Why I embrace community, but very carefully.

Events of the past few months in the Israeli Pagan community reminded me why I usually work alone or with a small, intimate group.  As will happen to any community of Pagans and mystics, the Israeli community has attracted vampires.  I don’t mean the blood sucking sort.  I mean psychic vampires whose only proactive behavior is to attempt to kill the soul of any person who dares refuse to play their game.

Until now, I’ve held my tongue because I didn’t have permission from their favorite target.  The situation was very hurtful to him, and he needed to heal well enough.  Now he has, and I do.

In this case, we have a reluctant leader who we’ll call Diva, a two-spirit “mama bear” type, and two of her former students, and 2 supposed friends, who we’ll call Itchy, Scratchy,  Trollface, and Newt.  Diva, like most divas, was very proud of himself, but unlike most divas, his generosity and dedication to education in the mystical arts matched his pride.  He was not perfect, but then nobody is.

Itchy, Scratchy, Trollface, and Newt were all hot messes when they came to Diva.  Being a living embodiment of proactive, he set his hands to helping them to solve their problems both practically and through magick.  As much as he encouraged them and helped them though, to get them to actually do anything positive to help themselves was difficult.  Slowly slowly though, he helped them to pull themselves up, with limited success.

When I say limited, I do mean limited.  Apparently they learned very little in the way of magickal instruction.  Because (due to one of Diva’s imperfections) he allowed them to get close to him and to be privy to some of his “darker” workings, they used this information against him, went on the offensive, and tried to bind him magickally.

This failed of course, since they don’t even know how to approach a forest sprite with any level of respect.  So they used his psychological insecurities against him, even getting to the point of telling him that he should commit suicide.

. . .

Unsure of himself, Diva stood down because he thought to himself that maybe he was out of control.  There are times when everyone goes a little too far, but they and he questioning himself, blew them way, way out of proportion.  What is funny is that these vampires played the concerned friend in front of Diva, but were busy little bees around the Pagan community, smearing Diva’s name and worse, putting other members of the community in danger, summonning Spirits they neither respect nor understand.

Since they didn’t try to sell me the bill of goods, and by the time I learned anything was going on, Diva was still questioning himself, I wasn’t sure that they were wrong…until he told me that they wanted him to give them his list of students and clients.

This is confidential information that NO ONE should even ask for.  To demand someone to give it is one of the lowest things one can ask.  The only people who might have that right in some situations is the police, but even then they shouldn’t get it.  It is like someone off the street demanding a priest tell them what someone else confessed just because they don’t like them.

What it boils down to is that they lack any real skills or power, and can’t even retain basic information because they are spiritually retarded, but they want to seize his client list to see if there are any suckers they can exploit by saying they were Diva’s students.  They want to destroy him and yet use his name to deceive and steal from people.

I don’t care if Diva was out of control.  The vampires went too far.

…but this is exactly why I don’t get too invested in the community or take on apprentices or students very easily.  Every community eventually gets attacked by psychic vampires, but not every community is strong enough not to let them take over.

In the case of the Israeli Pagan community, it may be lost.  The culture here fosters far too much apathy, and the current so-called leaders of the Pagan community are screwing their people as much as the government did until things got so bad that someone with a college degree couldn’t find a job as a waitress.  I wonder how bad things will have to get before the Pagan community sees that they’re being duped by four greedy, pathetic wretches with fantasies of being Harry Potter but without the level of self discipline to pull a rabbit out of a hat on amateur night at a hole in the wall.

I wonder who they will call to put out the fires when the idiocy run rampant causes more problems than it has already.  Diva?  Me?  One of the few who managed to see through their b.s?

…and I honestly don’t know how I would react to being asked for help by one of those stupid enough to follow them into the abyss.  I probably would try to help them, but I understand there is no cure for stupid.

Do I want to spend my life trying to help the stupid to not suffer the consequences of their stupidity?  I suppose I will have to do a little here and there in the name of keeping my neighborhood clean.  However, I would much rather spend my time helping those whose problems are not self inflicted.