PBP #10: Forge Ahead

So I have the regretful news that the Pagan Store/Community Center that I always went to is in Limbo at the moment, and might end up closing.  While I am overjoyed and glad that the current management is moving on to bigger and better things in life, and I hope that the Gods always line her way with joy, I do have to admit a bit of a mope here.  Pagan Stores are different from other Spirituality-type stores.  A Catholic Goods store can close down, but you still have the Church to go to for community and celebration.  Pagans, at the moment, really don't have that.  Sure, we have groups that come together to celebrate major festivals, and a few groups (Aquarian Tabernacle Church, the OTO, etc) have brick-and-mortar temples, but most of us really don't have much to work with.  A Pagan Store goes through trouble, and the community also goes through trouble.  When they close, suddenly the whole Pagan community of the area goes through a period of anomie, and some give up on groups all together.

Originally, this post was going to be about Forgiveness and how such ideas like Confession (or, as it's called now, Reconciliation) can be helpful and cathartic for Pagans.  Maybe I will get to that in a later post.  However, for the moment, I want to focus in impermanence and how we know it all to well.  This is also a call to arms to support our communities, with both time AND money; as well as a sort of spiritual jihad against hubris, which brings down more Pagan communities than it really should.

In May of 2012, Sacred Paths Center closed its doors.  The place was running out of funds fast and no one was committing themselves to work for the place.  When the place closed, its services were scattered to the winds, the shrine and library going to Key of Paradise and the like.  With this scattering many felt the pangs of anomie, and also letting the meme of Pagans being unable to have brick-and-mortar places sneak in.  Anomie does strange things to people.  No matter how anarchic or anti-establishment you are, everyone needs their norms, everyone needs nomos, or law.  Without these customs, we feel adrift in the sea of life itself.

Without delving into sociology or economics and making things messy with things like the Pareto Principle and such, we need to recognize that the only ones we can blame when these things fall apart are ourselves.  The greatest enemies modern Pagans have ever faced are modern Pagans.  If we want a community, we have to pool together resources and volunteers and build it.  This means we have to work on setting aside our own Egos for a moment and get down and dirty with the work.  I'm not saying that you need to be apart of a group or you cannot be solitary, both are very important.  What I am saying, is that a closed fist hits harder and leaves a longer impression than a single finger poking can do.

With the ancient Pagans, everything started at the household cultus (using the Latin instead of the English cult, due to the modern connotations of cult).  First and foremost was the Family, the household Gods, and the Ancestors.  From there they moved out into the community cultus.  From there, they would go to the national cultus, the mysteries, etc.  Now, why was there such a focus on the Family (I need to be smacked for that pun)?  Because, ultimately, the community is like a family of sorts.  Community leaders can take advice from Robb Stark of Game of Thrones when he says that, "being a lord is like being a father, except you have thousands of children."

We need to forge ahead with communities.  We need to forge ahead with connections.  Wicca is about 60 years old, Thelema is over 100 years old, and Neopagan ideas in general are about 300 years old.  It is time we stop thinking of ourselves as musty old lodges full of aging privileged men or flim-flam New Age groups that gather and fall apart a thousand times a minute.  we have a modern system for us that works, the cultus has been built, and we have re-established a sort of household worship.  Now it's time to collect ourselves, gird our loins, and get to building community.  We have the esoteric, we need to strengthen the exoteric.

Forge ahead, your community is counting on you.