Creating a Community pt. 1

The search for a community to be a part of is not an easy search. This last weekend, as I drove home from the Our Haven Beltane, I reflected on my own search for community, specifically a community to be a part of. As I thought about this subject, I realized that I had looked long and hard for a community that would welcome me to it with open arms. And I realized that I was likely not alone in my search.

As wonderful as festivals are, they are transitory experiences. You meet up with friends and strangers for a few days and hopefully leave with a few more friends and some memorable experiences. You may even, as I do, meet up with people again and again at festivals. But even so, the festival is a temporary community. What do you do when you go back home and there is no one to share that communal spirit you had at the festival?

If you're like me, when you come home you feel a bit bittersweet. You've had a wonderful festival experience and felt like part of a community. But now the community is gone. You are alone again and maybe even a bit envious of those people in magical communities that are more permanent than just a festival. And you don't have many people, if any to share that experience with.

The real question, then, is how do you find a community, or make one? The answer to that question involves several factors that need to be considered in the search for, or desire to create, a community. The first factor is the orientation of the community. Is the community you seek more oriented toward the religious side of paganism, with formal rituals and gatherings? Or is the community oriented toward a practical approach to paganism, participating in cleaning up the environment or doing public service for the overall community? Or is your community, one where you want to experiment with magic, pushing it to the edge and coming up with new ways to use magic? Knowing the type of community you want to join or create is essential to finding the people who share your ideas. Think of figuring out what type of community you want as a kind of mission statement. You can even use that mission statement to do some magic.

The second factor to consider is the type of people you want to associate with. Unfortunately, in Paganism, there are bad apples in every bunch and those bad apples can definitely have a negative effect on your desired community. You have to decide what people you want to associate with. Are the elders in your community honest with you or are they two-faced? Do people avoid you or do you feel welcome when you are with them? Finally do the people share your interests? Just because someone says s/he is pagan doesn't mean they have your interests in paganism or magic for that matter.

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