"Our chief weapon is surprise... surprise and fear... fear and surprise... Our two weapons are fear and surprise... and ruthless efficiency... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope... Our four... no... Amongst our weapons... Amongst our weaponry... are such elements as fear, surprise... I'll come in again."

--Monty Python

The question is this: why can't the Pagan Community-- or in fact, most of the political left-- get organized? How is it that the far right wing, who are farther out of touch with the needs of this country than a four-year old in China, are still in control, when the country clearly has more in common with the Pagan Community than the current administration?

I've been writing and rewriting this piece from a dozen angles since about December-- I've always intended it to be my next piece, but it's never quite ready and I end up taking another idea and finishing to meet the deadlines I've imposed on myself. But I finally decided that I wasn't going to say anything until I got this piece done.... and it's now two months later. Actually, it's just under three months as I'm writing this, and I'm hoping that this one will finally make it onto the site. The problem has been that I've been trying to lump several subjects into one piece, and it's just not working. I end up, like Cardinal Biggles in the Monty Python sketch quoted above, having to come in again and start over.

So instead I'm going to break it up into little pieces and take them one at a time. Hopefully this will keep me from spiralling wildly off topic AND keep me from taking another three months to get another piece out.

I've decided to start with the Burning Times.

Let me start out by saying that I am one of the Pagans who don't believe they happened the way many of our books and songs described it, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time harping on it. Margot Adler did an excellent piece on the subject for Beliefnet called A Time for Truth. She says things much better than I could, so I won't elaborate. Besides, my point is not that the stories of the Burning are so exaggerated that you might as well call them fiction. My point is that even if they did happen, they wouldn't be relevant in the context in which they are often discussed.

Their greatest relevance is when you examine them for what they are-- part of the Mythology of the Pagan culture. Our culture in its current form is pretty new, and the myth of the Burning Times has played a large part in its development. It gave us a rallying cry-- "Never Again The Burning!"-- and a sense of purpose. As mythology, it provides an important lesson-- humanity is capable of doing horrible things to its own in the name of religion. Unfortunately, many Pagans have instead learned another lesson-- Be Afraid.

And that's a lesson our enemies on the far right love.

The far right wing has everyone convinced that the hands they have around the collective throat of America is actually just a finger on the pulse of the Nation. Anyone who doesn't agree with them is obviously the deviant. It's not specifically targeted at us, or indeed at anyone-- it's just that one of the most effective ways to control the minds of a people is to convince them that they are inherently bad and you are there to help them stay good. The people will police themselves out of fear-- and mostly fear of their neighbors, whom they think are like the government.

There's a role playing game called "Paranoia," set in a world where anyone who has a secret affiliation is a "commie" and anyone with a power is a "mutant," and either can be killed on sight. Also, the computer that runs this world will kill anyone who has knowledge they aren't supposed to have. Of course, everyone who plays the game is assigned a secret affiliation and a mutant power, and you have to play against your fellow players as well as the computer. It's not quite as far-fetched as you'd think.

The problem is that some of us just loooooooooooooooooove to be persecuted. It gives one a feeling of righteous indignation and there's a smug kind of romance to it. So they whine about the Burning Times, and how oppressed they are, and how evil the Christian Church is. It seems like some of them joined the Pagan community simply for the opportunity to be more oppressed. This is pointless and even counterproductive.

In the first place, even if the Burning Times actually happened exactly as we've heard, moaning about it is useless. It didn't happen on this continent, it didn't happen in the last three centuries, it wasn't done by anyone alive today, and it wasn't done to anyone alive today-- or indeed to an ancestor within eight or nine generations. As far as ancestry, I'd imagine your average Pagan is just as likely-- if not more likely-- to have an Inquisitor in the family tree.

Second, it's in bad taste to be strutting around like victims, when there are far more horrible milestones in human history within Living Memory. The Holocaust rings immediately to mind, and nobody worth talking to disputes that body count. You think a Jew is going to particularly moved by our complaints? How about an African American? How about the mother of Matthew Shepard, who was handcuffed to a fence, brutally beaten, and left to die from exposure for the crime of being Gay? How about the family of James Byrd, who was beaten, chained to a pickup truck, and dragged for three and a half miles until he died-- just because he was black? Sure, they'll have some sympathy for us (if they believe us at all), but compared to their own much more recent history, it's a tempest in a teacup.

Think about it... in my experience, most of the Pagan Community is white. A white man or woman screaming about oppression comes across looking pretty stupid-- even when the oppression is real.

Third, the fear of the Burning Times makes Pagans afraid-- and fear makes us less powerful. Yes, some Pagans are afraid for a reason, but I'd bet for every Pagan hiding in the Broom Closet for a perfectly good reason, there are a dozen who'd be shocked to learn that their friends, neighbors, coworkers, and family just wouldn't care. Every one of that dozen is a victory for the people who oppose us. We don't even know how many Pagans are out there, and we can't accurately count because we've terrified our own people into silence. Since we can't accurately count our numbers, we appear to be more "fringe" than we are. I still say that if we were to find out how many of us there actually are, it would surprise even the most optimistic of us. Until we learn to be unafraid, we're going to be easy to trivialize as a "fringe group."

Finally, there's the fact that when you put aside accuracy, relevance, taste, and fear, whining about the Burning Times accomplishes nothing. Look at other minorities-- the only way to beat discrimination is to stand up and simply refuse to be pushed around. Assigning blame to people dead for 300 years isn't going to solve anything, and it's just going to make it that much harder for us to lead normal lives.

We're not far from being integrated into the mainstream as "another minority some people don't like and most people don't care about." This sounds bad, but until human nature changes, it's the best we can do.... and I'd say we'll do it within a decade. To pull it off, we need to be intelligent, organized, and realistic. Endless whining is just wasting... or perhaps I should say "burning"... time.

Afternote: It has been brought to my attention that my statement that the Burning Times did not take place on this continent is not wholly accurate. I've never considered the Salem Witch Trials to be a part of the Burning Times, as it was a local affair (rather than a national inquisition) and nobody got burned (they were all hung), but further research indicates that most people don't agree with me, and the Salem Witch Trials are widely regarded to be the end of The Burning Times.

© 2001 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp