The "Reader Circuit" is a group of people who like to fancy themselves as being the entire Pagan community of Chicago. Or, at least, they were. They're solidly in decline, right now, and well on their way out. They were never as important as they thought they were, anyway.

The name, applied by some pre-Christian Western Traditionalists and Polytheists to this group, refers to its long practice of advertising its events in the Chicago Reader, a free weekly newspaper located somewhere on the fringe between the tabloids and respectable journalism. Much of its readership consists of what one might call "marginal individuals": conspiracy theorists, adult bookstore regulars, mentally ill high school dropouts ... the people one learns to avoid in the coffeehouses. These are the people that the Reader Circuit ended up attracting, since these are the people who saw those ads. Not surprisingly, given the dysfunctional nature of the subculture the Circuit advertised in, the Circuit itself ended up more than a little dysfunctional, itself.

Some of the more aggressive dunces appointed themselves "community elders", and promptly started trying to take over every 'Pagan' group in sight. Elderhood was not determined by moral worthiness, for the existence of objective ethical standards is not something that a lowlife will be eager to acknowledge. Nor was scholarship, or any other sort of knowledge or talent helpful in attaining that status, because, like Usenet, the Circuit was a place where semi-literate anti-intellectuals went for validation. What determined who claimed elder status was backbiting politics, plain and simple.

The elders who survived, politically, made a sort of peace in which each was a member of the other's group, while the other compromised the nature of his group, to make it more to the liking of the other elders. The illusion was that the seeker entering the community was offered a wide variety of groups and options. The reality was that most of these groups were really just aspects of one larger, unnamed (and unacknowledged) group. Think of a semi-order, like the Shrine, only with no guiding philosophical principles. It was, indeed, a circuit - one would constantly see the same old people paying lip service to the same old ideas, and carry out the same old rituals in the same old way, over and over and over. Which tradition or pantheon the 'individual' group claimed, hardly mattered, because all was a mere facade for the practice of the local variant of Eclectic Wicca.

The Circuit's position is that if one wants to start a group in 'their city', one has to do business with them, on their terms. The Shrine's position is that they need to grow up and get over it.

One of the few things the Shrine and House have in common, is the experience of dealing with these people. Tamara Siuda, the Nisut of the House of Netjer, along with Craig Schaefer were abused and driven out by the 'leadership' of that community, which remained proud of its actions years later. Our own experiences with them are mentioned elsewhere. How sad, that the House is making the very same mistakes that ended up defining the community it left behind.

This page is part of our review of the House of Netjer, on the Almond Jar.