Pagan Ponderings

Commentary on that pagan who was on Wife Swap last night. I mainly read this because I thought, "Oh, hey, when she says 'Janet and Gavin', does she mean the Janet and Gav that dodgyhoodoo talks about?" Janet Farrar, yep. This is probably the first time I've seen people I've heard of referenced by total strangers. Of course, context is also interesting, because it touches on a couple of worrying points that come up in pagan communities (in fact, in most any communities): charlatanism, infighting and interpretational issues.

Charlatanism: This Belladonna character, if this is right, sounds like some piece of work. The reason that Janet and Gavin came up in all of this is because this woman, eight months after asking for teachers, started announcing that they were 3rd degree Gardnerians, citing Janet as part of their lineage via a Mr DeMartins. Never mind the fact that going from seeker to 3rd degree in such a short time is pretty much unheard of. According to the OP (original poster), she asked around and Janet hadn't even heard of this DeMartins person. I'd personally like independent confirmation of that, but I don't think it's unheard of. As far as financial compensation goes ... there's a whole big debate on that going on in the Pentacle forums (which I currently can't access) and the general agreement seems to go that, in terms of acting as a guest speaker at a convention or what have you, charging's okay, but beyond that, not really. There was even minor debate on the issue of charging money for training, but I think that was in the case of things like herbalism or anything else truly specialist, but I don't remember at the minute. However, charging to let people into her Imbolc ritual? On the grounds of "I am using the money to build a new driveway so that more people can come by"? That's just not on. That's not what rituals are about, from what I can tell; they're about communion or achieving a goal or both, not about just being there and saying, "Wow, look at me being a witch!"

(I had a conversation about the purposes of ritual with dodgyhoodoo last night. Basically, the gist of what we said was "Sometimes you have a goal in mind, sometimes you're doing the ritual just to touch base with Deity and sometimes you're doing it as communion and celebration, but whether or not your ritual has a goal, it should have a purpose. You shouldn't just be doing it because it's something you ought to be doing, or because doing so makes you more of a pagan, or because someone told you to." Purposeless ritual, much like purposelessly pretty ritual tools, does not lend credibility to what you are doing. If asked, I'd suggest that, if you're being trained in a trad that is telling you to do a ritual but isn't telling you why, make your own purpose so it's not just a general waste of time.)

Interpretational issues: After the OP had her say, there was a surprising amount of disapproval from the rest of the community. Various people accused her of "violating the Rede". For those of you not in the know, the Rede is that "An ye harm none, do as you will" thing. Also for those of you not in the know, it and the Threefold Rule are not as ancient as people would have you believe (I think dating back to the 1980s), and are seen more as guidelines anyway. The interpretational issue here is probably on the word 'harm', though. Honestly, have these people never heard the one that goes "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"? If you see bullshit, you have a duty to call 'bullshit' in whatever language suits you, lest a whole bunch of people be hurt (conned, badly trained or worse) by the perpetrator of the bullshit. Anyone who wants to hide behind the Rede to keep anyone from saying or doing something that offends them needs to remember that the world is a nasty place, that the Rede is a suggestion rather than a command, and (as someone in those comments quite eloquently said) Baba Yaga was described as having iron skin for a reason. You can't count on "An ye harm none" to prevent people from offending you. Deal with it. If more people ripped into more con artists and uberfluffs, the pagan community might get taken a bit more seriously, you know?

Infighting: "Infighting scares away the newbies!", comes the whimper. "No it bloody doesn't," say I. Yes, it scares away some people ... like, for instance, the fluffies who rely on the Rede to keep people from calling them on bullshit. It does not scare me. You want to know what would scare me? A lack of infighting. With so many different factions and trads, with charlatans, fluffies and high-and-mighty self-righteous types thrown under the same umbrella with the sensible, moderate pagans because the common man can't tell the difference, there has to be infighting. If there wasn't, I'd wonder what the hell cult I'd stumbled onto where no one's allowed an opinion. When it's a matter of faith or ritual, things are going to get heated because faith is a thing that matters to people and if you don't get emotional about what matters to you, you're just plain not human. I can deal with that, provided I'm allowed to join in when I have something to rant about, and I am, so that's okay. The only thing I find intimidating is the onslaught of names that results from the infighting, but that's passing. (I still never got it entirely clear about the Alexandrians and Gardnerians, except that it was a great big schism that wasn't really.) And incidentally, if you don't want infighting, don't perpetuate it by going onto someone's (entirely allowable) warning post on forum and bitch at them for violating Rede and LJ TOS, particularly when they're not doing either of those things.

