"If you want to be loved and liked, don't go into psychotherapy."

Take a look at this article about the doyenne of forensic psychotherapy, EstelaWelldon

The field often attracts "do-gooders", says Welldon, who are singularly ill-suited to it. The only physical attack she has ever witnessed at work took place when a colleague comforted a client by patting them sympathetically, prompting an explosive reaction. "Touching them?" she says, "No way. Also, if somebody's saying nobody wants them, and wants to talk about the parts of themselves that are bad, or hateful, they don't want to hear: 'You're actually really nice.' Fuck you! I mean, honestly, it's so condescending, and you're not seeing what the patient wants to give you.

My first exposure to psychiatry was when as a very new student nurse I chaperoned a doctor one night as he spoke with a young woman, about 16 or 17 years old in the Sisters Office. Looking back on it it’s clear now that she had been raped, was in shock and possibly a little dissociated. The psychiatrist was all technique, at one point noting that the woman glanced at a picture of fairies that was propped against a wall and wondering if she’d like to join them. Happily, his bleep went and he left the room.

Having not yet learned that professional means detached, I said something along the lines of “Well thank Christ that load of old rubbish is over. What happened to you?” The doctor hailed me as some kind of miracle worker when he returned and the young woman was able to speak about the evenings events.

When we treat patients as poor souls in need of our expertise we distance ourselves from them and patronise them. As a matter of principle, we are all equals.  And it’s dead true that therapy attracts do-gooders, people in massive need of care themselves who find satisfaction in exerting control over others. Therapists come into training because we’re interested in our own inner lives above and beyond almost everything else; we’re a desperately solipsistic lot and we’re all a bit bonkers. Therapists have to accept that about ourselves to keep the privileges that we’re given under control.

[Welldon] says she has an "enormous amount of violence myself, and I think the patients know that too.”

Hoorah. Many of us are seething with violence a lot of the time but we’ve learned to tone it down, disguise it, pretend it’s something else because that’s what gets rewarded and it’s why so much of Paganism is pathetic. Sitting with some friends the other day one said, ‘If one more person tells me I’m strong, I’ll scream.’ Another replied, ‘Tell them you’re not strong, you’re violent, that’ll shut them up,’ and we laughed with recognition and pleasure. Religions in particular tell us we must be meek and mild, totally accepting, utterly non-judgemental and it’s a very rare person who can come close to that even occasionally. Patients who are wild with fury, often very justifiably, don’t want to be met by someone who would really like them to talk about rainbows and puppies and the power of forgiveness. Whilst it’s often important for a woman patient to have a woman therapist there must also be room for a woman to meet with a male therapist who’s au fait with his responses to sex and  gender and is comfortable with a woman who needs to rage or talk honestly about her dangerous feelings around her children. I’ve met too many women therapists who make their fear and disapproval of women’s rage and violence all too obvious.

We all walk a thin line between professional, cold, and over-involved and we’re not always going to get it right. Good training, a good attitude towards authenticity, excellent and rigorous supervision all help, as does having people around us who are also authentic, who are settled enough in themselves to allow us to be vulnerable, livid, clever, committed, successful. Who are wise enough to allow and accept our humanity in its entirety.

Abuse Excuses

The media is heaving with news and opinion on the conviction of Eric Bikubi and Magalie Bamu, the three day torture and murder of Magalie’s brother, Kristy aged 15, and the torture of Kristy’s other siblings.

This case has been simmering away for a year but it was only after sentencing that pictures of the flat in which Kristy was murdered were allowed to be shown. I’m very unsentimental, detest sentimentality in others and fairly hardened to life, but I was aghast at what I saw on the news last night. Suffice it to say that the people whose duty it was to sit through details of this misery and pass verdict have been exempted from jury service for the rest of their lives.

Commentary is starting to focus on the socio-economic situation of the perpetrators – Bikubi and Bamu lived in a council flat in Peckham, an area of deprivation. The words ‘council flat’ in populist media are code for poverty and general shiftiness and also, to paraphrase a number of talk radio responses,  “We’re giving council flats to asylum seekers who bring their strange and dangerous foreign ways over here.”  Not only were they poor, they were African and therefore doubly troglodyte and unable to know the difference between right and wrong. Which misses the billions of poor people, African people and people in social housing who would not dream of being abusive.

