1
Getting
Started
Chances are that if you are reading this book, you are already a
pagan well-acquainted with the internet. Just about everyone is
well-acquainted with the internet, after all, regardless of their
religious denomination. Why should pagans be any different?
Furthermore, why would someone devote an entire book to the so-called
“virtual pagan”?
The
answer is really quite simple: modern paganism is a religious,
spiritual movement largely defined and shaped by the internet. While
Christians, Jews, and Muslims meet in physical spaces of worship,
pagans often turn to the internet to find sanctuary and
companionship—and while this has invited a great expanse of open
communication, freedom, and creativity, there have also been
significant downsides to rapid virtual growth.
When I
first became involved in the pagan religion (circa 2000 CE), the
internet was budding technology. Information about alternative
religions was limited. Depending on one's location, books, mentors,
and fellow seekers could be twenty, fifty, or even a hundred miles
away. For young people (and let us be honest, a vast majority of new
pagans are teenagers or younger), even if they could find an
alternative book store or metaphysical shop, they would often be
unable to afford the high cost of quality materials. When books on
paganism and witchcraft cost as much as a day's salary for a young
person and libraries refused to carry them, where were they to turn?
For
me—and I'm sure for many others—the answer was the internet.
However, even the information one could access there was of
questionable quality. Just like today, anyone could post anything
about any topic, giving the reader the burden of due diligence.
Sorting through what was obviously drivel from what could possibly be
legitimate knowledge is a daunting task for any new pagan. Often,
there is no clear starting point. At the time, paganism had already
branched into so many different sects that differentiating one from
the other is a near impossible task for someone with no prior
knowledge of the subject. Am I an Alexandrian Witch or a British
Traditional Witch? And what the hell is the difference...?
Flooded
with information, the seeker is forced to turn inwards to evaluate
what they truly believe—or they would have, in an ideal situation.
In the fifteen years I have been involved with the pagan community,
attitudes regarding orthodoxy versus heterodoxy have drastically
changed. At the time that I stepped into the circle, so to speak,
there was more pressure to conform; one evaluated their beliefs and
chose an existing path that most closely aligned with one's personal
gnosis. It has become increasingly more common for people to launch
out on their own path, rather than retracing the footsteps of their
predecessors, but that is another topic for another chapter.
Fifteen
years ago, one of the most discussed and very heated controversies in
the pagan community was the phenomenon of the “fluffy bunny,” or
the new pagan who identified as such because it was “cool” or
“alternative” with no true appreciation of the spirituality, and
who often fell away from the path when it was no longer convenient or
novel. Looking back on it now, I wonder if the community itself was
not—at least in part—responsible for the fluffy bunny. Of
course, it's irrational to hold one person responsible for another
person's silliness, but—in my experience, at least—the pagan
community does very little to encourage constancy or steadfastness.
My theory is that the fluffy bunny is born out of both immaturity and
lack of guidance. Unfortunately, guidance is not a resource that is
readily available in the pagan community, and I can't help but think
that the variety and wealth of information available to newcomers on
the internet plays into the problem.
For the
purposes of this book, I will create a hypothetical pagan and take
you, the reader, through her journey down the path of virtual
paganism.
2
Meet
Autumn
Autumn, of course, is not her real name. Her real name is Jessica,
but that would hardly fly on the internet, would it? Autumn is
fifteen years old and disgusted with mainstream, organized religion.
She saw a girl in her language arts class reading Raven Silverwolf's
To Ride a Silver Broomstick,
but she wouldn't let Autumn borrow it. Because she has no job and
can hardly ask her mother and father for thirty dollars to buy a
book, she logs onto
the internet with a couple of keywords in mind: paganism, Wicca, and
witchcraft.
Most of what she learns is bullshit, but she doesn't know that.
She's fifteen, and her ideas about sex are nebulous—much less
religion. She remembers that her mother once told her that she was
an eighth Irish, and so she wanders into the Celtic Paganism websites
in an effort to “reconnect with her roots.” On the way, she
learns about the basics of Wicca; this, at least, remains fairly
steady across the board. She learns that Wiccans worship a God and a
Goddess and have a reverence for nature. That's great! She loves
being outside. She must be a natural witch.
