Beltane and the Union of Opposites

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I’m joining the Tarot Blog Hop on the theme of the Beltane and the Union of Opposites.

More and more I have a challenge with opposites, or more specifically, binaries. Here’s what I mean. I think that they can be useful way to frame things, and in fact, I think people naturally think in binary terms. However, binary also creates black/white thinking. We humans get too used to the boxes, the pendulum swing…and we forget about the spectrum in the middle. This causes us no end of problems; typically when I write about that it’s in one of my leadership blog posts, but it finds its way into our magical and personal growth work as well.

On the other hand, there is some seriously powerful magic when we find that centerpoint, that balance of opposites.

The balance of opposites in the Tarot is often represented by the Lovers card, which is also the sixth card. The sacred geometry used to represent the balance of opposites is two triangles overlapping–a six-pointed star. In the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, this is represented best by Tiphareth, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiferet, which holds a position of balance of extremes. It is in the middle pillar holding the balance between Strength/Judgment and Mercy/Compassion. It’s also midway between Earth/Manifestation and Transcendant Spirit. Tiphareth is associated with beauty, balance, and love. It’s represented by a golden sun.

Now…what I think is sort of interesting–just to go on a metaphysical-nerd tangent–is that Venus (the planet/deity) is associated with a different sphere, but Venus is so often associated with beauty and love. Further, Venus (the planet) is the brightest object in our sky, after the Sun and the Moon, and thus held a lot of importance for our astronomy/astrology-obsessed ancestors. I’ve gone into some depth on this topic and how it connects to my own experience of divine communion in an essay published in the anthology “A Mantle of Stars.”

In fact, Venus is crucial for star observation and rectifying (aligning/correcting) the calendar. Every 8 years Venus sketches a wide looping spirograph around the Sun in the form of a rose-shaped pentacle. And every 8 years, you can use Venus to correct your solar, lunar, and sidereal (star) calendar to within a few minutes. Every 40 years you can correct your calendar to within a few seconds.

So we have a five-pointed star very clearly associated with the Goddess of Love. Roses, if you didn’t know, have 5 petals. Or at least, their petals are patterned in fives. Roses have continued to be associated with love and with Goddesses–in cathedrals you have rose windows, and Mary’s rosary, and you also have the rosy cross. In fact, the rose is often a symbol of the heart in the West, and occasionally it’s a metaphor for the Grail. The lotus would be the Eastern equivalent. The heart chakra is roughly in the center of our bodies and you can look at the heart as the meeting place of our various body functions–all blood must enter and leave the heart, so it is literally our center.

The Grail is another fantastic example of the union of opposites. Going back to that six-pointed star, this is actually a great visual for the Grail. The upward pointing triangle is typically associated with fire (active) whereas the downward pointing triangle is associated with water (receptive). Look at a chalice with a base; the cup part is the downward-pointing triangle. The base holding it up is the upward-pointing triangle.

And yet–here we get some mixed symbols again. The cup is usually associated just with water and is thought of as feminine, passive.

Here is where we start to run into some problems with those opposites and those boxes, where the symbolism starts becoming too rigid to be useful.

The Dangers of the Gender Binary
I’ve written in the past how I work to make rituals more inclusive for participants with diverse sexualities and allow for the entire spectrum of gender. In other words, I don’t really do the Wheel of the Year making the great heterosexual union of Goddess and God the focus of my work. I’ve written more about that in my Ritual Facilitation book, however, when I do a Beltane ritual I don’t focus so much on heterosexual sex.

It’s not because I think sex is bad or dirty…it’s that I don’t think that’s all there is to Beltane.

I can see how in an agrarian society–perhaps a village or a tribe where your entire group’s survival depended upon the fertility of the plants, the animals, and the humans–that maybe there needed to be a lot more magical and intentional work around fertility. Or at least the illusion of some control over fertility. For me, there are so many other avenues to explore in rituals. If I’m doing public ritual work, my job is to support the community with spiritual work that will serve and fill the group, and usually I’m focusing more on personal transformation work. In fact, nobody ever takes me up on sending them actual fertility energy.

I do work as an activist to support moving beyond the gender binary, and I’m also a supporter of non-dualist religious and spiritual work. I find that we often get caught up in those binaries and I think rather a lot of the problems with our society come out of the philosophical idea of dualism.

Actually, one of my challenges with most ceremonial magical traditions and orders is the fairly rigid binaries, often based upon the gender binary.

Do I think that the Sun is masculine and the Moon is feminine? Do I think that male is active, female is passive? Nope. Dualism is actually one of the really core problems I have with a lot of the dominant religions, because once you start going into that binary, that dualism, you eventually have the idea that there’s Good and Evil. And somehow, it always works out that Good is “up” and Bad is “down.” I like to call this the “gravity-based spiritual model.” Up is sky, masculine. Down is earth, feminine.

So you can see where dualism and gender binary-ism starts to cross over into a problematic area, because once you get your black/white dualism going, ultimately someone has to end up in the “evil” or “bad” box. Usually it’s women and people with darker skin. Dualism also makes bodies/the flesh/needs of the flesh “bad,” and transcendence/rising above the body “good.”

The good/evil dualism is how you end up with misogyny, sexism and racism. It’s how you end up with a sex-shaming culture, among a host of other cultural shadows.

Value of Opposites
I think there is some value to opposites, to binaries, because it’s an easy way to articulate a complicated concept. The problem comes in that we see everything fitting into those easy categories and we forget that there is a spectrum between. People are really terrible at holding paradox, at holding gray area, at holding the balance point.

And yet–maybe that’s the magic of this particular six pointed star, this particular balance of opposites.

Maybe that’s why the idea of the Union of Opposites holds so much allure for us–because it’s darned hard to do. Imagine holding two conflicting truths and not losing your mind. Imagine two people who both believe something that conflicts with each other’s beliefs, and yet, not making the other person wrong, holding the idea that their truth, and the other’s truth, could both be true without cancelling each other out.

Fire and Water
I tend to get pretty irked at the idea of assigning gender to metaphysical concepts or to planetary bodies, or anything that begins that quick slippery slope into dualism. Yes, I’m female, and yes, I’m heterosexual. In no way does that mean I’m supposed to hold a passive role, or any of the other gender associations with being female. Nor does that mean that my body is somehow bad. Or that my desire for sex is sinful or bad.

However, I do tend to like working with the concepts of Fire and Water, particularly around the idea of the Grail as well as the shamanic three worlds/tree of life. Fire and Water are opposites I can work with, as are Sky and Earth. I think of the water that falls from the sky to seep down into the ground, into the great cauldron of the waters below the ground that rise up through sacred springs to flow back out into the world, to rise up from the heat of the sun into the sky and fall again. I think of the fire that is the sun, that is the stars, the life-giving heat. I think of our bodies–gravity-bound as they are–and how we naturally reach up. When we think about reaching for something just out of reach, when we think about setting a magical intention to reach for a dream, we reach up, like the branches of the trees reach up for the sun. It’s instinctive.

And when we are working with our own shadows, our own inner darkness, it’s the closeness of the earth, the cave into the Underworld that calls us to that work. Under the earth in the cave, by the roots of the World Tree, the darkness isn’t bad. Down isn’t bad. Down and Darkness is depth, it’s the cycles of composting. Leaves composting are no more evil than our bodies are. Down and deep are the mysteries of decomposition and death. It’s the less-than-pretty things that we don’t always want to look at, and yet are part of the mysteries of life if we’d stop disowning them.

Fire and water is also the mystery of the cauldron, which was the precursor of the Grail. Without fire, you can’t heat up the cauldron. Without heat, there isn’t movement, there isn’t energy. For me, fire isn’t about gender, it’s about action. Water is about depth and dreaming.

I often think of water as that mysterious pool that holds the deep magic if I dip my hands in and reach down. It’s the waters of inspiration, the waters of life.

Grails, Service, and The Beloved
One of the mysteries of the Grail–which is a water-bearing vessel, and yet holds the properties of the Union of Opposites–is that it calls people to serve it. People often seek the Grail wanting to drink of the waters of inspiration and immortality, but the true Grail question isn’t asking the Grail what the Grail can do for you.

The Grail chooses its bearers based upon their ability to serve it. The Grail question is always, “How can I serve thee?” The Grail chooses those who are worthy to bear the vessel, those who will bring healing and inspiration. Like the heart, the mystery of the Grail is not about holding onto energy, but rather, systole and diastole–the heart must pump all the blood out of itself before it can refill.

I see that as part of that mystery of the Union of Opposites–the pulse of life, filling and refilling. The Union of Opposites is not static. It’s not a place we can stay. We get to be there for that brief moment, for that heartbeat, that moment of balance before we have to start over again. We can reach the fingertips of the divine, we can connect with that something beyond, but only for those briefest of moments.

The poetry of Rumi has often been an inspiration to me; Rumi often refers to the divine as “Beloved,” and the poems refer to that relationship with the divine as like a relationship with a lover.

But if you’ve experienced true mysticism–that is, direct communion with the divine, by whatever name you call it–you know that it’s a fleeting moment. You don’t get to stay there. You can hold onto that union for the briefest of moments. For me, it is often an ecstatic rapture, a weeping. For me it is a nondual state–grief and joy and sorrow are all one. My body is divine, it is a vessel of service, and I am simultaneously inside and outside my body. I am connected to the all-that-is. Most recently, this felt like being cradled in a great ocean, being held and told, “You are not alone. You were never alone.” I could feel that sense that the veil of flesh between us all is such an illusion. And that the separation from the Greater Whole that is the divine is just as painful for the divine as it is for us, but that there is some reason for it.

Finding that balance in the Union of Opposites, that divine connection, is the moment that inspires me. And it goes so far beyond gender and binaries.

Metaphysical Maps
All the metaphysical and cosmological models we have–the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, the Tarot, correspondence tables, Astrology–I think all of it is an attempt to come up with a model and a metaphor for something that is really a lot larger and a lot deeper than that. And yet, we are human. We are compelled to design models to understand the universe. Just like mystic poets are compelled to try to capture their experience of divine communion by writing about it, even though nobody can actually convey a mystery–we can only live it for ourselves.

Our ancestors tracked the path of Venus in the sky over decades and centuries. And, other ancestors came up with the esoteric wisdom contained within the Tarot. Other ancestors figured out the wheel of the year, the cycles of equinoxes and solstices and connected those to the cycles of hunting and planting, and somewhere in there also mapped them to the cycle of human fertility, which is how we have come to associate Beltane with sex and fertility. Our ancestors have worked hard to understand the underpinnings of the universe and the cosmos, and to understand the the outer and the inner, the movement of the stars and the depths of ourselves and our shadows. Our ancestors have tried to put words to that divine communion, that perfect Union of Opposites that is so elusive.

So too can each of us work to understand ourselves. Can we find a way to find that point of balance and beauty and love without the “othering” of dualism? Without relying too much on that binary, particularly the gender binary?

It’s tough work. But then, I figure if my ancestors can spend 40 years tracking the cycle of Venus to align calendars, I can do a little bit of intensive personal work on my part to challenge some of my assumptions about the world and how things work.

What is a Union of Opposites for you? What does the Lovers card mean? And are there binaries you hold onto that perhaps no longer serve?

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What is Magic? Part 3

I think that, with magic, we want proof. We want flash. We want miracles.  And when we don’t get those, we wonder what magic is. When we see how magic works, it doesn’t seem very flashy…or, we realize how unimportant the flash really is.

Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to put my finger on magic. Because magic is, at its core, one of the mysteries. You can’t work it til you experience it, and it’s really hard to put it into words.

People try. They write spell books that read more like recipes, they create informational graphics like the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to explain how the universe works…but that doesn’t teach what’s going on beneath. It’s a map, but it’s not the terrain. Nor is it the only map. It’s not the actual underpinnings of the universe, just one map to it that may or may not work for you or for me.

And at the core, I think that word magic has so much bound up in it. It’s a powerful, loaded word all on its own.

I think we desperately seek magic. We humans desperately seek that unexplained, that enchantment, that thrilling delight that there’s something intense below the surface. We seek that breathtaking reveal…and that’s the essence of the mysteries.

Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. But it also isn’t something you can readily explain to others–that’s the nature of one of the mysteries.

Some people want to be part of the in-crowd that understands these mysteries, wanting that power, wanting to be special, wanting to control the forces of nature. I think magic will always have that inherent fascination and attraction. Take the word charisma; I talk a lot in my ritual classes about what charisma means and how to be a charismatic facilitator, but the word alone has that magical quality to it–a sparkle, a charm.

I think that what a lot of other folks want out of magic is to believe in miracles. To believe that there is something out there looking out for them, that’s going to rescue them in a time of need. Or perhaps we’re just looking for proof that there is some order to the universe and that we have some control over that.

I think perhaps it’s a little terrifying to think that we are alone on a floating marble spinning out in the blackness of space and that we’re on our own, that there’s no divine plan, no divine beings to rescue us, no powers to control all the things that could go wrong.

External Magic and Need
That’s also some of what I mean with what I wrote earlier…the more out of control I feel in a situation, the more I feel that I’m powerless and things are happening to me, the more I want something magical, mystical, and unseen to be able “rescue me,” in the case of working with the divine. Or…the power to manipulate the forces of the universe to rescue myself.

Now, again, that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe external magic is impossible. I have done the occasional specific, focused magical work to solve  a specific problem. In the class, Taylor spends some time talking about the difference between magic that is more reactive to fix a problem, vs. magic that is more intentional and by design, more proactive.

I think that it’s the easiest to see the direct impact of magic when we do the big external magic spell…but I think that the magic that has more power and more lasting impact tends to be more of the internal magic and magic by design.

I liken it to a laser beam and a tsunami. The tiny earthquake can cause the tsunami; that’s magic by design, working the subtle energies that have a bigger long-term impact. But most of the magic people talk about in the Pagan/magical communities and in books is more of the “laser beam” magic. People want to be able to light a specific candle and incense, chant specific words, and target their laser beam and have phenomenal immediate results.

What I think is really core to making any magic work is need. Deep need. The deeper the need, the more juice there is.

We start with that deep need. We need something to fuel the change. But we also need perception. We need to be able to perceive at least a little bit of that Matrix code of the universe. In many cases I think we do this by instinct. But one core piece of this is, we can’t ask for an outcome if we cannot perceive that outcome. The need leads to a focused intention. A lot of magic really boils down to, what do you want? And what are you willing to do to get that?

Through the popularization of the law of attraction, most folks probably already know that a positive intention works better than a negative one.

Most magical texts focus on the process in the form of spellwork. In other words, it breaks magic down to the recipe. But, a recipe is not a cake. Various functions are broken down into tactics, logistics, steps…use this incense, light that candle, use this sigil, do this only when the moon is ___, speak exactly these words…

Need Vs. Tactics
What I can tell you is that the most potent external magical work that I’ve personally done–the stuff that clearly had a particular external outcome–I wasn’t thinking too hard about the steps. It was pretty primal stuff; I was filled with a specific, driving need. I wasn’t lighting blessed candles and burning incense or looking at correspondence tables and spellbooks.

Sometimes I was rocking back and forth, weeping, burning things someone had given to me…breaking a symbol of someone else’s power over me…tearing apart a piece of furniture or a shirt to move past my rage…drawing symbols representing a particular intention in my own blood.

….And if bodily fluids gross you out, keep in mind that a lot of old magic uses urine, blood, and other bodily materials. I know candles and incense are “prettier” but the deep magic often requires that we move past “pretty.” I’ll write more about that in my Hexes Part 2 post coming up.

For that matter, I’ve used modern tools and woven magic into some of my graphic designs and artwork, or even into Facebook posts and blogging. Use the tools that work.

Specific tools and scents can become a mnemonic, but I don’t tend to believe they bear any power on their own, they just anchor the intention and are important because of their connection to me and my association with them. And not to discount that power–since I believe that most magic really is about intention. My associating a power with an object becomes part of the intention package.

We each are going to have our own associations with those things–candles, colors, sigils, tools, scents. It’s also utilizing the idea of what Starhawk calls Younger Self, Thorn calls Sticky One, or just going with the more visceral aspects of ourselves, working with the learning modalities that take us into our deeper self, getting at our subconscious.

I find that my talky self/conscious self doesn’t do great magical work. Me crying and rocking back and forth in front of a fire? Yes. Me trance dancing for hours til I’m sweating? Yes. Me zoned out working on a photoshop file for ten hours straight? Yes.

How Does it Work?
It’s not the candles doing the work, it’s not the incense or the athame. It’s your need, your juice, your focus. Your will. I think that’s probably half the battle–because, I work with a lot of people who genuinely cannot articulate what they want. Sometimes they can articulate what they don’t want, but often they can’t even articulate that.

I think that’s a lot of how external magic works. By perceiving that reality, that dream, that goal, you make it more likely to occur. If you can’t perceive the goal, you can’t reach for it very effectively.

I think rather a lot of magic, internal or external, is ringing the bell of the universe, if the universe were music. It’s saying, “Hey, I need it to happen. Pay attention to this, this is the outcome I want.” And sometimes, the Matrix code of the universe is going to be in alignment with that and the synchronicities will start to fall into place.

Sometimes, you are swimming upstream. Like if you are trying to levitate a rock.

People ask me all the time if I believe in energy healing, and I suppose the best answer I have is a quote from the movie Deep Impact. “Sometimes, the answer is no.” I believe we can pray and ask for healing, we can do energy healing, and sometimes it’ll work. And sometimes, it won’t.

I can say this though; if you don’t ring that bell, if you don’t imprint what you want into the probability field, it’s even less likely to happen.

What I think gets in our way is our ego hangups. I see a lot of people trying to do magic who get caught up in wanting their magic to work. And, it sounds pretty reasonable–of course you want that thing to happen, otherwise why would you be doing magic for it.

But, what seems to happen is that a lot of people chasing after magic are looking to be acknowledged as badasses–and that’s a problem, because ultimately that’s poor self esteem, that’s a hole in the ego. Thus, while I don’t believe internal work is the only magic, I do believe it’s the best place to start because if you have all those holes in your ego, it’s hard to hold water–hard to hold the spiritual juice that fuels your magic in the first place. It’s hard to have enough juice to make things happen; you’ll be spending all your energy on looking like a badass.

I have noticed that the healthier my self esteem got, the more true confidence I gained (vs. arrogance,) the more energy that I had for the work that called to me. I didn’t have to be defensive all the time. Being defensive takes a lot of energy.

Values, Beliefs, Ethics, and Morals
I find myself in agreement with Taylor’s writing on this topic–that our personal beliefs and ethics will significantly impact what type of magic we can do, or feel that we can do. If we’re trying to do something we genuinely don’t believe in, that isn’t really going to work. And if we’re going against our ethics, we’re going to be worrying about that and that’s also pretty ineffective for magical work.

Harm none is often the one ethical rule that’s cited for Pagans, though it’s actually something that comes out of modern Wicca and I have a feeling it was more of a PR move to make people feel more comfortable with the word “Witch.”

Though harm none is something that I think is good to aim for, I don’t really believe it’s possible. For that matter, I’ve written in my Pagan leadership articles that I see Pagans work out elaborate phrasings for their spellwork so that it serves the highest purpose and doesn’t hurt anyone…and then I’ve later seen that person doing incredibly harmful things to people. I don’t believe there’s much purpose in separating out what I do ethically in my magical/spiritual life and my mundane life; my ethics are my ethics.

Harm happens, and it’s a part of the cycle of life. When I eat fruit or vegetables or meat, I’ve contributed to the death of that plant or animal. When I brush my teeth, I’m killing millions of bacteria. When I apply for and get a job, I’m taking that job from someone else. When I fire someone from a job–even if they did poor work–I’m definitely screwing up their life. If I remove someone from my group for bad behavior, even though there is cause, that may be causing them harm. But it’s a choice that I’m comfortable making because it’s the right thing to do.

For me, my own ethical approach is trying to avoid harming whenever possible, but when I have to make a choice, I go with the Vulcan “Good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one.” It’s a rule of thumb…and sometimes the path to hell is paved in good intentions. But I do my best; I still screw up sometimes.

I think that the essence of my belief as a Pantheist is that I can’t know every single impact my life will have. My stepping on this bug here may flap a butterfly’s wings there, and so on. The nature of God/The Divine is that there’s a pattern to it all, but it’s a way bigger pattern than I can encompass, and that’s about the place where I lean into agnosticism–there’s stuff I just don’t know. Can’t know.

I can strive to do the least harm possible. And sometimes, I need to hurt someone to prevent further harm. What I mean is, perhaps you come to me with a broken arm. I need to set the bone, and it’s going to hurt you. But, it’ll heal straight, and that’s what you really want.

I face situations like that all the time where I need to do or say something (like offer direct constructive feedback to a team member) that may cause shorter-term hurt and distress, but it’s in the interest of longer-term good.

What is Magic?
I think that magic is at its essence energy and shaping energy. And if I want to take the word magic out of it for just a moment, if I look at energy, I can look at how I can shape someone’s day with my intention. I get onto a city bus and smile, and thank the bus driver. Or, I get onto the bus, scowl, and berate him for the bus not taking my card.

I look at the way we each can impact each other’s energy, and how people can either work to make people’s day better with a smile, or work to make people’s day suck just by scowling and berating service employees.

That may seem pretty unmagical, but it’s energy, it’s intention followed through by action, and it’s largely unseen. In fact, going back to the example of charisma, one of the ways people try to encapsulate what makes someone charismatic boils down to, “They just made me smile, I felt good being around them.” That feels like magic, but really, all you need to do to have that kind of charisma magic is smile, and genuinely thank them for their work. That’s all it takes.

Not very flashy–but pretty effective.

What is magic for me?

Magic is the ability to tap the unseen. To change myself, to change the world around me, with my will. It’s also the ability to connect to that greater divine, to reach a fingertip past the veil to connect to that something larger. It’s the ability to inspire, to enchant, to bring the power of hope into people’s lives, to help others connect to that something larger, something deeper.

It’s the ability to focus on a particular intention, a dream, a goal…and to manifest that through my will, through my actions.

In my specific case, any of the magical work I do, I ultimately hold the the goal of bringing positive change to myself, to others, to the world around me. I look at speaking the truth as a form of poetic magic. I speak the truth and my words have power. And I speak the truth of what I will to be so, and my words have power. My upcoming Hexes and Curses Part 2 article will touch on truthspeaking as a form of hex or curse. Truth is my very favorite form of hex–or of any form of spellwork, for that matter, and I’ll explain more what I mean by that.

I think magic is, by its nature, mystery–something that is experienced and hard to explained. It’s power–the ability to take an action. And it’s in human nature to envy someone with a power we want.

Magic isn’t “making things happen without work.” It’s not levitating stones. Magic is the hidden, unseen that not everyone else can see, and so there is a mystery to it. When you see the unseen, you can shape it, reach for it, shift it. But you have to understand the language–magic has both an art to it, and a science.

Magic is still that thrill up my spine when some synchronicity falls into place or I connect to the divine. But it’s also technology.

Magic is shaping the world around me with my intention, and working to bring that into being.

** If you’re interested in exploring your own relationship to magic and getting a good baseline of training, I do recommend Taylor Ellwood’s class the Process of Magic.

What Is Magic? Part 2

I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel.

A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept. But if you haven’t read Part 1, you might want to go to the previous post and check that out so that this one makes a bit more sense.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. If you want to know more about what I mean, watch the show “What the Bleep” for some pretty cool science that sounds an awful lot like magic.

I suppose one way to put it is that some of us can more easily see this type of magic because we’ve trained ourselves to, or because we have particular psychic abilities like precognition. But, the more we know about magic and how it works–the more it seems to become science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

Ultimately, what I’ve come to is that magic is a lot like the Matrix code. In the ritual I mentioned in Part 1, there was that moment where I realized that so much of what I thought was magical in ritual was actually just ritual technique. It was like that moment where Neo wakes up and realizes what’s actually going on. It’s not a comfortable moment.

But understanding magic is going that layer deeper when Neo sees the underpinnings of the Matrix, when he can look at an object in the Matrix and see its underlying code. I think that that begins to describe what a skilled magician is doing and perceiving. They see/sense the underpinnings of the world, the energy, the physics, the quantum entanglement. I suppose it’s a general axiom that you can’t really manipulate/transform things unless you can see/perceive/feel them.

I think some of the common connotations of the word magic include cool, powerful…and the sense of control.

And I think it’s the idea of control–of power–that is where we start to run into some problems.

Illusion of Control
Imagine we live in a world where the elements can rip your house apart with a tornado or cause a tsunami or crops fail in drought…wait, we do live in that world. Ok, imagine that it’s 4,000 years ago. When the sun starts to go south it gets cold, and every year we wonder, will the days ever grow longer or will we all just freeze in eternal night? When the sun is blacked out in an eclipse or a comet appears in the sunset sky, we wonder, is this a portent of doom?

Now–you’re probably thinking, none of that is magic. True, it’s science. But at that time, it was part of the unseen, terrifying world. If you didn’t know why something was happening, or how you could fix that, it fell into that realm of the magical, the terrifying.

The druid/shaman/witch/wise person who knew the cycles of the seasons and the solstices, who knew the phases of the moon and when the eclipses happened–they held the magic. The wise one who held the mysteries knew what signs preceded a drought, what signs would lead to water or to game. They knew how to heal with specific herbs. None of this is magic, unless you don’t know the mysteries.

But I think part of what gets woven into our idea of magic is the idea that we can control these vast forces with enough magical juice. By vast forces, what I mean is the weather, for instance. The idea that we can end a drought, that we can turn aside a tsunami.

I’ll be honest. I believe in a lot of specific types of magic, and I believe in the power of intention, but for the really big stuff like that, I think it’s a lot of hubris on the part of the magical workers.

Though, I believe that a lot of magical beliefs and religious beliefs are actually social controls. The idea that if you live a good life and give to the church and follow the rules, that you’ll get rewarded in heaven…that’s a social control. Similarly, humans don’t cope well with feeling like we can’t control what’s going on, so the idea that we can do spellwork to break a drought or to turn aside a storm is also something that I feel falls into the category of social control.

Some of our ancestors certainly spent a lot of effort making offerings (including the occasional human sacrifice) to appease the gods and shift the weather, or end a war. Do I think it works like that? Not really. I think that everyone stays a lot calmer when we feel like we’re doing something.

We humans just don’t cope with the idea that the earth could shrug and we’re wiped out and we have no control over that. So I think in some cases, magic becomes an illusion of control.

I’m not saying that magic doesn’t ever work–I’m just talking in terms of perception and scale. And keep in mind, I’m also looking at magic from the perspective of, it’s working with the universe, with physics, with energy…and ultimately a lot of things that once were considered “magic” are now things you can do on your cell phone. You can tell the day/time of year, you can tell the compass points, you can tell what the weather is going to be like this week.

Internal And External Magic 
Let’s take a step back and talk about some specific types of magic framed as internal and external magic. In Part 1 I referenced how many of my mentors put forth the idea that the only “real” magic was doing personal work, in other words, transforming myself.

Now–you could do worse as far as an approach to magic, because most people come at magic from the more external-focused perspective. They are trying to impact the world around them without having done the personal work to become the person who can manifest that work. Much less, the personal work to approach magic without being egomaniacal about it.