The people who tortured Kristy to death were respectable members of their British communities. There’s the clue to what was really going on:

“People who knew 28-year-old Eric Bikubi have spoken of their shock to learn that the promising football coach . . . who showed no sign of the barbaric nature that was to emerge . . . killed a teenager.”

I’ve worked as a domestic violence counsellor for many years and the same issues arise there too. Perpetrators are very often respectable, charming people well liked by their co-workers and neighbours. In fact, the more charming and well liked perpetrators are the more likely it seems that they will kill, sometimes indulging in family anniahilation. Their motivations are power, control and a sense of entitlement.

When you meet with abusers it’s very easy to be drawn in by their charm. Abusers are almost by definition manipulative. It’s never a matter of ‘losing control’ because abusers are absolutely in control of themselves, they don’t attack their friends and neighbours or strangers who accidentally get in their way as strangers will from time to time. They choose to ‘lose control,’ that is, they choose to become abusive.

 They will say that they blacked out and have no memory of what happened; that the violence appeared out of the blue (“I’m not a violent person”); they deny their victims humanity (“A slut, a bitch,” “A Witch.”) Their entire perception of events is centred around themselves: if the victim hadn’t have done something to them they would not have had to defend themselves, or the police were called in order to punish them rather than to protect their victim – they’re classic narcissists. They have an enormous sense of entitlement and will want to talk about their victims’ behaviour and their own feelings.

Alcohol and stress are often used as excuses for violence. Yes, they can lower inhibitions but they’re also used ritualistically, as a precursor to violence. The scene is set, “I had a drink,” or “I’ve been under a lot of stress.” The abuser blames the victim for causing the stress or for not soothing stress.

Psychological instability is often used as an excuse, either a momentary insanity or because the perpetrator had an abusive childhood. In fact, the link between experiencing abuse as a child and perpetuating abuse as an adult is not clear and, again, discounts the vast majority of children who were abused who do not go on to become abusers.

I’ve no doubt that Bikubi and Bamu will use the ‘cultural belief' in witchcraft as an excuse for their behaviour. At least for a while, until they realise that the UK mental health system is inherently racist and will not tolerate any cultural expressions of distress at all. Whatever their eventual diagnosis part of Bikubi and Bamu's crucible of healing will be to acknowledge that they are child killers and child abusers: it has nothing to with witchcraft or kindoki style=, or any other 'cultural' practice.

You Need This Book

Three years ago it was Mindfulness. In the late '80's it was Project 2000. I've lost count of the stuff in between but at least this says what it means: Be Intelligent. And Be Kind. I'm hopeful that this will go some way towards altering the industrialisation of looking after people because it addresses it. It might be kinder if this book was not £25 but it looks like being a good investment. Here's the review from the Royal College of Psychiatrists.


Intelligent Kindness: Reforming the Culture of Healthcare

Intelligent Kindness is a powerful new approach to healthcare reform. Ballatt and Campling argue that the NHS is a system that invites society to value and attend to its deepest common interests; it is a vital expression of community and one that can improve if society, patients and staff can reconnect to these deeper values. To do so will improve quality and patient experience, as well as morale, effectiveness, efficiency and value for money.

Relentless regulatory and structural NHS ‘reforms’ have failed to avert scandals and left many health service staff feeling alienated. Industrial and market approaches to reform, whatever their merits, urgently need to be balanced by an applied understanding of what motivates and assures compassionate practice. The authors examine this topic from a wide variety of perspectives, including psychoanalytic thinking, group relations, neuropsychology, social psychology and ethology.

This book calls on policymakers, managers, educators and clinical staff to apply and nurture intelligent kindness in the organisation and delivery of care, and offers advice as to what this approach means in practice.

Readership: This book will be essential reading for health service managers, clinical leads, politicians, policy-makers and health journalists.

About the authors:

John Ballatt - Independent consultant advising on health and social care and organisational systems, Leicester.

Penelope Campling - Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist at Francis Dixon Lodge (a therapeutic community), Leicester.

Carers Week: Caregiving and Truth Telling

Sick people are grumpy and often angry. Wise Elders can turn bratty and difficult when they feel less able and under threat. I knew that going in. The trick was not to match these moods with more of the same, which, by and large, I avoided.

From Sia's Full Circle blog

It's The Economy, Stupid.

Voluntary Euthanasia is going to become legal in the UK within, please Goddess, my lifetime. Elderly people live longer, we don't want to pay for their wellbeing and we don't want to care for them ourselves because we've been told that being employed is far more important and that caring is someone elses job. But we can't bear to hear the endless story of elder abuse in hospitals and care homes either.