Of
course, her first priority is magic. She wants to change her boring
life. Unfortunately, she also learns that magic requires a lot of
stuff. Autumn is
going to need a wand, an athame, a chalice, a pentacle, herbs, tarot
cards, a divining mirror—the list is unending! That doesn't
matter, though—she wants it all! Luckily, there are fifteen online
shops willing to sell her everything she needs to be a better pagan.
Score!
Let's
pause here. It's true that pagans take a lot of flak for their
tendency to acquire things.
We have the clangers, the bangers, the candlestick-makers—people
who drip so with pentacles and jewelry that the very idea of sneaking
up on someone is ludicrous. We also have people who make a living (a
very lucrative living) selling props to pagans, a good percentage of
which don't even follow a pagan path.
I refuse to mince words here: paganism has been commercialized half
to death. When half of the introductory books come with a list of
“tools” that a prospective pagan needs, and the other half is
peppered with recipes for incense, teas, or what-have-you, pagans are
perpetually bombarded with the message that they need to buy and
consume in order to practice.
In a certain way, it is the nature of the religion: pagans consider
themselves to be priests and priestesses unto themselves. Whereas in
Christian churches, the church or the priest maintain the trappings
of ceremony, individual pagans, especially those who have a solitary
practice, have a (perceived) need for these things. And with the
message that these items are absolutely essential to establish a
practice, is it any wonder why so many people fall away from the
path? I know when I was fifteen, forty or fifty dollars for a Wiccan
“starter kit” was far out of my price range.
The counter argument should be clear enough: there are work-arounds
for those who cannot afford tools. In fact, in a vast majority of
situations, tools and props are not necessary at all. As a pagan of
fifteen years, I know this, and I do not doubt that a vast majority
of the audience knows this. But how many introductory or readily
available texts address this, really?
The easiest way to learn about paganism and Wicca these days is
through e-books. We tend trust published books more than a random
site on the internet. However, here, again, is another pitfall. The
pagan book market is absolutely flooded with stale, repeated
information. They skim the surface of the spirituality and urge the
reader to seek further knowledge, but usually offer no advice as to
how to go about this. At most, they will give a brief explanation of
meditation. There is no depth—no heart.
Autumn,
a studious girl, has perused what the pagan publishing market has to
offer and believes that she is ready to begin. She has some basic
tools and a vague area where she could practice. She waits
impatiently for the full moon, because the almanac that she bought
told her that her spell would not work under any other conditions—and
she needs a boyfriend, quick!
The
day (or rather, night) comes, and she sneaks out of her room so that
she can hold her first esbat. Before she undresses, she sets up her
altar and casts a circle—she thinks. It's hard to tell for sure,
because she's so distracted by how stupid she feels. She is in her
backyard, naked, holding a letter opener while she chants rhymes—and
she thinks this is
going to attract male interest? The silence of the night around her
is oppressive. Autumn begins to call the corners and gets to the
South before she stops. This is stupid; she feels stupid. There is
no magic here. She packs her things up and puts her clothes back on.
When
she's lying in bed, though, she remembers: for a brief moment, before
she started lighting candles and struggling with charcoal and
incense, when she was just staring up at the full moon with the night
air around her—there was something
in that moment. Something special, maybe even divine. She decides
that it was her fault. She messed up the ritual somehow, and she
goes back to the drawing board.
After some consideration, Autumn decides that she needs a
teacher—someone who can help her recapture that feeling. She
returns to the internet.
There are forums and networks for just this purpose. In fact, there
are several online schools that will teach her to be an effective
witch for a small monthly fee. If she had a credit card, that might
be an option, but she doesn't, so she decides first to send out a
plea for help.
She waits for a response.
And waits.
After about three weeks, when she is beginning to lose interest in
the whole thing, she receives a reply from a coven that is about
twenty miles away in a larger city. She wants to go meet them, but
she can't. Still, this little bit of encouragement urges her to keep
trying. She enrolls in one of the free online schools.
She thinks that the school will at least hold her accountable until
she establishes a routine and practice that works for her. But about
a week into classes, she realizes that this is just the same
information she read in books, but parceled out over the course of a
few weeks. Autumn doesn't even bother to tell her teacher that she
is no longer interested. They never spoke to her personally anyway.
Let us leave Autumn for a while, because Autumn is about to convert
to atheism for a few months.