And let’s be frank; in the Pagan and magical communities, there is no lack of egotistical “I’m a powerful magician” types.

Internal magic is basically working on myself, working to become a better, stronger person. The idea with this flow of magic is, by transforming myself, I can become the person who manifests my dreams. That the magic works on my consciousness and identity so that I myself, physically and through my actions, can manifest what I want.

Taken to an extreme, the idea is that no external magic works, ever. I’m not in that camp, I just tend to believe that the bigger and more physical an external magical working is, the more I’m swimming upstream against physics.

I want to make a brief re-mention of Dion Fortune’s definition of magic. In Part 1, I pondered whether the idea of “Changing consciousness at will” was a reference to being able to get into an altered state to be able to do magic, or, whether the magic was the change in consciousness, the change in self identity. Again, I think it’s both. If we’re talking about getting into a trance state/altered state, that certainly makes it easier to see the underlying “Matrix code” of the universe.

But, it’s also worth pointing out that internal magic–actually hacking your own personal programming to transform yourself and heal yourself–is some of the hardest work there is. Just because it’s internal doesn’t mean its easy.

External Magic
Getting back to external magic, I do believe that it is possible to influence the world around me with magic. But, again, I also believe that the more of an external physical result I want, the harder I have to work.

I also believe that a lot of people want to light the pink candle and wish for love and bam, the universe drops someone on their doorstep. Whatever spellwork you’re doing, you still need to do the physical, mundane work.

Too many people look at magic as “that thing that happened because I wished for it and I didn’t need to do any work.”

I believe that external magic requires an external action. Will is powerful, but without action, nothing happens. I look at a lot of the magical work that I do externally as changing consciousness. It’s actually fairly easy to change the consciousness of others just through writing. Posting a blog like this one, posting on my Facebook, I have the power to bring up ideas, to potentially change minds.

And if you think that isn’t magic, remember–changing consciousness is a part of magic. For that matter, think about how Bards and Poets were part of the druidic order.

Words, stories, and storytellers have always been a part of magic. So has music–think of the word enchantment. En-chant-ment. Chanting is a powerful technique for changing consciousness; I use it every time I facilitate a ritual.

I think that magic is easiest to achieve in ways that are more subtle, but the problem is, those results aren’t very flashy, and if you’re looking for big flashy results, internal magic/personal work isn’t what’s going to get you there. But then you have to ask yourself, why do you want the big flashy results? I know that once I did a lot of internal magical work, I had a lot less need for flash. The more self confidence I built, the less external validation I need.

Magic works really well for changing myself. It works well for changing the consciousness of myself and others where I have that influence. But the more specific external physical results I want, the more I’m swimming upstream against the nature of physics. Or, the more physical work I’m going to need to do to take it beyond just my intention and my will.

Magic and Self Identity
I have used magic to change my life, to become the person who can do the things I want to do. I have used magic to become the person who isn’t crippled by depression. This took will, it took focus, it took transforming my deepest programming about who I was.

I often refer to this type of magic as breaking the spell.

Every time someone repeats words to us, particularly those hurtful words like, “You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re worthless, nobody likes you,” or whatever we’ve suffered in our past, that becomes a spell that binds us. See what I mean about the power of words? This is what I meant in my article on hexes and curses.

It’s pretty easy to hex someone, just keep repeating something until they believe it. (That’s also called emotional and verbal abuse.) But it’s a pretty powerful form of enchantment–I say this because it obviously works.

All the little things that we think every day, all the negative self talk…it’s all a spell that was cast over us. And then we keep casting the spell, over and over. I’ve written a bit more about this on the Pagan Activist blog http://paganactivist.com/2013/12/02/media-mind-control-myth-and-magic/

By shifting those stories, we break the spell that we–and society–have placed on ourselves. There are so many ways that we keep ourselves stuck in the role of victim, and then we contribute to our own problems, our own self image.

It’s powerful magical work to transform ourselves. To move past an addiction, to move past a damaging behavior. In my case, I can see the clear results of years of hard work and internal magic.

In March of this year I wrote 100,000 words, and I have several books published and more on the way. The me who was stuck in the pit of depression couldn’t have done that. My work paid off, but it’s not as flashy as what people have come to expect with “magic.”

Divine Communion
Divine communion is probably the most common type of magical work that I do besides internal magic. This type of magic falls under the category of theurgy.

Magic to connect to the divine is also often about changing consciousness. For that matter–I actually have a difficult time getting into a deep enough trance state to connect to the divine, which has frustrated me for a lot of my life.

In my tween and teen years, I felt like the divine was just beyond my fingertips. I had visions, I had dreams. The dreams got more intense in my 20’s and I began to experience something I called the Water Temple. It was like the Grail, but an entire temple, and I would connect to the flowing water and know that it was my goddess/angel. I’d feel that resonant sense in my chest, that tear-bringing sense of union.

And when I finally gained access to the kind of leadership training I had been seeking…those dreams and visions went away. I wrote about this at some length in my essay in the anthology “A Mantle of Stars.”

I don’t have words for the aching frustration of the years without that divine communion. That connection was what had called me to spiritual service in the first place. Now I was serving–but I was cut off. I could get other people into that headspace, but not myself.

Taylor Ellwood wrote something on his Facebook that resonated a lot with me. “The genuine experience of magic is something which changes you and your relationship to the universe. It’s not a result. It’s an ongoing relationship that informs how you experience the world and your place in it, as well as how you change it.”

That made me think for a good long while. I started to wonder, what is the difference between magic and mysticism? What’s the difference between magic and divine communion?

That’s when I went back to what I had been taught at the Diana’s Grove Mystery School and I had to acknowledge that some of their definitions of a Magical vs. a Mystery tradition (as I referenced in Part 1) were not really working for me, and were in many ways inaccurate.

Divine communion is a magical experience. In my essay in “A Mantle of Stars” I reference how I eventually found my way back to divine communion. I found myself at last in a weeping rapture, complete love and connection with that divine I had found just out of reach.

And there isn’t much point in putting it into words because that’s the nature of mystery–I can talk about it, but I can’t give you the experience. A mystery is something only you can live.

What is Magic?
And maybe that starts to get at what we want magic to be. We want proof. We want flash. We want miracles.  And when we don’t get those, we wonder what magic is. When we see how magic works, it doesn’t seem very flashy…or, we realize how unimportant the flash really is.

To be continued in Part 3…

** If you’re interested in exploring your own relationship to magic and getting a good baseline of training, I do recommend Taylor Ellwood’s class, the Process of Magic.

What Is Magic? Part 2

I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel.

A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept. But if you haven’t read Part 1, you might want to go to the previous post and check that out so that this one makes a bit more sense.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. If you want to know more about what I mean, watch the show “What the Bleep” for some pretty cool science that sounds an awful lot like magic.

I suppose one way to put it is that some of us can more easily see this type of magic because we’ve trained ourselves to, or because we have particular psychic abilities like precognition. But, the more we know about magic and how it works–the more it seems to become science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

Ultimately, what I’ve come to is that magic is a lot like the Matrix code. In the ritual I mentioned in Part 1, there was that moment where I realized that so much of what I thought was magical in ritual was actually just ritual technique. It was like that moment where Neo wakes up and realizes what’s actually going on. It’s not a comfortable moment.

But understanding magic is going that layer deeper when Neo sees the underpinnings of the Matrix, when he can look at an object in the Matrix and see its underlying code. I think that that begins to describe what a skilled magician is doing and perceiving. They see/sense the underpinnings of the world, the energy, the physics, the quantum entanglement. I suppose it’s a general axiom that you can’t really manipulate/transform things unless you can see/perceive/feel them.

I think some of the common connotations of the word magic include cool, powerful…and the sense of control.

And I think it’s the idea of control–of power–that is where we start to run into some problems.

Illusion of Control
Imagine we live in a world where the elements can rip your house apart with a tornado or cause a tsunami or crops fail in drought…wait, we do live in that world. Ok, imagine that it’s 4,000 years ago. When the sun starts to go south it gets cold, and every year we wonder, will the days ever grow longer or will we all just freeze in eternal night? When the sun is blacked out in an eclipse or a comet appears in the sunset sky, we wonder, is this a portent of doom?

Now–you’re probably thinking, none of that is magic. True, it’s science. But at that time, it was part of the unseen, terrifying world. If you didn’t know why something was happening, or how you could fix that, it fell into that realm of the magical, the terrifying.

The druid/shaman/witch/wise person who knew the cycles of the seasons and the solstices, who knew the phases of the moon and when the eclipses happened–they held the magic. The wise one who held the mysteries knew what signs preceded a drought, what signs would lead to water or to game. They knew how to heal with specific herbs. None of this is magic, unless you don’t know the mysteries.

But I think part of what gets woven into our idea of magic is the idea that we can control these vast forces with enough magical juice. By vast forces, what I mean is the weather, for instance. The idea that we can end a drought, that we can turn aside a tsunami.

I’ll be honest. I believe in a lot of specific types of magic, and I believe in the power of intention, but for the really big stuff like that, I think it’s a lot of hubris on the part of the magical workers.

Though, I believe that a lot of magical beliefs and religious beliefs are actually social controls. The idea that if you live a good life and give to the church and follow the rules, that you’ll get rewarded in heaven…that’s a social control. Similarly, humans don’t cope well with feeling like we can’t control what’s going on, so the idea that we can do spellwork to break a drought or to turn aside a storm is also something that I feel falls into the category of social control.

Some of our ancestors certainly spent a lot of effort making offerings (including the occasional human sacrifice) to appease the gods and shift the weather, or end a war. Do I think it works like that? Not really. I think that everyone stays a lot calmer when we feel like we’re doing something.

We humans just don’t cope with the idea that the earth could shrug and we’re wiped out and we have no control over that. So I think in some cases, magic becomes an illusion of control.

I’m not saying that magic doesn’t ever work–I’m just talking in terms of perception and scale. And keep in mind, I’m also looking at magic from the perspective of, it’s working with the universe, with physics, with energy…and ultimately a lot of things that once were considered “magic” are now things you can do on your cell phone. You can tell the day/time of year, you can tell the compass points, you can tell what the weather is going to be like this week.

Internal And External Magic 
Let’s take a step back and talk about some specific types of magic framed as internal and external magic. In Part 1 I referenced how many of my mentors put forth the idea that the only “real” magic was doing personal work, in other words, transforming myself.

Now–you could do worse as far as an approach to magic, because most people come at magic from the more external-focused perspective. They are trying to impact the world around them without having done the personal work to become the person who can manifest that work. Much less, the personal work to approach magic without being egomaniacal about it.

And let’s be frank; in the Pagan and magical communities, there is no lack of egotistical “I’m a powerful magician” types.

Internal magic is basically working on myself, working to become a better, stronger person. The idea with this flow of magic is, by transforming myself, I can become the person who manifests my dreams. That the magic works on my consciousness and identity so that I myself, physically and through my actions, can manifest what I want.

Taken to an extreme, the idea is that no external magic works, ever. I’m not in that camp, I just tend to believe that the bigger and more physical an external magical working is, the more I’m swimming upstream against physics.

I want to make a brief re-mention of Dion Fortune’s definition of magic. In Part 1, I pondered whether the idea of “Changing consciousness at will” was a reference to being able to get into an altered state to be able to do magic, or, whether the magic was the change in consciousness, the change in self identity. Again, I think it’s both. If we’re talking about getting into a trance state/altered state, that certainly makes it easier to see the underlying “Matrix code” of the universe.

But, it’s also worth pointing out that internal magic–actually hacking your own personal programming to transform yourself and heal yourself–is some of the hardest work there is. Just because it’s internal doesn’t mean its easy.

External Magic
Getting back to external magic, I do believe that it is possible to influence the world around me with magic. But, again, I also believe that the more of an external physical result I want, the harder I have to work.

I also believe that a lot of people want to light the pink candle and wish for love and bam, the universe drops someone on their doorstep. Whatever spellwork you’re doing, you still need to do the work.

Too many people look at magic as “that thing that happened because I wished for it and I didn’t need to do any work.”

I believe that external magic requires an external action. Will is powerful, but without action, nothing happens.

I look at a lot of the magical work that I do externally as changing consciousness. It’s actually fairly easy to change the consciousness of others just through writing. Posting a blog like this one, posting on my Facebook, I have the power to bring up ideas, to potentially change minds.

And if you think that isn’t magic, remember–changing consciousness is a part of magic. For that matter, think about how Bards and Poets were part of the druidic order.

Words, stories, and storytellers have always been a part of magic. So has music–think of the word enchantment. En-chant-ment. Chanting is a powerful technique for changing consciousness; I use it every time I facilitate a ritual.

I think that magic is easiest to achieve in ways that are more subtle, but the problem is, those results aren’t very flashy, and if you’re looking for big flashy results, internal magic/personal work isn’t what’s going to get you there. But then you have to ask yourself, why do you want the big flashy results? I know that once I did a lot of internal magical work, I had a lot less need for flash. The more self confidence I built, the less external validation I need.

Magic works really well for changing myself. It works well for changing the consciousness of myself and others where I have that influence. But the more specific external physical results I want, the more I’m swimming upstream against the nature of physics. Or, the more physical work I’m going to need to do to take it beyond just my intention and my will.

Magic and Self Identity
I have used magic to change my life, to become the person who can do the things I want to do. I have used magic to become the person who isn’t crippled by depression. This took will, it took focus, it took transforming my deepest programming about who I was.

I often refer to this type of magic as breaking the spell.

Every time someone repeats words to us, particularly those hurtful words like, “You’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re worthless, nobody likes you,” or whatever we’ve suffered in our past, that becomes a spell that binds us. See what I mean about the power of words? This is what I meant in my article on hexes and curses.

It’s pretty easy to hex someone, just keep repeating something until they believe it. That’s also called emotional and verbal abuse. But it’s a pretty powerful form of enchantment–I say this because it obviously works.

All the little things that we think every day, all the negative self talk…it’s all a spell that was cast over us. And then we keep casting the spell, over and over. By shifting those stories, we break the spell that we–and society–have placed on ourselves. There are so many ways that we keep ourselves stuck in the role of victim, and then we contribute to our own problems, our own self image.

It’s powerful magical work to transform ourselves. To move past an addiction, to move past a damaging behavior. In my case, I can see the clear results of years of hard work and internal magic.

In March of this year I wrote 100,000 words, and I have several books published and more on the way. The me who was stuck in the pit of depression couldn’t have done that. My work paid off, but it’s not as flashy as what people have come to expect with “magic.”

Divine Communion
Divine communion is probably the most common type of magical work that I do besides internal magic. This type of magic falls under the category of theurgy.

Magic to connect to the divine is also often about changing consciousness. For that matter–I actually have a difficult time getting into a deep enough trance state to connect to the divine, which has frustrated me for a lot of my life.

In my tween and teen years, I felt like the divine was just beyond my fingertips. I had visions, I had dreams. The dreams got more intense in my 20′s and I began to experience something I called the Water Temple. It was like the Grail, but an entire temple, and I would connect to the flowing water and know that it was my goddess/angel. I’d feel that resonant sense in my chest, that tear-bringing sense of union.

And when I finally gained access to the kind of leadership training I had been seeking…those dreams and visions went away. I wrote about this at some length in my essay in the anthology “A Mantle of Stars.”

I don’t have words for the aching frustration of the years without that divine communion. That connection was what had called me to spiritual service in the first place. Now I was serving–but I was cut off. I could get other people into that headspace, but not myself.

Taylor Ellwood wrote something on his Facebook that resonated a lot with me. “The genuine experience of magic is something which changes you and your relationship to the universe. It’s not a result. It’s an ongoing relationship that informs how you experience the world and your place in it, as well as how you change it.”

That made me think for a good long while. I started to wonder, what is the difference between magic and mysticism? What’s the difference between magic and divine communion?

That’s when I went back to what I had been taught at the Diana’s Grove Mystery School and I had to acknowledge that some of their definitions of a Magical vs. a Mystery tradition (as I referenced in Part 1) were not really working for me, and were in many ways inaccurate.

Divine communion is a magical experience. In my essay in “A Mantle of Stars” I reference how I eventually found my way back to divine communion. I found myself at last in a weeping rapture, complete love and connection with that divine I had found just out of reach.

And there isn’t much point in putting it into words because that’s the nature of mystery–I can talk about it, but I can’t give you the experience. A mystery is something only you can live.

What is Magic?
And maybe that starts to get at what we want magic to be. We want proof. We want flash. We want miracles.  And when we don’t get those, we wonder what magic is. When we see how magic works, it doesn’t seem very flashy…or, we realize how unimportant the flash really is.

To be continued in Part 3…

** If you’re interested in exploring your own relationship to magic and getting a good baseline of training, I do recommend Taylor Ellwood’s class, the Process of Magic.

What is Magic?

I’m currently taking Taylor Ellwood’s online class, The Process of Magic. Largely, I’m interested in this class because I’ve never done any formal training in the Western Mystery Traditions when it comes to magic, and I’d like to piece together what I’ve learned through osmosis over the years.

Probably the more pressing reason for me to take this class is that over the years, my definition of magic has changed a few times.

When I wrote my Hexes and Curses article I got a lot of push-back from people who said I was wrong, that I didn’t understand how Hexes worked, or who even said, “Well, you obviously don’t believe in magic at all.”

The truth is, I do believe in magic–but, my relationship to magic has gotten both more complicated–and yet in some ways more simple–the more I’ve learned over the years. Like many things, I’ve gone back and forth to different sides of the pendulum, and so I’ve been asking myself this question a lot. What is magic? What do I believe about magic?

What is my definition of magic? Why do I use that definition? How does magic fit into my life? What are my core values and beliefs and how do those connect to my beliefs about magic?

These are some of the questions I’m pondering that are part of the homework for the class. And for me, coming up with that definition of magic is really the hard part, because that means I have to articulate if I believe in magic at all, and if so, what that means to me.

First I have to take a brief spin through my past to explain why the word magic is complicated for me. Because, what I realize is that if I don’t use the word “magic” in the sentence, I absolutely believe that I can shape the world around me with my will. Which is, in essence, a definition of magic. So why does the word magic bug me?

Magical Child
Like a lot of kids, I grew up with an imaginary friend and pretend magical powers. The more the other kids bullied and ostracized me, the more my fantasy world where I had magical powers seemed to draw me in. As I matured and realized that no, I didn’t really have the power to zap people with magical spells, I began connecting more with the idea of psychic powers. These felt different from the idea of magic spells, and yet–like magic–psychic abilities are hidden, unseen, mostly not proven by mainstream science. And only the “special” people seem to have them.

In fact, the foundation of my self-identity as a tween and teen was the idea that I was somehow special, somehow different, somehow better than all of my peers. It’s a common mental defense tactic in people who are bullied and abused. Ego removes the dangling threat of potential suicide with the compelling fantasy that we are somehow more special than anyone else.

For me, psychic abilities, and later my experiences of divine communion, were part of that compelling inner world of mine, part of my idea that I was somehow magical, special, better than the peers who abused me.

Psychic Abilities
Now–I wasn’t completely deluded; I knew I couldn’t shoot bolts of lightning out of my fingers. It’s also worth pointing out that I had a fair number of intense experiences of psychic phenomena, enough to prove it to me as a reality. I’ve had plenty of dreams of events that came to pass. I’ve had the occasional weirdly-accurate telepathic communication between myself and another person, either hearing words they were thinking, or them hearing words I was thinking. In some cases, I pulled an image right out of someone’s mind and described it to them.

In a few other rare cases, I had psychic “pings” about something they had done, usually related to sex or pregnancy. In a few cases, I knew when a close friend had had unprotected sex. In a few other cases, I knew eerily accurate details about a friend’s wife’s pregnancy. I knew she was pregnant months before they announced, I knew the due date, I even knew how old their first child would be when they had their second child, and that it would be a daughter. With another friend, I knew that he was going to accidentally get someone pregnant and what month. I told him, but it happened anyways.

So I’ve had enough proof of psychic abilities–and in specific, my own psychic abilities–for my own skepticism. I don’t really talk a lot about psychic woo-woo stuff because of two reasons. One is, psychic experiences like that are in no way predictable for me so people who want me to “prove” it or to do a reading on them, it doesn’t really work like that. Not for me, anyways.

The other reason is that a lot of the Pagans who talk a lot about their own psychic woo-woo experiences seem to be trying to impress people. Many seem to be trying to get attention but it comes across as being a show off and a jerk.

As I got older, I started to sort of realize and negotiate some conflicting ideas. Yes, I had had psychic experiences…no, they weren’t really on-demand. Despite many years of work, it wasn’t really something I controlled, it was just a piece of extra information that came up whether or not it was relevant or useful.

So my psychic abilities didn’t really make me “powerful” in any real sense. And they were real–I had enough proof of that–so they didn’t really feel magical, even though they were still unseen, hidden, unproveable to others.

Divine Communion 
The path of the mystic is the path of one who communes–connects–directly with the divine. I had had visions of a particular goddess/angel/spirit since I was young, and so in a way, though this did make me feel special and contributed to my sense of being different/unique/magical, as I got older, this too ceased to feel like magic. It was (and still is) transformative, intense, deep…and goes beyond words, but it didn’t feel the same as what people usually call “magic.”

In fact, in some of the training that I did in spiritual leadership, that particular mystery school took great pains to point out the differences between mysticism and magic, or more specifically, they defined themselves as a mystery tradition, not a magical tradition.

However, when I review what that particular mystery school taught, I realize that it was somewhat narrowly-defined and in some ways, erroneous. In fact, when I reread what they were teaching, it was basically shaping the definitions to suit their purposes, so I begin to realize how I started having such a problem with the word magic.

They wrote:

“Magical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can create change in the world outside the self – influence weather, other people’s behavior/thoughts, and group dynamics, such as politics
• Invest forms and tools with specific powers and meanings (e.g., invocation summons the power of an element to do the invoker’s bidding; green candles bring healing) and, therefore, hold fairly rigidly to forms and feel strongly about the specific and exclusive uses of tools
• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about self
• Often rely on a single intermediary who interprets doctrine and through which we learn about divine intention (e.g., a priest, priestess, minister)

Mystical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can change only the self – one’s own consciousness, behavior, perception

• Use forms and tools to convey intention and meanings (e.g., invocation honors the power of an element and recognizes its influence; green candles represent green, growing, living things) and, therefore, use forms flexibly and creatively select tools to fit need/intention

• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about life and see self as a part of the patterns, not the object of the messages

• Open to individuals’ varied interpretations of doctrine and diverse ways of connecting to divine intention.”

Now–I don’t disagree with all of this, but, it does put things in some pretty rigid terms, and in some cases uses the wrong terms completely. The word mysticism means direct communion with the divine, and that isn’t really addressed at all in the definition of Mystical Traditions in the above. For that matter, many mystical traditions have a central/hierarchical priest or priestess.

Definition of Magic–Dion Fortune
At the Diana’s Grove Mystery School, the definition of magic we were taught was based on Dion Fortune’s. “Magic is changing consciousness at will.” We were taught a variation–”Magic is changing my OWN consciousness at will.”

Now–I want to offer just a brief tangent thought. Dion Fortune’s definition could simultaneously be referring to two different things–the functions of magic, and the outcome. Getting into a trance state, or an altered state of consciousness, is one of the ways to do magical work. However, altering your consciousness is also a potential goal or outcome of magic. Which does Dion Fortune’s definition refer to? I like to think it probably refers in a sneaky way to both.

Back to my challenges with the word magic…Diana’s Grove was, at its core, agnostic, perhaps even a bit atheistic. We didn’t really talk about psychic abilities or woo-woo magic powers. In fact, anything that smacked of delusion and grandeur was kind of subtly discouraged if not outright referred to as being immature.

In essence, there was a pressure to believe that the idea of external magic was hubris. That the only real magic–the only magic that people could actually accomplish–was the magic of personal transformation.

Now–I get why there was the subtle and not-so-subtle disapproval of heavy woo-woo magic. It’s true that in the Pagan community, many of the people who go on and on about their psychic and magical powers are actually really immature and attention seeking. Or they just have really poor self esteem and are looking for positive attention. Or a combo of that and other things. So I get the idea of leaning in the other direction.

But I’m reminded over and over that humans just don’t do paradox well. We pendulum swing, we can’t hold space for gray area.

So now that I have reviewed where a lot of my assumptions about the word “magic” came from when I was doing my leadership training, where to go from there? First I have to go back to a few more of my experiences that disenchanted me with the word.

Ritual and Magic
During my three years at Diana’s Grove I began taking ritual roles with increasing responsibility. The Diana’s Grove rituals had at first felt magical and transformative to me. As I began learning the tricks to facilitate, the “magic” left those rituals. It just felt like technique.

I learned how to trance a group out. I learned about the power of eye contact. I learned about a lot of different techniques that facilitators use to entrance and enchant a group.

One night, I sort of cracked. I was at a weekend retreat at Diana’s Grove. It had been a stressful weekend, and I won’t go into the details of why, but by the time we were stepping into the evening ritual, my heart was thudding in my chest. Later that night someone would clue me in that what I was having was a panic attack. In the moment, I just realized I couldn’t get my heart to stop palpitating. I kept breathing evenly. I had three ritual roles that night. I stepped in for the first one, and the second. I did my part, and my heart kept thudding. When we all sat down/laid down for the trance journey, I had the spins so bad I had to keep my eyes open.

I stood up to do my third ritual role–each participant was to take a bead from a bowl and hand the bead to Persephone. The woman aspecting Persephone was supposed to take these beads to the Underworld. The beads would represent one wound from the past that each participant was ready to release for healing beneath the ground.

I was one of the people holding the bowls of beads. My job was to stand there and look into each person’s eyes and ask them trance questions while they worked to find the bead that would represent their wounds. So I’m standing there for long minutes. My heart is still palpitating but with even breathing I’m keeping things under control. And I’m asking the questions I’m supposed to ask. “What would would you leave behind? What would you release? What would you give over to Persephone, what would you release for healing in the Underworld? What no longer serves?”

People paw through the bowl of beads, hunting out that “perfect” bead. So I’m giving them deep meaningful eye contact, and asking these questions. But what I’m thinking in my head is, “This is just a fucking bead. It’s just a bowl of fucking beads. It doesn’t matter. None of this is fucking magical. It’s just a bead. Just pick one so I can set this thing down and we can move on. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”

I was obviously in a less-than-magical headspace. I had finally hit that point where I wondered, is all ritual just technique? Is there any magic to it at all?

At the end of that ritual when we were doing the final singing/dancing/energy raising, I burst into tears, probably from stress. After that is when a friend clued me in that those were all the symptoms of a panic attack. “But I wasn’t panicking,” I said. She laughed, and said, “Well, that’s because it’s you.”

The next year was my final year at Diana’s Grove doing my culminating year of leadership training, and I consciously worked to bring the magic back into ritual. And I found it again, to a certain extent. I realized that a lot of what I do in ritual is facilitation tricks…but, there’s also the authenticity piece beneath it.

It’s a form of alchemy. Technique + genuine, authentic connection = magic. And explaining that in more depth requires I talk a lot more about ritual facilitation, and that would take us way off topic.

