~shame of intolerance~

bigotry, intolerance, mind-set, narrow-mindedness, one-sidedness, prejudice, unfairness, viewpoint, animosity, bigotry, contemptuousness, discrimination, illiberality, injustice, narrow-mindedness

the serenity my yoga brought me this morning had gone, instead i am feeling rather angry and upset.

i spent the morning writing up some notes on counter-culture and religion then decided i would have a browse on the web while having my tea break,

now on my lunch time break decided to blog, to empty my mind of the negative before starting this afternoon's study session.

as i said, i was browsing the web and came across a site, a pagan site~my, but what an intolerant, aggressive sounding place it was.

in a few sentences it managed to discount any other path than its own as being inconsequential.

which actually takes me to something i was thinking about the other day after reading a back issue of what was then called 'pagan dawn'...a term i really hate and is just as worse as being sexist, racist, homophobic...fluffy bunny.

fluffy bunnies are, apparently, people who are new to paganism, (although the focus of many attacks are towards wiccans) people who take their beliefs from a few books, who see sweetness and light in everything...the list is endless but you get the idea.

anyone who chooses to label a person or group in this way are nothing more than narrow-minded idiots.

maybe these people do this to make themselves feel, like the bully in the playground, more important, that their pagan path is more important and real and of course you usually get those who are at pains to point out they have been a pagan since being an emryo and so of course are so far up the 'i am better than you' ladder as to be in the clouds and by being derogatory they are showing themselves to be apart, superior to those they label, the fluffy bunnies. if your thoughts, ideas, opinions and practices are not in line with what they say then it is wrong.

who are they to generalize and question others practice? do they actually talk to these people

ask them about their beliefs and engage in discussion?

i always thought that the joy of any pagan path is the lack of restriction, there is nothing written in stone on what each path will believe~

the shame of it is that sites like the one i visited, with all its associated off-shoots and attitudes will stop newcomers to any kind of pagan path from wanting to participate physically in social groups, attend moots and rituals and further their interests/studies~what these kind of folk need to remember is they were new to paganism once, whatever their path and however long they have been following it, to remember that just using big words and 'claiming' knowledge does not make them superior to the next pagan at the moot.