Overall, I find I'm learning a whole lot about who I am and where I stand on this whole pagan thing, entirely because of the bullshit. I certainly know what I'm not looking for, and now all I have to do is find out how far I want to take what I am looking for. Of course, that would involve getting into a conversation that doesn't involve calling 'bullshit' on fluffies and con artists, which can be rather difficult ... but that's a rant for another day.

Misplaced

And in other news, Ham-Fisted Editor continues to make my life a misery. He prints out a copy of his To-Do list for me, but he prints it off in its incomplete form, and I only notice when I realise that there's an author name at the bottom of the page with no decision attached so I have to go digging through the part of the server he's supposed to put that list on, then go digging through the part of the server he's taken to putting things on instead (all the while just telling me, "It's on the server"), reprint it and hope I haven't typed up letters that have previously been edited.

Then there's the ridiculous paper from hell issue. Look, he comes up to me with this paper that's just come in and says, "This looks like a paper that came in last year. Could you find it for me?" I look through the database by author name; nothing. I look through the email system - in vain, because this paper came in during June 2005 and I've cleared out my email folders up to July, but worth a try for a reference point email; nothing there, either. He is the only person who has a copy of this paper. So he puts it on the server, then writes under the paper that's just come in, "This resembles the paper by [author] submitted last June - copy on the server. Please can you look again for the file and see what happened to it?"

I. Have. Told. You. If it's not in the database, and there's no reference in any email, and there's no T-card, it was never processed, and therefore will have no file. And the reason for that is unclear to me, as I wasn't even here in June (no; I had a different hell-job in June), but I would surmise it has something to do with the fact that you have a copy of that paper when no one else seems to know of its existence. Which suggests to me that it's the other paper, the one where I kept reminding you that you and Lady Competence were supposed to discuss it and you kept brushing it off until yesterday when you bitched me out for filing that file and insisting that's why you haven't remembered about it, all over again. And watch as I take the shit for this. Watch and grin, you ham-fisted fuck.

I think I may go to lunch early. I still have the post run to do.

Booklist Revised

Read:
Devices and Desires
Holistic Herbal: A Safe and Practical Guide to Making and Using Herbal Remedies
Cunninghams's Encyclopaedia of Magical Herbs
House of Leaves
The Bloody Chamber
Tipping the Velvet
Furnace
Neutron Star
Neuromancer
Memoirs of a Geisha
Lolita
The Secret History
Total: 12

In Progress:
Dune
The Bhagavad Gita
Beowulf
The Bible
The Sicilian

Currently Reading:
Dune

Next Up:
The Sicilian

I really enjoyed The Secret History; my favourite recommended book thus far. Neuromancer and The Furnace weren't bad, but Neutron Star just really didn't do it for me and House of Leaves, recommended to me greatly by dodgyhoodoo, really did leave me cold. So thanks for the suggestion, weaselbitch.

I may have to put Dune aside for awhile. Herbert seems to have this thing about chucking you headfirst into the middle of this really complicated universe without so much as a how d'you do and lets you sink or swim on your own. I don't seem to be sinking too badly, but it's a bit of a slog and a trial. I'm sure I'll get into a rhythm with it eventually, though. After that I'm going to polish off The Sicilian, which I picked up from one of the local charity shops the week I was ill (yay, me), so I've got at least that long to decide what I'm going to read next. The listed books I see in front of me include Slaughterhouse 5, Catch-22, The Wasp Factory, Ulysses, Paradise Lost, Tales of the Cthulu Mythos, The Koran, The Bible and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The religious texts are probably not going to be read in one go. The Milton is a bit hefty for a commute read. I really should at least polish off Beowulf and The Bhagavad Gita before I read anything else, though. Maybe I can go back to those when I need a break from Arrakis.

The other thing I've read recently is V for Vendetta; don't know if that one counts, though. It's fairly long as these things go, but it's still a TPB and I promised I wouldn't count those. (If I did, I'd have to count Those Left Behind, the first of the Serenity comics, and it was really too short.) In any case, it was a fantastic story and now I'm looking forward to the film more than ever.

So many films coming up that I'm looking forward to. Well, relatively; this is coming from the person who only saw three films at the cinema in the last 12 months (Serenity, Saw II and Land of the Dead). But given that I have plans to see at least three films that are coming out in the next couple of months (V for Vendetta, The Proposition and Silent Hill), it's looking up this year. Note to self: stock up on painkillers. Cinema always gives me migraine.