Suffice to say, over the course of many years, I’ve found that there is still magic in ritual, even knowing what I do about facilitation technique, but it takes work to get there.

But then we come back to, what the heck does magic mean?

Magic
I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel. A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. Or, that some of us can more easily see because we’ve trained ourselves to, but the more we know about it–the more it becomes science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

I’ll continue this in Part 2 tomorrow.

What is Magic?

I’m currently taking Taylor Ellwood’s online class, The Process of Magic. Largely, I’m interested in this class because I’ve never done any formal training in the Western Mystery Traditions when it comes to magic, and I’d like to piece together what I’ve learned through osmosis over the years.

Probably the more pressing reason for me to take this class is that over the years, my definition of magic has changed a few times.

When I wrote my Hexes and Curses article I got a lot of push-back from people who said I was wrong, that I didn’t understand how Hexes worked, or who even said, “Well, you obviously don’t believe in magic at all.”

The truth is, I do believe in magic–but, my relationship to magic has gotten both more complicated–and yet in some ways more simple–the more I’ve learned over the years. Like many things, I’ve gone back and forth to different sides of the pendulum, and so I’ve been asking myself this question a lot. What is magic? What do I believe about magic?

What is my definition of magic? Why do I use that definition? How does magic fit into my life? What are my core values and beliefs and how do those connect to my beliefs about magic?

These are some of the questions I’m pondering that are part of the homework for the class. And for me, coming up with that definition of magic is really the hard part, because that means I have to articulate if I believe in magic at all, and if so, what that means to me.

First I have to take a brief spin through my past to explain why the word magic is complicated for me. Because, what I realize is that if I don’t use the word “magic” in the sentence, I absolutely believe that I can shape the world around me with my will. Which is, in essence, a definition of magic. So why does the word magic bug me?

Magical Child
Like a lot of kids, I grew up with an imaginary friend and pretend magical powers. The more the other kids bullied and ostracized me, the more my fantasy world where I had magical powers seemed to draw me in. As I matured and realized that no, I didn’t really have the power to zap people with magical spells, I began connecting more with the idea of psychic powers. These felt different from the idea of magic spells, and yet–like magic–psychic abilities are hidden, unseen, mostly not proven by mainstream science. And only the “special” people seem to have them.

In fact, the foundation of my self-identity as a tween and teen was the idea that I was somehow special, somehow different, somehow better than all of my peers. It’s a common mental defense tactic in people who are bullied and abused. Ego removes the dangling threat of potential suicide with the compelling fantasy that we are somehow more special than anyone else.

For me, psychic abilities, and later my experiences of divine communion, were part of that compelling inner world of mine, part of my idea that I was somehow magical, special, better than the peers who abused me.

Psychic Abilities
Now–I wasn’t completely deluded; I knew I couldn’t shoot bolts of lightning out of my fingers. It’s also worth pointing out that I had a fair number of intense experiences of psychic phenomena, enough to prove it to me as a reality. I’ve had plenty of dreams of events that came to pass. I’ve had the occasional weirdly-accurate telepathic communication between myself and another person, either hearing words they were thinking, or them hearing words I was thinking. In some cases, I pulled an image right out of someone’s mind and described it to them.

In a few other rare cases, I had psychic “pings” about something they had done, usually related to sex or pregnancy. In a few cases, I knew when a close friend had had unprotected sex. In a few other cases, I knew eerily accurate details about a friend’s wife’s pregnancy. I knew she was pregnant months before they announced, I knew the due date, I even knew how old their first child would be when they had their second child, and that it would be a daughter. With another friend, I knew that he was going to accidentally get someone pregnant and what month. I told him, but it happened anyways.

So I’ve had enough proof of psychic abilities–and in specific, my own psychic abilities–for my own skepticism. I don’t really talk a lot about psychic woo-woo stuff because of two reasons. One is, psychic experiences like that are in no way predictable for me so people who want me to “prove” it or to do a reading on them, it doesn’t really work like that. Not for me, anyways.

The other reason is that a lot of the Pagans who talk a lot about their own psychic woo-woo experiences seem to be trying to impress people. Many seem to be trying to get attention but it comes across as being a show off and a jerk.

As I got older, I started to sort of realize and negotiate some conflicting ideas. Yes, I had had psychic experiences…no, they weren’t really on-demand. Despite many years of work, it wasn’t really something I controlled, it was just a piece of extra information that came up whether or not it was relevant or useful.

So my psychic abilities didn’t really make me “powerful” in any real sense. And they were real–I had enough proof of that–so they didn’t really feel magical, even though they were still unseen, hidden, unproveable to others.

Divine Communion 
The path of the mystic is the path of one who communes–connects–directly with the divine. I had had visions of a particular goddess/angel/spirit since I was young, and so in a way, though this did make me feel special and contributed to my sense of being different/unique/magical, as I got older, this too ceased to feel like magic. It was (and still is) transformative, intense, deep…and goes beyond words, but it didn’t feel the same as what people usually call “magic.”

In fact, in some of the training that I did in spiritual leadership, that particular mystery school took great pains to point out the differences between mysticism and magic, or more specifically, they defined themselves as a mystery tradition, not a magical tradition.

However, when I review what that particular mystery school taught, I realize that it was somewhat narrowly-defined and in some ways, erroneous. In fact, when I reread what they were teaching, it was basically shaping the definitions to suit their purposes, so I begin to realize how I started having such a problem with the word magic.

They wrote:

“Magical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can create change in the world outside the self – influence weather, other people’s behavior/thoughts, and group dynamics, such as politics
• Invest forms and tools with specific powers and meanings (e.g., invocation summons the power of an element to do the invoker’s bidding; green candles bring healing) and, therefore, hold fairly rigidly to forms and feel strongly about the specific and exclusive uses of tools
• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about self
• Often rely on a single intermediary who interprets doctrine and through which we learn about divine intention (e.g., a priest, priestess, minister)

Mystical traditions:

• Based on the belief that ritual, prayer, and/or spell can change only the self – one’s own consciousness, behavior, perception

• Use forms and tools to convey intention and meanings (e.g., invocation honors the power of an element and recognizes its influence; green candles represent green, growing, living things) and, therefore, use forms flexibly and creatively select tools to fit need/intention

• See patterns in the world (e.g., the presence of an animal, a change in the weather) as a message about life and see self as a part of the patterns, not the object of the messages

• Open to individuals’ varied interpretations of doctrine and diverse ways of connecting to divine intention.”

Now–I don’t disagree with all of this, but, it does put things in some pretty rigid terms, and in some cases uses the wrong terms completely. The word mysticism means direct communion with the divine, and that isn’t really addressed at all in the definition of Mystical Traditions in the above. For that matter, many mystical traditions have a central/hierarchical priest or priestess.

Definition of Magic–Dion Fortune
At the Diana’s Grove Mystery School, the definition of magic we were taught was based on Dion Fortune’s. “Magic is changing consciousness at will.” We were taught a variation–“Magic is changing my OWN consciousness at will.”

Now–I want to offer just a brief tangent thought. Dion Fortune’s definition could simultaneously be referring to two different things–the functions of magic, and the outcome. Getting into a trance state, or an altered state of consciousness, is one of the ways to do magical work. However, altering your consciousness is also a potential goal or outcome of magic. Which does Dion Fortune’s definition refer to? I like to think it probably refers in a sneaky way to both.

Back to my challenges with the word magic…Diana’s Grove was, at its core, agnostic, perhaps even a bit atheistic. We didn’t really talk about psychic abilities or woo-woo magic powers. In fact, anything that smacked of delusion and grandeur was kind of subtly discouraged if not outright referred to as being immature.

In essence, there was a pressure to believe that the idea of external magic was hubris. That the only real magic–the only magic that people could actually accomplish–was the magic of personal transformation.

Now–I get why there was the subtle and not-so-subtle disapproval of heavy woo-woo magic. It’s true that in the Pagan community, many of the people who go on and on about their psychic and magical powers are actually really immature and attention seeking. Or they just have really poor self esteem and are looking for positive attention. Or a combo of that and other things. So I get the idea of leaning in the other direction.

But I’m reminded over and over that humans just don’t do paradox well. We pendulum swing, we can’t hold space for gray area.

So now that I have reviewed where a lot of my assumptions about the word “magic” came from when I was doing my leadership training, where to go from there? First I have to go back to a few more of my experiences that disenchanted me with the word.

Ritual and Magic
During my three years at Diana’s Grove I began taking ritual roles with increasing responsibility. The Diana’s Grove rituals had at first felt magical and transformative to me. As I began learning the tricks to facilitate, the “magic” left those rituals. It just felt like technique.

I learned how to trance a group out. I learned about the power of eye contact. I learned about a lot of different techniques that facilitators use to entrance and enchant a group.

One night, I sort of cracked. I was at a weekend retreat at Diana’s Grove. It had been a stressful weekend, and I won’t go into the details of why, but by the time we were stepping into the evening ritual, my heart was thudding in my chest. Later that night someone would clue me in that what I was having was a panic attack. In the moment, I just realized I couldn’t get my heart to stop palpitating. I kept breathing evenly. I had three ritual roles that night. I stepped in for the first one, and the second. I did my part, and my heart kept thudding. When we all sat down/laid down for the trance journey, I had the spins so bad I had to keep my eyes open.

I stood up to do my third ritual role–each participant was to take a bead from a bowl and hand the bead to Persephone. The woman aspecting Persephone was supposed to take these beads to the Underworld. The beads would represent one wound from the past that each participant was ready to release for healing beneath the ground.

I was one of the people holding the bowls of beads. My job was to stand there and look into each person’s eyes and ask them trance questions while they worked to find the bead that would represent their wounds. So I’m standing there for long minutes. My heart is still palpitating but with even breathing I’m keeping things under control. And I’m asking the questions I’m supposed to ask. “What would would you leave behind? What would you release? What would you give over to Persephone, what would you release for healing in the Underworld? What no longer serves?”

People paw through the bowl of beads, hunting out that “perfect” bead. So I’m giving them deep meaningful eye contact, and asking these questions. But what I’m thinking in my head is, “This is just a fucking bead. It’s just a bowl of fucking beads. It doesn’t matter. None of this is fucking magical. It’s just a bead. Just pick one so I can set this thing down and we can move on. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”

I was obviously in a less-than-magical headspace. I had finally hit that point where I wondered, is all ritual just technique? Is there any magic to it at all?

At the end of that ritual when we were doing the final singing/dancing/energy raising, I burst into tears, probably from stress. After that is when a friend clued me in that those were all the symptoms of a panic attack. “But I wasn’t panicking,” I said. She laughed, and said, “Well, that’s because it’s you.”

The next year was my final year at Diana’s Grove doing my culminating year of leadership training, and I consciously worked to bring the magic back into ritual. And I found it again, to a certain extent. I realized that a lot of what I do in ritual is facilitation tricks…but, there’s also the authenticity piece beneath it.

It’s a form of alchemy. Technique + genuine, authentic connection = magic. And explaining that in more depth requires I talk a lot more about ritual facilitation, and that would take us way off topic.

Suffice to say, over the course of many years, I’ve found that there is still magic in ritual, even knowing what I do about facilitation technique, but it takes work to get there.

But then we come back to, what the heck does magic mean?

Magic
I think the word magic has different meanings in different contexts. I think across the board, it tends to mean “the hidden.” Or, things that happen in a way I can’t easily see/unravel. A related definition might be how I see most people use it in terms of spellwork. “Magic is doing a spell and getting what I want without having to do any work.” I think the idea is that you set your intention, light the right colored candle, and the universe brings you what you want if you’re cool enough.

Obviously there are some problems with that concept.

I tend to use the definition that magic is science we don’t understand yet. It’s science, it’s just science we can’t readily perceive or see. Or, that some of us can more easily see because we’ve trained ourselves to, but the more we know about it–the more it becomes science and technique–the less magical it might seem. We’ll just chalk that up to paradox.

I’ll continue this in Part 2 tomorrow.

Harassment and Boundaries

Technically this is part of my Pagans and Predators series, but in this case, I’m largely not talking about intentional predators. I’m talking about the ambient harassment and physical boundary-pushing that happens at every Pagan event out there, to a certain extent.

It’s worse at some events than at others.

I’m going to describe a few situations I’ve found myself in at Pagan events, and at some science fiction and fantasy conventions, that I would consider to be in violation of my physical boundaries. In other words, harassment, or even the mild side of physical assault.

And at the time, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t speak up. In some of these cases, I didn’t even realize it was harassment until later.

As more women have started coming forward to speak out about being raped or harassed, I notice that there’s this cultural idea that women wake up the next day after having sex and suddenly, arbitrarily decide, “No, I didn’t want that. I didn’t really consent, I’m going to accuse this guy of rape.” There’s even ads out there, “Don’t be that girl.”

As I’ve posted in past articles on sex and ethics, the idea of being sex positive is a complicated one. Women, for instance, are simultaneously pressured by the dominant culture to be sexualized and sex objects, and pressured to not have sex because it’s “wrong” or “sinful.” And then the pressures of the sex positive movement is that sex isn’t “wrong” or “sinful” and women should enjoy sex…but, there’s a pressuring in that too.

And it’s not just women facing these pressures.

At Pagan events like conferences and festivals, and at other subculture events I’ve attended like science fiction and fantasy conventions, there’s varying levels of pressure to be ok with sex. The idea that being sex positive means that casual touch is ok.

Or, the more insidious side of the supposedly sex-positive culture is, “If you don’t like sex you’re a prude, you’re bad.”

Looking back, I’ve put up with a lot of touching and inappropriate comments under the auspices of not wanting to be “that girl.” Not wanting to be the party pooper, the prude, the person who was no fun. That’s a label I’ve held in my life and it’s one I’ve avoided getting stuck with.

But when I review certain situations, I see where I really wanted to say, “I’m not ok with this,” and I didn’t because I was afraid of offending people and being labeled the party pooper.

And that’s the communal problem we have–it’s the peer pressuring that we don’t even realize we’re engaging in that makes someone allow touching and other behavior that they aren’t ok with, for fear of being labeled (and thusly, rejected) for being “the party pooper.”

Boundaries
And as long as we see holding boundaries as someone who is ruining the group’s fun, we’re going to keep running into these problems.

If you want a quick review of what I mean by boundaries, and particularly the difficulty with poor boundaries in terms of people pleasing, one of my past blog posts might help. In the second half of the article I especially talk about the issues of boundaries and people pleasing. In other words–we are afraid to say “no” because it will offend someone.
https://shaunaaura.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/authenticity-boundaries-shadows/

What would happen if we, instead, honored and respected someone’s boundaries? If we asked them if it was ok before trying to hug them, if we respected someone’s desire to not drink alcohol or smoke without teasing them. What if instead of complaining about all the nasty jokes we can’t tell because then someone will complain, what if instead of worrying about how all these boundaries are going to spoil our fun, we look at the community we keep saying we want to be part of?

If we want a sex positive community and culture, that means we have to respect people’s boundaries.

Touching people without their consent is not sex positive. Telling people they are ruining the group’s fun and that they are ashamed of their sexuality because they don’t want to be groped in public is not sex positive.

Examples:

Hugging
Yes, there’s that axiom; “Pagans hug, you’ll get use to it.” And, I have. I just kind of freeze over my body when people I don’t know come up and hug me without asking me. Truthfully, I don’t mind a short hug. I don’t like a long hug with someone I don’t know well. In fact, I don’t generally like much physical contact with people I don’t know well. People who genuinely like hugging don’t get this about people who don’t like hugging. How can you not like hugging?

Thing is–it’s an issue of consent. At the very least, offer someone the chance to decline the hug without any major drama. I always appreciate it when someone asks if I’m ok with a hug, particularly if I’m at a Pagan festival and my shoulders are sunburned. Generally I’m fine with a quick hug. Some folks I know really  find it uncomfortable to be hugged. For instance, some folks on the autism spectrum find physical touch to be extremely distressing.

The reason doesn’t matter, and you don’t need to know if someone’s triggered by touch because of sexual assault or if they just don’t like to be touched. People who don’t like physical touch don’t need to be “fixed.”

If I’m being really truthful, I’d probably decline more hugs at events if I weren’t concerned that I’d offend people. However, I’m in that gray area where, while I don’t prefer random hugs, I can also be generally ok with them. But I’m a lot more ok with them if someone asks first.

Hug from Behind
This past year at a Pagan conference Michigan, I was standing at one of the registration tables getting my badge holder set up. Someone ran up to me from behind and said, “Shauna!” and wrapped their arms around me. I was kind of half standing up by then, but I had no idea who was behind me. I had to keep myself from my body’s automatic reflex which was to turn and shove.

It turned out to be someone that I know, but, let me just articulate that this is several degrees worse than an unasked-for hug from the front. It doesn’t matter if you know me…if you come running at me from behind and touch me, and I don’t know who you are, some of us find that to be really threatening or at least unnerving.

There’s a list of maybe five people where I’d be ok with them wrapping their arms around me when I can’t see them, and in all of those cases, I’d need to know who it was ahead of time. In other words–that type of physical intimacy is really not ok with me in a public place where it could be anyone.

I talked to a friend who had the same thing happen at a convention. She was in the vendors room when someone came up to her from behind to hug her. She was talking to a vendor at that time. She stood up straight and said, “That better be my husband.” The vendor smirked and said, “Or someone really cute.”

My friend put it really succinctly. How is it–in any way–ok just because the person doing it is cute?

You might see this as just innocent hijinks. Just someone teasing someone else. That if someone is saying no, that they aren’t ok with being touched like that, that they are a spoil-sport. I would say that someone unknown to me touching me in a way that I didn’t consent to is getting pretty close to assault.

And yet, we make exceptions. It’s just a convention, it’s just a festival, it’s just Pagans…

Let’s rewind. It’s not ok. Just because you want it to be ok for you to touch someone without asking, doesn’t make it ok. Ask before you touch. Always.

Cleavage is not Consent
So here’s another thing that happened to me at a Pagan convention. I was hanging out with some friends who like to drink and party. I don’t really drink, but, I wanted to spend time with my friends. They were a little more rowdy than I was, but I was basically all right with that. I’m not really a party animal, but this was the only way I’d get to hang out with these particular people.

One of the alcoholic substances in their ensemble was that they had some spray whipped cream cans with chocolate liquor whipped cream.

That particular evening, I was wearing something that showed off my cleavage. At some point as things got rowdier and the laughing went up a few decibels, after I’d declined yet another offer of a drink, my friends reached over and sprayed chocolate whipped cream on my cleavage and told their friend to lick it off.

Now–let’s hit pause for a moment. One of the things I hear a lot when people are denouncing victims of harassment is, “Well, why didn’t you say no?”

In this particular instance, everything happened so fast, there wasn’t time to say no. By the time I had even taken a breath to speak, their friend was already doing what they had told him to do. Let me describe one of the least sexy moments of my life. I felt like I was watching my own body from far away. I couldn’t even really feel what the guy was doing because I just completely disassociated from the physical sensation in shock.

By the time I’d even wrapped my brain around what was happening, it was done.

Speaking Up
In neither of these cases did I speak up and say, “I’m not ok with what you did, you violated my physical boundaries.” In neither of these cases did I complain to the staff or security. Why? Well–because these were my friends, right? They didn’t mean any harm, I was just taking it the wrong way, I was just oversensitive, I was just a stick in the mud and they were more party animals, right?

We have to stop raising up on a pedestal this idea that people who speak up about their boundaries are spoiling people’s fun and thus, deserving of victim blaming and derision.

I didn’t say anything because I knew they’d just roll their eyes and think I was overreacting. And it never occurred to me to talk to security. Thing is, I know that these folks didn’t mean any harm by their actions. But this is a form of sexual harassment nonetheless.

I want to point your attention to this fine article addressing harassment policies from scifi conventions that could be adapted for Pagan events.  http://wildhunt.org/2014/04/addressing-safety-at-pagan-conventions-and-festivals.html

The article addresses different types of inappropriate behavior and a potential range of consequences.

The article outlines the “Costume is not Consent” campaign at CONvergence, a scifi/fantasy convention. And while most harassment complaints come from women, I’m pleased that this article references the “kilt checks” that happen at events. If you’re unfamiliar with a kilt check, it’s where a woman (or group of women) will go up to a man or men dressed in kilts and, often without their permission, reach up under their kilt to grope them to see if they have underwear on under the kilt or if they are going “regimental style.”

All in good fun, most people would say…except, again we’re looking at totally violating someone’s physical boundaries without consent.

Kissing/Flirting/Groping
Here’s another example from my distant past. And, until talking about harassment with others in the past weeks, I never thought of this as harassment. I never would have labeled it as such, and yet I have to now acknowledge it for what it was.

And once again–this wasn’t someone with malicious intent. It was someone who really wasn’t good at respecting physical boundaries.

I was 18, and I was attending my first Scifi/Fantasy convention. As it happens–this particular convention happened at the same hotel that CONvergence (the scifi/fantasy convention referenced above) is located at. This was the conference that predated CONvergence.

Anyhoo. A friend of mine told me about this event and I met up with her at the hotel. It was my first year of college in Minneapolis. After going through the registration line, my friend was introducing me to some other friends of hers, including a very flirty guy she knew from the Renaissance Faire.

I’m not entirely sure how this all happened so fast, but we went from him admiring my necklace, to him kissing me in front of the whole registration line.

This was the first time I’d ever been kissed. In fact, this was the first time anyone had really flirted with me. So, I was really conflicted and confused. I had terrible self esteem at the time. I’d always been the fat kid, the social reject. So I figured it was some kind of freaking miracle that a guy was actually interested in me. And yet, I also was wondering where the fireworks were, and why I wasn’t enjoying what was going on.

Hours after, I was still frowning and mulling on the encounter. Being who I am, I wrote about it. I kept wondering over and over why it hadn’t been hot.

During the rest of the convention, whenever this particular guy saw me, he would find excuses to touch me, to try and make out with me. And every time, I kept thinking, gosh, I should be grateful that this guy is interested. In fact, I seriously considered having sex with him just because he was the only guy who had ever shown any physical interest in me.

But something felt wrong about it. I kept thinking over and over, why isn’t this hot? Shouldn’t this be hot? What’s wrong with me that this isn’t sexy?

It’s been almost 20 years since this happened, and I only have just been able to wrap my mind around why this entire series of experiences troubled me.

I didn’t consent to any of it.

I wasn’t interested in this guy, and his continued attempts to get me to agree to more physical intimacy had me kind of squicked out. I thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t interested. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t interested and that him pressing me for more touching and making out was turning me off.

Now–let me also take a step back. I’m fully aware that I did not verbally, directly tell this man to stop during most of these episodes. And–when he did start to go to far and I said it was time to stop, he did. However, during the course of this weekend, this man continued pressuring me for more physical intimacy, and I’m really clear that I was not giving him the physical signals of enthusiastic consent. I was probably giving the signals of “nervous/confused/shy/overwhelmed.”

While I don’t think this guy meant me any harm, I also think that he, and many people like him, unconsciously go for the shy, nervous folks who are afraid to say no.

Shy, Nervous–Predatory
Now, I get it. If you’re a geek or otherwise shy, nervous, and not really very confident in your physical appeal, there’s a tendency to go for others who are shy or nervous. Trust me, I understand–I’m a geeky mess of shyness and awkwardness.

However, there’s a point where targeting the shy/nervous/low-self-confident person in the room can start to veer into predatory behavior.

I have several times hosted Pagan events where there was someone (typically a man) who was hitting on the shyest, youngest, or most vulnerable woman at the event. At one event in particular there was a man who already had a track record of having broken a few hearts by misrepresenting himself (he identified as polyamorous but didn’t bother to tell that to the women he was with, so they thought they were dating, and he was just playing the field). He was hanging around a young woman who had just experienced her first ecstatic ritual. She was a little out of it. We made sure she got home safely, but with that event, I finally noticed his pattern.

He went for the young, pretty, shy girls with low self esteem.

My own ex, similarly, has gone for students in classes of his or people who attended events and festivals where they met him in context as a teacher/leader. There are a number of times when he was with–or he hit on–women who were shy, or who had low self confidence.

And ultimately, this is why boundaries and consent are really important–because, if we have a culture of consent, if we know what physical boundary-pushing is very much not ok, then participants are more empowered to say that. To say, “I’m not ok with this.” And if the behavior continues, to be empowered to talk to one of the event staff for help.

When we have confusing physical boundaries, when we’re afraid of speaking up for fear of offending someone, that’s what opens the door for the worse predatory behavior. The boundary pushing I mentioned above is what I’d call naive or unintentional harassment.

For instance, I have a few friends that are really touchy feely. They like to take your hand or grip your shoulder or lean in for a big long hug. They don’t mean anything by it. But, if we don’t talk about these things, if we don’t begin to respect each other’s physical boundaries, we’re making a lot more room for the genuine creepers to slip through the cracks.

Another fine blog post, this one on negotiating boundaries.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2014/04/consent-culture-101-basic-practices-and-teaching-games/

While the primary exercise listed is geared for children to explore boundaries, I’d offer that a similar exercise for adults would be excellent work. In fact, in some of the sex magic intensives that friends of mine have experienced, 75% of the workshop was negotiating trust and boundaries. Before any physical touch happened, they did a more adult-adapted version of the boundaries exercises in the above blog post.

In some ways, it’s really simple. And sometimes, the simplest work is the hardest. We have to learn to say no. And, we have to know that our “no” is going to be respected. That we won’t be teased for it. That people won’t roll their eyes or tell us we’re overreacting. Our “no” must be respected.

Only if “no” is respected does “yes” have any meaning.

Harassment and Boundaries

Technically this is part of my Pagans and Predators series, but in this case, I’m largely not talking about intentional predators. I’m talking about the ambient harassment and physical boundary-pushing that happens at every Pagan event out there, to a certain extent.

It’s worse at some events than at others.

I’m going to describe a few situations I’ve found myself in at Pagan events, and at some science fiction and fantasy conventions, that I would consider to be in violation of my physical boundaries. In other words, harassment, or even the mild side of physical assault.

And at the time, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t speak up. In some of these cases, I didn’t even realize it was harassment until later.

As more women have started coming forward to speak out about being raped or harassed, I notice that there’s this cultural idea that women wake up the next day after having sex and suddenly, arbitrarily decide, “No, I didn’t want that. I didn’t really consent, I’m going to accuse this guy of rape.” There’s even ads out there, “Don’t be that girl.”

As I’ve posted in past articles on sex and ethics, the idea of being sex positive is a complicated one. Women, for instance, are simultaneously pressured by the dominant culture to be sexualized and sex objects, and pressured to not have sex because it’s “wrong” or “sinful.” And then the pressures of the sex positive movement is that sex isn’t “wrong” or “sinful” and women should enjoy sex…but, there’s a pressuring in that too.

And it’s not just women facing these pressures.

At Pagan events like conferences and festivals, and at other subculture events I’ve attended like science fiction and fantasy conventions, there’s varying levels of pressure to be ok with sex. The idea that being sex positive means that casual touch is ok.

Or, the more insidious side of the supposedly sex-positive culture is, “If you don’t like sex you’re a prude, you’re bad.”

