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 f you are reading this, you are probably already the kind of person who might feel at home in a group like thee Gothik Faerie Grove. After all, a name like ours is unlikely to attract your average Nascar-WalMart-McDonalds-&-WWF kind of person. (If it has, we would argue that they are hardly average :)
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 s you might expect, Gothik Faerie Grove members have a deep connection to either Gothic culture, however one may define that (we certainly won't try to) or to the beauty of darkness, in addition to a profound kinship with thee Realm ov Faerie (we won't define that either - you'll instinctively Know what we mean, or you won't).
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et us emphasize right up front, though, that what thee Gothik Faerie Grove is not is an organization in any way devoted to or involved in the pursuit or practice of 'evil'. One of our primary tenets is "dark does not equal evil". If you are looking for someplace to express cruel, underhanded, manipulative tendencies, thee Gothik Faerie Grove is NOT for you, so let's not waste any more of each other's time. Good day!
f, however, darkness sings a wild song in your soul, if you feel most at home walking through a moonlit cemetery, on a midnight beach, in the woods late at night - anywhere one can revel in the melancholy beauty of solitude and shadow, then we suspect you may have found a group of kindred spirits.
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 hee Gothik Faerie Grove must be, by definition, a contrary and contradictory group; for it proposes to be an organization of solitary individualists. Therefore, no two members will hold precisely the same view of what the group is or what they expect from it. Even the founders have somewhat different expectations of and feelings about it.
 eople who are looking for structure and restraint in their spiritual expression will likely not find thee Gothik Faerie Grove a comfortable place. Instead, members are likely to be those who hold an affectionate view of such fundamental contradiction, seeing it as inevitable; the resultant beauty of chaos in action.
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ndeed humor and appreciation of the absurd is as much as 'pre-requisite' as the love of darkness, the wild, and Faerie. Gothik Faeries can be solemn and playful, morbid and cheerful, perhaps all at once. Ruth Gordon's character in "Harold and Maude" would be an ideal member: spending her days attending stranger's funerals, stealing the parson's car, liberating a sapling from a concrete planter, embracing her own death as blithely as a dance with her lover.
s an expression of this fundamental incongruity, thee Gothik Faerie Grove wants to be an Open group, in that we wish to promote high standards of respect, equality, and freedom amongst our members. However, thee Gothik Faerie Grove also wants to be a Closed group, in that we do wish to maintain certain principles and standards, and without boundaries to define same, we end up with Lowest Common Denominator Soup. And it's not even lunchtime.
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f we had to sum up what thee Gothik Faerie Grove aspires to be in one sentence, we might say it is a blend of church, masonic lodge and social club whose active members could reasonably include the Addams Family, Mary Shelley, Sally and Jack Skellington, Diamanda Galas, Lydia from Beetlejuice, and Johnny Depp's character from Dead Man. If this sounds like your cup of wormwood tea, then read on.
hee Gothik Faerie Grove is a spiritually-based philosophical lodge that has functioned variously as a church, a social organization, and a support group.Members may realistically be defined as anyone who has actively taken part in a GFG activity, although a formal membership is possible if necessary or desired.
n principle, thee Gothik Faerie Grove was designed to meet all the requirements of a functional church. In practice, it has not needed to do so, and so has never adhered to many of the formal designations built in at the outset. The initial intent of making this a group with nodes in different locales also proved too difficult to implement, so that only the original Hearth has existed for any practical purpose.
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f you've gotten this far, we would assume you are still interested in thee Gothik Faerie Grove. Feel free to contact us, by letter or email, to tell us what interests you about thee Gothik Faerie Grove (send snail mail to the Gothik Faerie Grove address - 16004 Damon Ave., Cleveland OH 44110).
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Terry Sindar & sade sindar-wolfkitten
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s have flitted through these twilight woods..