We almost hesitate to use the word "manipulation" for something this clumsy. In her first letter, Ellen (a member of our group who was to turn out to be a member of the Temple of Prima Nocturne) began with a vague allusion to unspecified friends. Three people had been removed from the list. She wrote ...

"I must admit that when two of my respected friends were violently trashed on this list, after they were unsubscribed and thus unable to defend themselves, it made me hesitant to open myself to the same attacks,"

A reasonably nice trick for putting somebody on the defensive is seen here. Make an accusation, but keep it vague. It is very hard to frame a defense when one isn't quite sure of what it is, that one is accused of. Which two people is she speaking of, and who did the "trashing"? There had been nothing that any reasonable person could consider a "violent trashing" of anybody on the list, and, as one might expect in a free forum, there were several people who had offered criticism of one position or another. So, in his first response, Antistoicus naturally asked

"Which two friends? Three people were removed from this list, prior to Sunday. What was it that occured on this list, that you considered "violent trashing"?"

At this time, Ellen had not revealed that she was affiliated with the Temple of Prima Nocturne. So, was she referring to the gentleman who had, in response to certain difficulties, commented that Pagan elders tended to be "a pain in the (expletitive deleted)", or to Antistoicus' criticism of Sally, or Harriet, or of the actions of Mike Daley? (Let us note that the last of the three has since apologized for his actions).

In regard to the first possibility, he said

"I read Markov's remarks, which you seem to allude to, below, but saw no reference to any specific elder, merely an observation that the Pagan elders, in general, were a "pain in the (deleted)". Such an observation does not rule out exceptions, and as such, would not constitute an attack against either."

to which Ellen offered the mystifying incoherent response that

"Well, honestly, neither of the two ladies in question seems to share your perspective of the events, and as I have known them for years, and have only just met you, you can see why I asked for more clarification. What else can I do?"

At this point, it bears repeating that this particular exchange had taken place on a mailing list that Ellen was subscribed to, aside from a few offlist exchanges which she would later stipulate to the existence of. There was no "perspective on the events" to be had - the contested letters were lying out in the open, for all to see. As for one's reaction to the statement that everyone on the list knew that this gentleman had made - of what relevance is the numbers of years that this woman had know Sally and Harriet? That this is what Ellen was getting at, was a reasonable guess for Antistoicus to have made at the time, given Ellen's earlier comment that

" the attitude that "Pagan Elders (expletitive deleted)" is not compatable with building a magazine/newsletter that is supposed to bring the community together.

following this up with the remark that

" I am aware that neither you, Antistoicus or (deleted), are proponents of this attitude but I wonder if others associated with you are."

To which, given the fact that the mailing list was supposed to be a free and open forum, Antistoicus naturally responded that

"If so, like I keep saying, that is their privilege. But what do you mean "associated"? Given that Mike has been shown the door, I would hope that he'd be off the list. As for Markov, he came to the group the same way you did. There was no prior connection."

also pointing out that

"Markov has, at no time, either sought to disrupt the forum that he sought to participate in, or deny another effective access to it, as Sally has. Consequently, regardless of whether or not I agree with such a broad statement, it would have been his privilege to make it on the list - much as it would have been your privilege to offer a counterargument, and my privilege to join you in making it.

Let us add that, in context, his remark was not so broad as that, but merely referred to the practice of many of the politically connected in the community to suck the rest of us into their meaningless battles, ie. the tedious and infamous Witch Wars."

The response, which came in Ellen's second letter, included the less than inspiring quote

"I guess I was unclear that Mike was gone! Now I know. (Markov eh? A name to remember, I think!)"

Meaning what, Ellen? The implication that she will make some unpleasant use of that bit of information is clear, and let us remember that a mailing list is not a court of law. She does not have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt, there merely has to be reasonable cause to suspect that she intends to breach the rules of the forum, for her removal from it to be legitimate. THE rule has been, that those on it, are not to attempt to hinder others on it from expressing themselves freely. As for the 'right' to freely express the opinion that others should not be allowed to freely express themselves, Antistoicus' remark regarding Sally's dismissal applies :

"Having breached the social contract defining the group, she forfeited her protection under it. Like Mike, she freely chose to engage in behavior that undermined freedom of expression on this list. As we all know from Civics 100, or should, one can not properly extend a right, past that point at which it would come at the expense of the freedom of another to engage in the exercise of that right himself ... in seeking to isolate another in an attempt to keep him from being heard, forfeited her right to be heard, herself."

