So tonight a few of us attended a planning meeting for an upcoming university discussion. We have a local anthropologist who teaches classes and routinely invites various folks to discuss their various paths. I love her and she is wonderful. The problem are my fellow... pagans....!
Honestly, I am never quite sure what the hell that word means. Mostly in this area it gets bantered about by the social misfits who need something on which to blame their lifes problems. Then there are a rather small group of magickians. I have very little in common with the general pagan community. As soon as I open my mouth that I do more than think happy thoughts someone gets bent out of shape. My magickian friends are almost all of other paths and we work it out just fine.
Tonight the unfortunate worlds collided. The good Frater and others who will remain nameless ( you know who you are...) spent an exquisitely difficult two hours of doing everything but planning. Don't get me wrong, I am a social creature. Yet when it is time to work, you work.
I take what I do very seriously and I take the talks very seriously. This may be the only time in the young adults life when they are face to face with someone who holds very different beliefs than their own. For 50 minutes they listen attentively and I take that time seriously. It annoys me to the bounds of my hormonal moodiness that the (to steal a line from a dear friend) "bugfuck crazy" of the community often have more time on their hands and are more than willing to represent "the pagan community". No thank you! Tonight that point was just driven home with the force of an ice pick to the third eye.
I gave it my level best "quiet, hush" bits. It worked on one of them, but the other one was like a 3 year old hyped on sugar. I am going to spend weeks cleaning my aura after this one!
4 comments:
I empathize with you there. I used to see the same shit in Gnostic circles. Used to even be one of the ones engaging in it. But I really WAS a teenager back then, and I doubt these folks can say the same.
I also empathize greatly with you. We have a large "pagan" community here and I just don't quite fit in due to the overwhelming "love and light" fluffiness of it all. Don't get me wrong; fluffy can be good, especially when starting out on various paths, but many of these individuals are much older adults who refuse to acknowledge there's much more to "paganism" than the tunnel vision they espouse. When you attempt to speak to them of other systems and what I consider the deeper roots of magic, they shudder at the thought that I'm doing something "evil" or "dark".
I can only shake my head. I've walked away from the larger community because of it.
Clean House.
I've been putting into practice what a good friend ad fellow magician taught me in the most practical Zen Koan EVAR:
"You: Out of my universe."
Rather like "Be not. Now."
I'll keep the world posted, or those that are trustworthy with such things.
Feel free to borrow my email tagline, RO.
But, I do understand, MyGal, what you've written about. When DH and I meet someone new in the pagan or magical community, we want to know: is this person "normal" that is, can they hold a job, keep ahuman relationship, manage and communicate coherent thought, shower regularly...
I almost never go to pagan meetups anymore.
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