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In a recent article in Newsday, Lycos's top 100 search topics for 2000 were listed, with Wicca, Witchcraft, Halloween and Harry Potter having places of importance. Youthwork, a Christian magazine published monthly, said in its September 2000 issue that "Teenage girls are showing unprecedented interest in Witchcraft, with about 100 every month wanting to join Covens." Shows such as Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and its spin-off Angel are immensely popular, and there is even a daily Soap Opera featuring Witches, magic, and demons. Occult books, once relegated to the New Age section, are proudly displayed in book stores, and the Harry Potter phenomena only promises to gain in momentum (if that is even possible) once the movie is released. Never before has interest in Wicca, Paganism, and the Occult been so great, nor has it at any time ever been accepted with such openness as it is today. The causes for this Pagan resurgence are complex and not always easily discernible - but one factor that has played an important role in the Occult craze is, without question, the development of the Internet. Pagans have always been in the forefront of the arts and sciences (hey, it was a Pagan that invented the wheel!) and NeoPagans have been interested in new technologies as well as new political, social, and religious ideas. In her seminal work on the NeoPagan movement, Drawing Down the Moon, Margot Adler noted that NeoPagans, contrary to her expectations and her own ambivalence, were "optimistic about the uses of science and modern technology," and "almost everyone I questioned ... thought that there was no conflict between 'scientific' and 'magical' thinking." In the 1985 Questionnaire that she printed in the Appendix of the book, 28 of the respondents (by far the highest at roughly 16 percent) were computer programmers, system's analysts, or software developers. Their statements would no doubt be reflective of a large number of Pagans who are active in this sphere. "Symbolic thinking and patterning are essential to magical thinking. Like magic, computers work in unseen ways to accomplish tasks." "Pagans are beginning to view the products of the human mind as sacred, what else could possibly be sacred to a largely urban people?" "Coupled with modems, computers are the oracles of the future." The inventors of the Internet were mavericks and wild-men. Begun as a means for the American government to ensure its ability to communicate even after a nuclear war, the students and professors who developed the system (called ARPANET) at MIT, UCLA, NPLA, and the RAND Corporation (who had first proposed it), found new uses for the huge, rare, and costly super-computers of the system. "By the second year of operation, however, an odd fact became clear. ARPANET's users had warped the computer-sharing network into a dedicated, high-speed, federally subsidized electronic post-office. The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance computing. Instead, it was news and personal messages. Researchers were using ARPANET to collaborate on projects, to trade notes on work, and eventually, to downright gossip and schmooze. People had their own personal user accounts on the ARPANET computers, and their own personal addresses for electronic mail." (Short History of the Internet, Bruce Sterling) In the 1970s and '80s new groups of individuals began using the computers, accessed remotely, leading to the development of the Yippies, Hackers, and other diverse social groups. According to the people queried by Adler, these were the same type of individuals who would be attracted to magic and Paganism. "Both attract unencultured, solitary, creative thinkers." "Both types are on the leading edge." "Pagans are playful by nature, and the computer is the most endlessly fascinating toy ever invented." (Drawing Down the Moon, 1986) Pagans flourish on the Internet. Every week there are hundreds of new Pagan websites that spring up, new newsgroups, lists, chats, message boards, and "Online Covens". We have claimed this new technology and made it uniquely ours. But just as the Goddess in the popular Wiccan chant is said to change everything that She touches, so too, have we been changed by our connection with the Internet. Many of these changes - perhaps even the vast majority of them - are positive, dynamic and have breathed new life into the Community. But whenever there is great change, there is also great concern - and not always without reason. One of the over-riding positives of the new technology is the wider sense of community that it produces. In many parts of the country, Pagans are isolated and fearful of coming out. The prospect of losing their jobs or children, of facing familial displeasure and communal prejudices are not appealing - and so they keep their interest in the Pagan religions to themselves, and never dare even wear their pentagrams in the open let alone express their deepest held beliefs. But with the Internet, there is anonymity. You can be whomever you want to be, without worrying if the girl from the grocery store recognized you. It allows you to explore parts of your personality that you never would in the real world, and it allows you to meet with people from a similar background. The incredible diversity of people that one meets on-line is another positive. I have met Thelemites, Wiccans, Buddhists, Druids, Atheists, and Irish Muslims that I would never, in all probability, have met had I not been on-line. And the friendships that one forms can be just as deep and lasting as anything made off-line - more so, if you are not worried about keeping up appearances and are freed to be yourself. I, myself, am not worried about coming out or what others might think of me. (It's way too late for that, darling!) I live in an area with a