Daily Mail = garbage

I try to ignore them. I get so annoyed when people treat that rag like a legitimate news source.

Can you cite a source for that info, please? That doesn't sound right.

Not in my experience. If anything, I was MORE aware of whom I was talking to. Their energy and our history and everything.

Have you ever been stoned, or were you just making a joke?

So you make one mistake (and serve your time, I might add, and get your name(s) forever on the sex offender list) and you get no support for any spiritual pursuits or anything else ever again... your Human Being card is revoked?

I think not.

How random. Of course what you say is true, but my point was that there's only one jewel we know of, and we ourselves are resultant and dependent on the planet NOT being another rock. My point IS to keep both. I wasn' t really devaluing rocks.

Planetary science is one of my favorite subjects. I value all the individual, unique rocks we know about. =) I just want more humans to value the jewel, and even just stop to think about planets and their value. There is no planet B. We can't screw this up.

Precious planet, brimming with life, I hope I can help in the quest to keep you blue and green. A living jewel is more valuable than another space rock. We know of no other font of life in this universe - May we have the wisdom not to burn down our one home.

"O Great Mother
bless this Earth
through our actions"

Damon has it. Human rights are important to all humans. Pagans have not only the stewardship of the Earth to be concerned with, but the humans along with the rest of nature to protect. So how can anyone think that witch-hunts in far-away lands aren't our problem? Even if I wasn't Pagan I'd still consider it my problem!

Darlings, if you want to have a Council of Nicea, I'm outtie. That didn't go well at all, when the original took root.

I will have to change my "religion" to the worship of Freedom, if Paganism starts trying to throw weight around.

There's a reason "organized religion" is a dirty word, and not just 'round these parts.

Sure you have good intentions, and it might be kind of nice for awhile... until the founders die and the new guard takes over and turns it to their own ends. Then you've armed them with an organized behemoth. Way to go!

I'm more attached to personal spiritual autonomy than to being called Pagan, or finding others to do spiritual work with. I'll go it alone if I have to. It would be a shame if Paganism became the authority figure I or my children have to run and hide from.

Freedom IS the core of spirituality, for me. If that threatens you or holds no value for you, try escaping a cult that is also the dominant regional religion and claiming your religious (indeed, personal and political) freedom at your own peril, like I did. Then pray that your kids and their descendants can stay out of authoritarian clutches when you're gone.

I'd be happy to work with others toward certain goals... but you have to be so, so careful that your monster doesn't get out of hand... and that's the nature of the beast.

Most of the groups I'm aware of don't even have "leaders". Needs change, and we value our freedom to seek what we need, and let things that are no longer necessary die. (Knowing when death is necessary is a very witchy trait.)

People who want lasting things with certain cores can go ahead and serve that mission and be tied to that, long-term. Or find a way to pass the torch to another who cares just as much, if they tire or have their own needs change.

But don't decide, please, that the phenomenon is a problem. Let it exist. Create your thing without deciding the other thing needs to die.

Heh! And like Apuleius says, colloquial usage would contradict this, too. "Sect" implies, without looking at a dictionary, a group that is part of the larger group, just a specialized flavor. "Cults" tend to be the groups that claim to be special and different and exclusive in holding the keys of truth. Sect is a much more "respectable" word in mainstream usage.

The definition of cult I'm familiar with doesn't place few demands on members - quite the opposite! Cults are the ones that demand people fit into their mold, while sects seem to have schismed off the more orthodox main body so as to fit the changing form of people and the wider culture and philosophy of the times.

BTW, I love this article's concept that a healthy phenomena in Paganism might be mistaken for an unhealthy one if it was a traditional religious group. We're more on the sect side, beyond it even, when the group changes so far as to dissolve to fit the members, rather than obligating them to its upkeep.