This would have been reason enough to eject her. How free are people going to feel to speak openly, if we leave people on the list have made it clear that they intend to 'get' those who disagree with them? Well, now that we've introduced you to Ellen's attitudes on the subject of Free Speech, let us get to what proved to be the meat of this subject - her reaction to the suspension of Sally and Harriet.

The aforementioned Mike Daley had gone onto WebForum, to retell a bizarre incident involving Eric Cunningham, the owner of the Towne Shoppe. a local Pagan goods and Metaphyical Bookstore. As Ellen herself had said in letter that preceded this exchange, Mr.Cunningham and the Temple were on hostile terms, not friends at all. As we were able to check, merely by inspecting the records over at WebForum, Mike had made no reference, direct or indirect, either to Sally, Harriet, or the Temple of Prima Nocturne. This much is simple, objective reality. Nevertheless, Sally seized on this letter as an excuse to reiterate her already endlessly repeated gripes about the newsletter, to a mass outside audience.

Rememeber the oath to refrain from politicing? As Antistoicus stated in his response to Ellen's letter,

" then, like Mike, went into WebForum, this time, having somebody forward her letter to every single Chicago area Pagan mailing list there that we know of. (Have these people heard of restraint?) She revealed the shocking news that ... well, you've already seen her letter here. Another rehash. Trying to win through sheer persistence, and again, violating the above understanding. "

to which Ellen offered what has to be a new low, in the history of spin doctoring in the local Pagan community :

"Um, I think that her concern was that she was being slandered and wanted all to see how it was being done. Also, from her point of view you were a crackpot causing trouble in the community, and all should see you for what you are. I guess she thought Mike was your alias, so "you" were directly attacking her. I am not saying this is the truth, merely her perception.

I am told Mike was booted off the lists for all his chaos."

The intent to deceive could not be clearer, here, especially given that Antistoicus had already stated that (at the time) he had no account at WebForum, and only knew of what was going on, by hearing about it from others. This would prove to be the breaking point, and rightly so : one doesn't lie to the moderator in order to prevail in a dispute. In his parting letter to Ellen, Antistoicus would make just this point, adding that there would be no point in retaining somebody on a discussion list, who one couldn't have a straight conversation with - and truly, one could not.

For example, when Antistoicus refered to the habit that got Sally suspended from the list : that of answering the same extremely broad questions (requiring extremely long answers) over and over, Ellen offered the irrelevant response that

"Tell you the truth, her questions made sence to me. I guess it is common to ask for a mission statement from someone you are not familiar with. There are a lot fo goofballs out there. (I have met some folks who should be on your cult list!)"

We could think of a few ourselves, Ellen. But the objection wasn't to Sally asking for a mission statement, but to her wasting our time by asking for it, refusing to read it, and then asking the list moderator to repeat himself endlessly - a vastly different complaint, and Ellen knows it. She continues trying to play lawyer, as she responds to Antistoicus' mention that Sally's response to his request that she stop asking repetitive questions

" Sally's response, was to send a letter, starting with a string of insults, followed by a call to all of the members of the group to abandon it, and come join her, and the staffs of the previous newsletters, to put out her own newsletter. This, she cc-ed to me, another person on the list, the mailing list itself (apparently forgetting that she had been suspended from it), and the staffs of said newsletters."

with the following absurd attempt at hairsplitting :

"I think if you will peruse the posts, you will see that she offered some money and a place to meet, but it was never to be HER newsletter. She just wanted to give the thing space to grow."

Is she founding it? Is she gathering together the staff? Then it is her newsletter, and Antistoicus' meaning in calling it such would be commonly understood. Well, OK, fine, somebody might say, Ellen was a bit dishonest, and did fail to honor her oath, required of all who join the council, to refrain from attempts to politic, in an effort to keep others from being heard. (Remember the man who referred to the Pagan elders as being "a pain in the (expletitive deleted)". But, shouldn't we be trying to work with her, and help her to come around, instead of just expelling her? Well, in response to that, let us examine her own flippant response when Sally's oath breaking came up :

"Huh? I will have to go read it. Is this from another disagreement, or the current one? (expletitive deleted), maybe I am breaching oathes here! Whoops!"

