The Witches Next Door
The Spiral Dance. Many Gods West. Pantheacon. Aurora Borealis WitchCamp. Tejas WitchCamp. California WitchCamp. CloudCatcher WitchCamp. Samhain Mysteries Retreat. South Bay Circles. North Bay Reclaiming. Sonoma County Pagan Network. Coru Cathobodua. Milk & Honey. The Sacred Well. Mystic Dream. PaganFest. All Pagan & Polytheist Meetings. Rituals and celebrations of all imaginable types.Countless working groups, online groups, private gatherings, classes, workshops, hangouts, and meet-ups.
*Whew*
In the past 12 months, we’ve attended rituals and conferences, planned gatherings, participated in discussions, visited and met with every one of the groups listed above. We’re both sure there’s more too, but neither of us are looking at our calendars right now. It’s pretty much looked like this for more than a decade and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
We are Community Witches, which means that we are blessed to have an abundance of community that we can reach out to and/or be in service with, pretty much whenever we want to (and even when we don’t want to).
If you’ve been around communities of people, you’ve probably heard the old axiom “The best thing about community is being around all of the people. The worst thing about community is being around all of the people.” Whenever we see online postings about some incident that affects the Pagan/Polytheist community, there are always commenters that post “That’s why I’m a solitary.” Yeah, sure, we get it, that is a totally understandable reaction to community drama. It can be difficult enough to show up for our own lives, let alone hundreds or even thousands of other people’s lives that may be playing out online.
And yet having said that, for us, there’s nothing quite like being in the physical company of other witches, world changers, and edge walkers.
Gwion: I’m a social creature. I thoroughly enjoy sitting with passionate people that have mastered their craft or built a magical tradition or are looking to tear down a system. I find it endlessly fascinating to take a deep dive into someone else’s theology, someone’s ritual schema, someone’s devotional practices and learn how they connect with their gods or nature or the nothing-ness of it all. My daily practices, my ritual skills, my activism has been shaped by the many people I get to be in community with.
Phoenix: I spent many years as a solitary. In fact, nearly twenty-five years ago virtually all of my experiences of paganism, witchcraft, and magic came from what I could find in books (yes, this was mainly pre-internet! *gasp*). Books taught me a lot, but there is only so much that can be gained from reading and study. Books were only able to take me so far. During my three years in a Druid community I learned more on a visceral and experiential level than I had the prior decade from books and reading. Community is a powerful teacher. Having mentors, teachers, and peers in a learning process helps the learning go deeper and potentially be more profound and life altering. It takes it from the head and heart into the blood and bone. Study is valuable, through study, trial, and error powerful personal practice can be created, but those moments in community where your experience is shared, and even validated, can not be met in a practice all alone. Plus, growth potential is faster because you can learn from others mistakes and have peers to bounce energy and ideas off of.
Gwion: Community is a place where I can go for support. Community is real people that are willing to lend a hand, move a fridge, act as a sounding board and pick me up when I’m down. I’ve witnessed moments of incredible beauty and support. I’ve celebrated births and watched as children grow into teens and adults and leaders in our community. I’ve officiated handfastings and honoured those becoming crones and cried at funerals. Dear friends have realized goals and gotten divorced and suffered terrible injustices. I’ve been supported, literally been held by people, when I was sure that I couldn’t take another step.Through all of these challenges and joys that make up life, there’s been ritual and community to hold it all.
Phoenix: Stepping out from behind my books and attending public ritual, taking workshops, and going to full moon gatherings helped me to fully experience what I had only read. It gave me a context for the pages of my beloved books (which are still my beloved books, I mean, c’mon, I’m an introvert!). Community helped to deepen what it meant to me to be a witch. Now I find myself being on the other side of community experience. I help to plan and execute the public rituals that I used to attend. It is a lot of work, it takes a lot of time, and so much of it is behind the scenes meetings and schlepping. But I feel so proud of serving the community that helped to bring me into a stronger relationship with my spirituality.
Of course, being involved with community means being involved with community. Good boundaries are essential to preserve everyone’s sanity. Understanding something of the way group dynamics work is critical; luckily there is a lot of good information out there about this very subject. Creating clear and accessible methods for decision making (yes we mean consensus, but consensus probably isn’t what you think it is) so that everyone’s voice can be heard and valued is an absolute must. Offering sustainable critique and practicing relentless support for one another can be a challenge but is necessary. And of course, there’s the whole trust thing. Being involved with community means trusting folks. A good friend of mine says “you can trust everyone, it’s just a question of what you can trust them with.” Trust involves honesty and being honest calls for being vulnerable and showing vulnerability means risking getting hurt and that’s a tough thing to risk over and over again. For us,the risk is worth it, because when community works, even with all of it’s foibles and pitfalls, it is simply amazing. It’s actually what makes being in community vibrant and alive and worthwhile, the understanding that we can create models of living together and interacting with each other that are based on trust and respect. It’s about showing up over and over again, especially when it’s tough and hard questions have to be asked and answered.
Does all of this sound like a lot of work? It is. But the rewards for putting in the effort up front, far outweigh the the temporary discomfort of setting up meetings and getting everything out on the table. After all of these years, being a solitary, being strictly in online communities, and being in face to face communities, we’ve seen a lot of the ways that groups can work. Ultimately, being in community serves our magic the most, which is what keeps us coming back, volunteering, and putting in the time to help keep our community strong.
This is why we are still community pagans.
Notes: The Spiral Dance picture was originally taken by Michael Rauner as is the picture from California Witch Camp. The book picture come from this link on Flickr and are used with permission.
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