(no subject)

 I've always thought of ancestor work as "ugh, how can you even when your associations with family are so unhappy." Now, however, I'm thinking about it as a kind of stand in.

Ancestor work can provide the kind of unconditional love, support, defence and guiding in you that mortal families often can't. A long line stretching back, and they're all invested and walking with you? That's bitchin, and it's humbling and difficult to begin ancestor work knowing you'll never have that kind of relationship with your family in the flesh.

I see people with this question quite a lot; but I'm cautiously dipping my toe in  and finding it's ok.

(no subject)

I'm moving soon, and I'm going to make linking up with real life community my top priority.

I still have a lot of messed up feelings about this. 

But what I think I want to focus on is unglamorous work. I am desperate for community, and I have a pretty good idea of what that should look like; and I can help best by contributing the gaps. 

I wrote a long whine which got deleted, but one thing ive observed abour contemporary craft vs most historic spirit and religious traditions is. This is a specialist job that exists in context of a community. The neopagan idea thst all people are innately magical and have their own power and a meritocratic access to whatever they like if they work hard enough ia super reflective of our culture. So while we call back to the Greeks or the Celts or borrow bits from Native Americans and African Diaspora Faiths, we also combine them with our contemporary philosophy even though the bits...just don't fit. 

Fwiw I'm a lot more comfortable with egalitarian non-hierarchical magic; but the sources we draw from, the sources we emulate, and even real-world religions don't have this as a norm. We have no clergy and no people - we have only priests and the powerful, selling to one another. If to be a priest ia to serve both the spirits and community as a kind of bridge, then that kind of work isn't possible without a community. 

What I mean is - I just did my annual reading a bunch about vodou blitz -and to be made houngan or mambo is a decision made jointly by the spirits and by the community. You can't be a solitary voduisant, the community is integral. So there's structure, and it's collective - rhe whole community collectively recognises someone as a priest, but also recognises the role of the other 498 participants as laypeople. Whereas, we're too fragmented to have spiritual roles which carry thst kind of weight. Anyone can self initiate anyway, and anyone claiming the kind of spiritual authority would be a big red flag. And the people who are interested in Paganism, our people, our group, all have equal access to power; our non-powerful followers are, in truth, rhe non Pagan locals around us. Who aren't really...Our people. 

I'm still not sure how to balance out both my anti-orthodoxy, anti-authoritarian preferences, with my desire for a functional real world magic community. And maybe that's what special abour pagan things, in thst we are all participants and no one just stands and watches. 

But what I can do, I think, is to try and be a "joiner", and look for essential non-glamorous community roles i can take: babysitting, washing dishes, showing up. Finding a way to be a lay participant in religion, which isn't inherently disempoweting or making one vulnerable. If I sense the problem is too many people claiming centre stage, then my contribution could be finding a way to explicity claim a supporting role. In a conscious way.

(We are not short of people who can read cards. Didnuou know in vodou, rhe ability to read cards is a secret only conferred after several initiations. It'sc not something everyone can do, or everyone expects to do. Aside from the power imbalance inherent there, what it does is build interconnectedness: a reason to speak to others. And it's not a straightforwardly capitalistic relationship either, because thst right has been in some way conferred by the people visiting you.

This is kinda mental! But also *really* nice.)

So yeah, I think I can do my part to combat this fear I have abour community & also be the best version of me, by trying to bring in the kind of energy I'd admire in those around me. Being a participant, being a joiner, being supportive of other people's need to be powerful in a way that doesn't make me vulnerable or insecure in my turn, doing the washing up, bringing cookies, clearing up after ritual, and generally coming in with a "how can I serve my community" approach. "How can I participate".

Rather than the kinda, fast-track to power, building of a personal brand, or buffet-table approach to dipping in and out of things as best they serve me. And looking for people & connections, rather than like what i can get out of it?

I think that's the right approach. I think that's the one which helps me act with grace & be the best version of myself I can be, and also the one which makes community-building possible.

(no subject)

Ooooh having said that

The first step in took with Fencraft was defining the Sun path as distinct from the Moon path - to divide what I saw as religious nature paganism from occult witch craft. This was a kind of organisational necessity -I was trying to just get everything straight in my mind, because so much pagan stuff blurs all these things together. I found it helpful to make these things distinct, and figure out what i wanted to do and how I fit in.

There is religious pagan stuff, and then there's technical skilled stuff, and they arent necessarily interlinked. 





So perhaps this is how you create a multi-layered community where everyone is Pagan, but you have elders with special skills. 

I found this mapping helpful because my executive function makes actual magic and technical craft skills very, very difficult. The concept of the Sun path was a way of saying - what you are doing is legitimate and it's ok. 
Sun stuff includes having a party on the sabbats, going for nice walks, baking, and just existing. Singing songs. Learning rhymes. Knitting. You don't need to be the best at circles, or even to cast them frankly, because you're directly reverencing the natural world by being in it, and the body by making use of it. 

From there, I developed a broader sense of Solar and Lunar powers, but it all started with just mapping out all the possible things thst "doing witchy pagan stuff" could mean, so I could spot the ones i valued and wanted to center my craft around.

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So that's a framework that could work, I guess, to include various kinds of people within a Pagan community. It's non-hierarchical, and it recognises different ways of being within the craft. We are all Pagan, but we do have specialists. Additionally, I guess in the context of a big group, it recognises what those "other" people are doing. Someone on the Moon path might be learning the ability to banish and ward hardcore shit; but someone on the sun path might be focusing on their herbal baking, and bringing some excellent cakes for the ritual. It makes every part of the tapestry sacred. It gives some shine to the ordinary work of life. Remembering additionally that the Sun Path is defined as experience, so being the sort of person who just shows up and experiences the ritual, is part of thst calling. 

Ultimately, I defined a third path to match the Stellar energies, as a kind of shamanic/ecstatic/experiential work, focused on going through and beyond.

So that's a kind of map for community, although I didn't originally intend it that way. It's a way for us to keep Paganism as a participatory faith, where everyone has direct access to the divine; but also the best of hierarchy, technical skill, and specialisms. You can imagine a coven, for example, having people who are developing on the Stellar path, whose role is drawing down and otherworld work; and also the Lunar path, whose role is having a library of occult texts, and they build the circle, and they take the lead on actual spells; and then on the Sun path, who make the robes and the flags and the objects to enchant, who bring the food, who organise the socials.