strong Wiccan and Pagan population, which is nice, but also isolating in a sense, since I do not share many of the beliefs or practice the rituals which are common to these groups. There is no active Hellenic Reconconstructionist bodies in my area, and as far as I have been able to deduce, not many, if any, Hellenic Polytheists. (They seem to be more common back east, and in the Bay area.) So the Internet allows me to reach out to these people and take part in our little sub-culture within the Pagan community. I am active on a number of lists and message boards, carry on extended conversations through e-mail, and maintain a web-site that proposes our ideals and explores our culture. In these ways, I feel that I am an Hellene, even though I have never taken part in any rituals with other Hellenes, and do not, as of yet, belong to any Hellenic organizations, such as Hellenion, the Julian Society, or the Supreme Council of the Gentile Hellenes. (Chances are I'll never join that last one. They're interesting, but seem a little . . . uhm . . . extreme for my tastes.) Part of belonging to a community is keeping up on what affects other members of the community. Yes, this usually ends up being gossip - but hey, gossip is fun. Anyone who tells you they don't like gossip is either lying to you, has something to hide, or just doesn't like the person or group that you're discussing. But sometimes the news moves beyond idle gossip, and involves the really important stuff that affects our community. (Okay, it rarely moves beyond gossip - but for the sake of this article, let's pretend like it does.) When steps are taken to curb our free expression of the first amendment, or a tragedy befalls our fellows, or some member of the Religious Reich turns their fiendish little piggy eyes upon us - the Internet allows us to hear about it with lightning speed and also provides us with a means of counter-acting it. When information had to be conveyed by word of mouth or by printing press it was often too late to do anything about it, and there were parts of the country where it never reached. Things that happened in New York rarely affected Pagans in California, let alone in Nye, Montana. But now, when a school district in a small southern town won't allow students to wear pentagrams, we all hear about it. And with the Internet we are able to make a difference. Concentrated letter writing campaigns, media awareness, web-pages of protest, and financial contributions are able to make a difference, no matter how small that difference is. I wish that the Internet had existed when I first began my studies. (I suppose in some cryptic form it did - but back in 1992 it was nothing like it is today.) The Internet is a great tool for getting our message out, dispelling myths and rumors about us, and generally educating the populace at large. There are so many wonderful, insightful web-sites on the Net now, created by talented, dedicated, and knowledgeable individuals. Want to learn the true history of Wicca, and how it grew out of 19th Century Occultism - click here. What's the difference between a boline and an athame - try this site. Who was the Celtic Goddess of poetry and wells - they have the information over there. Literally, the world is at your fingertips with the Internet. And by presenting all of this information free to the user, one's wallet is greatly protected. I am a Bibliophile. I love books. I work in a book store. But they are so very, very expensive - and if you only want the book for a small bit of information it provides - a photograph, or table of correspondences, a single chapter - it is really hard to shell out $30, since you're not going to be using the rest of it. Yet that information is indispensable - oh, a quandary! Since I have learned to use the Internet to find those odd bits of information, I am no longer quite so poor as I once was. I could continue my Paean in honor of the Internet - indeed, there is so much more that could be said - but I feel compelled to point out some of the draw-backs that this new technology has brought with it, the hoof and mouth disease that lies hidden within the happy little moo-cow that is life in the Cyber Age. Just as there are a great number of creative, intelligent, and avant garde sites on the Internet, there is a disturbing amount of repetition and stagnation. I'm sure you know what I mean. The sites that steal huge chunks (sometimes even verbatim!) from Scott Cunningham or Silver RavenWolf, that have unicorns, fairies, and spinning pentagrams - but not much else. How many Wicca 101 sites do we need? Oh, introductory Magic and Witchcraft are well represented - but where are the intermediate or advanced sites? Yes, the Charge of the Goddess and the Witches Rune are beautiful poetry - but if I see another version of it on a starry background, I'm gonna hurl. No really, I am. I mean it. Oh, and that little "Never Again the Burning Times" emblem. Yeah, right. THAT makes a big difference, doesn't it? As the person behind the Why Wiccans Suck page has so wisely commented, (comparing the "Burning Times" to more recent religious persecution such as Waco) "Maybe you can put up some "never again" Waco graphics on your webpage and see what good that does blocking out the napalm. Face it -- at the next Waco, you won't be able to do one damned thing about it other than picket peacefully, write/speak about your group's opinion, or get hauled off to jail for trying to take harsher action. All any of this does is give you a warm fuzzy feeling in your tummy for attempting to do the Right Thing." Come on people. Let's not be afraid to think outside the box. Please, for the love of the Gods, don't write another Wicca FAQ - make links to sites that have said it before and better than you can. Find something new, interesting, different to say. And if you can't - then maybe you