The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum

I've already won to a fair amount of respect there because of my knowledge and personal charisma and for this reason a young mother shared her experience with me of going into a graveyard on Samhain and trying to contact an ancestor. Fortunately she didn't know enough to do anything serious but I'm sure you can see how badly that could have gone.

 
Yeah, you need to be careful doing outdoor winter rituals. If you don't dress appropriately you can get hypothermia.

In this case it was partly the location she chose and mostly the fact that she did it without any consideration for the consequences.

And the issue with the location was?

And what, precisely, might those consequences be?  Aside from someone spooking the heck out of themselves because someone told them to be terrified, that is?



(I can't help but think of the image I saw recently: In Canada you are more likely to be killed by a moose than a terrorist attack.)

I just wanted to toss my nickle in here for this part...

I really like what Jenett said here but there was one thing I think, personally, she missed.

And that would be for a reason.

There is also material in my practice which has risks, and which is only taught to people once they have specific skills and some experience. As I implied with the comment about the majority of the oathbound material *not* being that, it's a minority, though.

(They're also, in a lot of cases, about 'this is a thing I'd only teach in a formal training setting, where I have explicit and formal ritually made commitments to the student, and would be ethically and morally responsible as their teacher if something went wrong' which is a very specific kind of relationship that doesn't apply in many many cases.)

Which I'm glad of, because honestly, I think a lot of times, people use that excuse for secrecy in a very paternalistic and controlling way, or at least it gets applied that way.

There are risks in life. I just got on a plane and flew to another country for vacation: there were risks in getting in the car with the co-worker who gave me a ride to the subway. There were risks in getting on the plane. There are risks in being in a foreign country, where I don't always know how things work.

But those are all risks that I can learn about and mitigate, and make informed adult decisions about, becuase there is information out there about them.

People who are new to Paganism, and want to try something new, they also have many sources of information and resources.

I'm not just talking about books or written material here: they have information about how they, as an individual, approach new things. They have their relationships with their family and friends that have taught them both information, but also something about how to relate to other people (and by extension, other entities.) They have a lot of experience in living their own life: what makes them feel comfortable or uncomfortable, safe or unsafe, happy or unhappy.

Saying "Don't do this thing, something bad might happen" short-circuits someone's own sources of information. And I tend to think that's more likely to be a problem than someone doing something seriously wrong, at least if they are a sincere person trying to do a caring thing (like honouring one of their beloved dead.)

Does that mean there's no room to say "Hey, next time, you might want to think about these other things?" Of course not. Or to say "Hey, glad that thing went well for you, but there's other people who've done X and it's had problems when they Z." Or "Some people find that doing Y after doing work in a cemetary is helpful for these reasons: some cultures have these traditions about cemetaries and the dead."

But all of those are sharing actual information, not just Dire Secretive Warnings. They're giving people a chance to make their own choices. They're assuming that people get control of their own lives.

And, on a very practical level, I tend to think that in most circumstances, the average person who doesn't really know what they're doing doesn't have a lot of oomph to do something really dangerous. (That doesn't mean it's not good to talk about the safety precautions, just that it's more 'this is why we wear a seatbelt in the car' than 'if you get in a car, you are very likely to be in an accident, doom, doom.')  

(You will notice, for example, that the safety tips page on my website for people exploring religious witchcraft (http://gleewood.org/seeking/practices/safety-tips-and-notes/) is about 80% fire and ingredient safety, and about 20% don't do ritual stuff you don't understand. There's reasons for that.

Do people do stupid things? Yes, they do. But the answer to that is more information sharing, not less, generally. And the stuff that's an exception, well, that should be *actually* secret, not 'I'm hinting that it's there so you get curious'.

(Thinking through this, the one big place this comes up in my practice is Drawing Down: I will discuss it's a part of my religious practice, but it is not a thing I will teach someone how to do except under very limited circumstances, and that it has a bunch of moving parts that can be tricky to get right and do in a way that is reasonably safe and sustainable for the priest/ess involved (and that my own precautions involve trusted and skilled other people involved, for example.) And that in many cases, there are other, less draining and safer practices that are a lot more workable for a solo practitioner or on a frequent basis. But that's a much different conversation than "That's dangerous, don't.")

I also think the withholding of information with no explanation as to why can cause people to react like a rebellious teenager. I mean, really now, you say "don't do this" and don't say why? Oh my gawd, how many of us would do that EXACT thing just to a) find out why not and b) offer up a huge middle finger to the person who told you no? (I am not saying this is an intelligent response, but intelligence isn't always the determining factor in human reactions.)

 
That would be my own consistently-repeated experience: the people who are likely to handle a thing rashly and cause a major mess are not deterred by being told not to do that thing. Heck, they're seldom deterred even by clear, precise, detailed explanations of what the dangers are and how to avert or mitigate them. These are the folks who are already convinced that they know exactly what they're doing, and no one can tell them nuffin'!

The only ones who are deterred by warnings without specifics are the people who are careful and cautious, and would welcome detailed and specific advice on how to do the thing well.

So IME, that approach does nothing about the people I'd prefer to discourage, while discouraging the people I most want to encourage.

Sunflower

Ok. Very long. Stopping now, feel free to ask more questions if I've been confusing, which is entirely possible.

Such an amazing and intelligent post.

I DO teach public classes on various subjects such as the runes, spellcrafting and all.

 But for teaching the Craft, I do not take a dime for it.

There are some things that people just won't teach outside of people they don't know, and there are good reasons for that.

IMO the entire definition of priest is "servant." That is what we strive for in our teaching, and totally right that if we start with 40 people, we might get ONE that makes it through. Maybe, if we're damn lucky. Still that's not bad odds, because that one person who goes on to be a nurturing servantYo to his/her community is worth every moment that I put into everyone.

It perturbs me a little that the OP keeps stating, "I'll pay for it." IMO the best teaching is not about money. It's a mutual situation in which the teacher receives back as much energy as they've put out.

You can't really buy community either. I'm fortunate that when I "grew up" in the Craft, we had a strong local community with an abundance of wise teachers and I was blessed that they allowed me to partake of their knowledge and wisdom.

I personally do not take on "internet students" because on the internet you can pose as pretty much anything.  IMO if I don't really know what's going on, I can't give advice that is beneficial.

Yes my path does have a few small "secrets" mostly they are secret because if you knew what the answers were ahead of time, it would ruin the experience.

Recently a friend went and TOLD me the crux of his path's initiation ritual and I was saddened because that meant I could never be initiated to that path whether I wanted or not. Because the magick here is in the choice your are given and the answers you choose. If  you already know the "answer." you cannot open to trusting the answer in your heart If that makes any sense.

So yes, some secrets are "secret" because they require an experiential element. In retrospect it might be, "duh I knew that" but when you are living through making that decision, it tells you much about yourself.

And so, back to the OP, there are some things I won't share because it's just not fair to share that and thus ruin their potential experience.

And yeah, there other things I won't share because certain advanced techniques can actually be freaking dangerous and I won't tell you how to consume an entity larger than your head.

But yes, there are plenty of opportunities for learning, though certain places may have more/less of those. My local UU church has a strong and long standing pagan component. If your closest one doesn't seek out another.

But one of the biggest lessons I've learned is: If the kind of community you want isn't available, create it.