Activism in the pagan community?

July 28, 2020

Activism in the pagan community?

Welcome to my magical virtual corner, this is my blog, I'm Elhoim Leafar, and this is my post:

What has happened to activism in the pagan community?

The problem with activism is that there is no activism. The "pagan community", is a current of the metaphysical community, we refer to "the pagan community" (for lack of a better term) when we speak and generalize about the few members that we believe that in one way or another, we are part of this holistic community.

Activism, consists of the search and execution of actions for the well-being of an individual or group in common, several years ago in my native Venezuela, I had the opportunity to be a volunteer, and later exercise a formal job for Amnesty International of Venezuela (click here), where the tasks ranged from raising funds with street campaigns to finance our activities to collecting signatures to carry out the execution of some 2,653 different actions, which involved at least 481 other foundations, constant marches on the street, and promotion of multiple events.

Activism is essentially about putting your attention on a cause, setting all your possible intentions and actions on that social cause, and working with this cause until it is resolved.

Completely contrary to modern (as I always call it on my networks) keyboard activism, which limits itself to sharing a couple of tweets about it, and criticizing anyone who is not taking any action.

While the cause has not found a solution, your task as an activist (whether voluntary or in any other way) involves following up on this cause until achieving the desired objective, not just supporting it for the moment when the cause is trending in the nets to earn some extra points between strangers.

But obviously, between the lack of organization by the leaders of a community, and the fact that social networks have become more a source of anxiety than a means of social closeness. It is to be expected that people end up quickly exhausting themselves from a cause after some time (essentially about two weeks), and then move “to fight” for another new cause, which is the “trending topic” of the moment.

The truth is that I will not give myself the unnecessary task of sitting down to give examples about it here, because my frustration will easily lead me to mention at least 200 different social causes that require real actions, from the writing of letters and the collection of signatures, up to street actions and their promotion.

If you want to take a look at some causes with which you can collaborate, at the end of this post, I leave you some links with endless lists of causes that require your support.

The problem with the pagan community is that it is not a community.

I often read in the comments on social networks about the “lack of activism” of the pagan community. Here arise two problems that apparently no one sees, the first, that the pagan community is not really a community, the pagan community is more a virtual grouping of individuals who identify in one way or another with a religious current, but are busier pointing out each other, fighting for who threw the first stone, bragging who sells more books, or who has more followers on Instagram.

Very acidic? Yes, I am Capricorn, believe me, I can be worse and much more honest.

The pagan community has no leaders or representatives, and due to the strong influence of social media, we have this misconception that the authors, or "personalities" with the most followers are our representatives.

The authors (and I include myself among these) have always made it clear that we are overrated, these are not the 1940s when a sorcerer was seen as crazy for wanting to publish a book, nowadays anyone can publish a book, let's be honest, there are even authors ghosts who are willing to write you a book for a good sum of money, Facebook is full of these. Not to mention the countless publishing houses we have today, many of them very good and with excellent material.

The "personalities" and "influencers", and I have nothing against them although it seems the opposite, they have a job that is to maintain that position as influencers, creating beautiful designs for their pages and seeking to gain followers, that is their job to full time.

If I have leaders, I have about three, maybe four different names that could serve as an example of leadership in this community, but none of them is here to lead anyone, even taking into account that in multiple countries of the world Wicca, and Witchcraft They can be recognized as a religion, we do not have a formal leader, and perhaps it is better that way, because in every religious community, the ego is the enemy of many, and our "community" is not the exception.

Without community, there is no focus, vision or unity, so zero activism

As we are not a community, despite the efforts that the event organizers make, it is in the events of paganism and sorcery where we get together, except for these events, the rest of the year we are "each one on his side", as small groups in a large classroom, these are those who study hard, those who practice everything and are part of all school groups, and there are those who only they are attentive to copy what others do, and others who are there, but it is as if they were not.

And there is no problem with any, each one has the right to be and act as they see fit and make him happy, as long as he does not harm others with his actions.

But real activism requires commitment, unity, and respect for the decisions of others, and as I mentioned earlier, most of our members are quite busy pointing to each other. Others are really doing what they can (THANKS !!) and everyone is in their own way doing what they think is most convenient. Unfortunately, some only seek to be part of a cause while it is a "trending topic", and then they turn their eyes when they begin to lose followers "for being very political."

Some very few members of our community are incredible activists, activists who are literally there trying to make a change, but they are very few and we can count them on the fingers of one hand.

And to do activism, it requires (as I mentioned) commitment, and a lot of unity, because to change the world it takes more than a keyboard, it requires coordination and teamwork, to carry out actions and work together for a good common. And as long as we don't really act as a community, this is not going to change.

As I promised, here below is a small list of some of the organizations and social causes with which I have collaborated in one way or another, and I invite you to take a look.