, would anyone blow up in their face? No. They'd be welcomed in, invited to explore & hang out. I don't know why it's so hard for Pagans to do the same thing. I mean, we're not telling people to go out and tell all their friends about us, but... what does it cost to be nice to someone? (Yeah, I know, coming from me that's a lot. For me, being nice is like slicing my face off or something... but I have the capacity to change, too - don't forget that).
It also irks me that it's always the whack-jobs who end up on television telling people about Wicca or witchcraft or Paganism in general. Always gotta be the whack-jobs. Why can't it be a relatively normal Pagan? Yeah, Tom Cruise screwed the Scientologists over on Oprah, but he's just one guy - every Pagan who ends up on t.v. seems to be a Tom Cruise. I go on web sites & read comments left by other Pagans whenever one of these whack-jobs shows up on the national news or a talk show & they all complain or 'try to set the record straight' about whatever damaging image the whack-job presented... but it's all after the fact. No one cares what people have to say when they're in damage control mode. We need more proactivism and less hindsight. And what is one of the easiest ways to be proactive about the image of Paganism in the media?
Teach.
Whenever someone asks me a question about my beliefs, I just try to be open, straight forward and honest. I don't go all New-Age white light and bunnies, and I leave out Unkle Al and Anton LeVey and the thing about the hot dogs and buns... and I just answer the question. I never generalize, and I always remember that I am not just speaking for myself, I am a representative of every other Pagan out there, whether it's Wiccans, reconstructionists, neo-Pagans, Dianics, Druids, Odinists, Asatruar... If I am the first Pagan someone meets and has a conversation with, I want them to be comfortable thinking that one of their neighbors or babysitters or banker might be Pagan, too. I don't want them to look at me and think I'm going to sacrifice their cat to my Gods. It costs me nothing except some of my time. I'm also never afraid to give referrals - books, stores, websites, forums, other resources.
I think it would be amazing if 'Mystery Schools' were opened, physical campuses dedicated to Pagan religious studies. Model them after the Catholic schools, so the students are still getting the fundamentals - history, literature, the sciences, but supported by Pagan concepts and attitudes. I know there are correspondence classes online, but why not colleges? If I had the resources at hand, I would consider it, but I'm mostly broke and have no background in education, lol.
Now, if you believe in the Burning Times, a lot of knowledge was supposedly lost to the ages. People could not maintain an oral tradition, they could not write anything down, nothing could be made public, everything was locked away and hidden from plain sight.
I used to believe very much in the Burning Times, but as I grew older and read more history, political and religious, it wasn't really that much of a Big Deal. Yes, people did lose their lives in the Inquisition and the witch hunts, but it wasn't so much witches or Pagans who were specifically being hunted down. It was people who owned land the Church wanted. It was people who were heretics in the eyes of the Church. It was people who just weren't liked by their communities. I don't know if the common '6 million' figure is accurate or not, but a good number of innocent people lost their lives due to (to borrow a phrase from Rob Zombie) superstition, fear and jealousy.
I know that in some African countries, people do still lose their lives for practicing, or being accused of practicing, witch craft. In some more conservative areas of the U. S., occult and psychic stores are vandalized and protested into closing up shop. I've been pretty much a west-coaster all my life, and luckily I have never encountered persecution. I've met a few Holy Rollers who were obnoxious beyond belief, but I've always had the rare privilege of being a 100% out of the broom closet Pagan. When I was a teenager, I was quite militant about it. I wore enough pentagrams and crystals & mojo bags to ensure my death by drowning if anyone pushed me into about a foot of water, I had the ACLU's phone number memorized, I could quote state statutes banning witchcraft from the birth of the nation, I lobbied for looser regulations on psychic arts business licensing (in Clark County, it's a time-consuming, rigorous and expensive process to prevent con artists from taking advantage of people), I wore robes in public.
