Former wiccan trying to undo a lot of bad...

[Former_Wiccan]

Hi, I'm Ella. As you can see from my username and the title I am a former wiccan, of almost 20 years in fact. There's a lot of good lessons in wicca, and good people as well. But it seems we have a lot of cleaning up to do. I've witnessed a lot of shady stuff going on, and I'm trying to undo some of it best as I can. Here's my story...

After almost 2 decades of being involved in both a wiccan coven and a druid grove in my area, I have encountered a lot of people who, quite frankly, just aren't interested in the religious aspects and are simply there because they have license to be as loony toons as they want. I know this is coming off awfully judgmental and I don't mean it to be, but if you are walking around calling yourself a reincarnated dragon with psychic powers and your "second job" is as a shaman chasing ghosts away with incense for $200/hr., you shouldn't be surprised if someone looks at you funny or asks you to prove your abilities. But that doesn't happen in the pagan community, and I think that's a BIG issue. There's not just the goofballs who are elves/werewolves/vampires who can locate things with their minds (actual adult human beings have made these claims to me, by the way), but there's a plethora of white folk who bastardize/monetize the sacred rituals of other cultures and no one calls them out on it. There are a lot of thieves and liars in the community who get any with it because there's this "anything goes" mentality, which just ruined it for me. My wiccan faith was really important to me for a long time, but after having dealt with abusive behavior and seeing how others manipulate people for profit (all while lecturing others on the wiccan rede, mind you), I couldn't deal with it anymore and had to cut ties.

My aim in joining this site is to try to ameliorate, even if just a little but, some of the bad I was unknowingly complicit in by not speaking up all those years. I would like to help expose some of the plastic shamans who prey on others, and hopefully educate myself on what the REAL practices are. I'm trying to be the ally I should've been during that time, and I sincerely apologize for not being one beforehand.

Thank you for reading.

[bcolinshazel]

thats so cool of you to say. i never saw the pagan movement quite that way, but youre right. it really is like that. when you get to believe anything you want, than you can be easily manipulated. its horrible. im glad youre here.

[Defend the Sacred]

We have survivors of the neopagan community here in the forum. Sectors of that community mean well, but most others have sheltered rapists, batterers, pedophiles, white supremacists and other criminals.

Appropriation and pretendianism is endemic at Neowiccan, Wiccan and Pagan/Neopagan groups and gatherings. Some groups that base their rules in old traditions of fear of persecution make their members swear oaths to never call the police on other group members. For decades, generations even, this created a haven for abuse of the worst sort. If you search the forum you will find threads on rapists and pedophiles who were active for years with community leaders refusing to banish them from community gatherings. Now that the Internet is the main ground for engagement, word about the worst offenders spreads quickly, but so does disinformation and retaliation against their victims. Then many community members whitewash the events and pretend the offenders were never part of their groups, and that they never protected them. We've seen their former close friends attempt to silence others, effectively keeping future victims from being warned. Now that most adherents don't even meet in person until these large gatherings, standards of ethics are even harder to come by.

The neopagans used to make a point of distinguishing themselves from the newagers. Now, the communities overlap almost completely.