Many illnesses that would previously have killed us have now become chronic conditions and the health service was never designed to care for infirmities that can last 50 years. That's not to say that it shouldn't - it absolutely should - but whether we like it or not it all costs money, and our population is growing, aging, becoming more and more unwell . . .

The London School of Economics is discussing it. Is there a Pagan thealogy of assisted suicide? Because there certainly are any number of Christian takes on the subject, some of them not as hardcore as we might imagine.



Jack Kervorkian, a poineer of assisted suicide, died today aged 83.

Spare A Thought For Carers

A guest post from Sue Vincent

There are over six million unpaid carers in the UK alone. They range from small children to old age, and care quietly for family, friends and neighbours. In 2006 it was estimated that this silent workforce saved the UK economy around £87 billion that would otherwise had to be spent on social and medical care.

The 30th May is a Bank Holiday in England. I, and my fellow carers, will not get a day off, nor get paid extra, or at all, for working.

Carers are often forgotten, hidden, silent and isolated. Children who cannot learn to grow and play with their peers, because they care for their parents and siblings. Skilled and talented people who cannot work or create because their days, and often their nights, are spent caring. There is no time, nor is there energy for a social life. Holidays are rare, if ever. Careers, dreams, hopes and futures are surrendered daily, silently, to meet the needs of love.

As carers, there are 'rights', legislation, policies... and little support except from peer groups. Pride goes out of the window as poverty is enforced in very many cases. There is not a vast package of welfare benefits available to carers, as many people believe. Caring becomes a lifestyle. So does begging.

Carers need to be nurses, secretaries, chambermaids, housekeepers, cleaners, gardeners, taxi drivers, psychologists, counsellors, cooks, personal shopper and PA. Carers are companions, lifelines and advocates. We get no training, we learn through neccessity.

Carers are often exhausted, get little sleep and are expected to carry on. We are human, we get lonely, frustrated, irritated.. then feel incredibly guilty because our problems are so much less than those of the person for whom we care.

Carers are at risk of depression, isolation, injury and poverty. You cannot solve all these problems, but there IS something you CAN do. Many carers find any kind of social contact difficult, through time, expense... or the fading away of their social networks. Many rely on email and phone to stay in touch and remind ourselves we are human. An empty inbox can be a body blow when you are down.

All I ask is that you look at your friends and aquaintances and identify the carers among them. I can almost guarantee that you know at least one! Then pick up the phone, write a letter, send an email, a joke, a smile and LET A CARER KNOW YOU CARE.

Please, if this makes sense to you, pass this around.

Thank you.

----------------------------------------

The creaking wakes me.

Four a.m., and again I am poised,

Ready to rise from the sofa bed,

Conscious of the steel strut against my spine.

Above my head, in the room once mine,

The bed that was mine once upon a time

Grinds against the wall.

He is wakeful again.

Another bad dream?

There are many.

There are tears.

There is fear and ‘what if’s?’

Every day.

Even the wonderful dreams hold pain,

The pain of loss and memory

The pain of what was and what should have been.

Reality is his nightmare.

“It is shit being me,”

I can dream too.

I can watch the flaying of a loved one,

A mangled body, broken in hate,

Love disembowelled by madness.

I stifle my screams in  the pillow

Or sob in the bathroom, quietly.

Even now.

I can see the scars on his chest

The tubes went in there, and there, and there..

No escape from heartache and memory,

Even in hope.

Body aches,

Mind is tired,

Bones hurt,

Muscles beg for peace,

Wedded to exhaustion.

The last shreds of youth

Leached away

Worry is my bedfellow.

Yet, how dare I complain?

How dare I feel tired?

He should be dead,

Fighting each day,

Hunting life with passion,

Pursuing the impossible,

Grasping its tail

With paralysed fingers.

I the squire, he the knight,

The dragon of disability

And the worm of despair,

The quest, the grail of normality.

Our shield is laughter

And gentle lunacy.

Our armour a refusal

To accept pain as answer.

My sin is hope,

My sin despair

Poised on the knife edge

Razor sharp, each step cutting.

My burden, guilt.

Failure to protect

To prevent the unpreventable

Failure to heal the unhealable

Illogical, ridiculous.

Yet human.

Because I am his Mum.

And because I care.

