Nor, truthfully speaking, can one practice authoritarianism and be a worthy village elder. A persistant difficulty in the Pagan community is the self-promotion as elders of those who have never witnessed the institution and have no conception of what it means, or how the status it describes is attained.

Some seem to imagine that one becomes a "village elder" as an automatic fringe benefit of growing old. This is pure nonsense. An elder is old, merely because it takes a lifetime to learn all he knows. The village drunk may have survived many winters, but nobody is especially interested in what he has to say, because his years have gone to waste (3).

Especially unseemly, has been the frequently seen attitude "I'm old, now. Cool! This means that everyone has to do what I say and give me what I want, right?". Wrong. This becomes especially humorous in its own repulsive way, when one notes that it is usually coming from members of the generation that coined the expression "don't trust anyone over the age of thirty", and was scarcely noted for the prevalence among its members of a willingness to show civility to its elders, much less deference, when its members where in their twenties. Such is a matter of well documented (and frequently videotaped) historical record. Along the way, this meant that our would be elders of today, frequently were refusing to listen to the very people who could have taught then, what they would need to know in order to be elders, today.

Remember, in all of this, that the priestess we speak of, is one of the nice ones, acting out of the best of intentions. But she can't help but be infected by the attitudes of her time, and some of those attitudes are ones that we need to get away from. For example, she mentions someone who attends a Catholic funeral. Feeling that this will serve as a compromise between her desire to pay her respects to the departed, and her desire to protest the church's early history, is willing to offer some opening remarks at the eulogy, and then walks out in the middle of the service. Of course, this is a blood level insult to deity and family alike, offered in the deity's home, no less. We wouldn't dare let her attend a ritual we were involved in, for fear of who she might offend. It's not that she means to offend. Having come of age during the "do your own thing" era, in a different culture, she just hasn't had a chance to know any better. And yet, here we are. This is reality, and we must deal with it, now.

But talking things over, might prove difficult at this point. Let's start with a little background. She wrote

"I came across your page in the witches voice...is your group primarily for young people born before 1956?"

I believe that would be after 1956. The answer is yes, except that it is exclusively for those born later, not primarily.

"You may want to rewrite that sentence (old habits die hard-I'm a teacher by profession), since it infers that your goal is to have a group of just young people..."

I assume she means "imply". I don't know, shall we break the age barrier, on the junior varsity pompom squad as well? Ma'am, I'm sorry, but this is just how it works, sometimes. Sometimes, we hang out in groups mixed by age, sometimes we don't, and we have to accept that each group serves a different set of needs.

"As a Priestess of 50, I would hope that you do welcome EVERYONE...after all, interfaith fellowship runs in all directions..."

when she was told that the age requirement was set, in part, in response to the refusal of far too many older pagans to treat their younger peers as adults, and as equals, she wrote

"equals in community? no-there never can be, that is the nature of student-teacher,"

which doesn't sound like much of a friendship to us. She then throws the snarling youngsters a sop by adding that

"but the two frequently (and should) overlap."

How gracious of her to say so. But where does she get the idea that being older automatically makes one the teacher instead of the student? As graduate assistants, we've had students twice our age in the past, and they haven't always been such good students, either. Their feeling that they are too old to listen, frequently gets in the way of their ability to learn.

Now, I am inclined to agree with the position that some argued, at the time this was going on, that she probably meant well, on a conscious level. But, some of the attitudes that came across were a little troubling. For example, quite recently, Cecil Adams (the Cliff Claven (*) of the 1990s) wrote a response to a question about Wicca. Specifically, the question was what evidence there was to suggest that Wicca was a continuation of ancient Paganism. The priestess took exception, and wrote a rebuttal which she e-mailed to a number of people in the Pagan community.

At first, the recipient was unclear on what her issue was. He stated in his response to her that Mr. Adams had not offered any distortions or historical inaccuracies. In fact, if you read the man's article, many of the points that she offers as corrections to his 'distortions' are points that Cecil made himself. Antistoicus goes on to correct some of her misstatements and distortions, and points out that she sent a load of Christian bashing, to a group practicing a religion that is, in part, Christian, fairly often.

The priestess' response was to try to softsoap him into not "bashing" his fellow pagans. But the only person he bashed was the eminently bashable Mr. Adams. All the priestess was sent was honest feedback and criticism of some weak arguments, and what was sent back, to him, read a lot like she expected us to be seen and not heard, unless we were going to be heard backing her up. Well, that's not how a conversation between equals works.

Of course, we've already seen her say that we aren't equals, but this just serves to underscore the fact that she means it. Under "rules" like this, getting a lynch mob going in the community would be pretty easy. Which, of course, it has been, lately, creating problems for the Pagan community, that badly need to be fixed.

The point here, is not to bash the priestess, who is one of the nice ones. The point is that we should take a look at some of the attitudes that are taken for granted, and understand that some of these attitudes are ones we'd want to occasionally escape from. Like we said, this was one of the nice ones. Imagine how difficult talking things over with one of the nasty ones might become.

I hope that clears everything up. Let's return to wherever it is that you came from. If you'd like to link to this article, please feel free to bookmark the link below.

Transcending Authority

Or maybe you'd like to be ordained, now?

(*) For those of you too young or well adjusted to remember late 80s sitcoms, Cliff Claven was the mailman character on "Cheers" who inflicted an endless series of inane and made-up "facts" on the other regulars at his bar, trying to cover the depths of his ignorance by affecting an inflated ego.