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<\/a>In September of 2015, a dear friend of mine had a massive stroke while at work. He was in a coma for days, and despite the best efforts of both his medical team and his magical community, he passed.<\/p>\nThis man was active in Paganism at least as long as I\u2018ve been, since the early \u201870s. A Wiccan, a Druid, and a Native American medicine-keeper, he moved between those spheres seamlessly, gracefully, and with authority. He was also one of the few true Bards I have known, whose music rang with truth and whose store of Lore (deliberately capitalized) was enormous and freely shared. He was what the Native American communities call \u201ca valuable person.\u201d The ruin of this mind \u2013 to say nothing of the loss of a much-loved personality \u2013 was nothing short of a tragedy to our Community. And for me it brought into focus the undeniable fact that much of modern Paganism\u2019s history, and all its best stories, exist primarily in the minds of a generation \u2013 mine \u2013 that\u2019s rapidly aging out. I\u2019ve seen at least an obituary a month on Facebook for the last year.<\/p>\n
My friend and I, you see, had discovered that we had a long, shared history of Pagan and magical experiences despite not having experienced them in the same parts of the country until just a few years prior. We had plans for the following year: We were going to hold a series of talks locally and then, if possible, farther afield, not only sharing our stories but inviting people to share theirs. Not so much the doctrines and practices, the scholarly collecting and disseminating of verifiable facts, but the oral histories, the family gossip and funny stories and \u201chow did that<\/i> wind up part of our Lore?\u201d How things were back in the day and how they differ now, and perhaps how some of our lost ways can be restored to us. Without his passion and power and boundless enthusiasm, I couldn\u2019t do it. But I can do this: I can reach out to everyone I know and urge them, urge YOU, to tell our stories.<\/p>\n
I know \u2013 everyone is so busy these days that we don\u2019t feel like we have the time to just socialize for hours, which is when we humans have always told our stories. Coven-or-grove time is crammed into an already over-full schedule and must, alas, stay on point or we feel we\u2019re not being \u201ceffective.\u201d And we\u2019re all so trained in the rigidity of classroom education and so accustomed to being polite (despite appearances to the contrary on social media) that we hesitate to either ask impertinent questions or wander off topic and over-share. But we have to break those habits.<\/p>\n
If you’re an elder or teacher, for the Gods’ sake talk<\/i>! And not just from your Book of Shadows or lesson plan \u2013 though you must of course cover those as thoroughly as you can. Tell the stories behind and around the lessons. Tell stories of the old days. Tell the funny one about the time the ritual failed spectacularly, or the inspirational one about the time it succeeded beyond all expectations. Tell stories of your elders \u2013 your downline is their downline, after all, and your students will be fascinated. Explain anything you do differently from the way you were taught, and why. Drop names. Trace relationships. Recount old gossip, all the juicy details. If you don’t already know where everything in your Book of Shadows came from, find out \u2013 and pass it on. Nothing should be off limits. You may not think a particular item is interesting or important, but some day it may well be. And the stories flesh out the \u201cofficial\u201d teachings in a way that makes everything more immediate and memorable to those who came later. Above all, encourage your students to ask questions.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a member of any kind of lineage, formal or informal, please ask more questions of those who\u2019ve preceded you. How did this get in our Lore? What does it mean? How did you, dear teacher, get involved in all this, and why, and what was it like then? Who did you know and what were they like? Any idea where they are now? Sure, your elders try to tell you everything, but we can\u2019t unless you help us. We forget. We get wrapped up in another train of thought and neglect to mention something. It can take the right question to tap into a stored memory, or a long conversation to create the chain of associations from this thing to that thing to the story that\u2019s needed. Take the time to have those conversations. Take notes, or record the conversation, and don\u2019t worry if they ramble. Such ramblings so often contain and conceal the gems of knowledge the teller may not even know they know. Ask.<\/p>\n
But there is still a custom \u2013 I won\u2019t call it a tradition \u2013 in some Pagan circles, of not wanting your students to ask probing questions. I know people who came from such groups, and their stories appall me, such as the fellow who allowed each covener to learn only one \u201crole\u201d in the ritual because he was more interested in putting on a perfect performance than in the power of a properly-understood ritual. Once this was a mechanism for certain leaders to maintain control over their students and coveners, back when one person might be a desperate seeker\u2019s only source of knowledge and participation. Not anymore. Even if you\u2019re stuck with a teacher who doles out crumbs of information like a miser parts with gold, today\u2019s frustrated student has access to the Internet. And most likely, said miserly teacher is no longer the only game in town. Ask. And if necessary, flee. Find someone who wants to empower you.<\/p>\n
I began this essay with a story, one about the loss to Paganism occasioned by human frailty. And another question arises. We Pagans tend to amass libraries, both of published books and our own writings \u2013 Books of Shadows, journals, notes, rituals, recipes, and what-have-you. At the end of our lives, especially if unlike my assumptions above we have no obvious spiritual heirs, what becomes of all this valuable information? Do we just allow our non-Pagan families \u2013 or worse, some court-appointed executor \u2013 to dispose of it as they see fit? If we want to control what happens to our materials, it\u2019s imperative that we think ahead. Make a will. Look around in your Community \u2013 is anyone amassing a library or research project? Look on the net \u2013 perhaps there\u2019s a worthy organization to whom you could leave your materials? Granted, not everything is going to be worthy of perpetual care, but even the mass-market paperbacks and tchotchkes, of which we all have too many, could be sold to raise money for the upkeep of the rest. Some people, such as for instance the Adocentyn Research Library and the New Alexandrian Library, are working on it. If not, pick a magical heir and pass your things on to them; I have.<\/p>\n
You can start your own history project, too. One Saturday, three priestesses downline from me came over for lunch and an afternoon of questions and answers. We had such<\/i> a good time, and it all went either on electronic memory or into various notebooks. We went over Trad lore I know I\u2019d shared before, but which evidently hadn\u2019t been fully understood \u2013 and now, with no distractions and plenty of time, it could be. Under their questions we discovered that a favorite kick-ass spell that I\u2019d taught all of them orally was not after all in our BOS, as I thought. We don\u2019t know if it may have once been there and got lost over the years \u2013 I suspect so because I have a clear memory of seeing it there \u2013 but because of our oral tradition it\u2019s still part of our Lore. Thanks to that afternoon it\u2019s now in the BOS for sure \u2013 they all wrote it down. We\u2019re doing it again with a larger group next month.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a recurring element in folk tales about Witches: that they can\u2019t die until they\u2019ve passed their power to an apprentice or heir. I submit that a Witch can\u2019t die \u2013 or shouldn\u2019t \u2013 until she\u2019s passed on her stories, which is where most of her power derives, anyway. In the end, all any of us has, perhaps all any of us is<\/i>, is our stories. If we let them die with us, our Traditions will die, too. Tell your stories. Please<\/i> tell your stories. You don\u2019t have forever.<\/p>\n
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Bio<\/p>\n
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Telling Our Stories Dana CorbyIn September of 2015, a dear friend of mine had a massive stroke while at work. He was in a coma for days, and despite the best efforts of both his medical team and his magical community, he passed. This man was active in Paganism at least as long as I\u2018ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1314","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>In September of 2015, a dear friend of mine had a massive stroke while at work. He was in a coma for days, and despite the best efforts of both his medical team and his magical community, he passed.<\/p>\n