OPEN LETTER TO THE PAGAN COMMUNITY WHY MUST THERE BE WITCH WARS? I am writing this letter to the Pagan community at large concerning prejudice within the Pagan community itself. My reason for writing it is due to the prejudice, intolerance and misunderstanding I have endured from fellow Pagans ever since I started down Pagan path. We are supposed to be fighting prejudice against us as Pagans, and we are supposed to be working to dispel misconceptions and educate the world about what we are really about. Unfortunately the very prejudice that we complain about from others is quite prevalent within the Pagan community itself. As President Lincoln stated, a house divided against itself cannot stand. If we hope to ever accomplish anything, we must solve our internal problems before we can hope for the rest of the world to take us seriously. Thus I decided to write an open letter to the people in the Pagan community who show intolerance and disrespect for others in the Pagan community who don't share their views. When I first started down Pagan path and started attending public rituals, those of you I call fundamentalist Pagans were quick to make fun of me because I started out Christo-Pagan. I wasn't Pagan enough for you, and you made fun of things I read as a "born again Pagan" taking my first baby steps. You disparaged writers like Scott Cunningham because you saw him as "fluffy bunny", and it soon became apparent to me that you were applying this hurtful epithet to me as well. I was told ritual had to be done by the book, with the right invoking pentagrams and devoking pentragrams, and everything had to be done in the right direction at the right time. I was told you can't do anything without creating a circle, and you always had to do a Great Rite. If I didn't have the biggest athame I was not in the "in crowd", and I was told you can't really be truly Pagan if someone else doesn't initiate you, even though I thought Scott Cunningham and others had a point when they asked who it was who initiated the first Pagan witch. You laughed and called me a prude when I said that being "skyclad" seemed disrespectful to me in front of my gods. You talked a lot about "perfect love and perfect trust", but I frankly could not imagine being bared in either body or soul in your presence, as there was obviously no love in your demeanor, and I personally felt no trust for you for that reason. It soon became obvious to me who the real fundie Christian was - you. You didn't leave the Christian god behind when you became Pagan - you brought him with you into every sacred circle you stepped into. You brought the same "my way or the highway" mentality with you that I thought I had left behind when I left Christianity. On top of that you are a hypocrite. You decry the hatred, intolerance, misunderstanding, and bigotry that you feel you are getting from Christians. Then you turn around and call them "Xtians", refusing to even use the proper name of their god in the word you refer to them by, thus showing your contempt and demeaning them with a word which in the Pagan community translates to the equivalent of "the 'n' word". You expect tolerance, but you give forth none. As I evolved on my faith path, I ended up embracing a lot of eclectic beliefs into my faith system. I am now quite pantheistic, and even though I honor the man that history insists on calling Jesus, whose actual name was Yeshua or Joshua, I do not describe myself as Christo-Pagan any more. I still respect his philosophy, though. It's just too bad that Christianity is not Christian. I follow both the right hand and the left hand path as an eclectic Pagan Satanist. First I was too "light" for you. Now I am too "dark" for you. You have tried to describe and define my beliefs to me, when I should know more about them than you do, and you know absolutely nothing - or less than nothing. You call me a "reverse Christian" and say I am not Pagan. It seems I can't do anything to satisfy you - not that I care. It is my path, not yours, and only I have the right to define what it is, not you. Paganism is about freedom, but you believe the only freedom that should exist is yours. You don't want to allow others theirs. Let's compare how each of us lives their lives and see who is the "real" Pagan. I helped establish a Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans group at my local Unitarian Universalist fellowship. Considering the fact that all of the children in the fellowship are Pagan, the entire fellowship will be Pagan in another generation. I helped establish a Pagan legacy for the future that will endure for generations to come. I donate to a charity that benefits children. I don't care what their religion is. Needy children are just children, and if we want our world to have a future we must nourish our children. I raise money for cancer research because I want to eliminate this disease forever and create a new generation which does not even know what cancer is. I have a prayer list that I use every night in my devotions. It gets longer every day, as the world has a lot of sadness in it. I don't care about the religion of the people I pray for. I figure people in need come in all flavors, and I believe the Spirit that unites all of us doesn't care what religion they are. I support the local library by donating books for its fund drives so that future generations will love learning and reading. I belong to an interfaith group where we share laughter and love and concerns and beliefs. We educate and enrich each other's lives. In this group I am arm in arm with such diverse people as an Anglican minister, liberal Christians, and Pagans of all kinds. I create poetry and essays that make people think and feel and see the Divine Spirit and our world in new and inspiring ways. What have you done lately, besides spread your own brand of venom? What have you created? Whom have you reached out to or prayed for? Who have you helped? Name one single thing you have done to make this world a better place. As my Pagan Satanist minister friend likes to say, what did you do for Satan today? Did you do anything for any of your deities today? Let me enlighten you about the new face of left hand path. We are theistic, not atheistic. Our god is not evil. We are eclectic and we blend right and left hand path beliefs.