Looking back, I’ve put up with a lot of touching and inappropriate comments under the auspices of not wanting to be “that girl.” Not wanting to be the party pooper, the prude, the person who was no fun. That’s a label I’ve held in my life and it’s one I’ve avoided getting stuck with.

But when I review certain situations, I see where I really wanted to say, “I’m not ok with this,” and I didn’t because I was afraid of offending people and being labeled the party pooper.

And that’s the communal problem we have–it’s the peer pressuring that we don’t even realize we’re engaging in that makes someone allow touching and other behavior that they aren’t ok with, for fear of being labeled (and thusly, rejected) for being “the party pooper.”

Boundaries
And as long as we see holding boundaries as someone who is ruining the group’s fun, we’re going to keep running into these problems.

If you want a quick review of what I mean by boundaries, and particularly the difficulty with poor boundaries in terms of people pleasing, one of my past blog posts might help. In the second half of the article I especially talk about the issues of boundaries and people pleasing. In other words–we are afraid to say “no” because it will offend someone.
http://shaunaaura.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/authenticity-boundaries-shadows/

What would happen if we, instead, honored and respected someone’s boundaries? If we asked them if it was ok before trying to hug them, if we respected someone’s desire to not drink alcohol or smoke without teasing them. What if instead of complaining about all the nasty jokes we can’t tell because then someone will complain, what if instead of worrying about how all these boundaries are going to spoil our fun, we look at the community we keep saying we want to be part of?

If we want a sex positive community and culture, that means we have to respect people’s boundaries.

Touching people without their consent is not sex positive. Telling people they are ruining the group’s fun and that they are ashamed of their sexuality because they don’t want to be groped in public is not sex positive.

Examples:

Hugging
Yes, there’s that axiom; “Pagans hug, you’ll get use to it.” And, I have. I just kind of freeze over my body when people I don’t know come up and hug me without asking me. Truthfully, I don’t mind a short hug. I don’t like a long hug with someone I don’t know well. In fact, I don’t generally like much physical contact with people I don’t know well. People who genuinely like hugging don’t get this about people who don’t like hugging. How can you not like hugging?

Thing is–it’s an issue of consent. At the very least, offer someone the chance to decline the hug without any major drama. I always appreciate it when someone asks if I’m ok with a hug, particularly if I’m at a Pagan festival and my shoulders are sunburned. Generally I’m fine with a quick hug. Some folks I know really  find it uncomfortable to be hugged. For instance, some folks on the autism spectrum find physical touch to be extremely distressing.

The reason doesn’t matter, and you don’t need to know if someone’s triggered by touch because of sexual assault or if they just don’t like to be touched. People who don’t like physical touch don’t need to be “fixed.”

If I’m being really truthful, I’d probably decline more hugs at events if I weren’t concerned that I’d offend people. However, I’m in that gray area where, while I don’t prefer random hugs, I can also be generally ok with them. But I’m a lot more ok with them if someone asks first.

Hug from Behind
This past year at a Pagan conference Michigan, I was standing at one of the registration tables getting my badge holder set up. Someone ran up to me from behind and said, “Shauna!” and wrapped their arms around me. I was kind of half standing up by then, but I had no idea who was behind me. I had to keep myself from my body’s automatic reflex which was to turn and shove.

It turned out to be someone that I know, but, let me just articulate that this is several degrees worse than an unasked-for hug from the front. It doesn’t matter if you know me…if you come running at me from behind and touch me, and I don’t know who you are, some of us find that to be really threatening or at least unnerving.

There’s a list of maybe five people where I’d be ok with them wrapping their arms around me when I can’t see them, and in all of those cases, I’d need to know who it was ahead of time. In other words–that type of physical intimacy is really not ok with me in a public place where it could be anyone.

I talked to a friend who had the same thing happen at a convention. She was in the vendors room when someone came up to her from behind to hug her. She was talking to a vendor at that time. She stood up straight and said, “That better be my husband.” The vendor smirked and said, “Or someone really cute.”

My friend put it really succinctly. How is it–in any way–ok just because the person doing it is cute?

You might see this as just innocent hijinks. Just someone teasing someone else. That if someone is saying no, that they aren’t ok with being touched like that, that they are a spoil-sport. I would say that someone unknown to me touching me in a way that I didn’t consent to is getting pretty close to assault.

And yet, we make exceptions. It’s just a convention, it’s just a festival, it’s just Pagans…

Let’s rewind. It’s not ok. Just because you want it to be ok for you to touch someone without asking, doesn’t make it ok. Ask before you touch. Always.

Cleavage is not Consent
So here’s another thing that happened to me at a Pagan convention. I was hanging out with some friends who like to drink and party. I don’t really drink, but, I wanted to spend time with my friends. They were a little more rowdy than I was, but I was basically all right with that. I’m not really a party animal, but this was the only way I’d get to hang out with these particular people.

One of the alcoholic substances in their ensemble was that they had some spray whipped cream cans with chocolate liquor whipped cream.

That particular evening, I was wearing something that showed off my cleavage. At some point as things got rowdier and the laughing went up a few decibels, after I’d declined yet another offer of a drink, my friends reached over and sprayed chocolate whipped cream on my cleavage and told their friend to lick it off.

Now–let’s hit pause for a moment. One of the things I hear a lot when people are denouncing victims of harassment is, “Well, why didn’t you say no?”

In this particular instance, everything happened so fast, there wasn’t time to say no. By the time I had even taken a breath to speak, their friend was already doing what they had told him to do. Let me describe one of the least sexy moments of my life. I felt like I was watching my own body from far away. I couldn’t even really feel what the guy was doing because I just completely disassociated from the physical sensation in shock.

By the time I’d even wrapped my brain around what was happening, it was done.

Speaking Up
In neither of these cases did I speak up and say, “I’m not ok with what you did, you violated my physical boundaries.” In neither of these cases did I complain to the staff or security. Why? Well–because these were my friends, right? They didn’t mean any harm, I was just taking it the wrong way, I was just oversensitive, I was just a stick in the mud and they were more party animals, right?

We have to stop raising up on a pedestal this idea that people who speak up about their boundaries are spoiling people’s fun and thus, deserving of victim blaming and derision.

I didn’t say anything because I knew they’d just roll their eyes and think I was overreacting. And it never occurred to me to talk to security. Thing is, I know that these folks didn’t mean any harm by their actions. But this is a form of sexual harassment nonetheless.

I want to point your attention to this fine article addressing harassment policies from scifi conventions that could be adapted for Pagan events.  http://wildhunt.org/2014/04/addressing-safety-at-pagan-conventions-and-festivals.html

The article addresses different types of inappropriate behavior and a potential range of consequences.

The article outlines the “Costume is not Consent” campaign at CONvergence, a scifi/fantasy convention. And while most harassment complaints come from women, I’m pleased that this article references the “kilt checks” that happen at events. If you’re unfamiliar with a kilt check, it’s where a woman (or group of women) will go up to a man or men dressed in kilts and, often without their permission, reach up under their kilt to grope them to see if they have underwear on under the kilt or if they are going “regimental style.”

All in good fun, most people would say…except, again we’re looking at totally violating someone’s physical boundaries without consent.

Kissing/Flirting/Groping
Here’s another example from my distant past. And, until talking about harassment with others in the past weeks, I never thought of this as harassment. I never would have labeled it as such, and yet I have to now acknowledge it for what it was.

And once again–this wasn’t someone with malicious intent. It was someone who really wasn’t good at respecting physical boundaries.

I was 18, and I was attending my first Scifi/Fantasy convention. As it happens–this particular convention happened at the same hotel that CONvergence (the scifi/fantasy convention referenced above) is located at. This was the conference that predated CONvergence.

Anyhoo. A friend of mine told me about this event and I met up with her at the hotel. It was my first year of college in Minneapolis. After going through the registration line, my friend was introducing me to some other friends of hers, including a very flirty guy she knew from the Renaissance Faire.

I’m not entirely sure how this all happened so fast, but we went from him admiring my necklace, to him kissing me in front of the whole registration line.

This was the first time I’d ever been kissed. In fact, this was the first time anyone had really flirted with me. So, I was really conflicted and confused. I had terrible self esteem at the time. I’d always been the fat kid, the social reject. So I figured it was some kind of freaking miracle that a guy was actually interested in me. And yet, I also was wondering where the fireworks were, and why I wasn’t enjoying what was going on.

Hours after, I was still frowning and mulling on the encounter. Being who I am, I wrote about it. I kept wondering over and over why it hadn’t been hot.

During the rest of the convention, whenever this particular guy saw me, he would find excuses to touch me, to try and make out with me. And every time, I kept thinking, gosh, I should be grateful that this guy is interested. In fact, I seriously considered having sex with him just because he was the only guy who had ever shown any physical interest in me.

But something felt wrong about it. I kept thinking over and over, why isn’t this hot? Shouldn’t this be hot? What’s wrong with me that this isn’t sexy?

It’s been almost 20 years since this happened, and I only have just been able to wrap my mind around why this entire series of experiences troubled me.

I didn’t consent to any of it.

I wasn’t interested in this guy, and his continued attempts to get me to agree to more physical intimacy had me kind of squicked out. I thought there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t interested. It never occurred to me that I wasn’t interested and that him pressing me for more touching and making out was turning me off.

Now–let me also take a step back. I’m fully aware that I did not verbally, directly tell this man to stop during most of these episodes. And–when he did start to go to far and I said it was time to stop, he did. However, during the course of this weekend, this man continued pressuring me for more physical intimacy, and I’m really clear that I was not giving him the physical signals of enthusiastic consent. I was probably giving the signals of “nervous/confused/shy/overwhelmed.”

While I don’t think this guy meant me any harm, I also think that he, and many people like him, unconsciously go for the shy, nervous folks who are afraid to say no.

Shy, Nervous–Predatory
Now, I get it. If you’re a geek or otherwise shy, nervous, and not really very confident in your physical appeal, there’s a tendency to go for others who are shy or nervous. Trust me, I understand–I’m a geeky mess of shyness and awkwardness.

However, there’s a point where targeting the shy/nervous/low-self-confident person in the room can start to veer into predatory behavior.

I have several times hosted Pagan events where there was someone (typically a man) who was hitting on the shyest, youngest, or most vulnerable woman at the event. At one event in particular there was a man who already had a track record of having broken a few hearts by misrepresenting himself (he identified as polyamorous but didn’t bother to tell that to the women he was with, so they thought they were dating, and he was just playing the field). He was hanging around a young woman who had just experienced her first ecstatic ritual. She was a little out of it. We made sure she got home safely, but with that event, I finally noticed his pattern.

He went for the young, pretty, shy girls with low self esteem.

My own ex, similarly, has gone for students in classes of his or people who attended events and festivals where they met him in context as a teacher/leader. There are a number of times when he was with–or he hit on–women who were shy, or who had low self confidence.

And ultimately, this is why boundaries and consent are really important–because, if we have a culture of consent, if we know what physical boundary-pushing is very much not ok, then participants are more empowered to say that. To say, “I’m not ok with this.” And if the behavior continues, to be empowered to talk to one of the event staff for help.

When we have confusing physical boundaries, when we’re afraid of speaking up for fear of offending someone, that’s what opens the door for the worse predatory behavior. The boundary pushing I mentioned above is what I’d call naive or unintentional harassment.

For instance, I have a few friends that are really touchy feely. They like to take your hand or grip your shoulder or lean in for a big long hug. They don’t mean anything by it. But, if we don’t talk about these things, if we don’t begin to respect each other’s physical boundaries, we’re making a lot more room for the genuine creepers to slip through the cracks.

Another fine blog post, this one on negotiating boundaries.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2014/04/consent-culture-101-basic-practices-and-teaching-games/

While the primary exercise listed is geared for children to explore boundaries, I’d offer that a similar exercise for adults would be excellent work. In fact, in some of the sex magic intensives that friends of mine have experienced, 75% of the workshop was negotiating trust and boundaries. Before any physical touch happened, they did a more adult-adapted version of the boundaries exercises in the above blog post.

In some ways, it’s really simple. And sometimes, the simplest work is the hardest. We have to learn to say no. And, we have to know that our “no” is going to be respected. That we won’t be teased for it. That people won’t roll their eyes or tell us we’re overreacting. Our “no” must be respected.

Only if “no” is respected does “yes” have any meaning.

Predators 4: Amputate

When we’re talking true predators, we’re talking about a cancer. In most cases, there is no fixing them, no healing them. Or at least–the likelihood is so tiny, it’s not worth trying. If we’re talking about people who sexually molest children, their rate of recidivism is so high that they are generally considered incurable. And there’s a host of other issues that play into addiction and personality disorders.

I hope that some day there are ways to help these people, because for some of them, it’s just how their brains formed. It wasn’t their fault, but now they are stuck with it. For others, their own systematic abuse as children may have made them, in turn, an abuser.

The point is–once you’ve identified a predator in your community, you need to take an action. You need to amputate them from your community, from their hunting ground.

And in the Pagan community (or rather, overlapping communities) this is pretty difficult to do. The “easiest” scenario (and it’s in no way easy) is if you observe directly predatory behavior in a member of your group, you have a group policy for what to do, and you tell that person they are no longer welcome.

Let’s be clear; most Pagan groups out there can’t even do that. Most Pagan groups aren’t willing to kick someone out, even for incredibly bad behavior.

But let’s assume that your group has that policy and you’ve witnessed this behavior and it’s a pretty cut and dried thing. Maybe someone was clearly not respecting an adult woman’s firmly stated “No” and touched her inappropriately. You talk about it, you remove the person from the group. But then you face the next step, which is that you really want to communicate to other local group leaders about this person so that they are aware. Except, even though you’ve worked out this great process for what to do with predators, the other group leaders shame you for spreading malicious gossip.

Now let’s work with a worse case scenario. Let’s say the predator is a coven leader or other group leader, or a big name Pagan author.

I’ve written at length how you can’t really “make” a Pagan group leader stop running a group. And, how standing up and speaking out against them is more likely to make you look like a jerk. The same thing for speaking out against a Pagan presenter or author. In fact, sometimes moreso. Many predators are charismatic, and any charismatic leader gains a following that gets stuck in that cognitive dissonance.

“Because ____ is awesome, this person must be lying about being abused.” Basic brain process.

Even if you manage to convince people that this person did something, many will be convinced that this person can get better, they can change.

Who Can Change?
I’m certainly an advocate of personal growth. Ten years ago I’d never have had the public speaking skills to teach workshops. Heck, I could barely attend events I was so shy. People can change, but as we talked about in the last post, sometimes they are pretty much unlikely to. I was recently “victim blamed” by my ex’s (Mark) fiance. She went on about how if I’d just hung in there, if I’d just worked harder to help him heal…

And I hear from people who tell me that he says he’s healed, that he’s done all this personal work. Well–and I know this will be a shock to you–but I’ve heard that before.

I put up with 3 years of “baby I’ll be better.” I put up with him going to therapy and trying to get help, only to backslide into worse behavior. In fact, that’s basically the pattern of every domestic abuse situation out there. I don’t mean to be a fatalist, only a realist. And I won that realism clawing my way up until my fingers bled from it.

Mark–like many abusers–may feel like he’s “healed” now, but I’m reasonably sure he’ll screw up again. The problem is, his screw ups are always just on the side of “we can brush that under the rug, it’s just stuff within the privacy of his relationships.” Or, “Cheating isn’t being a predator.” Or, “Flirting isn’t being a predator.”

In fact, Mark, like many abusers, is made all the more dangerous because of his periods of reasonableness. There are moments where he gets centered, where he realizes what he’s done, when he apologizes. Where he makes the grandiose gesture.

And–let’s face it. Most of us want people to be healed. We like this person, otherwise we wouldn’t have put up with the abuse in the first place. We want to believe that this time it worked. But what this does is give them yet another opportunity to hurt more people. When people see the “sane, grounded” version of an abuser, they soften. “Well, he’s getting help, so….”

And thus we enable.

I am nauseated by how I fell for this, how I enabled Mark to continue to hurt others, how I put my own community at risk. My own terror of being alone forever was something I placed above the good of the community, and I can’t take that back. All I can do is move forward and try to help build healthier communities, and own where I made my mistakes.

To be fair, I stayed with Mark and worked to help him because I thought, if he just got some help, what an amazing leader he could be. I had the hubris of, “I can help fix him.”

I no longer have such hubris. And so we come back to why abusers need to be excised, amputated, and cut off.

Festivals and Conferences
A month ago, I was at Convocation in Detroit. Mark was there presenting with his fiance. Now, to be fair, I have never complained about Mark being a presenter to the Convocation staff. I never felt like that would be a useful thing to do. I knew that the con staff was aware of him and keeping an eye on him, but I never made a formal complaint.

However, that will change. Mark’s fiance offered a women’s trance dance that was intended to get women into such a vulnerable state that they were encouraged to bring someone with them to hold them and care for them after. Can we count the thousand ways how this is inappropriate, to give someone like Mark–who has a history of targeting vulnerable women–access to this? THIS IS NOT OK.

And, once I wrap my brain around what to say, I’ll be messaging the folks who organize Convocation to address the issue. I think they–like many event organizers–do a great job, but all of us–group leaders, event organizers, everyone–we need to take a hard look at the predatory behavior and be willing to cut it off. Yes, it means we’ll lose some amazing teachers. Yes, we’ll lose some resources.

But what are the alternatives?

Amputate
In theory, the amputation process is fairly straightforward. Identify problem person, kick them out of a group, and alert other local groups. Or, if it’s a local group leader, gather together other local leaders to discuss, and agree to cut that leader off. Or, if it’s a Pagan teacher, agree that this teacher’s inappropriate behavior is grounds for them to not teach at events, and/or not attend future events.

There’s a more specific process outlined on this blog http://saltyourbones.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/on-outing-abusers/ that references a process outlined by TheGeekyBlonde on a  video about how communities should deal with abuse.

I’ll quote some from the above blog:
“Step 1 – Amputate: Cut offending members off from the community in all forms so that they cannot continue to influence them, abuse or manipulate members, etc. Don’t attempt to rationalize their behavior. Don’t attempt to “separate the man from the material” because both have proven to be problematic and dangerous in one regard or another. Cut him off from the community….

Step 2 – Vaccinate: Let the rest of the community know that these types of people, behaviors, and actions should not (and will not) be tolerated and are detrimental to our community in all forms. Educate as to why they are harmful and problematic and why they cannot be acceptable in a healthy community.”

Amputating Kenny Klein
Even if he isn’t sent to jail for a thousand years, Kenny Klein is finished in the Pagan community. He admitted to possession of child pornography, though he has not yet been convicted, and many people have come forward to speak about how he abused them as teenagers. The cat is out of the bag.

However, he’s still got books out, and CDs out. Taylor Ellwood and Immanion Press pulled Kenny’s book “The Flowering Rod,” Green Egg pulled his work, and Witches and Pagans pulled his blog. Sacred Harvest Festival announced that Kenny would not be teaching there this summer. I think that that’s a great first step. Llewellyn has ceased selling copies of Kenny Klein’s books.

A number of folks have balked at this, saying that Kenny Klein is innocent until proven guilty. And in almost every case, I’d be with them on that. Except, in this case, there’s two factors. Factor one is, he admitted to it.

Factor two is, we have all these people coming forward speaking about how he abused them.

What is Guilty?
Now, let’s take a step back, and imagine that we’re trying to remove a Pagan teacher/author where there isn’t a legal case. Maybe we have some allegations of unwanted touch, but no witnesses. Or a series of other allegations that are basically unable to be proven.

Sometimes, an allegation is just that. Sometimes it’s a squabble from a breakup. And other times, there’s a documentable pattern. And maybe it’s not illegal, but isn’t there a point when this behavior becomes grounds for people to cut someone off?

At what point do Pagan bookstores, Pagan publishers, and Pagan festivals and conferences have the obligation to stop promoting a particular author/speaker’s work?

Pulling Books and Role Models
When Taylor Ellwood and I were on Pagan Musings Podcast, Taylor summed up his reasons for why he pulled Kenny’s book. I’ll paraphrase. He offered that Immanion Press is a community resource there to serve the Pagan community. And Kenny Klein’s book “The Flowering Rod” was a guide for, among other things, how men should ethically behave in the Pagan community, and Kenny’s actions do not support the values in the book. Taylor felt it would be hypocritical to carry that book. Taylor also pointed out that as he and I are currently editing an anthology on Pagan leadership for Immanion Press, it would be further hypocritical of Immanion to carry Kenny’s title.

I agree with something else Taylor said–that Pagan leaders and authors should be role models. Gods know I screw up, I’m human. But, I work hard to be that, to be a role model. And when I screw up, I work to be better.

There are presenters I’d never hire or recommend because of things I know that they’ve done, but I have no physical proof. There are leaders that I avoid, or actively dissuade people from working with, for the same reasons.

But there has to come a point when we can’t just bury our heads in the sand, when we have to be willing to cut someone off.

What is Abuse?
I’ve asked this before. What behavior constitutes abuse that is “enough?” What’s bad enough to get someone kicked out of an event or removed as a teacher? Where does it cross that fuzzy gray area into actionable? Sleeping with students (of age) isn’t illegal. And hitting on people til they are uncomfortable is not seen as a problem in the Pagan community under the sex positive excuse. Lying, emotional manipulation…none of these on their own seem like grounds to kick someone out.

And that’s why this is going to have to be part of a longer, ongoing conversation. Because, I do not think it is in any way reasonable to say, “That’s just domestic abuse.”

Standing Up: Silent Voices
That’s why I made the decision to speak out about my ex, Mark. That’s why I’m not backing down from his threat of a libel lawsuit. That’s why I’m not letting the victim blaming on my Facebook page stop me.

I’m a published author, I’m a public speaker, I’m somewhat well known in some circles of the Pagan community, and even with all of that, I’m still dealing with the worst aspects of speaking out against an abuser.

I cannot even imagine trying to do this if I were just an event attendee or a group member. Several women have told me, “I can’t post about this publicly, but Mark did…” And, I wish I could get them to post. To speak out. To lend their voices. But I understand their fear.

And so many women felt like it was nothing major, nothing they should bother reporting. “He was out at the conference/festival in the wee hours while you were sleeping, and he was hitting on me in a way that made me uncomfortable. I didn’t think you guys were polyamorous but he made it sound like you were. I didn’t want to mention it to you at the time, but I wish I had…”

I have found one of my greatest struggles these past years is finding the balance to acknowledge two simultaneous things. Yes, I have heard from many people who have experienced horrific abuse. Nauseating and violent abuse. Abuse they will never physically recover from. What Mark did to me was not that. I acknowledge that what he did, in the grand scheme of things, was not  as bad as that. And yet, I also acknowledge that what he did to me was still abuse. There are a number of people who have taken it upon themselves to tell me that what I experienced was not “real” abuse. That isn’t true. It wasn’t violent, and I have the deepest compassion for people who have gone through more horrific abuse than I did. But what I went through is still abuse, and his behavior towards women is still predatory.

And so for all those women that he hurt that I know of, and for all those that I don’t know of, that’s why I’m posting about these issues, and about the specifics with my ex.

So even if I sound like the crazy ex, I cannot not speak out about his actions. And maybe it’s “just” domestic abuse, but I don’t want to support that being in my community. People like Mark need to be amputated from the community and from their feeding ground.

I wish to the gods he could be healed, because he could be one of the most amazing Pagan leaders and teachers out there. But after 3 years of “Baby, I’m sorry, I’ll do better, don’t leave me” and all the other reasons I stayed and gave him another chance for those moments when he seemed like he was getting better–there’s a time to cut the tumor off.

Predators 4: Amputate

When we’re talking true predators, we’re talking about a cancer. In most cases, there is no fixing them, no healing them. Or at least–the likelihood is so tiny, it’s not worth trying. If we’re talking about people who sexually molest children, their rate of recidivism is so high that they are generally considered incurable. And there’s a host of other issues that play into addiction and personality disorders.

I hope that some day there are ways to help these people, because for some of them, it’s just how their brains formed. It wasn’t their fault, but now they are stuck with it. For others, their own systematic abuse as children may have made them, in turn, an abuser.

The point is–once you’ve identified a predator in your community, you need to take an action. You need to amputate them from your community, from their hunting ground.

And in the Pagan community (or rather, overlapping communities) this is pretty difficult to do. The “easiest” scenario (and it’s in no way easy) is if you observe directly predatory behavior in a member of your group, you have a group policy for what to do, and you tell that person they are no longer welcome.

Let’s be clear; most Pagan groups out there can’t even do that. Most Pagan groups aren’t willing to kick someone out, even for incredibly bad behavior.

But let’s assume that your group has that policy and you’ve witnessed this behavior and it’s a pretty cut and dried thing. Maybe someone was clearly not respecting an adult woman’s firmly stated “No” and touched her inappropriately. You talk about it, you remove the person from the group. But then you face the next step, which is that you really want to communicate to other local group leaders about this person so that they are aware. Except, even though you’ve worked out this great process for what to do with predators, the other group leaders shame you for spreading malicious gossip.

Now let’s work with a worse case scenario. Let’s say the predator is a coven leader or other group leader, or a big name Pagan author.

I’ve written at length how you can’t really “make” a Pagan group leader stop running a group. And, how standing up and speaking out against them is more likely to make you look like a jerk. The same thing for speaking out against a Pagan presenter or author. In fact, sometimes moreso. Many predators are charismatic, and any charismatic leader gains a following that gets stuck in that cognitive dissonance.

“Because ____ is awesome, this person must be lying about being abused.” Basic brain process.

Even if you manage to convince people that this person did something, many will be convinced that this person can get better, they can change.

Who Can Change?
I’m certainly an advocate of personal growth. Ten years ago I’d never have had the public speaking skills to teach workshops. Heck, I could barely attend events I was so shy. People can change, but as we talked about in the last post, sometimes they are pretty much unlikely to. I was recently “victim blamed” by my ex’s (Mark) fiance. She went on about how if I’d just hung in there, if I’d just worked harder to help him heal…

And I hear from people who tell me that he says he’s healed, that he’s done all this personal work. Well–and I know this will be a shock to you–but I’ve heard that before.

I put up with 3 years of “baby I’ll be better.” I put up with him going to therapy and trying to get help, only to backslide into worse behavior. In fact, that’s basically the pattern of every domestic abuse situation out there. I don’t mean to be a fatalist, only a realist. And I won that realism clawing my way up until my fingers bled from it.

Mark–like many abusers–may feel like he’s “healed” now, but I’m reasonably sure he’ll screw up again. The problem is, his screw ups are always just on the side of “we can brush that under the rug, it’s just stuff within the privacy of his relationships.” Or, “Cheating isn’t being a predator.” Or, “Flirting isn’t being a predator.”

In fact, Mark, like many abusers, is made all the more dangerous because of his periods of reasonableness. There are moments where he gets centered, where he realizes what he’s done, when he apologizes. Where he makes the grandiose gesture.

And–let’s face it. Most of us want people to be healed. We like this person, otherwise we wouldn’t have put up with the abuse in the first place. We want to believe that this time it worked. But what this does is give them yet another opportunity to hurt more people. When people see the “sane, grounded” version of an abuser, they soften. “Well, he’s getting help, so….”

And thus we enable.

