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Welcome to The Cauldron!

Welcome!

Welcome to The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum message board. The Cauldron has been fostering discussion and debate between Pagans of all the many different Pagan religions and their friends since December of 1997.

That said, we’re probably not like other Pagan communities you’ve found online. We’d love to have you register and join us, but this article has some recommendations before you start posting.

We first suggest reading this entire message for some background about what you can expect around here, and how we got here. We’ve been around for over 20 years, so there's some accumulated history! The current version of our message board uses the popular SMF message board software, modified a bit for how we do things.

About our members

Our members come from a wide variety of backgrounds, religions, and experience levels. You will find many different religions and magical traditions: Traditional Wiccans, Eclectic Wiccans, Ceremonial Mages, Reconstructionists from different cultures, Christians, and many more can be found on our message board. You will find some members have been on their path for 20 or 30 years and others who are just starting down the road. You will find teens, college students, young adults, older adults, and retired people from many different countries on our board.

As our board has many experienced Pagan members and many discussions are intended for those who are no longer beginners, our message board can seem intimidating to newer folk.

To help, we have special boards set aside as "Beginner Friendly": the Paganism for Beginners board where people new to Pagan religions can post their questions and concerns; the Magic and the Occult for Beginners board for people new to Magic, and the Books and Other Resources board where you can discover if a book or web site is worth your time or not.

If you choose to post on these boards, our more experienced members will realize you are a beginner and try to provide help accordingly. Note that people will still correct you if you've got incorrect information or are citing a poor quality resource, but they are expected to take your questions as being made in sincere good faith.

Getting to know us

We are a Pagan-focused forum, but we welcome friendly non-Pagan members. We've even had a Christian theologian as staff in the past. If you think non-Pagan religions are evil, don't wish to see Christian or other non-Pagan views, or want to insult other religions, we are probably not the place for you. (Critical discussion of Christianity or any other religion is allowed, under the same rules as any other topic we talk about.)

Profile information in the sidebar (through the website access to the forum) allows you to share basic information about your location or nationality, your religion identification, and the pronouns you use. We include these things so people can be aware of your preferences, or suggest more useful resources for a particular topic. Skimming through a thread of any length makes it clear the range of backgrounds we have on the forum.

We focus on discussion and debate

Our message board is oriented toward more serious (and often somewhat scholarly) discussion and debate than many Pagan discussion areas. Members don't need to agree with you (or the staff!) - but everyone is expected to be polite and follow the rules.

Due to the wide variety of experiences, backgrounds, and religions of our members, you may often come across views and opinions you do not normally come across in other Pagan discussion spaces. We consider that a feature, not a problem.

It is normal in our board culture to be asked for where you got your information, or for posters to point out concerns or problems with a particular source. As a forum, we assume our members are people who value useful, meaningful information and deep discussion, rather than just being told they're right. (And if you've got a great resource, we want to know more about it!)

Sometimes people will have opinions and beliefs that upset or annoy you. The forum has tools to allow you to ignore a particular poster (you can ignore anyone except staff). Staff are regularly reading the forum and keeping an eye on threads, but you can report any post you feel actually breaks our rules, and staff will take a look.

One final way we're unusual is that we take moderation action in public, in the thread where action is needed, so everyone knows we've responded to an issue. Staff will also redirect conversations or note an emerging issue without taking formal action from time to time. It is against our rules to argue a moderation decision in public: those should be taken to the Host, Message Board Coordinator or other relevant staff in a private message.

Please read our rules before you post.

The most important ones are our basic rules (the Cauldron Community Rules) and our Quoting Guidelines. Our quoting guidelines are different than many online spaces, but they help everyone keep track in long or complex threads that go on over an extended period of time. You may find our additional quoting tips helpful.

The complete set of rules, policies, guidelines, etc, can be found in the Rules and Regulations section.

The Cauldron Announcements folder has pinned posts with additional information about some policies or explanations of why we have the policies and practices we do. You may also find the Board Questions, Suggestions, and Feedback folder helpful.

We also recommend reading our Inclusivity FAQ for more about our practices and choices about particular terms, as well as tips on whether and how to include formats like images or video in your posts.

Take a look around the forum

Within the forum, there are a number of different folders for discussion. Some focus on religious practices, some on magic, and some on social chat. Our members have a wide range of interests, so even if you don't see a thread on your current question, there may well be people who'd be delighted to discuss it once you ask about it.

Our rules apply to all areas of our site including our chat space. (At the moment, that's a Discord channel available to registered members who have made a few posts.)

We have several different parts to the ecauldron.com website. There's the forum, but there are also Special Interest Groups (also known as SIGs - not to be confused with the SIG subforums found in the Special Interest Groups & Special Discussions section) where people with similar interests can gather, and a wealth of articles and resources that can be found under "Pagan Topics" in the floating menubar at the top of every page. Different parts of the site may have different logins (i.e. there is one for the forums, and a different one for the SIGs and wiki section). You can always ask a question in the Board Questions, Suggestions, and Feedback folder (see link above) if you need help.

Because our board culture is so different from many other online Pagan spaces, we recommend reading for a bit (“lurking”) for a week or two or reading back through a few weeks of posts, before you start posting yourself.

In many cases, conversations can move fairly slowly, with a few posts a day. We welcome long posts (so long as you leave a blank line every 4-6 lines of text for readability, and trim any quoted material down), and it's fine to read something, think about it, and come back later. It's even fine in most cases to revive a long-slumbering thread, though we have some tips on when you might want to start a new one.

Our history

The Cauldron has been fostering discussion and debate between Pagans (of all the many different Pagan religions) and their friends since December of 1997 (on several earlier message board incarnations: the Delphiforums-hosted one on which TC started here, on two Beehive boards whose software is unfortunately so old it no longer works properly, and the most recent one here). The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum is hosted on a Linode Virtual Private Server.

In the past, we've also had an email list, a monthly newsletter, and a variety of other projects and creations - if you think you might have been here, there's a chance that's true in an earlier iteration of the site.

In the fall of 2019, Randall (one of our founding Hosts) and LyricFox turned over the job of Host on the forums to SunflowerP. Randall's still around, but focusing on the technical aspects of forum maintenance. Please take questions about forum policies that need a final decision to SunflowerP.

Thanks for reading all the way through this, and we hope you'll join us for great conversation, discussion, and many exchanges of ideas.

Sunflower
Host, The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum
Altair
Today at 04:01:22 pm by Altair
Views: 9 | Comments: 0

NYC just updated its list of "great trees"--trees of significant botanical or historical interest--for th...
Altair
October 09, 2024, 05:49:14 pm by Altair
Views: 574 | Comments: 5

With Halloween / Samhain fast approaching, witchy things are cropping up all over pop culture. I thought it might be interesting to see what has passed for magical words at magical doings in the realm of make-believe!

Here's one--
...
SunflowerP
September 29, 2024, 10:29:02 pm by SunflowerP
Views: 2132 | Comments: 2

Folks in western North Carolina and other parts of Appalachia have been hit hard by Hurricane Helene. I was relieved to hear from Aisling, in NC, who is safe and dry but without utilities, and who asked that I post to request prayers for the affected...
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* In Memoriam

Chavi (2006)
Elspeth (2010)
Marilyn (2013)

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