As I made my journey through the Parliament, I came to understand that my faith was not all like the others, even if we all accepted by Deity. That it was human born and not some revelation from the heavens, but instead a way for humans to have contact with the living world, the stars, and the worlds beyond our own. That Wicca has very little to do with the past really, and a lot more to do with the future. That we are a modern syncretic movement and in this part of what is being commonly termed the New Religious Movements. I will accept that because we are an evolving faith that is multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and deeply global in our outlook.
In this journey, I discovered that the Pagan community, which came to life in the 60’s, with Oberon Zell coining one phrase after another to describe it, pulled in Wicca, which had emerged in the late 50’s. In fact, the term used for at the Parliament for Wicca was Neo-Pagan, which means New Pagan, and has the same sort of sandpaper quality as Neo anything has on me. It was at this time, that we essentially were not Pagan at all by their standards, being neither indigenous nor really a reconstruction of a ancient faith, but something new that had emerged from Witchcraft and other multiple forms of thought. Instead we were regulated to the world of Neo-Pagan, which means we are not as authentic as other Pagans. This is a situation which gets Wiccans to help pay the bills, attend the festivals, buy the books, but in big events like the Parliament, regulated to the children’s tables and the back of the hall. This is certainly what happened, in my opinion, at the 5th Parliament of the World’s Religions.
In my heart, I saw the need to shed this Neo-Pagan moniker and go for a more independent heart within our community. While we may be part of their community, we are certainly a strong vibrant community in our own right. While the Parliament Pagans were going backward, seeking to show their kinship with Indigenous Faith Practices, they failed to see that the rest of the Parliament was coming closer to the syncretic nature of Wicca, and it’s emphasis on nature and future actions. While they sought to regulate us to a family tree of academia, the main thrust was by the parliament was how do we act in a pluralistic society. For me, it was not a move forward in many cases but a move back. This became my view, and one that I see is needed to survive.
I also recognized that none of the Parliamentarians from the Pagan community has any idea of what Witch School has accomplished. It showed to me that they called Covenant of the Goddess, the largest Witch Organization in the world (which is good for them) but the very same organization could not help me be directed to the main core to discuss the Witch School as becoming part of them. In fact, they said deal with local councils, which is next to impossible because there are no local councils in the majority of areas that we belong and those who do are so filled with Witch Wars that it is next to impossible. When I reported the story of this from the Parliament, I was told I was wrong, and they have been parsing it ever since.
Yet, the article I wrote “Is Paganism being redefined at the Parliament of the World’s Religions?” stirred the Witch School community not in the least. It was like water off a duck’s back, and I was so proud of that. I knew that while other parts of the community wanted my blood for the audacity of mentioning it, my community saw it as business as usual and moved on. They wanted me to say that I was wrong, and they are all qualifying the statements. In all cases Wicca was not represented much in the Panels. Only Phyllis Currot, at the Divine Feminine spoke out about a Wiccan point of view and did so beautifully.
It was then I realized we have outgrown the Pagan community and it’s current structures, and it has no room for us. Not really, and we must now consider our own structures, our own ways of dealing with problems, and our own ways of supporting our own. I recognize that we are not stronger for being part of the Pagan community as Neo-Pagans, and that we are not all equal at the table. That we are stronger on our own, as we can accept growth, real growth, as well as evolving ideas and changing the very nature of our relationship with the Deities. We can change how we deal with each other, and we can deal with being a global syncretic movement with multiple cultural points of view and multiple origins, with multiple flows of new information. We are more than our parts, we are more than a single revelation by a single man, we are a community of learners, teachers and thinkers. We are synergistic and we are made up of the whole world, we are a old people and we are a new people, and above all we are a independent people striving for greater freedom in our hearts, in our minds, and for each other. We are more that a Neo-Pagan offshoot of a movement, we are the heart of a movement that can move the world.
At the end of the Parliament, I came to the realization that Wiccans has become more than people realized, that we at Witch School are more than people know, and that others can not be allowed to continue to define us. We must now strive to be recognized on our own, and we need to seek to be independent of lesser labels such as Neo-Pagan. To this end, I declare myself a Wiccan and that is enough. I am Wiccan, and I believe we can change the world.
Blessings
Ed
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