I am nauseated by how I fell for this, how I enabled Mark to continue to hurt others, how I put my own community at risk. My own terror of being alone forever was something I placed above the good of the community, and I can’t take that back. All I can do is move forward and try to help build healthier communities, and own where I made my mistakes.

To be fair, I stayed with Mark and worked to help him because I thought, if he just got some help, what an amazing leader he could be. I had the hubris of, “I can help fix him.”

I no longer have such hubris. And so we come back to why abusers need to be excised, amputated, and cut off.

Festivals and Conferences
A month ago, I was at Convocation in Detroit. Mark was there presenting with his fiance. Now, to be fair, I have never complained about Mark being a presenter to the Convocation staff. I never felt like that would be a useful thing to do. I knew that the con staff was aware of him and keeping an eye on him, but I never made a formal complaint.

However, that will change. Mark’s fiance offered a women’s trance dance that was intended to get women into such a vulnerable state that they were encouraged to bring someone with them to hold them and care for them after. Can we count the thousand ways how this is inappropriate, to give someone like Mark–who has a history of targeting vulnerable women–access to this? THIS IS NOT OK.

And, once I wrap my brain around what to say, I’ll be messaging the folks who organize Convocation to address the issue. I think they–like many event organizers–do a great job, but all of us–group leaders, event organizers, everyone–we need to take a hard look at the predatory behavior and be willing to cut it off. Yes, it means we’ll lose some amazing teachers. Yes, we’ll lose some resources.

But what are the alternatives?

Amputate
In theory, the amputation process is fairly straightforward. Identify problem person, kick them out of a group, and alert other local groups. Or, if it’s a local group leader, gather together other local leaders to discuss, and agree to cut that leader off. Or, if it’s a Pagan teacher, agree that this teacher’s inappropriate behavior is grounds for them to not teach at events, and/or not attend future events.

There’s a more specific process outlined on this blog http://saltyourbones.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/on-outing-abusers/ that references a process outlined by TheGeekyBlonde on a  video about how communities should deal with abuse.

I’ll quote some from the above blog:
“Step 1 – Amputate: Cut offending members off from the community in all forms so that they cannot continue to influence them, abuse or manipulate members, etc. Don’t attempt to rationalize their behavior. Don’t attempt to “separate the man from the material” because both have proven to be problematic and dangerous in one regard or another. Cut him off from the community….

Step 2 – Vaccinate: Let the rest of the community know that these types of people, behaviors, and actions should not (and will not) be tolerated and are detrimental to our community in all forms. Educate as to why they are harmful and problematic and why they cannot be acceptable in a healthy community.”

Amputating Kenny Klein
Even if he isn’t sent to jail for a thousand years, Kenny Klein is finished in the Pagan community. He admitted to possession of child pornography, though he has not yet been convicted, and many people have come forward to speak about how he abused them as teenagers. The cat is out of the bag.

However, he’s still got books out, and CDs out. Taylor Ellwood and Immanion Press pulled Kenny’s book “The Flowering Rod,” Green Egg pulled his work, and Witches and Pagans pulled his blog. Sacred Harvest Festival announced that Kenny would not be teaching there this summer. I think that that’s a great first step. Llewellyn has ceased selling copies of Kenny Klein’s books.

A number of folks have balked at this, saying that Kenny Klein is innocent until proven guilty. And in almost every case, I’d be with them on that. Except, in this case, there’s two factors. Factor one is, he admitted to it.

Factor two is, we have all these people coming forward speaking about how he abused them.

What is Guilty?
Now, let’s take a step back, and imagine that we’re trying to remove a Pagan teacher/author where there isn’t a legal case. Maybe we have some allegations of unwanted touch, but no witnesses. Or a series of other allegations that are basically unable to be proven.

Sometimes, an allegation is just that. Sometimes it’s a squabble from a breakup. And other times, there’s a documentable pattern. And maybe it’s not illegal, but isn’t there a point when this behavior becomes grounds for people to cut someone off?

At what point do Pagan bookstores, Pagan publishers, and Pagan festivals and conferences have the obligation to stop promoting a particular author/speaker’s work?

Pulling Books and Role Models
When Taylor Ellwood and I were on Pagan Musings Podcast, Taylor summed up his reasons for why he pulled Kenny’s book. I’ll paraphrase. He offered that Immanion Press is a community resource there to serve the Pagan community. And Kenny Klein’s book “The Flowering Rod” was a guide for, among other things, how men should ethically behave in the Pagan community, and Kenny’s actions do not support the values in the book. Taylor felt it would be hypocritical to carry that book. Taylor also pointed out that as he and I are currently editing an anthology on Pagan leadership for Immanion Press, it would be further hypocritical of Immanion to carry Kenny’s title.

I agree with something else Taylor said–that Pagan leaders and authors should be role models. Gods know I screw up, I’m human. But, I work hard to be that, to be a role model. And when I screw up, I work to be better.

There are presenters I’d never hire or recommend because of things I know that they’ve done, but I have no physical proof. There are leaders that I avoid, or actively dissuade people from working with, for the same reasons.

But there has to come a point when we can’t just bury our heads in the sand, when we have to be willing to cut someone off.

What is Abuse?
I’ve asked this before. What behavior constitutes abuse that is “enough?” What’s bad enough to get someone kicked out of an event or removed as a teacher? Where does it cross that fuzzy gray area into actionable? Sleeping with students (of age) isn’t illegal. And hitting on people til they are uncomfortable is not seen as a problem in the Pagan community under the sex positive excuse. Lying, emotional manipulation…none of these on their own seem like grounds to kick someone out.

And that’s why this is going to have to be part of a longer, ongoing conversation. Because, I do not think it is in any way reasonable to say, “That’s just domestic abuse.”

Standing Up: Silent Voices
That’s why I made the decision to speak out about my ex, Mark. That’s why I’m not backing down from his threat of a libel lawsuit. That’s why I’m not letting the victim blaming on my Facebook page stop me.

I’m a published author, I’m a public speaker, I’m somewhat well known in some circles of the Pagan community, and even with all of that, I’m still dealing with the worst aspects of speaking out against an abuser.

I cannot even imagine trying to do this if I were just an event attendee or a group member. Several women have told me, “I can’t post about this publicly, but Mark did…” And, I wish I could get them to post. To speak out. To lend their voices. But I understand their fear.

And so many women felt like it was nothing major, nothing they should bother reporting. “He was out at the conference/festival in the wee hours while you were sleeping, and he was hitting on me in a way that made me uncomfortable. I didn’t think you guys were polyamorous but he made it sound like you were. I didn’t want to mention it to you at the time, but I wish I had…”

I have found one of my greatest struggles these past years is finding the balance to acknowledge two simultaneous things. Yes, I have heard from many people who have experienced horrific abuse. Nauseating and violent abuse. Abuse they will never physically recover from. What Mark did to me was not that. I acknowledge that what he did, in the grand scheme of things, was not  as bad as that. And yet, I also acknowledge that what he did to me was still abuse. There are a number of people who have taken it upon themselves to tell me that what I experienced was not “real” abuse. That isn’t true. It wasn’t violent, and I have the deepest compassion for people who have gone through more horrific abuse than I did. But what I went through is still abuse, and his behavior towards women is still predatory.

And so for all those women that he hurt that I know of, and for all those that I don’t know of, that’s why I’m posting about these issues, and about the specifics with my ex.

So even if I sound like the crazy ex, I cannot not speak out about his actions. And maybe it’s “just” domestic abuse, but I don’t want to support that being in my community. People like Mark need to be amputated from the community and from their feeding ground.

I wish to the gods he could be healed, because he could be one of the most amazing Pagan leaders and teachers out there. But after 3 years of “Baby, I’m sorry, I’ll do better, don’t leave me” and all the other reasons I stayed and gave him another chance for those moments when he seemed like he was getting better–there’s a time to cut the tumor off.

Of Pagans and Predators: Part 3

So in the midst of writing this series, my ex’s fiance posted on my Facebook, and a comment on Part 1, basically doing a textbook codependent dance of enabling. And it was painful to read, because I realize, that was me. Years ago, I was making excuses for Mark. I was the one defending him, because he would say, “If I do it, nobody will listen to me, but if a woman does it, that’ll carry some weight.” I bought it. I drank the Kool-Aid.

And I hear that he’s looking to sue me for libel for what I wrote about him. I heard this via some people who messaged me (this was unsolicited on my part) copied and pasted text of what Mark is posting on his wall.

What does all this bullshit drama mean? It means that I’m becoming a living example of why no victim wants to come forward.

Because this is what you’ll have to put up with. And gods help any victim who isn’t coming from a position of power. I’m an author, I’m a teacher, I have a public voice in the Pagan community. If you’re a newbie, an attendee at an event? I can’t see any way that someone in a power-under position like that would ever risk coming forward.

That being said, we’ve talked a lot about some of the problems. Here are a few beginnings of solutions. Now–none of this is earth shattering. But it’s a start. And it’s hard work and it’s going to take a long time, but if we don’t start, we’ll never get there.

Healthy Boundaries and Self Esteem
I know, I already said this. But as a community, we need healthier boundaries. And I’m not just talking about teaching what’s good touch or bad touch or what’s consent. I’m talking about boundaries and ego from the ground up. That’s big work. Huge work.

But if we each do not do that work–and trust me, this is work I’ve been working on with myself for years–we’re just going to keep spinning our wheels.

I can honestly say that poor boundaries and an unhealthy ego/poor self esteem are probably the grounds for a majority of conflicts that I see in the Pagan community. If each person out there works to get healthy boundaries and training in what consent is, we’ve solved a lot of potential problems right there.

Working With Socially Awkward People
While we’re doing all this personal growth work around boundaries and behaviors, this also offers us the opportunity to help those socially awkward folks who don’t understand that they are crossing other people’s boundaries.

Trust me, as one of those socially awkward folks, I really resonate with this difficulty. While my own behavior probably couldn’t have been described as predatory, I certainly was pretty annoying before I learned more about how to behave socially. And I’ve known people who were genuinely well-meaning who had no idea that they were being offensive or creepy.

I’ve worked with people who had no idea that they were coming across as creepy. Most folks when they find this out will work to adapt their behavior but sometimes need help. However, this type of work does require some discernment, in that

1. You don’t want to spin your wheels working with someone who isn’t going to change,
2. You need to be somewhat aware of things such as Aspergers and people who are not neuro-typical. There are ways that Aspergers folks can learn to engage, but that is often a more extensive process of therapy. However, you may be able to help connect them to a resource. You just have to understand that this is different from someone being just awkward; someone with Aspergers actually may not recognize facial cues or body language, and
3. You don’t want to get into the position of enabling someone to be a predator who is using the excuse of socially awkward.

It’s a fine balance on the edge of a knife to discern some of the differences. However, working with some of our more socially awkward community members can perhaps make the genuinely predatory behavior more clear.

Training in Spotting Predators
One clear solution to protect our children at community events is for each adult to have basic training in how to identify a pedophile. Keep in mind that a number of professionals in the field of therapy and psychology–even therapists who work specifically with sex offenders–will talk about how you can’t always “tell.” However, there are some behaviors that are a pretty solid red flag.

http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-a-Pedophile

Identifying the Unacceptable Behavior
When I teach Pagan leadership, I often talk about basic group agreements as the circle or cauldron that holds your group. What’s ok? What isn’t ok?

Apparently what we really need to do–collectively, to a certain extent, but also within our individual sovereign groups–is identify what behavior is acceptable, and what isn’t. When the behaviors are “fuzzy,” we can’t necessarily agree on whether or not what is happening is wrong, much less what to do about it. 

There are some things that are probably pretty clear–sexually molesting a child is pretty clearly grounds for not only being kicked out of a group but for calling the police. But what about the gray area? What if one of your group members and their partner are consistently getting into screaming fights and you’re worried about one or both parties being in an abusive dynamic? What if a presenter you’ve hired for a festival is really flirtatious at your event, but you’re not really sure if they are respecting boundaries or not?

What if your coven has a tradition of sexual initiation?

A sex temple or group with sexual initiatory practices is probably going to have a different spectrum of acceptable behaviors than a small coven or a group putting on a public festival or conference. Skyclad can work for some groups, and in others it can feel like pressuring people to be oversexualized. Sexual initiation can be totally appropriate in some circumstances. In other circumstances where people feel pressured into it, this can be an abuse of power.

In almost any group without a tradition of sexual initiation, I would say that a pretty good general guideline is that teachers should not be sleeping with students because of the heavily unequal power dynamic. There are exceptions when a peer dynamic has been achieved, but that’s a whole separate post on how to figure that out.

Fuzzy Gray Area
You have to look at what behaviors start to hit that zone in the gray area where it starts to become a red flag, and possibly grounds for someone to be removed from a group or event, or even legal action being taken.

Here’s an example. If someone on my leadership team got arrested for smoking pot, they would not be kicked off my team. Yes, in most states it’s illegal. But, it’s not a behavior that is in itself harmful to others, and states are beginning to decriminalize this.

On the other hand, I don’t allow pot or other illegal drugs at my public events. Why? Well, that should be pretty obvious–it puts all of us at legal risk. One of my leaders who breaks that rule is going to get a stern warning from me, and repeat offenses are probably grounds for asking them to leave. (Plus, I’m allergic to the smoke, so I’ll be cranky because if I smell that I’m going to get a migraine.)

Someone getting into a (verbal) fight with their partner at an event is not in itself grounds to get kicked out, though I might intercede and take them to a private room. However, if that’s happening every time, that’s a red flag.

In one case, I found out that a guy who had some “creepy” tendencies was physically abusing his partner. His creepy behaviors weren’t enough for me to kick him out of the group (yet), but once I found out what was happening with his partner, he is no longer welcome at my events.

Document Those Agreements
Once you and your group members have made agreements around what behavior is a red flag, and what’s grounds for dismissal, it’s time to document that and disseminate it to your group.

Several groups and events out there have policies specifically around consent and sexual abuse, and I hope to get some of those policies together to help other groups craft some “best practices.” But–go ahead and reach out to more established groups and festivals, they may have documents like this that are a place to start. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Process for Complaints
Your agreements need teeth. Part of that is giving people a clear process for how they complain about another group member, a group organizer, or a presenter at your event. If people don’t have a clear way to bring up a complaint, then your agreements are sort of null and void.

Now–just because someone complains doesn’t mean instant guilt. But people do need a way to complain.

I’ll give you three guesses why nobody complained to me about what my ex, Mark, was doing. Because…I was the group leader, he was the other core leader, and we were a couple. None of those women was ever going to feel safe complaining to me about my fiance, not until he was gone. And I shudder to think of how many were too nervous to come forward, or who just left the community in disgust.

In fact, in the time since I posted Part 1, I’ve already heard from another two women who felt that he was making unwelcome sexual advances on them when we were teaching at events.

Document the Complaint
Whatever has gone on, documenting the complaint is a good first step. And I am chagrined to admit that this isn’t something that occurred to me. I’m used to keeping a lot of data in my head, like Person A’s story about Person X, and Person B’s story, and Person C’s story. By the time I have that much data, I don’t need documentation, I know what to do with Person X.

When we were on the Pagan Musings Podcast, Taylor Ellwood brought up the idea of documenting the behaviors witnessed and the complaints received. I’m sure there are formats to do this, and in the coming days and weeks I’ll be working to gather some resources for best practices in that. You can listen to the Podcast here, as it it offered a lot of discussion of many of these issues. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pagan-musings/2014/03/31/pmp-sex-ethics-abuse-in-the-magickal-world

I think documenting a complaint is good for multiple reasons. One is that if something happens in the future with that person, you’ve got some documentation around it. Also, especially in groups with rotating leadership, one single person won’t always have all the information.

It’s also worth pointing out that if there’s one person who’s always complaining about others, that is also good information to have. While I don’t advocate blaming the victim, sometimes there are people who make it their life’s work to being a professional victim. Still other folks have untreated mental illness such as one of the Paranoid personality disorders. And, you may also just have someone who has an axe to grind. This is why this whole process requires rather a lot of discernment.

Documenting takes a complaint from being just a social thing or gossip into something a little more formal and actionable. It lets your group members know that you are listening seriously to their concerns, even if there’s not enough information to take an action at that time.

It also captures information that you could forward on to other regional group leaders about the actions of a particular group member, and this moves it from the category of “gossip” and “rumormongering” into “sharing a formal complaint.”

Decisions
With most complaints, there probably isn’t going to be enough information to take an action. However, documenting the facts of what has happened–or at least, the nature of the alleged abuse–makes it far easier to take an action if another person complains about the same person.

Taking Action
Sometimes it’s pretty clear that something skeevy is going on. Assuming it’s illegal behavior, such as abuse of a minor, your group also needs a policy for how to report things to the police. There are several books out there about Pagans negotiating with police, and specifically I’m thinking of Kerr Cuchulain’s book but if you aren’t sure how to approach the police, you might consider Circle Sanctuary and the Lady Liberty League as a resource.

Community and Judgement
Many of the actions that your group identifies will not necessarily be grounds for getting someone arrested, but may require you to ask someone to leave your group whether as a participant or as a leader. Or may require you to decline hosting a particular presenter.

What this basically means is that yes–you will need a judicial process for your group. However it functions–whether it’s one leader or a council or consensus–you will need to take the information from people who have come to you to tell you about an abusive or harmful situation…and you will need to determine, “Person B did this and I must remove them from the group,” or, “There isn’t enough data to determine if Person B did this but I will keep an eye out.”

So yeah–someone has to make a decision. Even if that decision as, “I don’t know. I don’t know enough to feel comfortable kicking out Person B yet.” That’s still a decision, it’s still a judgment.

Sometimes, an appropriate judgment might be that Person B can remain in the group if they consent to getting some form of help. However, be very cautious in this approach. Many people benefit from therapy, the right medications, or from AA or another program.

However, if you’re dealing with one of the major personality disorders, or someone who consistently goes off their bipolar medications, or with a sex offender…or any of the big abusive behaviors…these folks are very likely not going to respond to any treatment. In fact, many of these are considered untreatable.

Can People Change?
I believe that almost anyone can change. By my experience of people is, most won’t. This is what I mean when I say I’m an optimist with a broken heart. I want to believe that every single person can become better. But my dealings with Mark, and with others, helped me to understand that there are people way beyond my pay grade.

And when you find someone in your group who is a repeat abuser or any kind of predator, there’s only one real solution–amputate them from the group. Like a cancer, you have to remove them.

Yes–that means they will just go somewhere else. But, that’s a blog post for another day. We’ll talk more on what it means to remove someone from a group.

Meanwhile, here’s that statement on religious sexual abuse for the Pagan community that was crafted out of a call from the Wild Hunt news blog. It’s worth a look.

http://www.brendanmyers.net/wickedrabbit/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33%3Afinished-the-community-statement-on-religious-sexual-abuse&catid=11%3Anewscategory&showall=1

Of Pagans and Predators: Part 3

So in the midst of writing this series, my ex’s fiance posted on my Facebook, and a comment on Part 1, basically doing a textbook codependent dance of enabling. And it was painful to read, because I realize, that was me. Years ago, I was making excuses for Mark. I was the one defending him, because he would say, “If I do it, nobody will listen to me, but if a woman does it, that’ll carry some weight.” I bought it. I drank the Kool-Aid.

And I hear that he’s looking to sue me for libel for what I wrote about him. I heard this via some people who messaged me (this was unsolicited on my part) copied and pasted text of what Mark is posting on his wall.

What does all this bullshit drama mean? It means that I’m becoming a living example of why no victim wants to come forward.

Because this is what you’ll have to put up with. And gods help any victim who isn’t coming from a position of power. I’m an author, I’m a teacher, I have a public voice in the Pagan community. If you’re a newbie, an attendee at an event? I can’t see any way that someone in a power-under position like that would ever risk coming forward.

That being said, we’ve talked a lot about some of the problems. Here are a few beginnings of solutions. Now–none of this is earth shattering. But it’s a start. And it’s hard work and it’s going to take a long time, but if we don’t start, we’ll never get there.

Healthy Boundaries and Self Esteem
I know, I already said this. But as a community, we need healthier boundaries. And I’m not just talking about teaching what’s good touch or bad touch or what’s consent. I’m talking about boundaries and ego from the ground up. That’s big work. Huge work.

But if we each do not do that work–and trust me, this is work I’ve been working on with myself for years–we’re just going to keep spinning our wheels.

I can honestly say that poor boundaries and an unhealthy ego/poor self esteem are probably the grounds for a majority of conflicts that I see in the Pagan community. If each person out there works to get healthy boundaries and training in what consent is, we’ve solved a lot of potential problems right there.

Working With Socially Awkward People
While we’re doing all this personal growth work around boundaries and behaviors, this also offers us the opportunity to help those socially awkward folks who don’t understand that they are crossing other people’s boundaries.

Trust me, as one of those socially awkward folks, I really resonate with this difficulty. While my own behavior probably couldn’t have been described as predatory, I certainly was pretty annoying before I learned more about how to behave socially. And I’ve known people who were genuinely well-meaning who had no idea that they were being offensive or creepy.

I’ve worked with people who had no idea that they were coming across as creepy. Most folks when they find this out will work to adapt their behavior but sometimes need help. However, this type of work does require some discernment, in that

1. You don’t want to spin your wheels working with someone who isn’t going to change,
2. You need to be somewhat aware of things such as Aspergers and people who are not neuro-typical. There are ways that Aspergers folks can learn to engage, but that is often a more extensive process of therapy. However, you may be able to help connect them to a resource. You just have to understand that this is different from someone being just awkward; someone with Aspergers actually may not recognize facial cues or body language, and
3. You don’t want to get into the position of enabling someone to be a predator who is using the excuse of socially awkward.

It’s a fine balance on the edge of a knife to discern some of the differences. However, working with some of our more socially awkward community members can perhaps make the genuinely predatory behavior more clear.

Training in Spotting Predators
One clear solution to protect our children at community events is for each adult to have basic training in how to identify a pedophile. Keep in mind that a number of professionals in the field of therapy and psychology–even therapists who work specifically with sex offenders–will talk about how you can’t always “tell.” However, there are some behaviors that are a pretty solid red flag.

http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-a-Pedophile

Identifying the Unacceptable Behavior
When I teach Pagan leadership, I often talk about basic group agreements as the circle or cauldron that holds your group. What’s ok? What isn’t ok?

Apparently what we really need to do–collectively, to a certain extent, but also within our individual sovereign groups–is identify what behavior is acceptable, and what isn’t. When the behaviors are “fuzzy,” we can’t necessarily agree on whether or not what is happening is wrong, much less what to do about it. 

There are some things that are probably pretty clear–sexually molesting a child is pretty clearly grounds for not only being kicked out of a group but for calling the police. But what about the gray area? What if one of your group members and their partner are consistently getting into screaming fights and you’re worried about one or both parties being in an abusive dynamic? What if a presenter you’ve hired for a festival is really flirtatious at your event, but you’re not really sure if they are respecting boundaries or not?

What if your coven has a tradition of sexual initiation?

A sex temple or group with sexual initiatory practices is probably going to have a different spectrum of acceptable behaviors than a small coven or a group putting on a public festival or conference. Skyclad can work for some groups, and in others it can feel like pressuring people to be oversexualized. Sexual initiation can be totally appropriate in some circumstances. In other circumstances where people feel pressured into it, this can be an abuse of power.

In almost any group without a tradition of sexual initiation, I would say that a pretty good general guideline is that teachers should not be sleeping with students because of the heavily unequal power dynamic. There are exceptions when a peer dynamic has been achieved, but that’s a whole separate post on how to figure that out.

Fuzzy Gray Area
You have to look at what behaviors start to hit that zone in the gray area where it starts to become a red flag, and possibly grounds for someone to be removed from a group or event, or even legal action being taken.

Here’s an example. If someone on my leadership team got arrested for smoking pot, they would not be kicked off my team. Yes, in most states it’s illegal. But, it’s not a behavior that is in itself harmful to others, and states are beginning to decriminalize this.

On the other hand, I don’t allow pot or other illegal drugs at my public events. Why? Well, that should be pretty obvious–it puts all of us at legal risk. One of my leaders who breaks that rule is going to get a stern warning from me, and repeat offenses are probably grounds for asking them to leave. (Plus, I’m allergic to the smoke, so I’ll be cranky because if I smell that I’m going to get a migraine.)

Someone getting into a (verbal) fight with their partner at an event is not in itself grounds to get kicked out, though I might intercede and take them to a private room. However, if that’s happening every time, that’s a red flag.

In one case, I found out that a guy who had some “creepy” tendencies was physically abusing his partner. His creepy behaviors weren’t enough for me to kick him out of the group (yet), but once I found out what was happening with his partner, he is no longer welcome at my events.

Document Those Agreements
Once you and your group members have made agreements around what behavior is a red flag, and what’s grounds for dismissal, it’s time to document that and disseminate it to your group.

Several groups and events out there have policies specifically around consent and sexual abuse, and I hope to get some of those policies together to help other groups craft some “best practices.” But–go ahead and reach out to more established groups and festivals, they may have documents like this that are a place to start. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Process for Complaints
Your agreements need teeth. Part of that is giving people a clear process for how they complain about another group member, a group organizer, or a presenter at your event. If people don’t have a clear way to bring up a complaint, then your agreements are sort of null and void.

Now–just because someone complains doesn’t mean instant guilt. But people do need a way to complain.

I’ll give you three guesses why nobody complained to me about what my ex, Mark, was doing. Because…I was the group leader, he was the other core leader, and we were a couple. None of those women was ever going to feel safe complaining to me about my fiance, not until he was gone. And I shudder to think of how many were too nervous to come forward, or who just left the community in disgust.

In fact, in the time since I posted Part 1, I’ve already heard from another two women who felt that he was making unwelcome sexual advances on them when we were teaching at events.

Document the Complaint
Whatever has gone on, documenting the complaint is a good first step. And I am chagrined to admit that this isn’t something that occurred to me. I’m used to keeping a lot of data in my head, like Person A’s story about Person X, and Person B’s story, and Person C’s story. By the time I have that much data, I don’t need documentation, I know what to do with Person X.

When we were on the Pagan Musings Podcast, Taylor Ellwood brought up the idea of documenting the behaviors witnessed and the complaints received. I’m sure there are formats to do this, and in the coming days and weeks I’ll be working to gather some resources for best practices in that. You can listen to the Podcast here, as it it offered a lot of discussion of many of these issues. http://www.blogtalkradio.com/pagan-musings/2014/03/31/pmp-sex-ethics-abuse-in-the-magickal-world

I think documenting a complaint is good for multiple reasons. One is that if something happens in the future with that person, you’ve got some documentation around it. Also, especially in groups with rotating leadership, one single person won’t always have all the information.

It’s also worth pointing out that if there’s one person who’s always complaining about others, that is also good information to have. While I don’t advocate blaming the victim, sometimes there are people who make it their life’s work to being a professional victim. Still other folks have untreated mental illness such as one of the Paranoid personality disorders. And, you may also just have someone who has an axe to grind. This is why this whole process requires rather a lot of discernment.

Documenting takes a complaint from being just a social thing or gossip into something a little more formal and actionable. It lets your group members know that you are listening seriously to their concerns, even if there’s not enough information to take an action at that time.

