The Perks of Being a Solitary

or

Why I Don't Want to Join Your Coven

For those of you not keen on the lingo, being solitary is just as it sounds. I am not a part of any coven or clan or grove or house or whatever other words you need to justify worshiping together. Aside from occasional teenage flickering with people with whom I am no longer in contact, I've never even come close.

First is an issue of trust. I consider my spiritual identity as a serious and intimate aspect of my personality. Granted, there is a fair amount of Discordianism mixed into that, but I mean every word of my divine chaos. As such, I don't want to muck about with people whose intentions are not clean any more than I would snog some stranger. Few things seem more uncomfortable to me than meeting someone for the first time then getting together in circle with them dressed in funny robes to drop your shields, open yourself up, mix your energy together, and do magick. To me, it is a level of intimacy that should be reserved for people with whom I am utterly close outside the circle. As a solitary, neither my schedule nor my soul is pinned to a group of people I may not actually like in the "mundane" world.

I have been burned by attempts to get close to Pagan groups before. Often. Many are so fraught with power trips, ego games, sexual politics; I just don't need all of that drama in my life to feel spiritual. In fact, having to waste my energy on all of these issues created so someone can feel important takes away from my feeling of the divine. I do not consider the priest and priestess the mouthpieces of the sacred; the sacred tends to want a fairly clean mouthpiece. (Wouldn't you?) Recently, I read about a lawsuit against a church. It seems a congregant of the church confessed that she was having an affair with a married man who was outside of her church and faith. The priest saw fit to announce this from the pulpit the next Sunday, sullying this stranger's name and insisting the congregation help him "mend his ways" through harassment. The church, if I remember correctly, is insisting that it is their right to set this campaign of harassment in motion because it is freedom of religion. Ghastly, no? Pagan groups I have encountered pull that sort of crap all the time. Some members stop and consider the merits of this, but they are sadly far from the majority. Far too many take the word of some very fallible human beings as unerring truth and start what are colloquially known as "Witch Wars." It should be indicative of the state of Pagan groups that there is a need for a colloquial term. These can be vicious and slanderous. While is it laughable when they begin to threaten to throw curses around (and I once had a woman accuse me of summoning a demon to fling her about the room, a claim taken so seriously by her minions that they screamed at me in a public place about it), it loses its humor once they start "outing" the other person, harassing family members, destroying property, and more. It does nothing to improve the lot of Pagans and, at the very best, makes them seem about as emotionally stable as a covey of middle school girls. At the very least, in being a solitary, no one assumes my alliance or affiliation with any other group, and it forces me to think for myself as well as freeing me of guilt by association.

Covenspace is not your frat house and you are doing yourself a disservice treating it that way. If these people really care about you, they don't need you to be a yes-man to them. And if they insist otherwise, you are in a cult. I've personally know priest and priestesses who felt entitled to dictate who their coveners date, worship with, or talk to. These people didn't think they were doing anything wrong, just making certain their students weren't misled or their teaching wasn't derailed, but they increasingly tried to control the lives of others (especially when their own lives seemed out of control). Aside from initiation, I've also known groups to haze their members in ways that would do the worst kind of sororities proud, even going to far as to breach into sexual abuse. This is absolutely far from the majority (I've only known that one group), but the members put up with it because they were assured that was what the Gods required. Whenever there are weapons, alcohol, and nudity magnetizes stupidity and critical faculties seem to evaporate.

Further, I don't owe anything to Gerald Gardner and find it perplexing when people name drop their lineage as though it should matter a whit to me who their initiator's initiator's gardener's sister's ex-boyfriend's intiator is. NASA has a great deal to do with Jack Parsons, a protégé of Crowley, but I do not believe I have ever heard one astrophysicist slyly reference Uncle Al in hopes of seeming more entitled to call himself an astrophysicist. I would imagine this is because they have individually progress far beyond Parsons. Nothing Gerald Gardner wrote was gospel. He made it up, purloining bits from the Freemasons and gypsies to seem more authentic. Doing something just because some dead pervert said - despite all anthropological evidence to the contrary - that the nameless "Ancients" did it is at least very peculiar. Do not seek what he found, seek what he sought and walk your own path. Parroting words and movements that were primarily fiction and supposition and expecting me to take you seriously because Gardner said it is only fractionally removed from expecting it because Rowling did. So many seem to vie to join covens for religious prestige, something diametrically opposed to the humility of spirituality. If you can't feel the touch of the gods on your own, it greatly behooves you to work on that before some lecher tells you his touch is just as good. I wish more Pagans would begin their spiritual search working as solitaries before substituting some group for the Gods.

Yet I do not fault people for finding their place in a group. The right group of people who are truly united, who are working out of friendship and love, who individually have their acts together, can work synergistic wonder and focus the divine. But I've yet to see such a group in person and don't feel the need to seek them out when I am truly satisfied on my own. I have my own group composed of a variety of beliefs and disbeliefs and with no centralized figurehead. Its members so often do not get along or even know one another. I just call them "friends" and they don't need to be prescreened through the internet, have to fill out surveys, and interrogated at diners to be my friends. They just are because I feel a natural and organic connection with them.

For all these reasons and more, I am grateful to keep solitary. I may participate in an open circle if I wish, but am free to never again attend one with that group if I don't find what I am looking for. I don't have to kiss the haunches of someone and pretend they are a God. My religion is on my terms and no one can force me down their path when I should properly be walking my own.