This week is incredibly full. I have a membership meeting tonight. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I have rehearsals or rituals every evening. Wednesday is thus far free and I’m hoping to keep it that way. Hoping, but not really expecting. I suspect something will crop up. Even if it doesn’t I should use Wednesday evening to clean house and catch up on some projects that I’ve been working on, as well as prep everything for the rest of the week.

I’ve got a lot running through my head right now. A bit part of that is my quest for weight loss. Today is February 8th. As of this morning I’m down 2.8 pounds total, which is a good start. The first few weeks are always the easiest, so I’m going to take advantage of that as best I can. This week is going to be challenging on the exercise front, because getting out of bed and going to the gym first thing in the morning will not be easy with how busy I’m going to be. Still, after I wash my workout clothes tonight I’m going to try.

There is a lot moving in the world. My visions tell me that there is a great deal of potentia in the murk this year, and that there is opportunity if we keep our eyes and hearts open and aligned. I’ve got lots of ideas and thoughts about projects that seem to be ready to get moving, but making them move will require a lot of energy and time. As George prepares for Massage School and a complete loss of his free-time I find myself preparing for much the same. Not massage school, but I can see that I’ll be providing myself lots of opportunities to be busy and involved. Finding a way to live that schedule healthily will be the primary challenge of the year.

I’m thinking about the pagan internet a lot the last few days. It’s as fractured and poorly communicated as our communities in general. Here in Chicago I’m not even sure what operating groups other than the Brotherhood are functional or reliable. I was trying to suggest a group to a friend of mine recently and found that I kept saying “I haven’t heard a lot out of them lately…” Further research led me to discover that most of the groups I know about have self-destructed or transformed greatly. The pagan internet, much like our larger pagan culture is a frustrating place. There are lots of individual sites and sources of information. Many of them are about as reliable as the common knowledge and assumptions that guide so much of our culture. That is to say, much of it is lacking substance, depth, and understanding, and much of it is just plain incorrect.

There’s a need for that to be addressed, and I’m working on something that I think will help, but I’ve still got a lot to do in my head to make it function. My first instinct was that some sort of Wiki would be a good idea. The trouble is that a wiki relies upon experts to edit and maintain it’s articles. Unfortunately, we have two problems there in the pagan and magical community. 1) We don’t have a lot of experts, and 2) There are lots of people who claim to be experts, but aren’t. With a volume of people who believe they are experts a wiki is a breeding ground for bad, even harmful information. I have a hard time thinking that giving this type of voice more weight is a good thing.

But shouldn’t the voices of the wannabe-experts be heard too? Well yes, and no. Look at Witchvox. I, like many people, have been reading or reviewing WitchVox since the late 90′s. It is a valuable resource and one that I honor. However, it’s seen better days. As near as I can tell, WitchVox will now publish just about anything anyone sends them, regardless of the veracity or quality of writing. In the last 6 months I’ve seen articles published that are offensive (and I’m hard to offend), and worse advocate or advise actions that could be very damaging to people. That is the minority however. The majority of the articles are self-aggrandizing tripe, the equivalent of human interest stories. Lengthy articles where the writer rambles on about their experiences and then ends with a trite moralizing message meant to encourage or enforce an, often questionable, social more.

These people have lots of places for their voices to be heard. And their voices are given equal weight. That said, I don’t think it’s responsible to give them authority by promoting their words. Their thoughts are a different matter. I think that one of the biggest problems we have today is that a vast majority of the writing we find about our religion and craft claims to be factual. The truth is, we have interpretations and thoughts. We have research and experiences. We’re dealing with the metaphysical, the subnoumenal. Not the physical. When dealing with the subnoumenal we have to realize that there is no single truth or fact, and it behooves us to address and present a wide spectrum of those possible truths. From that spectrum the cream will rise. The most powerful, most meaningful beliefs will surface. The most effective magical technology will arise. And in so doing we will maintain both the most accepted of that spectrum, but keep access to that which has been left behind. The preservation of those ideas is vital, and we should have access to it. It also allows us to offer the most important aspect of our religious and magical tradition to the world. The ability to chose what practices and beliefs suit yourself, and with that choice create your own tradition, your own understanding, and your own practice.

So what I’m envisioning is a resource where all ideas are permitted and allowed, but none are given preferential treatment. The care with which this must be maintained is evident. It is easy for individual authors to promote their own views while deprecating the views of others. And It’s important that this is both allowed and discouraged. Individuals should promote their own views and opinions, much like the editorial page of a newspaper, but it’s important to keep those views out of the reporting or encyclopedic information. Many people don’t like non-opinion writing because it’s viewed as impersonal and doesn’t help us come to conclusions about things. The truth is though, that this is partially intentional. Good explanatory writing is often not meant to convince you of something, or to draw a conclusion for you. It is meant to give you the information on which to draw your own conclusion.

There is something to be said however, for explanatory or informative writing that has personality. Not putting forth a great deal of opinion or casting judgment upon a subject does not mean that the writing has to be dry or boring.