*I recently encountered an interesting phenomena. In my inbox, which I assume became full because Alpha is TMIA from the Ranting Witches, were no less than two letters that proclaimed that bytching about bunnies was not the way to go about changing them, and that we were part of "The Problem."
*This is inherantly flawed for three basic reasons: First, as of this moment, according to Gamma, who presently knows where the bodies are buried, the five ranting Witches have, between them, authored four books, over ten websites, exclusive of this one, taught a couple hundred students and given a handful of public lectures. To say we are doing only this one act of speaking out assumes you know these anonymous fellows, have weighed the body of their work and found it wanting. The
second reason it is flawed, beyond the idea that as anonymous folk, you are assuming a lot about us that is impossible to assume (and, frankly, wrong) you are neglecting the "good information" section of this website. There we have links, book suggestions, primary texts (with the actual authors!) and much more. We provide these as a fricking service. Lastly, and most importantly, there is a perception, among people who don't know better, that we are part of the problem. We are not a part of the problem, but part of a three-tiered attack on the problem.
*The three-tiered attack on the problem works like this: People in the know (teachers and those with experience) have to EDUCATE people about what is and is not real. This is done with websites, books, teaching, lectures, classes and things like our "primary sources" section. In addition, people with less experience have to
learn to be "smart students" they have to check their sources and question what teachers say... Here, we don't actually do much of this beyond telling students that they need to be smart students. There are people who do teach this. Greycat's Deepening Witchcraft and Kaatryn MacMorgan's Wicca 333 both talk about this en extremis, as well as a number of websites which are not geared towards Wiccans or Pagans specifically. The last part of the triad is, well, protest-you have to make people aware that there is a problem.
*It is this that people mislable as being a part of the problem-if no one mentions the problem exists, we can sit at home and imagine it does not exist. Therefore, those who speak of the problem, who give it names, are the problem itself. We see this in Silver Ravenwolf's nonsensical ideas that the mere mention of the name Satan gives it power-if you acknowledge a thing, real or not, you feed it energy. This is the antithesis of the Wiccan way- we fix what is broken, not ignore it! (In addition, we're not so sure Satan exists at all! If you're emotionally invested in having "Satan" as an adversary, may I recommend anyone of the Abrahamic religions?)The real Wiccan knows that, for example, cancer, does not go away by ignoring it exists-that's the entire basis of our reason for putting energy towards something-the belief that ACTION can have an effect! The idea of depowering the enemy by denying it energy only works in Nightmare on Elm Street (and there, not effectively, remember?) To those people with this twisted logical viewpoint we are the problem because we make them aware of a problem.
*This puts us in admirable company-we're right up there with smoke detectors, tornado alert sirens, exit signs and warning lights and noises of all kinds- I mean, don't you know that smoke detectors only encourage fires? (Vomit.)
*In addition to this nonsense, I was recently told that we felt we were the "intellectual elite." As you can see from Iota's rant (below), this got a lot of talk amongst the witches here. This came after a person asked me to thwapp his site. My elegant response was simply that The Ranting Witches is not a sort of free validation service, and that it was his job to know the authors of the texts he had posted, and similar things that label a site thwapp worthy. He essentially accused me of being an ivory tower intellectual for refusing to play his game (a game similar to the one someone apparently played with a friend of Gamma's-see "not my @#$%ing job!") and that we were doing nothing here but sitting back pointing at the problem, not doing anything about it.
*You already know what is logically flawwed in that statement, so let me get to the "intellectual elite" part.
You're Darned Tooting we're the Intellectual elite, mister!
I don't know where on earth neowiccans got the idea that being smart was bad. I also don't know where they got the idea that being willing to do research means you somehow haven't time for the more spiritual pursuits. To be the so-called intellectual elite of a religion you have to be a balance of spirituality and education, and if, after a few decades in my craft I don't have the ability to speak with some knowledge about what I am saying than I never was doing it right to begin with.
We are elite compared to a lot of people:Those who make money off of ignorance, those who say things they know aren't right, those who are too lazy to find out the truth and instead just say what they think should be true. We are smarter and better than people who don't care about the effects of their actions on others, who don't care about anybody but their holy "me."
I am PROUD to be called intellectual elite, because that's what it means: the top of the heap in the brains department.
Let's think of other things Pagans have used to distinguish those "better" than your average Pagan: Years or practice (if the years of practice have done nothing but brough harm and dismay we should honor them?) number of rituals done (my neighbor's teen Wiccan son does 3 or 4 a day!) number of students (If an idiot writes a book with 30,000 students, is she more relevant than, oh, Gardner?)
Is it so bad to choose, instead, to judge people (and we do judge people!) by their actual actions! Their actual deeds! Their actual work and what they say!
Leave your assumptions at the door and judge people on real, fair, criteria- not your assumptions or your ignorance.
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