Sue Vincent

Moral Cretins

A guest post from Mogg Morgan

The so-called Kidwelly Sex Cult Case probably raises all sorts of mixed emotions amongst the UK’s many occultists and Pagans. It has just the kind of lurid details that make it difficult to focus on the core issues in the case and the temptation must surely be to keep one’s head down and hope the scandal blows over. And after all, rational discourse largely stops as soon as the boogeyman of Aleister Crowley or to give him his full name “Mr Aleister Satanist Crowley” or “Sir Aleister Notorious Crowley”, enters the narrative.

Let me say right out that I think the culprit Colin Batley and his accomplices are moral cretins (The same term was applied to Karen Mathews – who faked the kidnapping of her own neglected daughter in order to claim some putative award). People like Colin Batley claim they are following the imperatives of the Devil, Satan or Aleister Crowley for the bad they do. And the courts and the media are happy to accept that the long dead libertine Aleister Crowley and his works are somehow responsible for the wrong people do. I’m not sure if they ever bother to discover which came first, the Batley’s violent, abusive personality or his interest on Crowley and his Thelemic religion – it is just assumed that one must have caused the other. But I say that in the end the evil people do is down to their own moral failings.

The details they are reported from the trial show to my admitted practice eye that these people have misinterpreted and misunderstood Crowley and more especially his Thelemic Religion that has many thousands of law abiding modern disciples. Contrary to what you may hear in the press and indeed even in some Pagan commentary, in my opinion Thelema is not an immoral creed. Its famous axiom “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” (reported as “Do what thou wilt” in some new reports) is an ideal intended for an enlightened community of refined adults. Its core myth is found in the Early European novels of Rabelais, where he envisions an ideal community as an escape from the chaos, crime and madness of the times. Its motto is indeed “Do what thou wilt” (Fais ce que voudras) but this commune can only function if certain kinds of behaviour are excluded. In other words perverts such as Colin Batley would be excluded from the Thelemic community, for the simple reason they are dominated by their most base desires.

Crowley emphasises this very point in a pamphlet called Liber II, widely circulated amongst all true seekers of the Thelemic religion. He is at great pains to emphasis that “Do what thou wilt” is not the same as “Do what you want”. In comparative religion this approach is more akin to yoga and indeed it is in the widely despised Tantrik texts that the explanation of Crowley’s system really lays. But in short Thelema aims to develop enlightened, compassionate human beings.

For a more modern version of the rules of an ideal community – see John Rawls’ “A Theory Of Justice” which contains a “thought experiment” not unlike Rabelais’s “Abbey of Thelema”. The whole is the subject of the Harvard University’s first freely available online course on Justice – see www.justiceharvard.org/

For press reports of the trail see http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2011/03/13/aleister-crowley-s-influence-on-colin-batley-and-his-followers-91466-28326466/#ixzz1GToHTpW9

The Kidwelly group’s actions show them to know none of this. They are merely venal criminals who use the widespread fear and ignorance of Paganism and magic as a smokescreen for their abusive personalities. This case has very little to do with any genuinely held religious beliefs but is about one person using his power over others to fulfil his own perverted needs. I venture to guess that his personality was formed long before he ever heard the name Aleister Crowley and absorbed the popular myths about Satan and the Devil, As 'cult leader' he found a way to gain power over other gullible or otherwise vulnerable people.

It is easy for us to be sidetracked by the sensational details, which shows just how powerful the image of “cult leader” is in mainstream society. The details of the trial make me seriously doubt that he ever had contact with a genuine, Thelemic or Crowleyian group or was aware of the appropriate training in the tradition. His knowledge of Thelema is superficial and minuscule and based on unsupervised reading and uninformed secondary sources, perhaps even the media. I have no problems condemning what Colin Batley has done and feel sure I am not alone in my condemnation.

Mogg Morgan with contributions from Kym and Floortje

Caring For The Pagan Patient

Thank you for your regular readership - who'd have known that a such niche subject would have so many people returning to read about it?

It makes me hopeful that the wider community of Pagans can contribute to the non-Pagan understanding of the needs of Pagans in hospital. Well over a decade ago I wrote a small booklet on the subject that has been thoroughly plagiarised and it's overdue a revamp.

But any information will be so much more meaningful if it comes from the horses mouth rather than me simply giving my limited experience and understanding of what the greater body of Pagans might need.

