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nonfluffypagans got me thinking vaguely, though somewhat incoherently. And I've pontificated a bit over there. (This from recons is also relevant.)
I'm going to start off my rambling here by pointing out the problems I see with available pagan resource material, just for context. This is probably not a complete list.
( List cut for length. )
This all is a problem. It's bad for seekers; it makes it impossible for them to find what they need readily unless what they need is the available stuff. It's bad for the obscure paganisms like the reconstructions and non-Wiccan religious witchcraft traditions; nobody knows they exist before they fall into the right pagan community or do the right websearch, and there are plenty of ways of not finding this stuff. It's bad for the BTW folks, for reasons I'm sure they're able to express at great length. It's bad for the interface between pagans and paganism and the rest of the world, due, among other things, to the proliferation of misinformation out there. And it's bad for the people who buy into the bad information, because it inclines them to have the problems that come of looking like idiots in public and also potentially deprives them of meaningfulness that they were looking for.
This has schismatic effects: dividing participants in pagan communities into camps based on, essentially, favored reading material. It's also, at this point, deeply entrenched in a way that I think a lot of people are overwhelmed by. They try to correct the bad information in a one-on-one way, individual people dealing with specific situations, but the supply of the ill-informed is bottomless.
The thing is, though, that the situation can be self-curing if the threads of the power are observed. There is a tremendous market that exists and is, at least at the moment, self-perpetuating; it has two major population components that are relevant to this thought and one minor one. The major populations I'm thinking of in this market are the people who buy every 101 book that comes down the pike and the people who keep buying books in the hope that the next one will give them what they need. (The minor thread are the people who tend to collect what's on the market for pulse-and-awareness reasons.)
This means that it's entirely possible to start correcting for this with application of 101 books of tools. Not magical tools per se; tools for dealing with the information glut, the separation of wheat and chaff, and correcting things that aren't available on the market. If these things get published, they will get bought, and the tools will enter the community bloodstream the same way the misinformation, information gaps, and bad research did.
This is generational magic, but the degeneration of the available market happened generationally as well. But these things really are worthwhile hekau.
In other religious meanderings, while I'm on the subject, I'll add here so as not to create a post glut, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I haven't been dealing with Hwt-Herw, but rather Hethert-Nut. And since I got this notion I got an inspiration for an icon I need to make, which strikes me as encouraging; I've been trying to come up with an icon design for Het-Herw for ages and failing. Ed to Add: Which really, by the way, bothered me; I'd been able to make icons for a variety of other Names, so why not the lady who's been with me for nearly half my life?
nonfluffypagans got me thinking vaguely, though somewhat incoherently. And I've pontificated a bit over there. (This from recons is also relevant.)I'm going to start off my rambling here by pointing out the problems I see with available pagan resource material, just for context. This is probably not a complete list.
( List cut for length. )
This all is a problem. It's bad for seekers; it makes it impossible for them to find what they need readily unless what they need is the available stuff. It's bad for the obscure paganisms like the reconstructions and non-Wiccan religious witchcraft traditions; nobody knows they exist before they fall into the right pagan community or do the right websearch, and there are plenty of ways of not finding this stuff. It's bad for the BTW folks, for reasons I'm sure they're able to express at great length. It's bad for the interface between pagans and paganism and the rest of the world, due, among other things, to the proliferation of misinformation out there. And it's bad for the people who buy into the bad information, because it inclines them to have the problems that come of looking like idiots in public and also potentially deprives them of meaningfulness that they were looking for.
This has schismatic effects: dividing participants in pagan communities into camps based on, essentially, favored reading material. It's also, at this point, deeply entrenched in a way that I think a lot of people are overwhelmed by. They try to correct the bad information in a one-on-one way, individual people dealing with specific situations, but the supply of the ill-informed is bottomless.
The thing is, though, that the situation can be self-curing if the threads of the power are observed. There is a tremendous market that exists and is, at least at the moment, self-perpetuating; it has two major population components that are relevant to this thought and one minor one. The major populations I'm thinking of in this market are the people who buy every 101 book that comes down the pike and the people who keep buying books in the hope that the next one will give them what they need. (The minor thread are the people who tend to collect what's on the market for pulse-and-awareness reasons.)
This means that it's entirely possible to start correcting for this with application of 101 books of tools. Not magical tools per se; tools for dealing with the information glut, the separation of wheat and chaff, and correcting things that aren't available on the market. If these things get published, they will get bought, and the tools will enter the community bloodstream the same way the misinformation, information gaps, and bad research did.
This is generational magic, but the degeneration of the available market happened generationally as well. But these things really are worthwhile hekau.
In other religious meanderings, while I'm on the subject, I'll add here so as not to create a post glut, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that I haven't been dealing with Hwt-Herw, but rather Hethert-Nut. And since I got this notion I got an inspiration for an icon I need to make, which strikes me as encouraging; I've been trying to come up with an icon design for Het-Herw for ages and failing. Ed to Add: Which really, by the way, bothered me; I'd been able to make icons for a variety of other Names, so why not the lady who's been with me for nearly half my life?