shouldn't be making a web-page. Go back and read a couple more books. Books that don't have a little crescent moon on their spine, preferably. Try some history, mythology, comparative religions, and philosophy. You could do a whole lot worse than Seneca, William James, William Burkert, John Shelby Spong, Aleister Crowley, or Gus DiZerega. Perhaps as a result of this stagnation, many on-line Pagans - in particular Wiccans in AOL chats - can be intolerant, petty, ignorant, unmannered, and just all-around unpleasant. They react badly when a new theory is presented, or someone dares to challenge the accepted ideology. ("If you don't believe in the Wiccan Rede, you're evil and immoral." "Aleister Crowley was just a con-man." "Wicca is 25,000 years old." "All God/desses are One God/dess - except for Jesus, YHWH, and the Devil - none of which we believe in.") Their reactions are usually defensive, hostile, and they soon degenerate to the point of name-calling. I am almost always disappointed when I go into a Wiccan chat expecting to find intelligent conversation - it's either petty gossip or heated conflict. Part of the reason for this, I believe - and no, it's not the general immaturity of the on-line Wiccans - is that there are subtle nuances to conversation that are missed in chat rooms, e-mails, and news-groups. We are not able to pick up on important things such as tone, posture, expression, and myriads of other non-verbal (or non-written to be more precise) forms of communication which play such a fundamentally important part of any kind of social intercourse. The same sentence said with a self-deprecating grin might not cause the other person to go into a fit of childish histrionics. Then again, with Wiccans there's no guarantees. Along with the generally anti-social behavior of the on-line Wiccans, one must often contend with bizarre and outrageous rumors, as well as more subtly deceptive material. Many times there is no way to check the authenticity of what one hears through a newsgroup or in an e-mail, and there are plenty of individuals out there - both Pagans and non-Pagans - who are willing to take advantage of that. Sometimes well-meaning individuals pass on false information without realizing it. For instance, when the name of a well-respected authority within the community is attached to a theory or chain-mail or the like, it becomes difficult to evaluate the material, because that person is a trusted and beloved authority figure, and they would never steer us wrong - right? Others use the anonymity of the Internet to air their paranoid delusions. "George W. Bush is preparing concentration camps in the midwest for Pagans, Jews, Catholics, and Homosexuals. We must stop him now!!!" was a recent favorite of mine. A lot of the information out there is also mistaken. Dates that are wrong, quotes mistakenly attributed to people, claims of miracle cures and health benefits for decidedly harmful practices or ingredients. There is so much information, coming at you in all directions, at all times, that it becomes difficult - if not impossible - to evaluate it properly. One has to use common sense, check so-called facts whenever possible, and use resources such as Urban Legends Reference Page. One should apply this to individuals that one meets as well. Put their claims to scrutiny - especially if they are outlandish and difficult to believe. People make up stories about contact with Gods, aliens, demons, etc or claim to practice a form of ancient Atlantaen Arch-Druidry or tell you that they are lithe Faery Princess with incredible magical powers - even though in reality they're 30 year old virgins, living at home with their mothers, who work at Taco Bell. Claims of an unbroken Witch lineage that stretches back to the time of King Arthur or that one is the reincarnation of Merlyn, Cleopatra, or Aleister Crowley are also common, and just as bogus. Occasionally this kind of stuff moves beyond the realm of idle curiosity and make-believe and enters a very dangerous place. You hear from time to time of young girls lured into the hands of predators and forced to perform sexual acts as part of an "Initiation" into a "Wiccan Coven." Others are cheated out of money, time, and energy, studying with bogus Ascended Masters. Question everything! A true teacher won't mind if you ask for verification. When it comes to money or sex as part of the deal - be especially wary. One last concern might be raised. There is something peculiar about a person who claims to practice an earth-centered Nature religion - but spends all of their time indoors, on the computer, and can't remember the last time they were outside the city limits. One can take Electronic Covens and Virtual Rituals a bit far, and if you've ever spoken with someone who has been up for 36 hours straight writing code or talking in chats, you understand what I mean. From time to time we need to shut down the computers, venture out into the sunlight (that frightening orange globe isn't really as menacing as it may first appear) frolic in the fields with the bunnies and birds and nature spirits, experience the magic in a blade of grass, the wonder of life in the acorn which becomes the mighty oak, and really feel that all things are subtly but profoundly connected. Or at least go down the street to the 7-11 and stock up on microwave burritos and chocolate-covered espresso beans. Anyway, the Internet is here. It has left an indelible mark on the Pagan Community as well as society in general. It has brought a lot of good into our lives - but like all things, it must be used wisely and responsibly. Now if you don't mind, I'm going to go into AOL Life - Wiccan Fluffbunnies and cause some trouble, while I munch on my microwave burritos and download nude pics of Britney Spears. Ooh yeah! Resources used:
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