Let us repeat that everyone on the list, Ellen included, was informed of the oath and the understanding at HeathenCon, when they signed up. But then, given that she didn't even admit to being a student over at Prima Nocturne until her second letter, the attitude toward honor expressed here should not come as a great surprise. In a rare moment of clarity, though, she was straightforward enough to state that she was complaining about the response Sally saw to her arguments, after Antistoicus directly asked her if it was her position that to offer a rebuttal constituted "bashing", and to offer a strong and effective response constituted 'a severe bashing' :

"to me, your responces were very aggresively phrased and to me,who was not privy to all the events, they seemed undeserved, confusing and intimitating to my personal concept of free speech (1). (Which I admit is different from everyone else's)"

which is as manipulative a position as any that might come. (Let us remind the reader, once again, that Ellen, as a student over at Prima Nocturne, must be regarded as a member). It's OK for Antistoicus to argue back - or is it? Ellen never makes this clear, but she does make it clear that it is not OK for him to do so in any manner that is likely to prove effective. There is absolutely no practical difference between complying with such a demand, and handing control of the group over to Sally. So, how does Ellen square this desire of hers with the fact that she has joined an organization whose stated purpose was to foster free and open communication? Well, as she puts it

"Seems you and I differ in our definitions of 'free and open'. The concept is rather difficult for me to explain in this medium."

In print?! She can't discuss the written word, in print? She adds

"The curse of being an musician, I guess."

Our guess is that she's been sampling the ganja. But here we get to the key "cop out", since Ellen seems to want us to get into a 60s frame of mind, here. Ellen has decided that words mean what she wants them to mean, at the moment. The acceptance of this position makes the whole concept of an oath, and of that of integrity itself, meaningless. If the meanings of the words themselves can be shifted at will, what does it even mean to say that two people are having a conversation?

So, one might say, that in excluding Ellen from this forum, we deprived her of nothing that she didn't freely choose to throw away. The situation was explained on the (new defunct) Agora Pagan listings site, with some discussion as to our thoughts about the future, as it stood at that point. Given almost a year to do the right thing, the community was not to come anywhere close to doing so.

(Note : we were to hear one more bit of "interesting" news about her exploits, that gave us a new perspective on somebody's sense of reality. In all fairness, we should report that we are told that most of the participants in this new effort of hers haven't been active in it, and seem to be present more out of curiosity than anything else).

Some will say, that we're being a little mean here. What happened to live and let live? What indeed? "Ellen", ever since she was thrown out of here, has been seen on the local Pagan lists at WebForum, spreading disinformation about Antistoicus and this group everywhere she goes, so it's not like we're attacking somebody who was willing to leave others her own, herself. As for meanness, anything we've ever done, as we criticised somebody, has paled by comparison to what you're about to see. Here, somebody on WebForum shares a report with those present, of how he was essentially blackmailed, being threatened with malicious prosecution, merely for questioning the reasonability of something that Ellen's group had done. This is how she treats her own people when crossed to an even slight extent.

Slight, indeed. The victim of the previous incident was to write to Ellen, forgive her, and suggest that she contact the people she had wronged in the past. Meanwhile, Antistoicus had decided to start the International Brotherhood of Warlocks and Trolls and had placed a notice online for Trolls' Night Out. This was supposed to be a fun, politics-free evening where people would go, basically to get away from people like Ellen and garbage like this. So, what would be the most obnoxious thing that Ellen could possibly have done at this point?

Uh huh. She wrote to Antistoicus, and asked him if she could crash the event, and talk to him ... about what you've just been reading about. Uh, gee, Ellen, but doesn't that kind of violate the no-politics rule for the evening? (But then, we already know what she thinks about honoring understandings, right?) She says fine, she doesn't want to trash his evening, but could she drop by and talk to him and Mike, because she's heard stories about why Antistoicus was angry with her, and wanted to hear the reason why, directly from him.

Antistoicus couldn't believe what he was reading. You've already seen the articles. All but the last few paragraphs were up at the time that she wrote this. She had been given the urls by multiple people. Antistoicus had explained this much to her by private e-mail. Now, she wants a third go-around, so she can try to wear him down so more on this. "NO!", came the predictable response. At some point, one just says "go away, and leave me alone". Which Antistoicus did, but not immediately. At first, he merely expressed his disbelief at what he was hearing, and reminded her of what had happened.

