Thursday, April 21, 2005

The "Yeah, Right" department

A news release for an online witchcraft school trots out the interview that I gave to Religion Link a few months back.

Whoever wrote the release was pretty sloppy. Phyllis Curott, for instance, is a lawyer not a "researcher." And straight-line demographic projections are generally meaningless. Then there is "visionaire." Is that supposed to sound slicker than the usual "visionary"? I think the only vision here is "get rich quick with the World Wide Web." Of course, if you have to divide the money among your "staff of over 300," there will not be much cash to go around.

6 Comments:

Blogger themarigoldtrail said...

They also misspelled your last name. :)

10:54 AM  
Anonymous Freeman said...

On the projected increase in the Pagan population, I see The Hour of the Witch qualifies that with "if this trend continues," a key phrase left out of the news release.

What I'm seeing is that Wicca is losing momentum because the vast majority of people who explore it are only exposed to fluffy neo-Wicca, and it doesn't take them long to find out that there's nothing there. Some of them find their way into other branches of neopaganism, and some wander off to seek elsewhere. This is just me feeling the wind; we'll see what the surveys say as and when they come out.

Many Wiccans speak and write as if they were a majority of neopagans, and often as if they were the only neopagan religion that matters. Neither is true.

I most certainly agree that there is no structure in place to educate the large number of people who want to explore neopaganism.

Basically, when people are attracted to a new religion by the promise of magickal power, a promise which will not be kept for 99.9% of them, we cannot expect to keep very many of them around for long. Very few people have the talent and drive to become practicing magicians; there should be more visible routes into celebratory paganism if we want to accomodate large numbers of new people.

I think that "if current trends continue," rather than a flourishing and visible minority religion, taking its place alongside Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism, neopaganism will be mostly gone by 2012.

11:36 AM  
Blogger Chas S. Clifton said...

I found one place in the world where my name is never misspelled.

11:37 AM  
Anonymous Carol Maltby said...

One, two, many Cliftons...

http://www.getty.edu/vow/TGNServlet?nation=United+States&english=Y&find=clifton&place=&page=1

I see you "collaborated" what they say. Does this mean that come the revolution, someone will frogmarch you out for execution at dawn ?

10:03 PM  
Blogger The Zero Boss said...

Wonderful. Further proof that Pagans can't use statistics appropriately.

What's the point of claiming you're the member of the "fastest-growing religion", anyway? This isn't a dick-swinging contest.

7:20 PM  
Anonymous Carol said...

There won't be enough money for your staff of 300 to share only if you divide it evenly. I'll bet some animals are more equal than others. ;)

5:51 AM  

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