It also captures information that you could forward on to other regional group leaders about the actions of a particular group member, and this moves it from the category of “gossip” and “rumormongering” into “sharing a formal complaint.”

Decisions
With most complaints, there probably isn’t going to be enough information to take an action. However, documenting the facts of what has happened–or at least, the nature of the alleged abuse–makes it far easier to take an action if another person complains about the same person.

Taking Action
Sometimes it’s pretty clear that something skeevy is going on. Assuming it’s illegal behavior, such as abuse of a minor, your group also needs a policy for how to report things to the police. There are several books out there about Pagans negotiating with police, and specifically I’m thinking of Kerr Cuchulain’s book but if you aren’t sure how to approach the police, you might consider Circle Sanctuary and the Lady Liberty League as a resource.

Community and Judgement
Many of the actions that your group identifies will not necessarily be grounds for getting someone arrested, but may require you to ask someone to leave your group whether as a participant or as a leader. Or may require you to decline hosting a particular presenter.

What this basically means is that yes–you will need a judicial process for your group. However it functions–whether it’s one leader or a council or consensus–you will need to take the information from people who have come to you to tell you about an abusive or harmful situation…and you will need to determine, “Person B did this and I must remove them from the group,” or, “There isn’t enough data to determine if Person B did this but I will keep an eye out.”

So yeah–someone has to make a decision. Even if that decision as, “I don’t know. I don’t know enough to feel comfortable kicking out Person B yet.” That’s still a decision, it’s still a judgment.

Sometimes, an appropriate judgment might be that Person B can remain in the group if they consent to getting some form of help. However, be very cautious in this approach. Many people benefit from therapy, the right medications, or from AA or another program.

However, if you’re dealing with one of the major personality disorders, or someone who consistently goes off their bipolar medications, or with a sex offender…or any of the big abusive behaviors…these folks are very likely not going to respond to any treatment. In fact, many of these are considered untreatable.

Can People Change?
I believe that almost anyone can change. By my experience of people is, most won’t. This is what I mean when I say I’m an optimist with a broken heart. I want to believe that every single person can become better. But my dealings with Mark, and with others, helped me to understand that there are people way beyond my pay grade.

And when you find someone in your group who is a repeat abuser or any kind of predator, there’s only one real solution–amputate them from the group. Like a cancer, you have to remove them.

Yes–that means they will just go somewhere else. But, that’s a blog post for another day. We’ll talk more on what it means to remove someone from a group.

Meanwhile, here’s that statement on religious sexual abuse for the Pagan community that was crafted out of a call from the Wild Hunt news blog. It’s worth a look.

http://www.brendanmyers.net/wickedrabbit/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33%3Afinished-the-community-statement-on-religious-sexual-abuse&catid=11%3Anewscategory&showall=1

Of Pagans and Predators: Part 2

I see this conversation happen on TV shows. “Did you talk to your teachers?” “No, we can’t do that, the other kids will just hate us even more.”

This is why bullying works. And this is what sets us up for a whole suite of victim-blaming behaviors. The whistleblower is sometimes shown as the hero of the story–but the truth is, people who speak out about how they’ve been harmed, bullied, and abused are mmore often blamed and shamed and bullied even more. Thus, we learn to shut up and not speak up, because speaking up makes it worse.

And yet, if we can understand some of these behaviors, we can begin to look at what the unhealthy dynamics are so that we can build something better. And quite simply–we must.

To understand how to move forward, we have to understand the problem. There’s an axiom in the field of strategic design that the solution is inherent within the problem. But, this first requires a real understanding of the problem.

And that means we have to look at a lot of uncomfortable stuff. 

Here’s a place to start. I encourage you to the following blog posts now, or when you have some time to devote to it. And read the comments. Yes, there are a lot of comments. Yes, they may trigger you. Yes, it’s worth it to read them if you want to be part of the solution.

http://www.thorncoyle.com/blog/2014/03/28/predators-paganism-trigger-warning/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2014/03/silence-equals-death/

http://www.incitingariot.com/2014/03/kenny-klein-arrested-for-child-porn.html

I don’t agree with everything that’s written in these posts, but, it’s a place to begin to understand some of the patterns. And see that there is a consistent pattern of enabling abuse.

He’s Just a Lech
I have seen the abuse/cover-up of abuse be a problem for a long while now…I just didn’t realize how much of a problem it was. Namely–I knew that touchy-feely guys were excused as “Oh, that’s just ____, he’s a lech.” (And–it’s not just men, though statistically, it’s more likely to be.)

I think that people do this in general; I wrote about it in my Sex/Ethics post on Pagan Activist. When there’s a leader or boss–like that editor from Scientific American who was harassing interns and other women he had power over–the folks who like that leader cannot possibly believe that they would do something like that. That’s where “You must be mistaken” comes from. “They’d never do that.” It’s cognitive dissonance.

So we have that baseline behavior–we tend to defend someone because we can’t, or don’t want to, believe that someone we like could do that.

In fact–read this quick blog post. It’s really an apt explanation of how we get used to making excuses for bad behavior. http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html

Ego Annex and Boundaries
Ultimately, I think this is probably yet another issue of ego annex and poor boundaries at work. Our ego’s big job is giving us a sense of our self identity. Ideally a positive one. In fact, ego doesn’t cope well with anything that tells us we might be “bad.” So if I like Person A and trusted them, and someone says that they did a bad thing, then by extension, because I like Person A, if Person A did something bad, then I must be bad because I like that person.

That’s not in every case, but I sure have seen it be a factor in someone digging their heels in to defend Person A, even when Person A has clearly harmed someone. What it usually means is that the person defending Person A has poor boundaries and has mistaken Person A’s actions with their own self identity and sense of self.

Standing Up and Saying No is Hard
Again, poor boundaries. We are taught–over and over by experience–that saying NO has dire consequences. Saying No to someone will be perceived as rejection and hurt. Women especially are culturally prone to this people-pleasing, however, I see it in all genders.

I’m sure there’s science around this, but if you watch people when there’s something uncomfortable going on, they will look away. They will look down. They will shrink into their bodies, visually try to disappear. It’s almost a herd behavior. And it’s passive aggressive. Most people would far rather just ignore the bad thing happening and make it go away, than stand up and be the asshole/bitch/jerk who addresses it. Nobody wants to be that guy. Except–this is what allows for abuse to happen.

Sex Positive
What perhaps exacerbates the above tendencies in human nature is the (sometimes extreme) pressure in the Pagan community to be sex positive and accepting of free love and alternative romantic lifestyles. We’re sex positive, right? So we’re not supposed to judge people for being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, or for being into BDSM or for being polyamorous. All of that is supposed to be cool, right? And, if an older person hits on a younger person that’s supposed to be ok, it’s empowering, because we’re not bound by the rules of the dominant culture…and it’s ok when someone gropes someone else, right?

Hold up there. We’ve hit the slippery slope. There is a gulf of difference between being at a gathering where I respect someone’s sexual openness and where they can hit on me and I can offer a polite no and that’s respected….and a gathering where people are given a free pass to flirt with people to the point of harassment, or touch them without their permission.

In a so-called sex positive culture, nobody wants to be the asshole who calls out someone for groping them, because they’ll be seen as a prude, right?

There’s a pressure to laugh off creepy lecherous handsy behavior and just be ok with it because we’re sex positive.

Boundaries and Flirting
And thus we come back to boundaries. Wouldn’t all this be easier if everyone had good boundaries? Then Person A can flirt with Person B, and Person B can feel totally comfortable saying, “Thank you, but no thanks,” and Person A isn’t offended by the turn-down, and Person B isn’t offended by being flirted with.

Let’s be clear. Flirting isn’t immoral or unethical (in most cases). Invading someone’s space without permission is not ok. Touching people without their permission is not ok. Flirting with someone until it becomes harassment is not ok.

I think in this area, we can work as individuals to grow healthier boundaries. What are boundaries? Well…I’ve written a few posts on the topic, and there’s a book called “Where you End and I Begin” that I recommend. But basically, it’s knowing that your sovereign right to your body ends at your skin. Meaning, you don’t have a sovereign right to touch me. Nor do your own ideas, thoughts, or desires belong in my sovereign space.

You might want something for someone else, but you aren’t that person, and what you want for them ends at the boundary of your skin. They, in turn, have their own sovereignty over their skin, their thoughts and ideas.

Just because you want to hook up with someone doesn’t mean they want that. And–trust me on this one, I’m way familiar with that one. It’s my romantic super power.

I might have the hots for someone, but it doesn’t mean I get to go pressure them to have sex with me. I might make my interest known, and I have to be ok with hearing No. That’s boundaries.

The Problem of Calling Out Leaders
I know of Pagan community leaders who make some really poor decisions, including verbally and emotionally abusing their group members. And these leaders continue because–as I’ve written about at length on my blog–there’s no real way to “make” a group leader stop leading, because Pagans have no overarching body, no governing people in power who can say, “You shall no longer be a coven leader, you are excommunicated.”

But it turns out that even when we do have people in positions of power who could kick someone out of a group or a festival…and even when the offenses were not in the slippery slope of “I’m not sure this warrants kicking someone out of my event,” even when it’s children coming forward to do what the adults told them to do and saying, “That person touched me in a way that made me uncomfortable,” these victims weren’t listened to.

And there’s a host of reasons. Dozens of them. One is that all the intercommunity witch wars and strife have made every person I know gun shy about taking a stand. “If I speak out against XYZ leader, I’ll just be starting a witch war.” And they aren’t wrong about that. Speaking out against someone is bound to start up a conflict

We Don’t Want to Take Sides
More often I’ve seen the “We don’t have enough evidence” thing, or the “You’re blowing that out of proportion, what they did wasn’t that bad” thing. Or as I’ve been told numerous times about my experiences with my ex, Mark, “That was just domestic abuse.”

There’s a very small Pagan leadership FB group that I’m on where there was a frustrating conversation several weeks ago. We were talking about what to do about local Pagan leaders who were acting in a harmful way. Some folks brought up the idea that the only time you could take a stand against someone is if they had done something illegal that could be prosecuted.

I brought up the issue of how it’s not always about legal evidence, but sometimes it’s about a pattern of behavior. What my ex did to me and to others isn’t really something he can be prosecuted for. Sleeping with students isn’t illegal. It sure as heck isn’t ok to target students and newbies though.

I do sometimes make my decisions about a person on hearsay. It’s the type of hearsay that matters. Who it comes from, how many people, what they have to gain.

I think that people who always say, “We don’t want to take sides,” sometimes are (unintentionally) siding with the perpetrator. Yes, I know…we don’t want to cause a witch war. We don’t want to make the conflict worse.

But what would have happened if any Pagan leader or festival organizer had taken the complaints against Kenny Klein seriously 10 or 20 years ago?

Scorched Earth
I have seen some people take a stand against their abusers, and ultimately the community conflict that ensued blew up any Pagan community work in that region for years afterword because people were so hurt by the he said/she said conflict.

So–while I’m no longer prepared to say, “Speaking out against your abusers won’t get you what you want, you can’t take a group leader down,” I’m also not prepared to say “Cry havoc and hop to it” because it’s going to end up being a scorched earth thing.

If Person A attempts to bring to light Person B’s abusive behaviors and the conflict ends up literally exploding their local community so that no public events are happening to serve local Pagans, that isn’t really a viable either.

When it’s a group leader, you can’t force them to stop leading a group, other than getting them arrested. All you can really do is leave the group and maybe tell other people. Many people will stay in the group because that’s the only community in their area. But, people who complain about abusive behavior from a Pagan group leader often get victim blamed as “trying to start a witch war.”

Giving Pagans a Bad Name
This one’s been cited a lot in other areas so I won’t go into it much here, but it’s an excuse that’s been used for why Pagans don’t call the authorities for some situations that really warrant the involvement of law enforcement.

—

How do We Go Forward?
That’s been keeping me up at night for years. The more I teach leadership, the more shitty behavior I hear about and the more despondent I get. I see all forms of abuse by Pagans and Pagan leaders getting swept under the rug. I mean, I seriously could probably write an entire blog post just about different leaders and the crap I’ve heard about them and that I’ve done enough verification on to satisfy myself that it’s the truth, even though there isn’t concrete proof. But, what does that solve?

Another blog post coming soon.

Of Pagans and Predators: Part 2

I see this conversation happen on TV shows. “Did you talk to your teachers?” “No, we can’t do that, the other kids will just hate us even more.”

This is why bullying works. And this is what sets us up for a whole suite of victim-blaming behaviors. The whistleblower is sometimes shown as the hero of the story–but the truth is, people who speak out about how they’ve been harmed, bullied, and abused are mmore often blamed and shamed and bullied even more. Thus, we learn to shut up and not speak up, because speaking up makes it worse.

And yet, if we can understand some of these behaviors, we can begin to look at what the unhealthy dynamics are so that we can build something better. And quite simply–we must.

To understand how to move forward, we have to understand the problem. There’s an axiom in the field of strategic design that the solution is inherent within the problem. But, this first requires a real understanding of the problem.

And that means we have to look at a lot of uncomfortable stuff. 

Here’s a place to start. I encourage you to the following blog posts now, or when you have some time to devote to it. And read the comments. Yes, there are a lot of comments. Yes, they may trigger you. Yes, it’s worth it to read them if you want to be part of the solution.

http://www.thorncoyle.com/blog/2014/03/28/predators-paganism-trigger-warning/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sermonsfromthemound/2014/03/silence-equals-death/

http://www.incitingariot.com/2014/03/kenny-klein-arrested-for-child-porn.html

I don’t agree with everything that’s written in these posts, but, it’s a place to begin to understand some of the patterns. And see that there is a consistent pattern of enabling abuse.

He’s Just a Lech
I have seen the abuse/cover-up of abuse be a problem for a long while now…I just didn’t realize how much of a problem it was. Namely–I knew that touchy-feely guys were excused as “Oh, that’s just ____, he’s a lech.” (And–it’s not just men, though statistically, it’s more likely to be.)

I think that people do this in general; I wrote about it in my Sex/Ethics post on Pagan Activist. When there’s a leader or boss–like that editor from Scientific American who was harassing interns and other women he had power over–the folks who like that leader cannot possibly believe that they would do something like that. That’s where “You must be mistaken” comes from. “They’d never do that.” It’s cognitive dissonance.

So we have that baseline behavior–we tend to defend someone because we can’t, or don’t want to, believe that someone we like could do that.

In fact–read this quick blog post. It’s really an apt explanation of how we get used to making excuses for bad behavior. http://pervocracy.blogspot.com/2012/06/missing-stair.html

Ego Annex and Boundaries
Ultimately, I think this is probably yet another issue of ego annex and poor boundaries at work. Our ego’s big job is giving us a sense of our self identity. Ideally a positive one. In fact, ego doesn’t cope well with anything that tells us we might be “bad.” So if I like Person A and trusted them, and someone says that they did a bad thing, then by extension, because I like Person A, if Person A did something bad, then I must be bad because I like that person.

That’s not in every case, but I sure have seen it be a factor in someone digging their heels in to defend Person A, even when Person A has clearly harmed someone. What it usually means is that the person defending Person A has poor boundaries and has mistaken Person A’s actions with their own self identity and sense of self.

Standing Up and Saying No is Hard
Again, poor boundaries. We are taught–over and over by experience–that saying NO has dire consequences. Saying No to someone will be perceived as rejection and hurt. Women especially are culturally prone to this people-pleasing, however, I see it in all genders.

I’m sure there’s science around this, but if you watch people when there’s something uncomfortable going on, they will look away. They will look down. They will shrink into their bodies, visually try to disappear. It’s almost a herd behavior. And it’s passive aggressive. Most people would far rather just ignore the bad thing happening and make it go away, than stand up and be the asshole/bitch/jerk who addresses it. Nobody wants to be that guy. Except–this is what allows for abuse to happen.

Sex Positive
What perhaps exacerbates the above tendencies in human nature is the (sometimes extreme) pressure in the Pagan community to be sex positive and accepting of free love and alternative romantic lifestyles. We’re sex positive, right? So we’re not supposed to judge people for being gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, or for being into BDSM or for being polyamorous. All of that is supposed to be cool, right? And, if an older person hits on a younger person that’s supposed to be ok, it’s empowering, because we’re not bound by the rules of the dominant culture…and it’s ok when someone gropes someone else, right?

Hold up there. We’ve hit the slippery slope. There is a gulf of difference between being at a gathering where I respect someone’s sexual openness and where they can hit on me and I can offer a polite no and that’s respected….and a gathering where people are given a free pass to flirt with people to the point of harassment, or touch them without their permission.

In a so-called sex positive culture, nobody wants to be the asshole who calls out someone for groping them, because they’ll be seen as a prude, right?

There’s a pressure to laugh off creepy lecherous handsy behavior and just be ok with it because we’re sex positive.

Boundaries and Flirting
And thus we come back to boundaries. Wouldn’t all this be easier if everyone had good boundaries? Then Person A can flirt with Person B, and Person B can feel totally comfortable saying, “Thank you, but no thanks,” and Person A isn’t offended by the turn-down, and Person B isn’t offended by being flirted with.

Let’s be clear. Flirting isn’t immoral or unethical (in most cases). Invading someone’s space without permission is not ok. Touching people without their permission is not ok. Flirting with someone until it becomes harassment is not ok.

I think in this area, we can work as individuals to grow healthier boundaries. What are boundaries? Well…I’ve written a few posts on the topic, and there’s a book called “Where you End and I Begin” that I recommend. But basically, it’s knowing that your sovereign right to your body ends at your skin. Meaning, you don’t have a sovereign right to touch me. Nor do your own ideas, thoughts, or desires belong in my sovereign space.

You might want something for someone else, but you aren’t that person, and what you want for them ends at the boundary of your skin. They, in turn, have their own sovereignty over their skin, their thoughts and ideas.

Just because you want to hook up with someone doesn’t mean they want that. And–trust me on this one, I’m way familiar with that one. It’s my romantic super power.

I might have the hots for someone, but it doesn’t mean I get to go pressure them to have sex with me. I might make my interest known, and I have to be ok with hearing No. That’s boundaries.

The Problem of Calling Out Leaders
I know of Pagan community leaders who make some really poor decisions, including verbally and emotionally abusing their group members. And these leaders continue because–as I’ve written about at length on my blog–there’s no real way to “make” a group leader stop leading, because Pagans have no overarching body, no governing people in power who can say, “You shall no longer be a coven leader, you are excommunicated.”

But it turns out that even when we do have people in positions of power who could kick someone out of a group or a festival…and even when the offenses were not in the slippery slope of “I’m not sure this warrants kicking someone out of my event,” even when it’s children coming forward to do what the adults told them to do and saying, “That person touched me in a way that made me uncomfortable,” these victims weren’t listened to.

And there’s a host of reasons. Dozens of them. One is that all the intercommunity witch wars and strife have made every person I know gun shy about taking a stand. “If I speak out against XYZ leader, I’ll just be starting a witch war.” And they aren’t wrong about that. Speaking out against someone is bound to start up a conflict

We Don’t Want to Take Sides
More often I’ve seen the “We don’t have enough evidence” thing, or the “You’re blowing that out of proportion, what they did wasn’t that bad” thing. Or as I’ve been told numerous times about my experiences with my ex, Mark, “That was just domestic abuse.”

There’s a very small Pagan leadership FB group that I’m on where there was a frustrating conversation several weeks ago. We were talking about what to do about local Pagan leaders who were acting in a harmful way. Some folks brought up the idea that the only time you could take a stand against someone is if they had done something illegal that could be prosecuted.

I brought up the issue of how it’s not always about legal evidence, but sometimes it’s about a pattern of behavior. What my ex did to me and to others isn’t really something he can be prosecuted for. Sleeping with students isn’t illegal. It sure as heck isn’t ok to target students and newbies though.

I do sometimes make my decisions about a person on hearsay. It’s the type of hearsay that matters. Who it comes from, how many people, what they have to gain.

I think that people who always say, “We don’t want to take sides,” sometimes are (unintentionally) siding with the perpetrator. Yes, I know…we don’t want to cause a witch war. We don’t want to make the conflict worse.

But what would have happened if any Pagan leader or festival organizer had taken the complaints against Kenny Klein seriously 10 or 20 years ago?

Scorched Earth
I have seen some people take a stand against their abusers, and ultimately the community conflict that ensued blew up any Pagan community work in that region for years afterword because people were so hurt by the he said/she said conflict.

So–while I’m no longer prepared to say, “Speaking out against your abusers won’t get you what you want, you can’t take a group leader down,” I’m also not prepared to say “Cry havoc and hop to it” because it’s going to end up being a scorched earth thing.

If Person A attempts to bring to light Person B’s abusive behaviors and the conflict ends up literally exploding their local community so that no public events are happening to serve local Pagans, that isn’t really a viable either.

When it’s a group leader, you can’t force them to stop leading a group, other than getting them arrested. All you can really do is leave the group and maybe tell other people. Many people will stay in the group because that’s the only community in their area. But, people who complain about abusive behavior from a Pagan group leader often get victim blamed as “trying to start a witch war.”

Giving Pagans a Bad Name
This one’s been cited a lot in other areas so I won’t go into it much here, but it’s an excuse that’s been used for why Pagans don’t call the authorities for some situations that really warrant the involvement of law enforcement.

—

How do We Go Forward?
That’s been keeping me up at night for years. The more I teach leadership, the more shitty behavior I hear about and the more despondent I get. I see all forms of abuse by Pagans and Pagan leaders getting swept under the rug. I mean, I seriously could probably write an entire blog post just about different leaders and the crap I’ve heard about them and that I’ve done enough verification on to satisfy myself that it’s the truth, even though there isn’t concrete proof. But, what does that solve?

Another blog post coming soon.

Announcing Pagan Leadership Anthology through Immanion Press

I’m very excited to announce that I will be editing an anthology for Immanion Press with Taylor Ellwood on Pagan Leadership. Below is the call for writers.

Call for papers for Pagan Leadership: An Anthology on Group Dynamics, Healthy Boundaries, and Community Activism.

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for Pagan Leadership: An anthology on Group Dynamics, Healthy Boundaries, and Community Activism

Deadline for submissions: September 1 2014.

The words “Pagan Leadership” are often met with scorn and tales of failed groups and so-called Witch Wars. And yet, as our communities grow and mature, we find ourselves in dire need of healthy, ethical leaders. Anyone who has been in a group that said, “Let’s just not have any leaders or power issues,” has seen what doesn’t work. But what does?

This anthology will explore leadership for real Pagans and real groups. We’re looking for essays and articles that detail leadership success stories, best practices, and ways you have worked through challenges and obstacles. Our specific focus is on techniques to help Pagans build healthier, stronger, and more sustainable groups and communities. We’d like to see a combination of hands-on how-to, personally-inspired, and academic pieces that will offer readers tools they can use in their own groups.

What resources do you have now that you wish you’d had when you stepped into leadership? What problems have you faced and overcome? How have you faced the unique difficulties of grassroots Pagan leadership? What are tools and techniques that have worked? Essays and articles should be 1500-4,000 words.

We’re also looking for brief (500-1000 words) personal stories of what we might call leadership disasters—community blow-ups that you’ve personally witnessed or even mistakes you’ve made as a leader. With few exceptions, these would be published anonymously (not naming names/locations) in order to illustrate, through the personal voice of storytelling, the need for leadership education through the power of storytelling. These stories do not need to be formally written; they should simply tell a story about problems you experienced that caused a group to blow up. Note: We prefer shorter pieces for this, but up to 2,000 words might work.

What we are not looking for:

We are not looking for spells or rituals. We’d also prefer to not see generalized advice, like “leaders should delegate,” but rather, “Here’s how I learned to delegate in my group” or “here’s how a team I was part of successfully handled delegation.”

Here are some suggested topics to give you an idea of the focus of this anthology:

• Planning a successful Pagan event, or running a successful coven or circle, or—how those involve different leadership processes
• Skills to build community from the ground up, and skills to sustain a community long-term
• Organizational leadership techniques
• Transformational leadership and servant leadership
• Experiences with Pagan unity councils or other collaborative work between groups
• Dealing with local Pagan politics, including dealing with difficult, mentally ill, or abusive local leaders
• Dealing with difficult and disruptive group members, spotting predatory practices, red flags
• Gossip, bickering, rumors, and triangulation, ego and egotism, conflict resolution and personality conflicts
• Communication skills and techniques
• Personal work and self transformation required to be a leader, boundaries, dealing with personal burnout
• Administrative aspects of leadership, leadership structures like bylaws, mission statements
• Handling money in your group
• Ethics of leadership
• Delegation and dealing with volunteers dropping the ball
• Keeping people motivated, empowering group members and new leaders, passing on the reigns of leadership
• Creating a safe space
• Different leadership models (consensus, hierarchy, rotating leadership, democracy)
• Facing a leadership disaster/crisis

Submission Deadline is September 1st. Articles should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Personal experience essays should be 300-2,000 words. Drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won’t be considering additional ideas.

Do write in your voice! If you’re academically inclined or trained, feel free to be as intelligent and technical as you like, and writing in the first person is fine as well. These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editor. If your essay is not accepted for the anthology, we will tell you after the first round of edits.

E-mail for inquiries and submissions: ShaunaAura@gmail.com
Please put “Immanion Press Leadership Anthology Submission” in your subject line.

Essay requirements:

• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material
• Bibliography of works cited
• Prefer the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla
• Send the file in RTF format

Compensation:

Accepted contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributors. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays.

Rights:

This anthology will take nonexclusive first world rights for 6 months.

Editors: The anthology will be edited by Shauna Aura Knight and Taylor Ellwood:

Shauna Aura Knight is an artist, author, community leader, presenter, and spiritual seeker who travels nationally speaking on the transformative arts of ritual, community leadership, and personal growth. She is the author of several books including The Leader Within and Ritual Facilitation. She’s a columnist on ritual techniques for Circle Magazine and writes frequent articles and blogs on the topic of Pagan leadership, and her writing also appears in several Pagan anthologies. You can find her site at: https://shaunaauraknight.com/books  and her leadership blog at: https://shaunaaura.wordpress.com and her email address for this anthology is ShaunaAura@gmail.com

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Magical Identity, and other books on magic. He is also the managing non-fiction editor of Immanion Press. He can be found online at http://www.magicalexperiments.com

Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.

- See more at: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/blog/#sthash.RiBZEQGi.dpuf

Announcing Pagan Leadership Anthology through Immanion Press

I’m very excited to announce that I will be editing an anthology for Immanion Press with Taylor Ellwood on Pagan Leadership. Below is the call for writers.

Call for papers for Pagan Leadership: An Anthology on Group Dynamics, Healthy Boundaries, and Community Activism.

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for Pagan Leadership: An anthology on Group Dynamics, Healthy Boundaries, and Community Activism

Deadline for submissions: September 1 2014.

The words “Pagan Leadership” are often met with scorn and tales of failed groups and so-called Witch Wars. And yet, as our communities grow and mature, we find ourselves in dire need of healthy, ethical leaders. Anyone who has been in a group that said, “Let’s just not have any leaders or power issues,” has seen what doesn’t work. But what does?