Ellen's response? Remember, that Antistoicus had responded by private e-mail? Her response was to go on to a list a WebForum to announce to the whole world, in a followup to his post inviting people to a social gathering, the deep dark secret that he didn't like her. She then followed up by issuing an invitation of her own. She asked people to write to her, so that she could smear the man by private e-mail (where he wouldn't be able to document it, naturally). At this point, she had already been doing so in the forums, without rebuttal, for over nine months, talking vaguely about the "trouble" he had stirred up, in places where he had never been. This passed without comment from those present.

Finally, Antistoicus had had enough, as had some of those who knew him. Attempts were made to tell our side of the story, backed up with evidence, not just assertions. Antistoicus did a followup to Ellen's post, briefly explaining what happened, asking what was wrong with her, and asking her to go away, and leave him alone. The response? You almost expected this one, didn't you? Just like Staci and Frank, people made up their minds before looking at the evidence, and based their reactions purely on personal bias, the facts be darned! (2) People wrote in to ask Antistoicus why he was being so mean to poor little Ellen! In places where we had been attacked, when we attempted to rebut the attacks, the rebuttals were usually censored, on the basis that they were personal attacks!

We're serious. It was just that absurd. Somebody tells some outlandish lie about one, one writes in to deny it, and one is denied the right of reply, on the basis that one shouldn't be calling somebody a liar! It doesn't get more bizarre that that.

Or, at least, we thought it didn't. After a long, time-wasting struggle, finally, weeks later, Antistoicus was allowed to put in ONE post rebutting Frank's comments. (Frank had made a post urging people to not send their updated information to the Agora staff, because he claimed it had been used to "launch attacks upon the community" and "libel several prominent Wiccan elders", neither of which was true. This "concession" wasn't freely made, and wasn't seen until after Antistoicus posted his defense on another community list, along with the explanation that he had to defend himself there, because his replies were being censored in the forum in which he and his group were being attacked). But then, when he made a simple, flame-free reposting of an old essay explaining the concept of the Council, it was censored. Remember, the final decision on the newsletter hadn't been made, yet? This was still topical.

So, what was the basis for censoring a post about why a writers' group would be concerned with networking, and why a networking group might want to promote writing? Ready for this? Because the moderator, who, like the previous string of idiots, didn't want to bother herself with the facts and actually look at the material in question before reacting to it, decided that it was about the infighting between Antistoicus and Frank. Attempts to reason with her and her staff fell on stubbornly deaf ears as once again, people played the dishonest Wiccan solidarity game.

The excuse of the first administrator included a rare bit of honesty. She acknowledged that my post was considered to be a troll and censored, in part, because Antistoicus had gotten mass flamed. This, from somebody who had claimed that she wouldn't stay on a list where people were censored! But, if mere unpopularity was enough to justify moderating a post, then what was the practical difference between that form of moderation, and censorship? The moderator then, like Frank and company, proceeded to lie about the contents of something that Antistoicus had written, in a place where people were denied the freedom to see it for themselves.

We could tell the rest of the story, but why? It's just more of the same, repeated over and over. There are other sordid details, like the fact that one of the moderators was allegedly in an adulterous affair with one of the people smearing us, but, enough. The point has been made. Let it not be said, that we acted in haste. The "community" had 11 months to calm down, come to its senses, and do the right thing. In that time, a grand total of two people, out of thousands, cared enough about right and wrong to do so. So, when we concluded that almost all of these people were pure slime, and that their community was far more worthy of destruction than service, we did not come to that conclusion lightly.

Nor did we come to it in a sense of futility. In this period of not quite a year, not only have we not started a new community newsletter, but apparently, neither has anybody else. For all of the callous posturing about how I should 'get over it', because '(expletitive deleted) happens' (my, what an uplifting insight, "Reverend"), nobody seemed eager to rush in to do what we had gotten (expletitive deleted) over doing, or, if they were, seemed focused enough to be able. Bookstores were closing their doors. Groups were finding themselves unable to get people to volunteer to do the work needed to keep themselves running, or even to come, in some cases.

If virtue is its own reward, then vice, in the end, becomes its own punishment. By creating a hostile environment for those who gave to it, in order to appease those who disrupted it, this community worked to hasten its own end. When it comes, let it do so with no undue mourning, for nothing of value has been lost. Time to move on to better things, and better people. This account is now complete.

Now you know why we shun the general Pagan community. These are the people we were meeting. This is supposed to be religion? It is kind of discouraging.

Click here to return.

(1) "Intimidating to my concept of free speech"? What on earth is that supposed to mean?

(2) or some other applicable word.