I often think about my relationship with the pagan community online and I found myself reflecting on the evolution that it has undergone over the years; comparing the old generation of neo-pagans with the new one I can say that the change in here has been huge.
It is literally another world, the media are different, people's attitudes are different, and I unfortunately admit that not everything has improved.
Like many of you, my spiritual journey started studying the Wicca tradition, when I was very young.
Internet was not for everyone, it was slow and the contents were very few. If you wanted to go deeper into a topic you needed to study on books and encyclopedias, venturing into the small esoteric section of bookstores and libraries, under the inquisitorial gaze of the clerks.
In a super catholic country as Italy, who had the desire to enter the world of witchcraft had no easy life. The chances of getting books in english were few (no, neither Amazon nor Paypal existed) and the only way to have them was to go physically abroad and get them. And in fact so I did, I procured a supply of books in England, where witchcraft was no longer a taboo and was very well known thanks to Wicca.
There is little to say, despite all the criticisms that are made against it, Wicca is the neo-pagan religion that has helped spreading witchcraft in countries with a Christian majority.
Perhaps for a time it also became a sort of fashion, but thanks to this spread of new ideas and the increase of the interest of young people in a spirituality that was different from the only religion that was proposed, Catholicism, the quantity of books regarding neo-paganism, magic and esotericism increased dramatically. All this, in turn, allowed a greater diffusion and knowledge of themes of which the existence was not even suspected. Consequently, even to those who couldn’t fit Wicca as a religion, they finally had the opportunity to access to something else.
Websites dedicated to the topic were soon all over the net, as well as forums where you could interact with other people who shared your same point of view. People with my same passion for magic were very few, so being able to talk with them was incredible to me. The relationship with the other people in the group was absolutely not one of rivalry, but of sharing and inspiration; we could interact without prejudice and we used to help each other to ensure that everyone had access to the various contents.
Over the years, neo-paganism finally became a topic for everyone, even on television. In the online communities the first subdivisions began to appear for those who followed a certain tradition or another.
Many of us, however, including myself, felt that they could not take part of any specific tradition and, therefore, built an individual path, taking from the various traditions and subjects of study that most suited their vision, calling themselves "eclectic witches".
In my thirties I still haven't found a path that fully reflects my spiritual vision, besides the fact that I don't like putting limits and labels on my passions, so I still consider myself an eclectic witch.
All this seems to have gone out of fashion in the modern neo-pagan community, suddenly
the most important thing has become the spasmodic search for a defined and stereotyped path (you don’t want to be mainstream, don’t you?), giving itself names and labels, rigid rules that you can't break.
To call oneself eclectic has become synonymous of lack of seriousness (despite one could have many years of experience but, hey.).
But didn’t we literally escape from a religion like Catholicism even for these reasons?
If there is one thing I learned from studying Sorcery is that religion itself will not guide you in spirituality, but your soul will do it, making you realize what you believe through the raw experience with the divine or with the energies. Is it therefore so necessary to find a label to define something as intimate and personal as one's spiritual path?
For those who start today as a witch or a neo-pagan, information is luckily within everyone's reach, anyone can learn quickly, not to mention that there are so many books on the subject, so a neophyte will learn many more things and much faster than years ago.
Unfortunately, this freedom of information immediately took a negative turn. Anyone can publish their own content on the web, even the least informed ones, often this results in a dissemination of incorrect information, which favors misinformation on the subject. It is necessary to learn to distinguish those who provide valid information and those who are not, and many times it’s not so easy, especially if the writer defines himself as an authoritative source (they are the first to be wary of).
All this speed in acquiring data, moreover, has led to another problem: the neophytes find themselves full of notions and informations but they can't assimilate them.
I often come across discussions between people, who have been studying esotericism just for a few months, and already call themselves "experts" of some topic or tradition. Can we really define ourselves experts about a topic that represents the study of a whole life?
When information was poor, more time was spent on reflection on the same subject, trying to understand thoroughly what was studied, assimilating it. Today, however, we lose a lot of time focusing on the details, while we have lost sight of what is the real practice, the one that you cannot find in textbooks and that no "expert" can teach you, that will of experiment by following our instinct, without worrying about the position of the candles or having used the right incense or the right Latin word, but descending more and more into the abyss of our unconscious and following what the Universe suggests to us. The most powerful sorcerers in history are not those who can recite all the scriptures by heart, but those who know the depths of their soul.
As much as I appreciate this future that allows us to communicate to the maximum of our potential, among the modern neo-pagans, addicted to a virtual society, I have experienced the real monsters of today's age: a constant air of superiority based solely on belonging to a certain cult or another, real episodes of racism and elitism, bullying against those who are less prepared or those who belong to a tradition that the "pack" does not like, to take an interest in a certain type of tradition or the choice to work with certain energies (shadow work, for example) automatically becomes a discriminating factor. Suddenly everyone feels compelled to explain to you how to live your spirituality, what you should and what you should not do, and often are the most immature practitioners to do this.
And in fact it is the younger practitioners who arm themselves with arrogance, as if screaming louder will automatically put you on the side of reason. We have forgotten that on the other side of the screen there is a human being and that your experience in Witchcraft is not directly proportional to your number of followers on Instagram. This attitude is inevitably reflected in the online pagan community; how can we think of overturning the system if we are the first ones to not even know how to sustain a normal discussion without quarreling or trying to prevaricate over others?
Don't let others decide what your magic path should be, don't let them tell you what's right and what's wrong with your practice: if you feel something is done in a certain way, it means it's right for you to do so.
Don't let the writings and opinions of someone else, perhaps someone who lived hundreds of years before you, influence your experiences.
Witchcraft is an individual journey, you can share it with other people, but every experience is strictly linked to the person who lived it and only this person can understand it.
♄Unornya
Per leggere questo articolo in Italiano clicca qui.
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