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29 April 2020 17:57![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haptalaonSo I just run all this past my husband, and some interesting things came up:
1. "This is just like wanting the stability of monogamy but also the freedom of polyamory; with every decision something is gained and lost"
2. He suggested that Pagans were inherently the kind of people who wanted a freeform, individally-defined religion. Is this true? It's certainly true in practice. But is this only because we don't have any "show up on a Sunday" trads, or is this because the kinds of people drawn to something as alternative as magic will be alternative in other ways?
3. We agreed that pagans broadly just don't want/need a priesthood in quite the same way that other religions do; the reason we don't have fulltime clergy, the reason why Shauna feels like her teaching work isn't valued, is because it literally isn't. No one is feeling the lack of a fulltime clergy, so no one works to create one.
4. I talked about alternative models of faith that I admire - including Vodou in Haiti, which is a three-days of prep, four days of ritual, everyone pitches in sort of community. Husband said the idea of this was simply not present in pagan culture, and our role models are all inherently solitary.
5. "I want to be paid, but not in money: I want to be paid in the knowledge that I'm building something or contributing something to the community. Like a Sunday School teacher who volunteers, and is paid in the children who encounter Jesus. With a "consumerist" teaching model, my customers come to me and take, and then vanish again - I'm not building anything"
6. I pointed out that his mother - who is a member of a Christian cult - doesn't expect anyone to pay her to talk about Jesus, she does it for free. Apparently that's not true: she also *pays* the cult for the magazines she distributes, and additionally pays to attend courses from the cult on how to convert people better. This is messed up. But also strengthens my point that the reward of teaching faith is that you expand the number of the faithful, and that itself can be a motivator.
7. My husband says that if he was volunteering to teach or running a youtube channel, he wouldn't expect payment. But if someone asked him to talk at their shop or coven, then he would expect to be paid. That was his distinction.
8. I talked about how I was rethinking eclecicism/individuality in paganism. In contrast, I was looking at things like Vodou or the martial arts where people can recite their teacher's lineage back four generations. If you believe in the reality of what you're doing, then the concept of doing things correctly and recognising elders must have weight; rather than this "substitute everything with rosemary" approach, this "anyone can do magic anytime with a white candle and intention" approach. He had an alternative model of eclecicism, which is evolution: things which don't work are discarded, but things which do are hybridised and enhanced. He's a scientist, so he doesn't use the word evolution lightly - as a process of perfection away from the original towards something better.
9. He asked whether I'd be expecting my {hypothetical future students} not to deviate from what I was doing. I said that originally, no - I had a much stronger commitment to eclecticism/freedom. But nowadays, yes - I'm beginning to value the anchor of tradition as a useful part of a path, and also I think if I'm serious about the tangible reality of my work, then why would I encourage people to change it? I could definitely see myself embracing more ways to accomplish the same outcome, but not variable about what the outcome is, if that makes sense.
10. It's definitely nice to talk to someone who's committed to the freedom of Paganism for its own sake, not just because that's what happens organically - someone celebrating this as how it should be.
11. Apparently one of our friends is a literal hermit, as in, he lives in a cave on a heath. I didn't know this, and am super jealous.
12. Like most people, I dream of creating pagan land. But last time I talked about this with my man, we decided the way to really do it? Was to start a pagan pub. And that feels right. Self-sustaining, with odd occult trinkets thereabout, and a place for people to gather together, swap stories and make merry. Better even than a farm or academy, a pub seems to "fit" the pagan culture as-is, rather than an imaginary of what it could be.
1. "This is just like wanting the stability of monogamy but also the freedom of polyamory; with every decision something is gained and lost"
2. He suggested that Pagans were inherently the kind of people who wanted a freeform, individally-defined religion. Is this true? It's certainly true in practice. But is this only because we don't have any "show up on a Sunday" trads, or is this because the kinds of people drawn to something as alternative as magic will be alternative in other ways?
3. We agreed that pagans broadly just don't want/need a priesthood in quite the same way that other religions do; the reason we don't have fulltime clergy, the reason why Shauna feels like her teaching work isn't valued, is because it literally isn't. No one is feeling the lack of a fulltime clergy, so no one works to create one.
4. I talked about alternative models of faith that I admire - including Vodou in Haiti, which is a three-days of prep, four days of ritual, everyone pitches in sort of community. Husband said the idea of this was simply not present in pagan culture, and our role models are all inherently solitary.
5. "I want to be paid, but not in money: I want to be paid in the knowledge that I'm building something or contributing something to the community. Like a Sunday School teacher who volunteers, and is paid in the children who encounter Jesus. With a "consumerist" teaching model, my customers come to me and take, and then vanish again - I'm not building anything"
6. I pointed out that his mother - who is a member of a Christian cult - doesn't expect anyone to pay her to talk about Jesus, she does it for free. Apparently that's not true: she also *pays* the cult for the magazines she distributes, and additionally pays to attend courses from the cult on how to convert people better. This is messed up. But also strengthens my point that the reward of teaching faith is that you expand the number of the faithful, and that itself can be a motivator.