This anthology will explore leadership for real Pagans and real groups. We’re looking for essays and articles that detail leadership success stories, best practices, and ways you have worked through challenges and obstacles. Our specific focus is on techniques to help Pagans build healthier, stronger, and more sustainable groups and communities. We’d like to see a combination of hands-on how-to, personally-inspired, and academic pieces that will offer readers tools they can use in their own groups.

What resources do you have now that you wish you’d had when you stepped into leadership? What problems have you faced and overcome? How have you faced the unique difficulties of grassroots Pagan leadership? What are tools and techniques that have worked? Essays and articles should be 1500-4,000 words.

We’re also looking for brief (500-1000 words) personal stories of what we might call leadership disasters—community blow-ups that you’ve personally witnessed or even mistakes you’ve made as a leader. With few exceptions, these would be published anonymously (not naming names/locations) in order to illustrate, through the personal voice of storytelling, the need for leadership education through the power of storytelling. These stories do not need to be formally written; they should simply tell a story about problems you experienced that caused a group to blow up. Note: We prefer shorter pieces for this, but up to 2,000 words might work.

What we are not looking for:

We are not looking for spells or rituals. We’d also prefer to not see generalized advice, like “leaders should delegate,” but rather, “Here’s how I learned to delegate in my group” or “here’s how a team I was part of successfully handled delegation.”

Here are some suggested topics to give you an idea of the focus of this anthology:

• Planning a successful Pagan event, or running a successful coven or circle, or—how those involve different leadership processes
• Skills to build community from the ground up, and skills to sustain a community long-term
• Organizational leadership techniques
• Transformational leadership and servant leadership
• Experiences with Pagan unity councils or other collaborative work between groups
• Dealing with local Pagan politics, including dealing with difficult, mentally ill, or abusive local leaders
• Dealing with difficult and disruptive group members, spotting predatory practices, red flags
• Gossip, bickering, rumors, and triangulation, ego and egotism, conflict resolution and personality conflicts
• Communication skills and techniques
• Personal work and self transformation required to be a leader, boundaries, dealing with personal burnout
• Administrative aspects of leadership, leadership structures like bylaws, mission statements
• Handling money in your group
• Ethics of leadership
• Delegation and dealing with volunteers dropping the ball
• Keeping people motivated, empowering group members and new leaders, passing on the reigns of leadership
• Creating a safe space
• Different leadership models (consensus, hierarchy, rotating leadership, democracy)
• Facing a leadership disaster/crisis

Submission Deadline is September 1st. Articles should be 1500-4000 words, although if your work falls outside those limits, do submit it – we can discuss this during the editing process. Personal experience essays should be 300-2,000 words. Drop us an email if you are unsure whether your idea fits into the content. The sooner you start the communication process the better, as after the deadline we won’t be considering additional ideas.

Do write in your voice! If you’re academically inclined or trained, feel free to be as intelligent and technical as you like, and writing in the first person is fine as well. These drafts will be edited in a back-and-forth process with the editor. If your essay is not accepted for the anthology, we will tell you after the first round of edits.

E-mail for inquiries and submissions: ShaunaAura@gmail.com
Please put “Immanion Press Leadership Anthology Submission” in your subject line.

Essay requirements:

• Citations for all quoted, paraphrased, or otherwise unoriginal material
• Bibliography of works cited
• Prefer the Modern Language Association (MLA) Style http://www.library.cornell.edu/resrch/citmanage/mla
• Send the file in RTF format

Compensation:

Accepted contributors will receive a free copy of the anthology when it is published and additional copies sold at 40% off the cover price to contributors. All contributors will be provided with a contract upon final acceptance of their essays.

Rights:

This anthology will take nonexclusive first world rights for 6 months.

Editors: The anthology will be edited by Shauna Aura Knight and Taylor Ellwood:

Shauna Aura Knight is an artist, author, community leader, presenter, and spiritual seeker who travels nationally speaking on the transformative arts of ritual, community leadership, and personal growth. She is the author of several books including The Leader Within and Ritual Facilitation. She’s a columnist on ritual techniques for Circle Magazine and writes frequent articles and blogs on the topic of Pagan leadership, and her writing also appears in several Pagan anthologies. You can find her site at: https://shaunaauraknight.com/books  and her leadership blog at: http://shaunaaura.wordpress.com and her email address for this anthology is ShaunaAura@gmail.com

Taylor Ellwood is the author of Pop Culture Magick, Magical Identity, and other books on magic. He is also the managing non-fiction editor of Immanion Press. He can be found online at http://www.magicalexperiments.com

Immanion Press is a small independent press based in the United Kingdom. Founded by author Storm Constantine, it expanded into occult nonfiction in 2004 with the publication of Taylor Ellwood’s Pop Culture Magick. Today, Immanion’s nonfiction line, under the Megalithica Books imprint, has a growing reputation for edgy, experimental texts on primarily intermediate and advanced pagan and occult topics. Find out more at http://www.immanion-press.com.

- See more at: http://www.magicalexperiments.com/blog/#sthash.RiBZEQGi.dpuf

Equinox: Planting Seeds of Rebirth

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I’m taking a break from my ongoing series on Grassroots Leadership to join the Tarot Blog Hop on the theme of the Spring Equinox. Although, the particular magical act that is the rebirth of spring–and planting the seeds for the dreams you wish to bring into fruition–is an important part of a leader’s work.

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a long, hard winter for me. I’ve been in a wrestling match with the depression that tried to take hold after my car accident in December, and I’m so grateful for the longer days and melting snow. The past month has been incredibly reinvigorating for me and I’m really ready for spring planting.

Some people are physically planting seeds at this time of year, but for most of us it’s more of a metaphor. And yet, the seasons still have their pull on the ecosystem of our bodies. I often look at the time November through the silence of winter as the time to release what we really need to let go of. To identify what seeds we need to actively not plant in our garden again.

I look at New Year’s Eve and the attendant New Year’s Resolutions, and those months leading up to Imbolc and the Spring Equinox as the inspiration energy, preparing for new growth. Spring Equinox, then, is a fantastic time to make a solid commitment to something we’ve been thinking about or working with.

Spring Equinox is that fresh start, that rebirth, that time to really plant the seeds of something we want to bring into our lives.

Tarot and Rebirth
Often when we pull out the cards, we’re looking for help with a decision or with choosing a direction. I know that nothing is more personally frustrating for me than when I know that I need to make a change in my life, but I feel stuck, unsure of which direction to choose. Or unsure of what’s holding me back.

Tarot can be a great way to help you get at what’s going on beneath the surface.

With Tarot cards–or just on your own–you might begin to consider first what you want. What are some of the goals that you dream of but perhaps haven’t yet put into place? It could be actual farming or gardening, or starting a family, or changing careers, or starting a business, or starting  a new community initiative or perhaps a particular creative pursuit like writing or painting. What are the things that you would like to accomplish?

You might also begin to think about what you’ve let fall away from your life–or what you need to let fall away. Perhaps it was a bad relationship, a toxic friend, a job that didn’t serve you, a mindset about money. I’ve often heard that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And yet, so many people (myself included!) have gotten stuck repeating the same old things. I know that I’ve found myself in a few relationships that were abusive–both romantic and professional.

Often what we need to let fall away is more directly related to the pain we’ve suffered in the past. Call them old wounds if you like. These are the things that were done to us in our past, and we develop coping mechanisms to deal with them. And–it keeps us alive, it keeps us sane–but those coping mechanisms ultimately hold us back. In school I was emotionally, verbally, and sometimes physically abused by my peers. I toughened up, decided I didn’t need anyone. I got defensive, I looked at anyone around me as an enemy. And a dozen other small coping strategies.

Literally, it kept me alive. If I hadn’t done all that, the emotionally sensitive younger version of me might very well have tried to commit suicide.

But later, when I wanted to connect to people, develop friendships, nobody wanted to be my friend. I blamed it on so many things…”They don’t like a fat chick. Screw them.” And, that was certainly true for some of them. Yet it was also my attitude that pushed people away. I was looking at everyone I met as if they were the kids from middle school, about to hurt me. I treated people like that.

Figuring out what to let go can be the work of years. Your own meditation or journaling might help with it. Therapy can help, talking to a friend can help. Exploration through Tarot can help you see what’s too close to your own face.

When you begin to release what doesn’t serve you, you can then look again at what you want to bring into your life. This is where popular concepts like the Law of Attraction start to come in, but it’s often oversimplified. Thinking positive is not enough–it’s the way to shine the light of hope, like a lighthouse in the distance. But there’s all the work that it takes to get there, all the work to release what doesn’t serve you and to make room for what will serve you.

What do you want in your life? Love? Friendships? Connection? Creativity? Life Force? Abundance? I want to do what I love and get paid for it, among other things. I want to write and create art and travel and teach, and connect to other people who are doing similar work and share resources with them and build something that lasts. I want to leave the world better than how I came into it.

Ritualizing and Embodying Planting the Seeds
We humans are physical creatures. A lot of spiritual work seems to try to get us out of our bodies, but truly, are bodies are pretty powerful spiritual instruments.

When we sing, dance, and drum together, something changes. Our bodies help us to get into that trance state that can help us take the work deeper. It’s one thing to think about what you need to release, or what you want to bring into your life. It’s another thing entirely to embody that through singing, chanting, dancing and drumming.

Or perhaps even just to embody releasing by cutting a piece of string, or to embody bringing something into your life by burning an intention written on a piece of paper, or focusing that intention into a cup of water and drinking it.

Here is a “sketch” of a ritual that I’ve offered for groups at this time of year, and perhaps the words and the process will offer you some ideas for how you  might physicalize setting an intention for yourself to plant the seeds of hope, of rebirth. Much of the language below is something that I might use when facilitating a ritual or ceremony for a group.

Planting the Seeds of Hope
What is often useful first is some kind of a sound purification. A singing bowl, a gong bath, singing a chant or an om. Any sound with intention can help to center and focus you.

You might also invite in any spirits, allies, or other forms of the divine to assist your work. Elements, ancestors, deities, or just honoring that you are a part of the larger universe and that the work you do to set intention has ripples throughout the fabric of that universe, whether or not you can see them.

It can also be very potent to choose a physical object to work with to represent your seed such as a stone, gem, seed, or any small object.

–

Can you feel and smell the season turning from Winter to Spring? The seeds begin to awaken within the earth, softening with the melting snow and rains and stretching toward the rising light. The winds of change are blowing, and the tide is turning to spring and growth and warmth and life force is rising up in our veins.What seeds do you plant, what are the dreams yet to come? What are the hopes and wishes you pray for?

As you celebrate the return of the light, breathe life into the seeds of your personal dreams. Bless the seeds of hope for healthy communities and earth sustainability. Imagine…inspire, empower, and reach for the seeds of your future.

Will you hold the seeds planted in the rich earth of your heart, and imagine the tree grown strong?

When you name your seeds you bless them. What are your dreams? What are the seeds that you plant? What are your hopes and prayers for this year? What is one big dream, a tree you would like to grow? How will you send blessings and abundance to those seeds, those dreams.

The Seed. What is the seed you wish to plant? What seeds do you plant now, or have you planted in the earth before the cold season? What are the seeds that you wish to tend for this year? For the years after?

What is the dream that you wish for? Will you dream big? What are your hopes, your wishes? When you imagine the seed, what is the plant, the tree that it will grow? What fruits will that tree bear?  Standing in the place of now, can you imagine the tree grown strong and full? What is a dream that you hold? What is its scent, its taste, what does it look like or sound like? What is your dream of the future, one dream. Is it a dream of abundance, of prosperity.  A dream of a new job, a dream of something you wish to learn, a new business, a new project.

Perhaps it is a maple tree, swift growing. Perhaps it is an oak tree, long to grow and long to stand. Do you hold a dream for social change, a dream of healing, a dream of a creative project?  A healthy family, a healthy community?

Hold the image, the sound, the feeling. How do you hold your body here in the place where your seed has taken root and grown tall, where you can pluck the fruits of the tree. And coming back to now, when you hold the seed within your hand and your heart. What is the seed you will plant, or have planted already?

Earth

What is the soil that grows your dream? The Dreaming in the Darkness. What rich, loamy earth does your seed require to flourish? What are the nutrients your seed will need? Imagine being under the earth, in the moist darkness in the weeks and months, waiting for the thaw and waiting for the time to be right. Here is the time in the darkness, in the deep, in the waiting. When do you require darkness and silence and rest, when does that fill you and feed you?

What is the soil that will feed your dreamseed? Is it words of encouragement, is it time alone, is it the support of friends, is it financial abundance, is it family or community, what are the resources you need? What does your dream need, your seed need?

(At this time, you might plant the representation of your seed into earth, dirt, sand, or something soft.)

Water

The water that softens the seed.  Can you remember being under the earth, can you remember that darkness going on and on, the winter not letting go? What is it like to be so ready for light and heat and moisture? Have you ever been under the earth for what felt like a thousand years of darkness? And then….the waters came.
Can you remember what it felt like to have the waters touch the edges of the seed, the edges of your skin. The waters soften the seed, prepare it to grow. Can you remember the warm rains flowing down to cleanse you, prepare you?

Have you known joy or known sorrow? Why do you care about this seed? Have you felt the rains falling down on you? Or were they the waters of the stream or the lake or the ocean? How did the waters flow? Do you remember feeling? What brings life to your seed? What do you love?

Did your heart break?  The Sufi say the heart must break to make more room for God to enter. When did your heart break? Where is the love inside of you, are you in love with this seed and this dream? Can you feel the waters of your love softening the edge of the seed, filling the cup of your heart, slaking the thirst of this growing plant as it grows and grows?

How do you feel? What feelings bring life to this dream seed, to this tree that will become?

(You might bathe your hands in water here, or even pour water over yourself.)

Fire

The sunlight, the fire. What is the sunlight that feeds your plant, brings it life force and vitality? What is the will that rises within you?

Fire will be the sun and the light, the Will to make the dream happen, what lights us up. What gets you on fire? What sparks your imagination? What causes the fire in the head and heart, that life force shiver to rise up your spine? What gets you excited, what is your vision of the future? Can you feel it inside you, can you reach for that sunlight that will feed you?

Can you imagine that golden beautiful radiance and as it touches your leaves and your skin and you’re bathed in it, it fuels you and feeds you.

(You might light a fire at this point such as a candle, or even a campfire or bonfire if you are outside. Or you might also reach your hands up toward the sun itself, reaching for that fire.)

Air

The breath of life. What is the name of the divine? I am that I am. What brings life and consciousness to this seed, what gives it its name? Will you name this dream that you are planting, will you name the tree it will become? Will you blow a name into the seed, into the wind, and commit to making this seed a reality?

Will you turn and whisper its name to someone next to you, will you tell its story and bring it to life? Will you risk naming this dream, call it forth?

And will you say aloud one thing you can do, to take a step toward making this dream happen?

Fueling Your Intention
At this point in a group ritual I typically engage people in singing a chant together which builds in intensity. We sing, we dance, we play drums, until the energy of our song and movement reaches a peak. If you’re doing this exercise on your own, I recommend engaging in some kind of energetic activity in order to “fuel” the intention, the seed, that you are planting.

There are lots of ways to raise up life force. You can sing a chant or tone along with a singing bowl or a chant cd, you can go out for a run, you can go dancing at a club or a drum jam, you can rock back and forth, or do an intense workout. Heck, you can go sing a song that fits the work you’re doing at karaoke. Anything that makes a sound and gets your heartrate going is generally going to lay the pattern deeper.

If you sing, sing like it matters. Sound is energy. Life force is energy. Breathing and moving is energy.

Rebirth, Planting Seeds, and Planning
When you’ve done the work to set an intention, the work is not yet done. There’s still the long road from here–where you are right now–to there. Envisioning what “there” looks like can be a powerful motivator, and essentially strikes the “bell” that is the fabric of the universe and says, “Hey, this is my intention, this is what I want to happen.” But there’s all the rest of the work we have to do to get there.

Whenever I’m planning something–particularly something big that’s going to require a lot of work–I make a map. I identify what I want as clearly as I can, and then I pull out all the steps I’ll need to take in order to get there. It’s like a to do list, only a little prettier. I can start to get a sense of what tasks need to get accomplished first so that I can progress closer to the goal. For instance, getting a web site. Finishing a book. Getting more artwork done. Planning more traveling and teaching engagements. Or even cleaning up my art studio so that I can do more painting.

While there are a lot of thankless tasks and busywork on the way from Here to There, connecting them firmly to the big goal is a way to help you visualize and stay on track. And–if you enjoy crossing things off lists as much as I do–as you get those things done, you can see yourself on the map, getting closer to that goal. Some things don’t map out as well as others, but if you have a big complicated goal this can be a good way to break it down.

And it’s another place where Tarot cards can come into play as you’re beginning to make decisions about particular things. Tarot is a great way to look at what’s going on beneath the surface, and short 1-card or 3-card pulls can tell you a lot.

I wish you the very best in reaching for all of your dreams. Happy Spring!

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A quick message from me. I need a little help in realizing my dreams for the seeds that I have planted. I’m in the final days of my Indiegogo campaign to raise funds so that I can continue traveling teaching work like this.

I’m offering cool perks from $1 and up, including chants, meditations and trance journeys, artwork, and more. If my writing is useful to you, please consider contributing so I can keep doing this work.  http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/leadership-education-and-writing-for-pagan-community/

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Equinox: Planting Seeds of Rebirth

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I’m taking a break from my ongoing series on Grassroots Leadership to join the Tarot Blog Hop on the theme of the Spring Equinox. Although, the particular magical act that is the rebirth of spring–and planting the seeds for the dreams you wish to bring into fruition–is an important part of a leader’s work.

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a long, hard winter for me. I’ve been in a wrestling match with the depression that tried to take hold after my car accident in December, and I’m so grateful for the longer days and melting snow. The past month has been incredibly reinvigorating for me and I’m really ready for spring planting.

Some people are physically planting seeds at this time of year, but for most of us it’s more of a metaphor. And yet, the seasons still have their pull on the ecosystem of our bodies. I often look at the time November through the silence of winter as the time to release what we really need to let go of. To identify what seeds we need to actively not plant in our garden again.

I look at New Year’s Eve and the attendant New Year’s Resolutions, and those months leading up to Imbolc and the Spring Equinox as the inspiration energy, preparing for new growth. Spring Equinox, then, is a fantastic time to make a solid commitment to something we’ve been thinking about or working with.

Spring Equinox is that fresh start, that rebirth, that time to really plant the seeds of something we want to bring into our lives.

Tarot and Rebirth
Often when we pull out the cards, we’re looking for help with a decision or with choosing a direction. I know that nothing is more personally frustrating for me than when I know that I need to make a change in my life, but I feel stuck, unsure of which direction to choose. Or unsure of what’s holding me back.

Tarot can be a great way to help you get at what’s going on beneath the surface.

With Tarot cards–or just on your own–you might begin to consider first what you want. What are some of the goals that you dream of but perhaps haven’t yet put into place? It could be actual farming or gardening, or starting a family, or changing careers, or starting a business, or starting  a new community initiative or perhaps a particular creative pursuit like writing or painting. What are the things that you would like to accomplish?

You might also begin to think about what you’ve let fall away from your life–or what you need to let fall away. Perhaps it was a bad relationship, a toxic friend, a job that didn’t serve you, a mindset about money. I’ve often heard that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. And yet, so many people (myself included!) have gotten stuck repeating the same old things. I know that I’ve found myself in a few relationships that were abusive–both romantic and professional.

Often what we need to let fall away is more directly related to the pain we’ve suffered in the past. Call them old wounds if you like. These are the things that were done to us in our past, and we develop coping mechanisms to deal with them. And–it keeps us alive, it keeps us sane–but those coping mechanisms ultimately hold us back. In school I was emotionally, verbally, and sometimes physically abused by my peers. I toughened up, decided I didn’t need anyone. I got defensive, I looked at anyone around me as an enemy. And a dozen other small coping strategies.

Literally, it kept me alive. If I hadn’t done all that, the emotionally sensitive younger version of me might very well have tried to commit suicide.

But later, when I wanted to connect to people, develop friendships, nobody wanted to be my friend. I blamed it on so many things…”They don’t like a fat chick. Screw them.” And, that was certainly true for some of them. Yet it was also my attitude that pushed people away. I was looking at everyone I met as if they were the kids from middle school, about to hurt me. I treated people like that.

Figuring out what to let go can be the work of years. Your own meditation or journaling might help with it. Therapy can help, talking to a friend can help. Exploration through Tarot can help you see what’s too close to your own face.

When you begin to release what doesn’t serve you, you can then look again at what you want to bring into your life. This is where popular concepts like the Law of Attraction start to come in, but it’s often oversimplified. Thinking positive is not enough–it’s the way to shine the light of hope, like a lighthouse in the distance. But there’s all the work that it takes to get there, all the work to release what doesn’t serve you and to make room for what will serve you.

What do you want in your life? Love? Friendships? Connection? Creativity? Life Force? Abundance? I want to do what I love and get paid for it, among other things. I want to write and create art and travel and teach, and connect to other people who are doing similar work and share resources with them and build something that lasts. I want to leave the world better than how I came into it.

Ritualizing and Embodying Planting the Seeds
We humans are physical creatures. A lot of spiritual work seems to try to get us out of our bodies, but truly, are bodies are pretty powerful spiritual instruments.

When we sing, dance, and drum together, something changes. Our bodies help us to get into that trance state that can help us take the work deeper. It’s one thing to think about what you need to release, or what you want to bring into your life. It’s another thing entirely to embody that through singing, chanting, dancing and drumming.

Or perhaps even just to embody releasing by cutting a piece of string, or to embody bringing something into your life by burning an intention written on a piece of paper, or focusing that intention into a cup of water and drinking it.

Here is a “sketch” of a ritual that I’ve offered for groups at this time of year, and perhaps the words and the process will offer you some ideas for how you  might physicalize setting an intention for yourself to plant the seeds of hope, of rebirth. Much of the language below is something that I might use when facilitating a ritual or ceremony for a group.

Planting the Seeds of Hope
What is often useful first is some kind of a sound purification. A singing bowl, a gong bath, singing a chant or an om. Any sound with intention can help to center and focus you.

You might also invite in any spirits, allies, or other forms of the divine to assist your work. Elements, ancestors, deities, or just honoring that you are a part of the larger universe and that the work you do to set intention has ripples throughout the fabric of that universe, whether or not you can see them.

It can also be very potent to choose a physical object to work with to represent your seed such as a stone, gem, seed, or any small object.

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Can you feel and smell the season turning from Winter to Spring? The seeds begin to awaken within the earth, softening with the melting snow and rains and stretching toward the rising light. The winds of change are blowing, and the tide is turning to spring and growth and warmth and life force is rising up in our veins.What seeds do you plant, what are the dreams yet to come? What are the hopes and wishes you pray for?

As you celebrate the return of the light, breathe life into the seeds of your personal dreams. Bless the seeds of hope for healthy communities and earth sustainability. Imagine…inspire, empower, and reach for the seeds of your future.

Will you hold the seeds planted in the rich earth of your heart, and imagine the tree grown strong?

When you name your seeds you bless them. What are your dreams? What are the seeds that you plant? What are your hopes and prayers for this year? What is one big dream, a tree you would like to grow? How will you send blessings and abundance to those seeds, those dreams.

The Seed. What is the seed you wish to plant? What seeds do you plant now, or have you planted in the earth before the cold season? What are the seeds that you wish to tend for this year? For the years after?

What is the dream that you wish for? Will you dream big? What are your hopes, your wishes? When you imagine the seed, what is the plant, the tree that it will grow? What fruits will that tree bear?  Standing in the place of now, can you imagine the tree grown strong and full? What is a dream that you hold? What is its scent, its taste, what does it look like or sound like? What is your dream of the future, one dream. Is it a dream of abundance, of prosperity.  A dream of a new job, a dream of something you wish to learn, a new business, a new project.

Perhaps it is a maple tree, swift growing. Perhaps it is an oak tree, long to grow and long to stand. Do you hold a dream for social change, a dream of healing, a dream of a creative project?  A healthy family, a healthy community?

Hold the image, the sound, the feeling. How do you hold your body here in the place where your seed has taken root and grown tall, where you can pluck the fruits of the tree. And coming back to now, when you hold the seed within your hand and your heart. What is the seed you will plant, or have planted already?

Earth

What is the soil that grows your dream? The Dreaming in the Darkness. What rich, loamy earth does your seed require to flourish? What are the nutrients your seed will need? Imagine being under the earth, in the moist darkness in the weeks and months, waiting for the thaw and waiting for the time to be right. Here is the time in the darkness, in the deep, in the waiting. When do you require darkness and silence and rest, when does that fill you and feed you?

What is the soil that will feed your dreamseed? Is it words of encouragement, is it time alone, is it the support of friends, is it financial abundance, is it family or community, what are the resources you need? What does your dream need, your seed need?

(At this time, you might plant the representation of your seed into earth, dirt, sand, or something soft.)

Water

The water that softens the seed.  Can you remember being under the earth, can you remember that darkness going on and on, the winter not letting go? What is it like to be so ready for light and heat and moisture? Have you ever been under the earth for what felt like a thousand years of darkness? And then….the waters came.
Can you remember what it felt like to have the waters touch the edges of the seed, the edges of your skin. The waters soften the seed, prepare it to grow. Can you remember the warm rains flowing down to cleanse you, prepare you?

Have you known joy or known sorrow? Why do you care about this seed? Have you felt the rains falling down on you? Or were they the waters of the stream or the lake or the ocean? How did the waters flow? Do you remember feeling? What brings life to your seed? What do you love?

Did your heart break?  The Sufi say the heart must break to make more room for God to enter. When did your heart break? Where is the love inside of you, are you in love with this seed and this dream? Can you feel the waters of your love softening the edge of the seed, filling the cup of your heart, slaking the thirst of this growing plant as it grows and grows?

How do you feel? What feelings bring life to this dream seed, to this tree that will become?

(You might bathe your hands in water here, or even pour water over yourself.)

Fire

The sunlight, the fire. What is the sunlight that feeds your plant, brings it life force and vitality? What is the will that rises within you?

Fire will be the sun and the light, the Will to make the dream happen, what lights us up. What gets you on fire? What sparks your imagination? What causes the fire in the head and heart, that life force shiver to rise up your spine? What gets you excited, what is your vision of the future? Can you feel it inside you, can you reach for that sunlight that will feed you?

Can you imagine that golden beautiful radiance and as it touches your leaves and your skin and you’re bathed in it, it fuels you and feeds you.

(You might light a fire at this point such as a candle, or even a campfire or bonfire if you are outside. Or you might also reach your hands up toward the sun itself, reaching for that fire.)

Air

The breath of life. What is the name of the divine? I am that I am. What brings life and consciousness to this seed, what gives it its name? Will you name this dream that you are planting, will you name the tree it will become? Will you blow a name into the seed, into the wind, and commit to making this seed a reality?

Will you turn and whisper its name to someone next to you, will you tell its story and bring it to life? Will you risk naming this dream, call it forth?

And will you say aloud one thing you can do, to take a step toward making this dream happen?

Fueling Your Intention
At this point in a group ritual I typically engage people in singing a chant together which builds in intensity. We sing, we dance, we play drums, until the energy of our song and movement reaches a peak. If you’re doing this exercise on your own, I recommend engaging in some kind of energetic activity in order to “fuel” the intention, the seed, that you are planting.

There are lots of ways to raise up life force. You can sing a chant or tone along with a singing bowl or a chant cd, you can go out for a run, you can go dancing at a club or a drum jam, you can rock back and forth, or do an intense workout. Heck, you can go sing a song that fits the work you’re doing at karaoke. Anything that makes a sound and gets your heartrate going is generally going to lay the pattern deeper.

If you sing, sing like it matters. Sound is energy. Life force is energy. Breathing and moving is energy.

Rebirth, Planting Seeds, and Planning
When you’ve done the work to set an intention, the work is not yet done. There’s still the long road from here–where you are right now–to there. Envisioning what “there” looks like can be a powerful motivator, and essentially strikes the “bell” that is the fabric of the universe and says, “Hey, this is my intention, this is what I want to happen.” But there’s all the rest of the work we have to do to get there.

Whenever I’m planning something–particularly something big that’s going to require a lot of work–I make a map. I identify what I want as clearly as I can, and then I pull out all the steps I’ll need to take in order to get there. It’s like a to do list, only a little prettier. I can start to get a sense of what tasks need to get accomplished first so that I can progress closer to the goal. For instance, getting a web site. Finishing a book. Getting more artwork done. Planning more traveling and teaching engagements. Or even cleaning up my art studio so that I can do more painting.

While there are a lot of thankless tasks and busywork on the way from Here to There, connecting them firmly to the big goal is a way to help you visualize and stay on track. And–if you enjoy crossing things off lists as much as I do–as you get those things done, you can see yourself on the map, getting closer to that goal. Some things don’t map out as well as others, but if you have a big complicated goal this can be a good way to break it down.

And it’s another place where Tarot cards can come into play as you’re beginning to make decisions about particular things. Tarot is a great way to look at what’s going on beneath the surface, and short 1-card or 3-card pulls can tell you a lot.

I wish you the very best in reaching for all of your dreams. Happy Spring!

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Assumptions, Expectations, and Boundaries

If you don’t ask for it, you won’t get it. But asking is sometimes the hard part.

“Let’s meet at ___ location at about 6pm.” What does “about” mean here? Does “about” mean, “I want you to meet me exactly at 6pm?” Does it mean that we might be there by 5:45, but that it also is acceptable if we aren’t there until 6:15?

“I like it when someone else takes the trash out.” What does that mean? Does that mean the person is hinting that I should take the trash out?

“Someone needs to design a flyer.” What does that mean? Is someone being asked to design a flyer?

“We need to clear the debris out of that room.” Who’s being asked to do this? What’s the plan? Am I being asked to help, or is this just a statement about the need to clear the debris?

“I have a train that is leaving at 6:30 am.” Is this even a question? If my intent is to procure a ride to the train station for myself, shouldn’t I be asking a specific question of someone? Something more like, “Hey, I have a train leaving at 6:30 am, would you be willing to give me a ride to the train station?”

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First–a quick plea for assistance. I’m in the final days of my Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for a car so I can continue traveling and teaching leadership and writing articles like this. I’m offering cool perks from $1 and up, including leadership resources. Every dollar helps me to get a safe, reliable vehicle for those long road trips. If my writing is useful to you, please consider contributing so I can keep doing this work. If everyone who read my blog this week contributed $1-$5, I’d have a pretty reliable car.  http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/leadership-education-and-writing-for-pagan-community/

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Back to the article….I experience that many people are afraid to ask direct questions, particularly when they are asking people to do something–or worse, to do something for them. It’s part of this whole cultural passive aggressive baggage that really hinders communication efforts.

Why are we afraid to ask for help?
I can speak for myself on this one—I’m afraid that if I ask for help that someone might say no. That someone might resent me or judge me for asking for help. That I will then be stuck owing that person or be labeled as needy. There’s a whole host of reasons. Every once in a while, my deeply-hidden people-pleaser rears its ugly head. People who ask for help are judged as needy and helpless, I think. People will resent me for asking for help.

Energetically, it feels better if I hint and then they offer. That way I’m not owing them, right? Or at least, it feels more that way. Many communications lack the specifics that would actually get us what we want.

“Let’s meet up at 6pm” is at least somewhat specific. However, if Person A said “Let’s meet around 6,” and then Person A gets pissed off that Person B didn’t show up until 6:15, that really isn’t fair. “About” is a pretty vague word. If Person A needs something to happen by no later than 6pm–such as a departure–what would work better is, “I need for us to leave no later than 6pm, so please be there by 5:45.” It’s more clear and puts their needs forward. They are setting themselves up for someone to fail them if they are vague.

Why might they be vague? Well, let’s face it, being that specific and clear can be taken as being confrontational in our culture.

Here’s something that makes it more difficult is when someone asks a question when they already know an answer. Here’s an example. Let’s say Person A knows they want to leave by no later than 6pm to get somewhere else by 7pm. But they first ask Person B, “What time do you want to leave?” If Person A already knows they want to leave by 6pm, why bother asking?

And yet, we learn how to do these polite things that actually get in the way and cause micro conflicts and set us up for frustration.

Similarly, we learn that to be clear and to hold boundaries is to sound controlling and bitchy. “We need to leave at no later than 6pm, so be there at 5:45, please,” can come across as sounding harsh and unyielding.

And yet, it puts forth a clear need. If it’s actually going to tick you off to leave at 6:05, or, cause you to risk being late, it’s really your responsibility to communicate that up front.

“Let’s meet around 6ish” is something we learn to say, but it isn’t really what we want. I experience that people get really ticked off at people who don’t do what they wanted.

However, you can’t know what someone wants unless they tell you.

Expectations Uncommunicated
In fact, I notice this a lot in relationships when one partner has an expectation of another partner but never communicates it. One partner I was with expected that if someone didn’t jump up to take care of a problem that was hinted at, that that person didn’t love him. We finally came to be able to talk about this after therapy. It was an expectation he’d learned from a family member. His frustration could be anything from, the laundry pile was too full, to, he wanted to go out to dinner.

He just held the expectation that if there was something he wanted me to help with, that I’d somehow telepathically know. And when I, of course, did not read his mind to know what he wanted help with, he’d get increasingly frustrated but not tell me that he was frustrated until he exploded in anger.

You can probably start to see how something that’s really fairly miniscule like doing laundry becomes a major conflict. We’d end up in this cyclical argument where ultimately he’d say, “If you really loved me you’d just know, I wouldn’t have to ask.”

Perhaps you too have had relationship arguments that just ran around and around the barn like this.

Expectations in Groups and Leadership
The point is–you can’t expect something of someone if you haven’t asked them or told them what you want. I’m using an example from friendships and romantic relationships, however, this happens in a group setting just as easily.

“Someone needs to design the flyer” is not asking anyone to actually do that work–but you can bet that the group leader who mentioned this is going to get upset when nobody reads their mind and creates the flyer. Or the silent expectation that everyone knows they need to be at the venue 2 hours early for setup.

If you don’t ask people to do something specific, you can’t expect them to know you needed the help. I talk to a lot of group leaders who get frustrated with people in their groups who aren’t stepping up to do the work. And yes–volunteers often drop the ball, it’s the nature of the beast. However, many of these group leaders are not properly articulating the question, they are not asking people to do a task.

Here’s a mistake I’ve made in the past–I’ve put out the email to “everyone” listing the things that need to be done for XYZ event, or the Facebook post saying, “Can anyone do XYZ?” And then I get no responses. What gets a better response is, “Hey Pat, I know you’re really a great graphic designer, would you be willing to design a flyer for the event? I understand if you are busy.” When you actually ask people for help, you might get it–and you might get the help you are actually asking for.

But if I sit there and angrily stew that nobody is helping me with tasks–and I never asked them explicitly to do those tasks–that one’s on me.

Sometimes the Answer is No
Going further, you can’t really expect someone to act in a way that goes against their nature, against their values. I’m not talking about high-minded values, I’m talking about, what you value in the sense of, where you are willing to spend your time, energy, and money.

I value having time to spend working on writing, artwork, and community building. I’ve simplified my life in order to reflect those values. I don’t value expensive food, going out for dinner, or drinking, for instance. A former partner of mine was an extrovert (I’m an introvert) and greatly valued hanging out with people, going out for dinner. He was a foodie, I wasn’t. He liked to drink, I didn’t. He would get mad at me for not caving to his wishes and coming out with him to social events that I didn’t want to spend the money on. They were events that I wasn’t going to enjoy, and I didn’t value spending my time or my money on them.

“If you really loved me you’d do things you don’t want to do because I want you to do them,” was among his ways of trying to manipulate me.

And here’s the thing–group leaders sometimes do this. Visionaries, stubborn group leaders, we do this, and we don’t mean to. It’s a mistake I’ve made in the past and I’ve worked to correct that. I’ve tried to pressure people into going against their nature, guilting people into doing something “for the event” or “for the group.”

Sometimes, when I ask someone for help, the answer is no. And as a group leader, I have to be ok with that, I have to respect someone’s “no.”

Manipulation and Expectations
Let me take a moment to step back and point out how putting pressure on people to do what you want them to do can be incredibly manipulative whether it’s a friend, lover, or someone in your group. The person who is trying to hold a boundary and say, “No, I don’t value that,” is made to feel horrible by the guilting.

When my own former partner tried to get me to do what he wanted, I began to  doubt myself. I was pretty clear at first that I was just holding a boundary. After a while, I began to wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Am I really that terrible?” Sometimes, my partner’s words led me to going against what I knew was good for me. In the context of a relationship, this can end up into a very abusive, codependent spiral. In my case, this exacerbated my existing depression and made it worse.

However, group dynamics and relationships are very similar, and a leader who is pressuring people to do things in a group–even for altruistic reasons–is still sliding on that slippery slope into an abusive dynamic. Pressuring people to taking on event planning roles might get your event done, but it’s ultimately not going to build a healthy group. I’ve learned that the hard way.

Groups are a Relationship
So when the group leader (Person A) really wants people in the group to volunteer to take ritual roles but nobody does, Person A is going to get frustrated. However, Person A didn’t communicate their need clearly, and then usually ends up browbeating people for not volunteering.

If they set up the expectation up front–or better yet, walked through what they need, and listened to their group members who might not want to take ritual roles–there would be less frustration all around.

Nobody likes the abusive dynamic of waiting for the group leader/parent to blow up at them. If the group leader puts out there, “We put on 8 sabbats, and I need at least 5 people to step in and take ritual roles each time or I won’t be able to facilitate the sabbat, how many of you are interested in volunteering?” and then perhaps also asks, “Are there any of you who really don’t want to ever take ritual roles?” and then listens to those folks share why, a conversation can happen. Negotiation can happen.

Maybe some of the folks don’t want to take roles because they are shy, but would be willing to take really small roles and learn to get better at public speaking work, but they are afraid to take on the bigger roles that the group leader is offering. Maybe some of the folks just have absolutely zero interest in facilitating.

Help people in your group build healthier boundaries–a healthier sense of self, and the ability to say no to you, the leader. And yeah, as a visionary, sometimes that sucks. Sometimes it means the event isn’t going to be as grand as your vision. I’ve been there. I have another T-shirt.

Organizing Events
Pagan Pride or another local festival is a great example. I hear from a lot of PPD organizers that they have a hard time getting volunteers, and have a hard time getting local people involved. They get frustrated when their local community doesn’t even show up for an event, or when local community leaders don’t take an active part.

But I wonder, how many PPD and festival coordinators actually work to establish relationships with local community and leaders by going to other folks’ events? Some do. Some don’t. How many festival organizers actually make the time to research local groups and go and introduce themselves? How many ask for specific help? Putting out a post, “I need help with XYZ day-long festival, I need volunteers,” is vague. “I need 10 people for 2-hour shifts at the info table greeting people” is specific.

I’ll be clear–volunteer management is not my strength. If I’m working with a skilled volunteer coordinator I can help break tasks down simply like that, but it’s not an area where I have as much skill. However, it’s an important factor in breaking down tasks because volunteers are much more likely to help when you outline exactly what you need.

Getting Other Groups Involved
Many Pagan organizers find it challenging to get other groups involved. One thing that I can say–and I’ve worked with a lot of groups in a lot of regions–is that most groups tend to get tunnel vision.

Now–sometimes this is just boundaries and focus. People only have so many hours in the day, and when you are running a small group or an activity as a volunteer, you may not have time or resources to do more. Remember–sometimes the answer is “no.” No is the answer you are giving when someone asks you to help with their project and you just never get back to them, it’s just an indirectly communicated no.

Event organizers and visionaries also get the tunnel vision of “I want everyone to like my project! I want everyone to want to donate time to this cool thing that I’m doing!” I see a lot of Pagan leaders do this. I’ve done it myself. What happens is, a leader gets a great idea for something, and gets upset that everyone is not as excited as they are, and that their requests for help aren’t met with overwhelming enthusiasm. Much less people jumping on board to read the organizer’s mind and take on tasks like vendor coordination and fundraising and programming.

However, the truth is, that not everyone is as excited about that thing as the person/group that came up with it. And other groups have other focuses. What’s also ironic–and this is something that I see a lot too–is that the folks organizing a bigger cool event, like a Pagan Pride or other day-long festival, get upset when more local leaders and groups don’t get involved, but then those organizers themselves don’t reciprocate and support what other groups are doing.

I have seen local event organizers get snippy when more people don’t support their event, and then they themselves plan fundraising and other events and other events right over the top of what other groups are doing. They don’t do it out of malice, just carelessness.

But what it can look like to a local Pagan leader is something like, “So you want me to donate my time and energy to your event, and then you just scheduled a fundraiser at the same time as my open ritual/class/event/thing and you never come to my events. Nope, not going to support your event.”

Which…is part of why we have so many petty conflicts, because scheduling accidents happen and people take things personally, but a lot of it boils down to awareness. Keeping track of what other groups are doing is a mighty challenge, and we have little infrastructure for it.

Assumptions
There’s that old saying about assumptions, and it really is true. Whenever we have an expectation or assumption about someone else–an assumption about their motivation..”They are doing this because they hate me, they are out to get me,” or an expectation, “Why aren’t they doing this thing that I need them to do for this event?” In these instances, we’re setting ourselves up for conflict and failure.

So what can we do? First is strengthening our own healthy boundaries as leaders, and working to help members of our groups strengthen their boundaries. Then there’s checking our assumptions. Is that true? Or are we just pissed off? There’s our expectations; did someone fail to live up to your expectation? Did they betray you? Or, did you never effectively communicate your expectations to your group members?

What we can do is work to be better. Notice the places where we’ve been hitting our heads against the wall and are frustrated, and work to change things so that it’s better next time. For an excellent resource on boundaries, I recommend the book “Where You End and I Begin.”

If you want things to happen, begin by asking for them. Clearly, and without ambiguity. You might get a yes, you might get a no. But at least you’ll know, and you aren’t setting yourself to be ticked off at someone later for dropping the ball. When a volunteer drops the ball, it often means that they should have said “no,” but they felt pressured to say “yes.”

Authenticity, Boundaries, and Shadows

Authenticity is a complicated word. We are told to be authentic. However, we also face a lifetime of expectations, of being conditioned by the cultural norms to try to meet the expectations of others.

When we begin to first stretch our wings, to be authentic to what we really want, there’s sometimes a clash between trying to continue satisfying everyone else’s expectations of my actions and doing what I have previously committed to….This sometimes conflicts with our desire to live an authentic life, to follow the dreams we may have only just admitted we have for our lives.

And those dreams may be very different from what everyone around us “wants” for us or expects of us. Trying to become more authentic is where many of us first learn to say, “No, that’s not what I want for my life.”

Authenticity, needs, and shadow do a particular dance. A great deal of shadow is more accurately described as, cultural shadow. They are things that are genuine human needs, things it’s realistic to want. Like, sex, affection, comfort, or even people’s attention or respect. But, culturally, we’re taught that it’s “bad” to want these things. And then they work their way into shadow, where we try to resist wanting them–because, our ego knows that it’s “bad” so “we don’t want that, right?”

Except, then we do work to be more authentic, and we start to recognize, “No, I really do want that.”

We slowly start to learn that it’s reasonable (not inherently dirty) to want sex. To want physical affection. To want people’s attention and respect. To want to be seen for being unique and special. To be told we did a good job. It’s not bad to want these things, we’re just told that some of these things are bad. “Only Show-Offs want that,” “If you want that you’re a whore.” Etc, etc.

However–there is a balance with authenticity, needs, and shadow. I hear a lot of people using the “authenticity” smackdown to articulate why they can be a total jerk. “I really want this, I’m being authentic and true to myself.” Well–yeah, your need for _____ might be overwhelming in this particular moment.

But, how does that need impact or even harm others if you indulge in it? And is it something that is going to serve you for just this moment, or is it going to serve your larger life’s purpose?

For me, authenticity is more of a long-game type of word. I can be authentic and say that, yes, right now, I’d like to go eat some terrible-for-me fast food. I admit it. I’d like a sub sandwich and some ice cream, and seriously–screw all the people who would judge me for being just another fatass.

However–this does not serve my long-term health goals. In my case, it’s not about weight so much as depression and other health concerns. When I eat healthy, I feel better. So there’s authenticity/honesty about our shorter term needs, but there’s also looking at the larger picture for ourselves. Food’s a really great, clear example because in some cases (like mine) there might be the short-term instant gratification, but in the longer term, I’m going to suffer through exhaustion and depression symptoms.

Authenticity: Sex
Here’s a more emotional example. Since in my last post I was talking about sexual ethics in groups, let’s look at that. Let’s say that I’m a group leader, and there’s someone who came into the leadership team via attending one of my classes. Let’s say he hits on me, and I’m attracted to this guy, and I decide, yeah, this is authentically what I want right now, and sex is not bad so let’s go for it.

Maybe we go out a few times before I realize that we’re really not compatible. Maybe he’s really immature. Or maybe he falls in love with me and wants to settle down, and I don’t want that. Or maybe he has a very different communication style. For whatever dozens of reasons, I realize that this was a big mistake. One of us breaks off the relationship during a fight. And then we’re both left with the aftermath–now we’re both in a group together, and one or both of us is pissed off at the other. Ultimately this usually means one party leaves the group, and usually if that happens, it’s bitter and frequently involves gossip and backstabbing.

So in that one moment, maybe we both authentically wanted sex…but, the longer term impact to the group certainly isn’t what I wanted, but in the above scenario, I didn’t take the time to get a better sense of the other person and where they were at and what our compatibility was…nor did I ensure that that person and I were on a peer dynamic.

It goes on and on. I think sex is a good example for the authenticity/needs discussion because

1. There’s so much cultural shame around wanting sex, so when we discover that sex isn’t bad and want to explore it, we can kind of pendulum swing to the other side, and
2. It’s one of those things that tends to happen rather impulsively when things heat up, but can have various consequences when the morning light hits the pillows.

Authenticity: Anger
Let’s go to another emotional example. Anger. Rage. There are people in my life who have hurt me badly; I’m sure anyone reading this has had moments where they were in the same place. There are moments where I wanted to hurt them the way that they hurt me. Was that emotion authentic? Yup.

However, part of authenticity is not just what I feel in that moment, but who I want to be and what values I want to live. I’m authentically pissed. Hurt beyond words. Maxxed out to my limit by what was said to me or done to me. But yet, I have worked in my life to be authentic to my larger self, to my values, not just to that brief feeling.

Now–since the above scenario can get pretty complicated if we’re talking about issues of emotional or physical abuse, I’m going to clarify that I’m not in any way judging anyone who has totally blown up at someone who’s been emotionally or otherwise abusing them. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I have the t-shirt.

What I’m talking about are when we have the opportunity to look at the emotion we are feeling, and the different ways we could react, and instead choosing to respond in a way that is in alignment with our values. A specific example might be if another group leader starts yelling at me because he heard that I had done XYZ. If I just start yelling back because I’m pissed, I don’t really get the opportunity to dig into what’s going on.

But if I listen, and figure out, oh, he has the wrong information, then I can clarify that indeed, I didn’t do XYZ, I did ABC. I can de-escalate the conflict if I can keep my cool. I’m authentically angry that I’m being shouted at, but I can choose to not escalate things by shouting and try to figure out what’s actually happening and work through the conflict.

Of course, if the other person never stops shouting at me, I can’t really do much about that–but I can control my own response.

Authenticity, Anger, Needs, and Societal Consequences
The benefit of having a dominant culture and social consequences to our actions is that it does keep certain bad things from happening–or at least, happening as frequently. Like murder and theft. The way we treat each other are part of the laws that we have. Such as, theft is illegal, murder is illegal, rape is illegal. Those are all laws theoretically to protect people. However, there’s a certain overlap between our laws and expectations, and the dominant culture and the social pressures it represents.

We generally want the social pressure that people shouldn’t be murdering and raping each other. But that same social pressure is wrapped into the dominant culture’s expectations and judgments of each person. Each person should be heterosexual and get married and have babies and go to church and dress like everyone else and not be promiscuous and not be a show-off and should keep a steady job and…etc.

Those societal judgments are part of what cause our individual struggles with our own needs. And that’s where shadow comes in, and why we struggle with personal boundaries–even with our identity, who we are.

Boundaries, Identity, and Pleasing Others
These are things that are both fascinating to me, as well as frustrating. If I’m doing things in my life to please/satisfy others instead of to please myself, what’s the impact there? See–one of our problems is that humans don’t tend to do gray areas very well. We tend to do black/white thinking. Something is either Awesome or Terrible. Good/Bad. We polarize really quickly.

Authenticity is not turning into a self-centered jerk who only does what pleases them. But nor is authenticity bending over backwards to please everyone else in your life at the expense of yourself.

Authenticity is looking at what you want in a particular moment, and looking at what you want for your life, your goals and dreams, for your larger/deeper self, and determining if that momentary desire is in alignment with your life’s desire.

In our society, we don’t develop very good boundaries. That is to say, we often have a vague idea of self. Typical parenting extends identity from the parent onto the child–meaning, a parent has expectations for their child. That child either is “good” and lives up to those expectations, or is “bad” because they rebel against them.

Good boundaries means you have to know who you are. And that might sound simple–and it’s really, really not. Most of us have utterly terrible boundaries. We’re a mess of the expectations placed on us by our parents, expectations from the school system, expectations from the dominant culture, and expectations from our friends, partners, and others in our lives.

Boundaries: Changing Your Life
I have a number of people I know–usually women hitting middle-age–who suddenly change their lives. They have been care-taking their family their whole adult life, and suddenly they realize, they hate their marriage, they hate their job, they hate how people treat them, they hate their life. Sometimes they get divorced, or switch jobs, or start going to spiritual retreats.

Basically, they never fully got to individuate. At age two, we learn to say “no.”  But if we’re taught that it’s bad to say “no,” then we’re stuck with poor boundaries. And then it’s really hard to say “no” because what we’ve learned is, “If I say no, they will hate me. They will judge me, and excommunicate me, and I’ll be alone forever.”

But for these folks, they get to a point where the rock met the hard place and they exploded. They couldn’t keep saying “yes.” Often this blow up results in an attempt to re-negotiate an unhealthy dynamic with an overbearing parent. And–as you might expect–that renegotiation rarely goes well.

Once Person A says, “I know I’ve always bent to the pressure from you, but I want to do my own thing,” whether Person B is their parent, spouse, teacher, or some other relationship, Person B usually gets pissed off. Sometimes, they are able to renegotiate the relationship. In most cases, it ends up with family estrangement because the person who has worked to negotiate their boundaries can no longer put up with the behavior from Person B, and Person B won’t respect the new boundaries.

Saying No
I think a lot of our societal problems would be different if we could say “no” without huge social consequences. Angeles Arrien writes about tribal cultures where “no” just means, “No, can’t help with that, good luck,” and there’s no cultural judgment around it. That’s not the case in the culture I grew up in.

A lot of authenticity work ultimately boils down to figuring out who you are. Healing the wounds of your past. And, once you know who you are, establishing healthy boundaries with the people around you and learning what you truly want to agree to do, and what you don’t.

Again, healthy boundaries and authenticity doesn’t mean being totally selfish. Yes–it’s still a good idea to bow to the social pressure to help a friend move into a new house even if you don’t want to. Why? Because you value that friend, and even if in the moment you really would rather do something else, you’re working to support your larger values of friendship and community support.

Authenticity and boundaries might be starting a new job, even though your family or spouse doesn’t agree with the choice. “That work is beneath you,” someone might say. “You’ll never make a living doing that.” “You won’t get any time with you family.” Or a host of other complaints. Authenticity is figuring out what it is you want to do–part of who you are. Boundaries is that line between you, and someone else. You don’t have to do what someone else wants for you.

This also comes into play romantically. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been dating someone and had people tell me, “Oh, he’s perfect for you. Don’t let that one go.” Or, “You should marry that guy, I like him.” And if I broke up with the guy, there was the pressure that I had somehow screwed up because that other person liked the guy. This is, again, more of that subtle social pressuring and why we have problems with boundaries.

People Pleasing
If I’m living my life authentically, and others are pleased by it, that’s cool. I’m probably not living my life for them to be pleased by it, but if that’s an impact, ok. If it’s the other way around, and I’m running around people pleasing, that’s probably not on the authenticity side of the fence.

Going back to the issue of shadows, authenticity, and sex in groups, we’ve got a lot of paradox there. Is sex inherently bad? No. But, sex does lead to relationship complications. And specifically, the shadow side of sex is when someone is so desperate for affection that they are acting compulsively. It’s usually referred to in our culture as sex addiction, though sex therapists that I know have told me there’s no such thing, and that the behaviors of sex addiction are usually symptoms of one of the major personality disorders or another untreated illness. People with Borderline Personality Disorder, for instance, often display the symptoms of compulsive sex, compulsive spending, theft, property destruction, and other compulsive behaviors.

Sex isn’t bad. If you’re using someone for sex because you are desperately trying to get that love/affection need met, and you are manipulating someone into sex or lying to them to get sex or are having unsafe sex with multiple partners and lying to them, or cheating on your partner…that’s where we are looking at shadow.

Shadow is when our genuine human need (love/sex/affection) is so unmet–and we are so desperate to have it met–that we act out in a way that’s unhealthy for us and those around us.

Authenticity is a complicated thing, but if we can get there…imagine the positive impacts, the healthy relationships, the healthy groups. If we:

1. Work to know ourselves,
2. Work to know our deep selves and our dreams for the future,
3. Look at our current relationships and how we are living someone else’s identity/desire for us,
4. Work to understand the difference between our short-term needs and desires, and our longer-term needs and desires and values, and
5. Work to negotiate our boundaries with those around us so that we can live our own life, establish our own identity…

Ultimately, this is why beneath every leadership tool and technique is intensive personal growth. It’s knowing yourself, and identifying what really needs to transform in order for you to be a healthy, whole person and to bring that healthy, whole person into service of your deeper life’s purpose, your dream, your community, the world. This is why we all need to work on our baggage. That’s the world I want to live in.

**Some of my understanding of the concept of boundaries comes from the work of Dr. L. Carol Scott, who has a great blog and newsletter with fantastic articles. Very much worth checking out.