My Fondest Wish
Jan. 4th, 2007 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxI'd love to found a small community of like minded Pagans in my home town, Wrexham, Wales. The ones that exist here are not exactly formally recognised as such (well, yeah, what's new, but ...) but they seemingly cater exclusively to a 16 - 18 year old Goth crowd from the art college. A bit too young for me, I'm afraid.
I wish that there could be a few braver people than the ones in town. There's always that hesitancy when people ask me about Paganism, or what I do. I'm a man, and many local women always seem to assume the worst - that I'm going to harp on about skyclad rituals in the woods, all of that stuff, while looking at them kind of hungrily or something.
Why do you think I never advertise; never look for apprentices? I say the words "perfect love and perfect trust", and all they seem to hear is "naked romps" and "dirty old man".
It's hard enough to actually do readings for people in public without having some intolerant religionist ranting about my "demonic" practices (true: this happened to me whilst doing a reading for a client, some time ago), without people associating my divinatory skills with base, brute lechery, lasciviousness and scurrilous behaviour.
This town seems to want to pride itself on "proprietary" behaviour, whatever that's supposed to mean; and people like me, with our Trickster following, oft Chaotic, but generally harmless and always humourous, brand of enlightened Paganism, aren't part of this. And yet this is the town that gets all the bad press.
Whenever the nationals want a juicy story, full of scandal but hurting nobody important, someone they can pour scorn onto without fear of reprisals, where do they come for their stories of race riots and fourteen year old girls getting pregnant and running off to Eastern Europe with fifty year old sanitation workers? Yep, you guessed it.
One day, if I meet the Buddha, I'll ask him: was it ever this hard for you when you were doing your rounds?
In case you were wondering why this post seems ... less than full of the milk of human kindness: I was effectively slapped in the face today, by people whom I thought had their act together, whom I thought I could have respected and called "enlightened", but whose behaviour towards me just plain disappointed me.
The sign'd said "This is a working shrine, so be respectful". So I did, offering my thanks to the little Cernunnos statue for the inspiration that had come to me whilst having a cup of coffee in their place. Only thing is, I saw that they'd had a CCTV trained on me, and they'd been watching me on a monitor the whole time, even blooming laughing when I saluted Cernunnos.
They made me feel that they were, in fact, no better than some of the lads from round my way, who never had a magical thought in their bodies.
I wish that there could be a few braver people than the ones in town. There's always that hesitancy when people ask me about Paganism, or what I do. I'm a man, and many local women always seem to assume the worst - that I'm going to harp on about skyclad rituals in the woods, all of that stuff, while looking at them kind of hungrily or something.
Why do you think I never advertise; never look for apprentices? I say the words "perfect love and perfect trust", and all they seem to hear is "naked romps" and "dirty old man".
It's hard enough to actually do readings for people in public without having some intolerant religionist ranting about my "demonic" practices (true: this happened to me whilst doing a reading for a client, some time ago), without people associating my divinatory skills with base, brute lechery, lasciviousness and scurrilous behaviour.
This town seems to want to pride itself on "proprietary" behaviour, whatever that's supposed to mean; and people like me, with our Trickster following, oft Chaotic, but generally harmless and always humourous, brand of enlightened Paganism, aren't part of this. And yet this is the town that gets all the bad press.
Whenever the nationals want a juicy story, full of scandal but hurting nobody important, someone they can pour scorn onto without fear of reprisals, where do they come for their stories of race riots and fourteen year old girls getting pregnant and running off to Eastern Europe with fifty year old sanitation workers? Yep, you guessed it.
One day, if I meet the Buddha, I'll ask him: was it ever this hard for you when you were doing your rounds?
In case you were wondering why this post seems ... less than full of the milk of human kindness: I was effectively slapped in the face today, by people whom I thought had their act together, whom I thought I could have respected and called "enlightened", but whose behaviour towards me just plain disappointed me.
The sign'd said "This is a working shrine, so be respectful". So I did, offering my thanks to the little Cernunnos statue for the inspiration that had come to me whilst having a cup of coffee in their place. Only thing is, I saw that they'd had a CCTV trained on me, and they'd been watching me on a monitor the whole time, even blooming laughing when I saluted Cernunnos.
They made me feel that they were, in fact, no better than some of the lads from round my way, who never had a magical thought in their bodies.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Several things...
Date: 2007-01-04 05:53 am (UTC)You're stronger than that though, hon. And better. Those are the type of people who'd crumble at the first insult and you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move forward in your life. *hugs*