7. My husband says that if he was volunteering to teach or running a youtube channel, he wouldn't expect payment. But if someone asked him to talk at their shop or coven, then he would expect to be paid. That was his distinction.
8. I talked about how I was rethinking eclecicism/individuality in paganism. In contrast, I was looking at things like Vodou or the martial arts where people can recite their teacher's lineage back four generations. If you believe in the reality of what you're doing, then the concept of doing things correctly and recognising elders must have weight; rather than this "substitute everything with rosemary" approach, this "anyone can do magic anytime with a white candle and intention" approach. He had an alternative model of eclecicism, which is evolution: things which don't work are discarded, but things which do are hybridised and enhanced. He's a scientist, so he doesn't use the word evolution lightly - as a process of perfection away from the original towards something better.
9. He asked whether I'd be expecting my {hypothetical future students} not to deviate from what I was doing. I said that originally, no - I had a much stronger commitment to eclecticism/freedom. But nowadays, yes - I'm beginning to value the anchor of tradition as a useful part of a path, and also I think if I'm serious about the tangible reality of my work, then why would I encourage people to change it? I could definitely see myself embracing more ways to accomplish the same outcome, but not variable about what the outcome is, if that makes sense.
10. It's definitely nice to talk to someone who's committed to the freedom of Paganism for its own sake, not just because that's what happens organically - someone celebrating this as how it should be.
11. Apparently one of our friends is a literal hermit, as in, he lives in a cave on a heath. I didn't know this, and am super jealous.
12. Like most people, I dream of creating pagan land. But last time I talked about this with my man, we decided the way to really do it? Was to start a pagan pub. And that feels right. Self-sustaining, with odd occult trinkets thereabout, and a place for people to gather together, swap stories and make merry. Better even than a farm or academy, a pub seems to "fit" the pagan culture as-is, rather than an imaginary of what it could be.
no subject
Date: 29 April 2020 23:58 (UTC)I agree, that a pagan pub's a great idea, makes for a very warm, inclusive atmosphere.
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Date: 30 April 2020 10:58 (UTC)As we are considering where we want to live, one of the things we think about is whether or not there’s a pagan presence in the area, and it’s less about having a coven than about having ‘our kind of people’ there. (My partner does not regard himself as pagan, but he does have a nature-revering worldview without the magic or ritual).
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Date: 6 May 2020 12:57 (UTC)Paganism/new age/occult is so broad, that you can go to a meetup and be surrounded by people who are into angel healing, crystals, UFOs, Egyptian god energies, and so on, and that's Fine. But I go to my Extinction Rebellion meetings, and someone has brought home-made chutney from their allotment, and someone else has brought honey from their own bees, and everyone their is profoundly sincere and in love with nature, and some of them are willing to go to prison for it, and I feel like these people are on my frequency. Esp in what I'm writing now, about Walking as a pagan practice - you don't have to "do" anything, just walk - and that's clearly a thing that a lot of non-pagans do too, and in exactly the same way. Walking as an act of reverencing nature and being present in it.
Obviously I can bash out a Third Planetary Seal of Jupiter to communicate with the arch-celestials, if I have to, but I wouldn't necessarily see someone who made that the center of their work as "my people".
For me, the appeal is very much family. I like the idea of having the same group of people in my life long-term, and creating these alternative communities is a traditional role of religion. I want...there to be a bunch of people who come over to help me paint my basement, or to do the cooking the first month we have a baby; and I want to age with people, and feel invested in their lives as they are in mine; I want to be there for community elders and do their shopping and take babysitting shifts for new parents; I want to grow as an inidividual because I'm surrounded by people on a similar path; and I want to do the things which groups can do which individuals cannot. For example, get a Suma account and order container-free wholesale goods. Buy solar panels.
These kinds of community are absolutely standard if you're in a "normal" religion, and I'd like to cultivate them in ours, you know? Especially because so much of the pagan spirit is outside of the circle, is just baking and growing things and going on walks.
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Date: 6 May 2020 13:41 (UTC)> ramblers associations, gardeners, environmental groups, local historians.
This is totally been my husband’s thing when he’s lived in places that had a bit more wild than our current abode. We’re planning to get into that sort of thing, too, when we finally do our move out of the city, but I worry because no matter how much I try, I don’t code as “normal” and stick out awkwardly (it’s worse now that I’m also obviously a foreigner). My partner is a much better social chameleon than me.
> For me, the appeal is very much family. I like the idea of having the same group of people in my life long-term, and creating these alternative communities is a traditional role of religion...
This whole paragraph is exactly what I long for. I have often posited to my partner that we should go in with friends to buy a series of adjoined properties so we can have our own little “village,” but first we have to find those friends XD We sort of had that back in our days in Seattle, but the group was already fracturing around the time we moved across the pond, and since then they’ve all gone to the four winds. Alas. A co-living “village” might have been the only thing that would convince me move back to the States.