GRIPE

I have a little gripe about something I noticed recently... wonder what you might think.

Llewllyn Worldwide

They are by far, the largest publishing house of all things Wiccan and Pagan for the Western hemisphere. And, being such a gigantic voice you would assume they hold true some of the basic principles or ideals of the community they represent, right?

I had assumed this for a long time.

They were the publishing house of one of my favorite author (Scott Cunningham) when I first started down this Path back in the late eighties. When I joined my first coven (Church of Magick; Dragon Tradition) in Indiana, I ran into some opposition of what had been in my mind, the leaders of bringing Paganism to the forefront--Llewllyn. My new tribe had nothing good to say about them: they edited too much out, they changed the original intent, they watered everything down and were the leading cause of what came to be known in our Circle as the "Fuzzy-B.M.", (fuzzy bunny movement: clueless practitioners with a cut and paste mentality... also known as posers or fashionably Wiccan.). I did not agree or disagree with them at the time, because I really did not know too much on the subject and did not find it very important. I kept my love of Scott Cunningham to myself when in their presence.

Over the years I have grown to loathe the Pagan/New Age section at bookstores. What once was a sanctuary had now become a thorn. To me, no matter the Publishing house, all Pagan and Wiccan books seemed the same to me--Introductions, 101's and how-to's. It was boring...

But I digress.

My gripe.

To me, one of the basics of Western Paganism is that it is a Nature-based spirituality. In some way, shape or fashion, no matter what Path or Tradition you follow, the Earth, Gaia, Nature, whatever, is sacred to us. We are typically the biggest proponents of a more Green society--trying to save that which is most sacred to us, our Environment.

But yet, there is Llewllyn.

I first discovered something was amiss with them when I was reading a recipe in my Witches' datebook a couple of years ago. Everything being used in it was either processed, canned or frozen and picked up at your local grocer. A light went off in my head. WHY were they not saying things like "organic" or "locally grown" or "farmer's market" or at least "fresh"? So I scanned the little datebook and discovered that all the recipes were like this.And all the articles were written in a 101 mindset...

AND worst of all, I could not find the RECYCLE emblem anywhere on my datebook. No suggestion to recycle or that it had been created from any percentage of Recycled waste.

So I ran to my bookshelf and started tearing through all of my Pagan books... the same. Not a single one was created using post consumer recyclables.

I have yet to find a book on green living by any of our leading pagan authors.

I have yet to find anything online about how Llewllyn (or any other capitalist Pagan Org or Inc) is leading the way in this green revolution that has started.I find this all very disturbing.

And yet one of our leading periodicals, Pan Gaia, in their 5oth issue salutes the work of Carl Llewllyn... which, granted, bringing the Pagan community into the light is a HUGE accomplishment, but if you are breaking one of that communities leading and most basic tenants, should you really be saluted? And also in this issue they saluted the most influential pagans of our time, but no where was there a category for Environmental Action or Activists.

We are the religious movement of NATURE.

We are Nature's guardians.

We are supposedly Nature-Based Religions...REALLY??? Maybe individuals within these groups ARE, but as a whole, I think we may have missed the boat. Our leaders have dropped the ball and are turning our Earth-Based Faiths into the hypocrisies of all the other religions that we were/are trying to escape. Have they become so entranced by the BIG GREEN dollar that they themselves have become Fuzzy-B.M.'s?

If we want our religious identities to be taken as seriously as our neighbors' in this world then we need to ask those within the public spotlight, what are you doing to promote us as a TRUE Nature-based religious movement? They need to be held accountable before we are the biggest joke next to clean burning coal.

AND if the powers-that-be cannot, then it is up to all of us to change this.

When our Judeo-Christian-Islamic brothers and sisters think of Pagans, the Devil should not be the first thing that comes to their minds... it should be NATURE LOVING fanatics, Eco-terrorists, tree huggers, RECYCLE thumpers. WE should be the face of the GREEN movement! Llewllyn, AzureGreen, whoever, should be leading this movement. ALL of our periodicals should at least have a section or column on this. If our authors are searching for something new to write about beyond the 101 manuals (of which there are way too many) here is a WHOLE area you have missed out on. The Spirituality of the Green Way of Life. There is a title of a best seller if ever I saw one.

By the Gods! What have we done to ourselves? We have been so focused on equality of our religious freedoms and trying to educate the world of our legitimacy and the fact that we are not evil cults that we forgot the most basic and over looked cause of our Traditions... Mother Earth.

How can this be changed?

Does anyone else out there care?

Mother Earth, Sky Father, forgive us.

--Mouse.