Today, though, anyone with an internet connection or a library card can obtain a great amount of information about witchcraft and Paganism. I think in all total, there are probably more Pagan forums, commercial occult & psychic stores, occult websites, etc. than anything else online except maybe porn. Hel, there's even Pagan-centric porn out there (no, I'm not counting this one website Rob & I encountered featuring 'vampire lesbian nuns sucking Satan's big red cock).
Bearing all this in mind, I think the Pagan community as a whole does not place enough value on passing on information. There are many who complain of poorly researched and written books, the abundance of 'Witchcraft 101' books on the market, the 'fluffy bunny' take on Paganism that many of these poorly researched and written books have. But, when it comes down to it, very few people are willing to teach. I used to complain about this one AOL chatroom called 'Ask a Witch'. I don't know why the majority of people were in that chatroom, other than to pounce on the unexperienced & unsuspecting & make them rue the day they ever tried to ask a witch anything. I can understand that yes, in a situation like that, it is going to attract a lot of people who either want love spells or want to murder someone. It would be like me throwing a hissy fit anytime anyone asked me where the restrooms were at the Excalibur. Just because 15,000 people have asked me that doesn't mean that it's not the first time they all asked that question. They honestly didn't know where the bathrooms were (even if they were standing right in front of them) & I happened to be the closest thing to an employee they saw walking by. People also tend to forget that they were new once, too.
I think bad attitudes chase people away from exploring Paganism on a deeper level. They get kicked around so much when they first discover it that mistreatment turns them off & makes them wish they had never gotten the urge to explore it in the first place. I know Paganism is not evangelical, we don't get gold stars for converting people to the pack, so to speak. But if a person walked into a Catholic or Christian church, or a Jewish or Muslim temple and asked someone there to tell them about this God they'd been hearing so much about, would anyone blow up in their face? No. They'd be welcomed in, invited to explore & hang out. I don't know why it's so hard for Pagans to do the same thing. I mean, we're not telling people to go out and tell all their friends about us, but... what does it cost to be nice to someone? (Yeah, I know, coming from me that's a lot. For me, being nice is like slicing my face off or something... but I have the capacity to change, too - don't forget that).
It also irks me that it's always the whack-jobs who end up on television telling people about Wicca or witchcraft or Paganism in general. Always gotta be the whack-jobs. Why can't it be a relatively normal Pagan? Yeah, Tom Cruise screwed the Scientologists over on Oprah, but he's just one guy - every Pagan who ends up on t.v. seems to be a Tom Cruise. I go on web sites & read comments left by other Pagans whenever one of these whack-jobs shows up on the national news or a talk show & they all complain or 'try to set the record straight' about whatever damaging image the whack-job presented... but it's all after the fact. No one cares what people have to say when they're in damage control mode. We need more proactivism and less hindsight. And what is one of the easiest ways to be proactive about the image of Paganism in the media?
Teach.
Whenever someone asks me a question about my beliefs, I just try to be open, straight forward and honest. I don't go all New-Age white light and bunnies, and I leave out Unkle Al and Anton LeVey and the thing about the hot dogs and buns... and I just answer the question. I never generalize, and I always remember that I am not just speaking for myself, I am a representative of every other Pagan out there, whether it's Wiccans, reconstructionists, neo-Pagans, Dianics, Druids, Odinists, Asatruar... If I am the first Pagan someone meets and has a conversation with, I want them to be comfortable thinking that one of their neighbors or babysitters or banker might be Pagan, too. I don't want them to look at me and think I'm going to sacrifice their cat to my Gods. It costs me nothing except some of my time. I'm also never afraid to give referrals - books, stores, websites, forums, other resources.
I think it would be amazing if 'Mystery Schools' were opened, physical campuses dedicated to Pagan religious studies. Model them after the Catholic schools, so the students are still getting the fundamentals - history, literature, the sciences, but supported by Pagan concepts and attitudes. I know there are correspondence classes online, but why not colleges? If I had the resources at hand, I would consider it, but I'm mostly broke and have no background in education, lol.