So if you've ever been in hospital, please share your experience here, at a sister blog, Caring For The Pagan Patient. If you know someone who has been or is or will be an inpatient, let them know about this resource and encourage them to contribute. Ask the question on your own blog or webpage. When you have your next Pagan gathering, bring it to your friends attention: ask them  to consider how they might get their spiritual needs met if they have to become an inpatient, ask those who have been patients how it was for them, what, if anything, they would have done differently, what they really needed and didn't get, what they didn't expect and were pleasantly surprised by. You know the kind of thing - what would you want your non-Pagan carers to know about your needs?

It's been impossible to get this project going in the past but with 540 hits in the last couple of weeks - I know, we should all write about Satanic Abuse if we want a massive increase in traffic! -  I'm hopeful we can move this along a little.

Enjoy the huge Full Moon and consider how simple and satisfying it is to contribute to the health and welfare of your sisters and brothers.

Japan

 "Several well known Pagans have joined with Peter Dybing in his effort to raise $30,000 to assist victims of the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Selena Fox, Starhawk, Patrick McCullum, T. Thorn Coyle, Anna Rowe, M Macha Nightmare, Star Foster, Jason Pitzl-Waters, Morgana, Ivo Dominguez Jr, Holli S Emore, and Katrina Messenger have all made statements in support of this charity initiative.

Dybing has set up a fundraising page to gather donations from Pagans to send to Doctors Without Borders. This organization has teams on the ground in Japan and is setting up medical treatment centers."

Like everyone else, I am speechless at what has happened - what is happening - in Japan. As well as passing the message on about Doctors Without Borders, if you're on Facebook take the time to read these translations of tweets from Japanese people.

This earthquake has reminded me of that Japanese goodness that had recently become harder and harder to see.  Today I see no crime or looting: I am reminded once again of the good Japanese spirit of helping one another, of propriety, and of gentleness.  I had recently begun to regard my modern countrymen as cold people … but this earthquake has revived and given back to all of us the spirit of “kizuna” (bond, trust, sharing, the human connection).  I am very touched.  I am brought to tears.

We're living through extraordinary times, many of us are facing unpleasant futures one way or another, and the Japanese are showing that grace under pressure is possible, none moreso than the people who have been working in the nuclear facilities for a week. More, that just allowing our natural urge to reach out and work with and for each other makes life infinately more bearable, whether that's committing a slow and fairly certain suicide to try and avert meltdown or cheering people up by offering them a toilet and a place to rest. It's a natural instinct in us. If dogs can manage it for each other, so can we.

Pagan Complacency

Of course, it doesn’t help when Paganism is associated with this behaviour as it is in today’s Daily Mirror but theology has to be considered and created without PR in mind. 

Over the last couple of days I’ve heard Pagans saying things along the lines of, “I don’t see what Satanic abuse has to do with Paganism, do we really want to be associated with that?” and I find my heart just sinking. 

It’s as Nottingham, Orkney, Cleveland and Rochdale never happened. 

Ian and Penny Campbell, both Wiccans, after being found totally innocent, were as welcome in their community as a fire in an orphanage. Their children were put into care. Here’s a transcript of part of the first four-hour formal police interview:

Police Officer: "Do know anyone else who, or have you heard of anyone else who, practices the occult?"

Ian Campbell: "No. I don’t know of anyone who practices that kind of religion."

PO: "Have you any knowledge of the use of statues in practicing the occult? What about the ritualistic killing of animals? Ritualistic dress, as in gowns, that type of thing? Do you have any books about witchcraft?"

IC: "Umm, Wicca witches and things like that? Yes in the kitchen?"

PO: "Wicca witches? What’s that?"

IC: "Well paganism, you don’t know about paganism?"

PO: "I don’t."

IC" "It is not against the law. Paganism is basically about people who believe in mother Earth. It’s not witchcraft as in, you know, flaming voodoo sort of things."

PO: "I have information that you were involved in devil-worshipping ceremonies. Have you ever been into devil worship?"

IC: "Not at all."

PO: "The information we have is that it has taken place and that you did use it to dress up in a long white gown and wore masks, as did your wife, and that you carried out some sort of ceremony during which there was dancing, and that your children were dressed up in a similar manner to yourselves and there was music being played, described as Indian music. And also that during this, some form of chanting and praying took place. Further to that, there was information given to us that whilst this was being conducted, it was being videoed on a camcorder. Have you been in a position of seeing any videos which would depict serious sexual abuse? People being killed, and I’m not talking acting here? Have you ever drank the blood of a chicken? Have you ever witnessed anybody else doing that? Ever drink the blood of any other animal?"

