Greetings!

I read Peter's remarks and I think that there has been a little confusion. My concern for the Shrine was not, "how do I deal with intruders?". I've already given that some thought. The question was, "how do I help it gain wider visibility, locally, so that the right people can find their way here?". In regard to the issue Peter raised, though:



Weathering an attempted hostile takeover was never a serious problem (for us). Dealing with the subsequent harassment has been another matter, altogether.

For example, how would you feel if your mother started getting a series of late night phone calls, starting on Christmas Eve, in which she was told that you were going to be thrown off the State Street bridge, dismembered, etc., followed by a semi-incoherent, screaming demand that she defend herself from the charge of having given birth to one. The police ended up having to be brought in and a trap had to be put on my parent's phone. This is very far from being the only time this sort of garbage has been seen from the circle of groups we encountered.

This is religion?

It might give you a taste, though, of the reason why I avoid my local Wiccan community. Fanaticism, combined with a weak grasp on reality, is an explosive combination. So, in dealing with attacks, the question is not how we avoid conquest, but how we avoid the search and destroy mission that some of the psychotic acolytes will go off on, when the peerless leader starts feeling frustrated.

A few thoughts ...

1. The best way of dealing with the psychotic is by not being noticed by them in the first place. Reality check. The Shrine was a group of less than two dozen people in the middle of a city of 2.7 million (not counting the suburbs). Being relatively inconspicuous would have been relatively easy.
   
   My mistake, and a foolish one at that, was in getting involved in anything that would bill itself "the general Pagan community". Fairly deeply involved at that. I made the mistake of setting up a Pagan networking site (the Agora), which attracted some measure of attention. Worse still, when the local Pagan newsletter (the Gazette) ceased publication, I opened the doors and started inviting the rest of the "community" in to join us in helping to put out a new one. This drew a huge amount of attention and is what brought in the offending High Priestess as our guest.
   
   It is an old observation that fixed location open forums of any sort follow a certain life cycle, be they Usenet groups or monthly meetings at Mensa. They are created, people get interested, and there is a little magic for a while. But eventually, inevitably, the craziest and most obnoxious regulars will drive out the rest, and it's time for the rest to move on. In the case of a "general Pagan community" that life cycle can be exceedingly short. The problem is that people with a wide variety of mental ailments can come in and get their sicknesses validated as being "spiritual paths". Start hearing voices elsewhere, and the words "auditory hallucinations" and "schizophrenia" come up. In "the general Pagan community of Chicago", they are deemed "shamanic trances" and needed medication is discontinued, with popular approval.
   
   I had one person drop in and explain that her boyfriend followed a narcotic tradition. In case you were uncertain as to what that was, it involves taking LSD, ecstasy, or whatever else strikes one's fancy that day, and then seeing God. I thought I was listening to one of Dad's Cheech and Chong albums.
   
   
   
   
   
   To cap it off, I assembled my group quickly and took to recruiting at HeathenCon, making for even more visibility in the wrong place, and making it even more convenient for any would be intruder. It was there that I picked up the first of the Priestess' acolytes, who stuck behind to create discord after I stopped inviting her "spiritual leader". Given that the members hadn't even had a chance to get comfortable with each other, this really didn't help at all. So, how could I have done this better?
   
   Better one should ask, how could I have done this worse? One thing that I needed to get past was the idea that being in a "central location" puts one in a good place to assemble a group. As in, "where better to find Pagans to join a group, than in the general Pagan community?" Well, that's on a level with "where better to find a date, than at the local singles' hang-out", something we all learned was a REALLY BAD IDEA, long before the ink was dry on our fake IDs. The question is, what kind of Pagans are you going to meet there (and will they respect you in the morning)?
   
   
   
   
   
   Forget the "Pagan" (read : "Occult") bookstores. Forget the Pagan community. Avoid these like they were Ebola wards. Instead, in the case of a younger Pagans' group like ours, look to advertising on the college campuses and in the regular used bookstores (and the regular coffeehouses) one feels comfortable in. "Regular", non-Pagan people can be a lot more open minded than they are given credit for being, especially when they are relatively well-educated. There are literary and philosophical discussion groups that one knows that one might like to attend. Go. Meet people. A lot of people. Get comfortable with them and be reservedly open about what it is that one believes. Bring business cards (url included) for those occasions on which somebody proves to be interested.
   
   For good measure, host such groups oneself and get out of the Pagan ghetto. It isn't such a nice place.
   
   In my first post about the Shrine, I mentioned something called a "semi-order". I didn't really invent those. The concept is a formalization of how both academic discussion groups and the informal network of connections in some extended family cultures have traditionally operated. At some point, common interests will tend to cause certain groups of people, within a network of overlapping discussion circles, to pool together. At some point, one would never be sure of exactly when, one of one's discussion sections might evolve into a Pagan group. Naturally, it would inherit the structure of the network that gave rise to it.
   
   It would be far from being the first time such a thing occurred.
   
   
   Rome wasn't built in a day, but the first Shrine was, and that's why it never amounted to much. I built quickly, instead of well. I was impatient. Why? I can pray to and sacrifice to the gods on my own while I wait. I should have been more patient.







2. It would be wise for us to remember where we are and be good Chicagoans, so long as we are here. If somebody one doesn't know asks for one's real name, one doesn't respond by telling him one's life story. Instead, with hand on hip, one looks him in the eye and says, "who's asking, buddy?".
   
   While in group and dealing with those we haven't gotten to know, yet, it would be prudent to stick to nicknames and pseudonyms and not mention where we're from or where we work. That way, if somebody wishes to play the attrition game and start harassing and attacking the reputation of those who don't "go along to get along" ... what good does it do him to spread rumors about "Iphicles", if nobody knows who "Iphicles" is? We would further make sure to not use those "craft names" (to borrow a phrase from our Wiccan friends) outside of the group.

One might say that if the group grows large enough, it will gain attention, and one is back to one's previous problems. But, a semi-order, by its very nature, is going to be decentralized. Even if the network of associations formed were to grow into the thousands, that wouldn't mean that the original gathering would grow to be much larger than the two dozen or so it originally was. It would mean it would overlap with branches of the semi-order set up by those members, which in turn would overlap with ... and so on, going outward. At this point, hearing that there are members of that particular network in an area, is like hearing that there are Catholics in Naperville. Absolutely true and culturally significant, but, as a political bit of information, utterly useless.

Where is an attacker going to hit? It's a diffuse and widespread (though densely interwoven) network, not a centralized group. Fine, she hits one little pocket. So what? Big deal. Through the grapevine, people will have heard of others, not so far away, they go there for a bit, and no measurable damage is done.


This gets us to why those who suggested CUUPs membership missed the point. (And yes, Peter is right, it is an overwhelmingly Generic Wiccan group). A semi-order like the Shrine neither seeks to compete with or join an organization like CUUPs or Hellas, because it exists on a different level. One might say that Hellas is akin to the chamber of commerce for the Hellenic Pagan community, or maybe the PTA. It gives stability to the community. It can bring members of the community together for large, well organized efforts. The Shrine, on the other hand, was and would be akin to a system of coffee klatsches or extended family gatherings (fictive relatives included). The participants in a klatsch may join the PTA or chamber of commerce, but it would be most curious for the klatsch itself to seek to do so.

At most, the membership might seek to take part in a chapter they might individually join. But the purpose, at the Shrine, is to create community (with its network of informal connections), not to organize it. Should it succeed, it would no longer even think of itself as being an organization. It would simply be a hard-to-define patch in a larger social network, no longer even needing a name or a distinct institutional identity.


........................................... Antistoicus



Let's return.