Pagans United

The Magickal/ Pagan Community, decay or regeneration, you decide.
By : Lady Cerridwyn StormDragon

Magickal and pagan people have had a long and colorful existence and as with anything that has been around for a long time it follows a natural cycle or rhythm. In it's conception these wonderful magickal people were everywhere and were free to explore, learn, and grow. Then the magical people were invaded upon, by people, who did not appreciate their ways of loving the Earth, nature, and their belief that anything was possible because the magick was everywhere and within everything. These crusaders/ invaders bullied, hurt, and even killed the magickal people because they were afraid of their difference, their freedom loving ways, their natural ways, their ability to feel, to love, to learn, to live. So the magical people went into hiding and some of them even went as far as to forget the old ways and they refused to teach it to any but a few special and risky individuals who could be trusted with keeping the record of the ways, kept it alive.

Then there came a push by a few individuals to bring the old ways out of the proverbial closet and make them accessible to the many by scattering the magickal seeds to the winds, and as most things in the northern hemisphere, it started in the East and just like the sun and moon it soon spread West. Luckily or unfortunately, according to your perception, the seeds to a renaissance of Magick flew everywhere and the rebirth of Magick was prepared for. Some of those early seeds found their was into some freedom loving creative individuals who were trail blazers and decided to tell others that all they needed was love, to peacefully protest the injustices they saw, to open your mind, and to take the time to feel instead of simply following the set cycle of beliefs. Some of these seeds were used to fuel the changes that needed to occur to fertilize the soil so the soil could support a future harvest. The world experienced a great upheaval as some trail blazers decided that the fear, hatred, indifference, bigotry, and limiting ways needed to be exposed for what were and tried to show the world a different perspective. This chaos or upheaval was necessary to regain the balance because in order to change a cycle one must experience new ways or growth and the cycle of growth is experienced in the cycle of order-chaos-order.

Then the magical seeds took form and what began as heirloom type seeds were bred into many different hybrids of magick, and magickal community became a colorful garden. Some of the seeds became unrecognizable when looked at by their magickal parentage yet they were indeed spawned by the broadcasting of the magickal seeds 50 years earlier. But look at how these magickal seeds changed the world. In the middle of the last millennium children were to be seen and not heard and their role was to become the next worker drones in the work force. The teenagers were screaming to be heard through rock and roll and movies, this was the start of teen idols who were seen as "bad boys, or rebels", like James Dean or Elvis Presley. All of a sudden the teens were divided into groups like the responsible, the beat-niks, and the wild ones and the seeds of change grew. Then we progressed into the 1960's and we had the Beetles, the Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Joplin, Pink Floyd, and others who expressed their non- conventional views of love, togetherness, self-expression, letting, go, and embracing change. We were inundated with exotic flavors and differences like Hippies, Pagans, Flower Children, Guru's, TM practitioners, and it became acceptable to explore the differences. This was a part of the grand scheme of things because the Baby Boom from WW11 had placed 70 million teenagers to be large and in charge of the change during the 1960's. Many of these teens saw the need for a change in the social order, they wanted to be heard, they wanted more than just a home, family, church, and work, they wanted to explore life and the cosmos. The fear and injustices that had been brought into light were addressed and Civil Rights became huge and a fought for issue, with the free love mentality and exposure of sex by Dr. Kinsey, birth control pills became accessible to women, women's lib started to combat the Presidential Commission on the status of women in 1963. The magickal seeds found soil that had been fertilized and tilled by the chaos of the times and the seeds started to flourish and the world changed at warp speed.

Why do I bring up these things that happened prior to some of you being born? Because these were all events that occurred to bring us to the place we are today where the magickal/pagan community is the colorful creature it is today. Good or bad, right or wrong, sensible or not, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to take up the torch and pick up the hoe and watering can and choose to nurture the changes started half a millennium ago and pave the way for those who will walk this path in the future. Is it time for us to weed our community with those we see as not like ourselves? Is it time for us to try to compromise our freedom loving roots and try to fit in? Is it time for us to allow the hate, fear, and injustices that provoked the change to seep back in and taint the fertile soil? Is it time for Magick to go underground and be taken out of the public eye, returning to our proverbial broom closets? What is the answer is it blowing in the wind? What we choose to do, as a community, will affect not only ourselves, but also the future. This is the time of changes and not the time to become complacent. "We have come a long way baby" because of some special people with a handful of magick seeds and many spirited individuals who were ready for a change and not afraid to do the work needed to change the world and our existence. What the future holds for our children, our grandchildren or as the Native Americans say the seventh generation is up to each of us, we are the present and we can nurture the future and help it grow or we can choose to become complacent and allow the weeds of hate, fear, indifference, and laziness to decide the future for us. The time of changes is upon us and the future harvest is up to us; it is our turn to tend the garden, what is your decision?
Live Blessed,
Cerridwyn
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The opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.
~Robert Anthony