And here's one from a (discredited) Channel 4 documentary

JOURNALIST: Do you remember the interview with Bea Campbell? The one that was filmed for the Channel 4 programme? 

JEAN: Yes. 

JOURNALIST: So, are you a witch? 

JEAN: No. I’ve never been into ought like that. 

JOURNALIST: Then why did you tell Bea Campbell that you were? 

JEAN: She came to see me at work. She had Chris Johnstone the social worker in tow. I was really angry about it. I’d only just got the job and the last thing I needed were social workers turning up and asking to speak to me. I told them I didn’t want to be in their program.

JOURNALIST: What happened then?

JEAN: Chris Johnstone said that if I didn’t do the interview and say that I’d been a witch, I’d never see me kids again. I was trying to get them out of care at the time. So I agreed to do it. I just thought I’d get me kids back.

JOURNALIST: So then you did the interview?

JEAN: First Bea Campbell took me to a bank and cashed a cheque and gave me £150. JOURNALIST: If you lied for Bea Campbell, why should we believe what you are saying now?

JEAN: Because now I know the truth. Chris [Johnstone] lied to me about getting me kids back. I was never going to get me kids back. And I were never a witch. 

Geoffrey Dickens, MP, tried to pass a bill on April 15, 1988 that would prevent children attending Pagan ritual. As he made his statement in the House of Commons he mentioned Chris Bray, the owner of a Pagan bookshop called the Sorcerers Apprentice, by name and Bray was hounded by the local and mainstream media and had to have police protection. On August 13 1989, Fundamentalist Christians broke into the shop and burned it to the ground. 

Pagans who don’t think the myth of satanic abuse is a problem for Paganism need to wake up. If you hadn’t noticed, the UK has become very Right Wing and one in 6 of us is functionally illiterate. Membership of conservative and extreme Christian groups has exploded. As a society we are unsettled, scared about losing our public services, our jobs, universal benefits, pensions, having to work longer for less. We’re being taught to find scapegoats – immigrants, people on benefits, asylum seekers, any minority group will do. In other words we’re primed for (oh the irony!) a witchhunt.

Actually, you just have to read a paper or listen to the radio or read some pages on the internet on SatanicRitual Abuse and Paganism.

 

Bear in mind that this is just the state of affairs in the UK. US and African Evangelicals have a direct influence on what British mainstream Churches believe and do, and they can be both hysterical and politically influential.There, jurors, lawyers, the whole shebang are childishly prejudiced.

Those of us who were Pagans in the 80’s and 90’s and had small children were pretty concerned. We noticed that the majority of the people who were accused of Satanic abuse weren’t Pagan which was selfishly reassuring, but what was desperately concerning was that the people doing the accusing were mainstream doctors, police officers, social workers, therapists, people in good standing with their professions and peers. 25 years on what I’m increasingly concerned about is that Satanic Ritual Abuse is totally accepted by many intelligent professionals with no apparent religious roots at all. 

Interestingly, being intelligent people, they are also feminists and there’s a strange link between SRA and 1980’s feminism – which is when I learned both feminism and Witchcraft. 

Patriarchy is known to hurt men as well as women, children, the Earth and all creatures on it. We forget that in the 70’s and 80’s married men were officially Patriarchs, they were the head of the family, and it was evident that this paradigm of men-in-power was bringing us all to the point of Silent Spring and mutually assured destruction. Feminists fiercely resisted this, developing our own family and community structures, creating relationships beyond dominion or submission for ourselves and for the natural world. This is the fertile grounds from which non-Wiccan witchcraft sprung. 


Other feminists took a different route, one of genuine man hating, which saw all men as rapists. Beatrix Cambell was one of those feminists. She was implacable in her belief that the family was the source of female oppression (which it often was) therefore fathers were routinely anally raping their daughters and the government was part of a huge conspiracy to cover it all up. She caused 112 children to be removed from their homes, invasively examined often more than once, and put into care. 14 months ago, she’s still going on about it in a mainstream broadsheet, with an OBE. 

My colleagues aren’t mad or stupid but they probably read the Guardian alongside other papers and, being about 10 years older than me, they’d have experienced the full, exciting, creative force of second wave feminism. In all it’s aspects.  Of course, that Satanic Ritual Abuse and Recovered Memory Syndrome are being taught in universities is another really worrying reason. We expect teachers to teach truthfully, but how much do any of us vet 'experts' who've written books and done other lectures, and who look and sound not at all like a frothing loon?

