http://pagantheologies.pbworks.com/Fluffy
I posted this link to my Facebook and received a comment that encouraged me to 'educate and enlighten' rather than 'judge and look down on'.
This was my response:
We have all had our fluffy phase. Fluffiness is adorable. I love the shiny new pagans with twinkles in their eyes, and their inexperience doesn't bug me one bit. What bugs me is when people profess to have been pagan for twenty years (or so) or who don the Lady Mucketymuck titles, or who start 'traditions', yet spew the fluffy. It isn't a matter of 'looking down on'. It is a matter of acknowledging that there are those who seek on, read widely, practice deeply, and earn their stripes, and those who content themselves with reading a book or two and claiming lineage, training, knowledge, wisdom, or power that they haven't earned. Inferior understanding *is* inferior. Especially if you *choose* to remain ignorant, which many, many people do.
Those pagans who have been in the trenches, who have had our children removed from our custody based on the fact that we were evil pagans, or lost our jobs, or had to practice in secret for fear of violence or exile from our families get a wee bit weary of the shabby fluffy - you know the kind - pagan forever, initiated at their Grandmother's knee, oh so powerful and capable of leaping tall buildings, and spewing that old yarn about 9 million women and witch burnings in Salem.
IRAB (I Read A Book) pagans have the opportunity to move beyond reading Wicca 101 and into something deeper. It saddens me the numbers I encounter who fail to do so.
Your thoughts?
I am still in the fluffy stage. I do not profess for one minute, to know anything, much less anything. I am surprised really, how many people, that have more years of being pagan, that I do, are too, still in the fluffy stage.
ReplyDeleteSince, I began my path, I have been in search of a mentor, in the city that I reside. My search has brought me knowledge, but not the knowledge that I had hoped it would.
I have yet to encounter a single person, who lives their life, by what I deem to be the only rule what so ever, when it comes to living a pagan path .......... harm none!
In my quest for a mentor, I have experienced nothing but backstabbing, snobbery and drama. Sometimes that backstabbing, snobbery, and drama, has been caused by the very people, that stepped forward to try to mentor me.
I have yet to feel welcome by anyone. I have gone to events, moots and rituals, and sat in the corner, talking to no one, except myself.
In fact, I was injured at one ritual, and not one person has ever come forward to offer assistance since.
I have posted a need for transportation to various out of town things, that are advertised, only to be told there is a no rider policy in the community.
From what I have witnessed, most people that claim to be Pagan, seem to be doing so, merely for shock affect. To me ..... that is far more fluffy bunny pagan, than a beginner reading some books.