Group or Solitary: Which Is Best For You? (Witch Vox)

[icymist]

Group or Solitary: Which Is Best For You?

Author: Bronwen Forbes
Posted: October 18th. 2009
Times Viewed: 821

One of the biggest and most important decisions you will make as a newcomer to the Pagan path is whether to join an existing group of like-minded practitioners or go it on your own as a solitary. Of course, there will be other big decisions to make later but they are all dependent upon what you choose to do now.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will confess that I am a big advocate of finding others who a) are further along the path than you and learning all you can from them and b) are folks your gut seems to trust (more on this in a future article, I promise) . Why? Let me give you an example.

At one time my group’s holiday rituals were open to any Pagans in the area who chose to attend (if they told us they were coming in advance) . Since our group was the only one and the first one in the area for some time, we attracted a lot of people who hadn’t ever been in ritual with other Pagans, even though they’d been solitaries for years.
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There is one other reason which I have seen that makes people go solitary and that's having the group not accept you. I seen this happen to those for perceived sexuality, for outright being Gay or Lesbian, or for having the outrage of changing your sex! Let me give an example, a friend of mine was in a coven out in Rhode Island and she was in the process of having a sex change from male to female. We had met earlier at the 1993 March On Washington and decided to keep in touch. She would send me letters describing how the HP's were giving her hell because of the coming sex change. They were saying horrible things to her as in their minds my friend was 'insulting' the Gods! The last letter I got from her she was being forced out of the coven and she seemed a nervous wreck. I never heard from her again even though I tried many times to get in touch. This made me sad as I realized that mean people are in all religions and that Pagans are not immune to out-right bigotry as well. Finding that magickal combination of people that work well together is something that can be very hard to find and when it is found, should be cherished.