I’ve always had trouble with patience. Immediate gratification can be intensely satisfying and we live in an era that practically revolves around the concept. When I heard my initiating High Priestess’s first Witch-book was The Waxing Moon: A Gentle Guide to Magick by Helen Chappell (published in 1974) both a friend and I ordered it immediately from our phones. Twenty-five years ago I would have had to do some actual digging to find such a book, now it arrives in less than a week through the mail.
One of the things about patience though, is that it’s a necessary quality in most Paganisms, and that’s especially true in Modern Witchcraft*. It was easy enough in 1994 to decide I was going to be a Witch, another thing entirely for me to actually understand what I was getting into. Finding a community, a coven, and a practice took even longer, and in many ways those are all ongoing things.
Many of the questions I initially had about Modern Witchcraft weren’t answered for years, some for decades, and there are still a few of them that have yet to be answered. The Modern Pagan revival kicked off in the 1950’s with Gerald Gardner, and it then took fifty years for something approaching a reasonable history of his Craft to be written (that would be Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon in 1999). It takes time to build institutions, lore, history, and a backstory.
In 2013 I wrote an article here called Reading Modern Pagan History which was essentially a book list containing the relatively few books that have been written about our recent history. It got reposted online a few weeks ago and I then read a couple of “this is only about Wicca!” comments shorty thereafter. Guilty as charged, the article does mostly list books about Wiccan history because that’s pretty much all that’s been written.
Do I want a scholarly history (or even a non-scholarly one!) of Asatru in the United States? Hell yes I do, but that won’t make it suddenly appear. I want something on the history of Modern Pagan Druidry too, but that doesn’t change the fact that it hasn’t been written. I’m sure both of those histories will eventually be in a book, and when they are I will devour them (though not literally) and recommend them if they are good, but until then I can’t.
New religions are never patient. Christianity wasn’t, Islam wasn’t, and in more recent history both the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons) and Scientology have proven to very impatient. But I like to think that Paganism (or more accurately Paganisms) might follow a different course. Most Paganisms aren’t built around belief in an absolute truth or headed by messianic figures. Most Paganisms aren’t even all that concerned with money, which is another factor that drives the growth of some institutions. (And if you see a Pagan group built around these qualities I suggest running very quickly.)
I think many of the growing pains in the extended Pagan community aren’t over issues of theology so much as they are about a lack of patience. It takes time to build a new tradition, it takes time to build a community. It takes time to build up a presence so that those who are searching can find the groups they need to. In the age of instant gratification it might feel as if putting up a blog and doing a workshop at a festival will accomplish all of that, but that’s not the case. Online Paganism is tiny percentage of a very small pond.
Right now we are witnessing a true renaissance in Pagan belief and yet that fact seems so unappreciated. Paganisms today, like the paganisms of the past, are varied and remarkably different. There are a lot of loud voices today that are so focused on getting to “why they are right and everyone else is wrong” that they are missing this extraordinary moment in history. And I think a lot of that’s due to impatience.
It’s much easier to cast one’s self as a martyr fighting for rights and beliefs that no one has taken away than to actually do the hard work of creating a new tradition. What a mean sounding thing to write, but I think it’s true in our current environment. I’ve seen a lot of brilliant people waste their talents engaging in pointless arguments that do nothing but alienate them from that which they hope to create. Sadly, it’s often easier to tear something down than build something up.
It’s possible to grow an idea through negativity, but at what cost? Turning Jesus into a champion of the strong instead of the weak perverted his message so much that Christianity eventually became something completely different from what it was founded on. Groups that are more concerned with what everyone else is doing will either never make a lasting mark, and if they do somehow survive, they’ll inevitably be forced to embrace the very same things their adherents once thought to escape from. There’s something there about catching more flies with honey than vinegar I do believe.
I think most people in greater Pagandom want beliefs and practices outside of their own to flourish, but it takes time to grow a garden. New and different ideas have to percolate, and they have to get outside just a core group of followers to impact a lot of people. Those ideas also have to be presented in ways that are attractive, writing how other bloggers are terrible has a pretty limited appeal. (Even if it results in a lot of page-views I think it’s more a side-show than an exercise in community building.)
I’ve had to wait for a lot of things in my Pagan life. I wanted to be initiated into a Craft tradition back in 2003, it happened in 2010. I started dreaming about what a truly great coven might be like in 1994, I finally got that for myself in 2012! The fact that I had to wait for these things made them all the better, I’m glad I stuck around for them. I hope the things we are currently creating stick around too, and that they are given time to grow.
*Originally this was going to be a piece about all the things I’ve had to wait for in my twenty-plus years as a Witch. It eventually turned into something else.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In