So Pagans who think satanic ritual abuse has nothing to do with them had better wake up. 

We don’t need to make a fuss, though not so long ago the Pagan Federation would have automatically written to the Mirror to object to the word ‘Pagan’ being used in relation to the Batley's and have put out a press release making clear what Paganism does and doesn’t do. We’ve become complacent. We assume that, well, everyone knows SRA is a load of discredited old rubbish. 

They don’t. 


ADDITION: Nearly two years on Jason over at Wild Hunt has written about the subject "Those Dark Satanic Mills: The moral panic that won't die" and, presumably because it's been written by a big name American, people in the Pagan Federation have woken to the possibility that it might be an issue. 

Lost Lambs?

I'm sorry for the horrible non-editing on this post - for some reason blogger won't allow me paragraph returns or a decent font size. Life can be that random. Thanks for bearing with it.

----------------------------------------------

Here we have a number of people who have done absolutely dreadful things over a long period of time, to each other, to children and to other adults. In March and April 2009 I wrote two entries for this blog, one about my principal that, given particular circumstances, I am as capable of heinous acts as any other person and that to forget this puts criminals into the role of Radical Other. Making people Other denies their humanity and limits the expansion of our own capacity to make contact: if I claim to be in contact with the Spirit of Tree or Land or Ancestor, how can I not be in contact with these people who raped and prostituted children?        

The April entry was about my understandings of Pagan theology which helps me define my own personal boundaries. Because I believe that the sexual aspects of our life are sacred then sex crimes become exceptionally dreadful. Because I believe that the people I visit are essentially my equals and not little lost lambs, then my role is not to save them. Because there is no hell then there’s no eternal damnation to save them from. Because there’s no hell I can’t grant absolution; each individual has to seek our own right relationship with the world and with ourselves.       

It’s well within the bounds of possibility for one of these people to request a Pagan chaplain. They’ve used the The Book of The Law and Egyptian iconography to dominate and control their victims, I’d put a fiver on a bet that they’ve used the pentagram, circle and quarters. They’ve demonstrated the need to feel different from the rest of their community, as well as the sense of superiority that the Occult can offer. Since our definition of A Pagan is someone who calls themselves A Pagan, then aren’t they entitled to a Pagan Chaplain?       

I’d say a very definite no. Paganism is not a religion of turning the other cheek, wise though that Christian philosophy can be. Paganism is not a religion of unconditional love, no matter what our New Age members say. Neither are we a religion of retribution, an eye for an eye has no place in our way of being. Since we share a concept of some kind of peaceful learning after death, then we can trust that learning to take place peacefully after death if it doesn’t happen before. Since we need no intermediary between our Gods and ourselves we can communicate with those Gods for ourselves.   Should this be a once and for all decision? Probably not. Perhaps after some years of good therapy and personal introspection these people might be ready to take full responsibility for what they did, without excuses, becoming changed in a manner that allows them to be useful and positive in the world again. The veracity of these feelings is incredibly hard to judge: to survive prisoners have to manipulate people and the Batleys are already past masters at this game, a game that the manipulator has to make themselves believe for the deception to be successful. People who have truly accepted their culpability, who have stood in the crucible of public and private shame and guilt, are rare. Might it be appropriate for what is in effect shunning or excommunication to be reversed so that being genuinely contrite (for crimes committed rather than for getting caught) has a purpose? Otherwise, why bother with painful introspection and personal growth?       

If we are anything, we are a religion of interconnectedness, relationship and balance. This doesn’t mean that we have to accept and absorb all human behaviour, it means we have to attend to the balance of our connections and relationships. Some people put themselves beyond the pale in one group and find healthy connection and relationship in others, but there are some behaviours that, on a purely ecological level, damage all human groups. Rape is one. Child sex is one. Massive abuse of power is one. Not all societies agree with those limitations, but all varieties of Pagans do, and it’s what makes Paganism as a philosophy more healthy than many others.       

When Colin and Elaine Batley, Shelly Millar and Jackie Marling were caught they woke up from their reality in which they were all-powerful. It was a lack of balance and interconnectedness that allowed their world to exist at all and now, being back in relation with the rest of the world, they’re suffering the rebalancing effects of imbalanced actions that all Pagans, all thinking people, find abhorrent. Who am I to get in the way of that natural law? Apart from anything else, who on Earth do I think I am, if I believe I can?