(no subject)

[haptalaon]

I think I need to go through and capture all my bits on Pagan Infrastructure, and turn it into a longer essay, as it seems to occupy my thoughts so often, but another thing I was thinking was

to what extent are proper world religions actually funded by the devout?

vs

they are funded by geopolitical strategy & the inherited wealth of such.

like, one very liberating thing about being a wiccan is that you have no country, no politicians, no history, no schools, no wars, and so you're never in this difficult ambivalent relationship to your religious life where you love something that is so terrible. the worst you get is shitty interpersonal behaviour to other wiccans. neo-pagans can and do wield systemic power through their other privileges - but 'being a witch' just isn't one of them.

what it makes me think about is, so much of religious power and state power are intertwined, and so in Britain for example, stuff like people who funded cathedrals or religious schools etc were buying worldly power, as much as favour on the other side. Or, King Henry trashing the monasteries, kind of so he could get divorced, kind of to establish a new religion, but mostly because he wanted their money and he didn't like the Pope as a political rival in his country.

& those are the times and places whence come the wealth of religions, for example, the Church of England has a lot of wealth in land and investments that they've had for centuries, and it's run by the literal King who is chief commander of the army .

We don't want any of that, of course, and if we do we need a sharp slap. But yeah, I feel like perhaps this kind of analysis is missing from conversations about why we don't have infrastructure. It mistakes the infrastructure as something that is for religious work, whereas I think that's a byproduct. The infrastructure is a facade for underlying politics. So long as pagans have no worldly power, there is no reason for us to be funded