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Your Stories of Bullying - Cases Five and Six

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Case Five:

I own and operate a metaphysical store, and part of what we offer are classes and events.

We have a 700 sq ft ritual room that has been all painted and set up with the elements, altars, pillows for meditation, etc. It is offered to the community for them to use free of charge. I try to do what ever I can for the community from putting on public rituals free of charge, to offering free classes and free readings. I also have a huge selection of items for sale and I offer store credit to anyone who needs it. If someone needs an item, but can not afford it and it is with in my ability (financially) to gift it to them I do that.

Now here is my problem. There have been some people that came into the store started asking questions, taking classes, participating in the public rituals. But all in all befriended my husband and I. They never seemed to have money to buy anything, though. I just kept gifting it to them when ever I could. Then out of the blue two different groups of these people started slandering me and my store. They said things that were not only false but so false they were ridiculous. I have lost business over it. I have lost sleep and I have gone from spending 70-80 hours a week in my store to my husband having to drag me into the store in the morning because I just do not want to be here. This has really broken my heart, so to speak!

I am originally from ________. I will never regret moving here because it has taught me a lot and I have met great people. However I am faced with a..."what do I do now?" Do I keep my store and Church open? Do I close the store, but keep selling items on line and offering classes out of my home? Do I close the store and return home to ________?

I have currently banned all of the parties involved from our e-group and from the store, but it just keeps getting worse. I have read all of your info on your site, but most of what I have read seems to be about bullies in general or people that feel they have been bullied by elders in their groups. What advice or info can you shed light on when neophytes are bullying the HP or HPS of the community? Remember this is not a coven but a community of solitaries that just get together to support each other and share ideas under a common goal. Thank you for having such a wonderful site and may the lord and lady bless you as you travel from shore to distant shore.

Iris, in a Mid-Western State

My Response:

Unfortunately your story is quite a common one in the Pagan Community. I know of a local store which was rumoured to be run by animal-sacrificing Satanists and so there was an effort to boycott them.  I helped to explode this rumour last year and business is up again but I think the battle is not over yet. In this instance I suspect that the source of the slander may be a rival store, and it ultimately may be in your case too.

What struck me most about your e-mail is that you are far too good to these persons. Call it human nature or whatever you want, but most people do tend to bite the hand that feeds them sooner or later. People who are too generous often get used or abused (or both).

I know you probably don't really want to do this, but I think you should start charging a nominal fee for the use of your facilities, workshops and especially readings. It doesn't have to be huge, but it would weed out the deadbeats who want to take advantage of you. I would be willing to bet that many of these people CAN afford to pay you something, but choose not to.

As for the bullying, in this case I think your best option is to ignore it as best you can and go about your business as if nothing happened. In my opinion these neophytes are making a grab for power - if you act like you're afraid of them, you give them that power. Keep the banned people out by all means, and refuse to discuss the situation with anyone but your closest friends. Continue to participate in Community events as usual, and discuss anything BUT what has been happening. People have incredibly short memories, and chances are everything will be forgotten in a month or two.

If you haven't been already, start keeping track of what has happened, who said what and when. The other thing you might consider doing if you can prove the slander, is to have these people charged. You will need to prove that business went down after the rumours started, so take a look at the financial statements before and after to see if there is a noticeable dip in revenue. If there is, consult a lawyer to see if you have a case. Nail them to the wall, so to speak.

Case Six

A few years back my wife and I were targets of Pagan bullying.  In our case, the bullies were the local community leaders.  By the time we discovered that we were targets, it was too late -- we only noticed when in the space of two weeks we were now ostracised by the community.  Prior to this, we were influential persons in the community (generally viewed as being of those few how were "doing the Great Work", we gave of our home and our time, we were seen as people who did "killer" public ritual, our child was viewed as an exemplar -  i.e. polite and well behaved) then, out of the blue -- to us -- nobody would speak with us.  We  became personae non grata.  Isolated.  The really  hurtful thing was that there was no information.  It is one thing to be targeted with malicious gossip, and another thing to face a wall of silence.


Even now, we still do not know for certain why we were targeted, nor do we know exactly what was said about us by the community leaders that resulted in  the community aligning against us.  In recent years, we have heard two different versions of what our "crimes" were that resulted in the community shunning us, 1) that we were planning a coup against the leadership and 2) that we were planning to start our own public temple.  The funny thing is, we had been  the most loyal to the local leadership and were instrumental in defusing an attempted coup in 1992 and brokering reconciliation  afterwards.

Well, we fought back...  However, operating in ignorance -- since we did not know at the time what we were accused of -- we made some mistakes and this resulted in a local witch war.  In the course of the witch war, we indeed did set up our own public temple.  This did nothing for the local  community.  The original temple lost membership, but these people didn't come over to our temple.  Our temple gained new membership, but we didn't retain these people either.  Most of the community wanted to be neutral and therefore drifted from both temples.  Nasty things were said by both sides. And in the end, the community leaders "won".  They struck us in our achilles' heel -- our child.  The day that we had the police arrive at our door to investigate a complaint of satanic ritual abuse, is the same day that we shut down our temple.  We have since then, just worked in private with a few Wiccan parents in our city.  In public, we are Unitarians; when pressed Unitarian Pagans.

 

In hindsight, there were some clues.  The community leaders always had a target that they bullied.  Usually not an individual or group within the temple, but a group outside of the temple.  Coven X would be claimed to be up to "no good", guilty of sexual favours for degrees, homophobia, elitism, femi-nazism, God-oriented, Goddess monotheism, etc. But, here is where we were not entirely loyal to the community leaders, we did not participate in this bullying.  Sometimes we countered it, but most of the time, we were bystanders.  Nor did we use information obtained through personal counselling as raw material for the gossip mill or for bullying community members.  We did confront the leadership once of this issue and upon discovering that they were not going to budge, backed down -- resolving that we would not do this ourselves, but otherwise remaining bystanders.  For this, the purging of my wife and I from the community is our karma.

The community leaders are still leaders, they still run a public temple -- much smaller now -- and they still have influence, though perhaps not as strong as they once had.  And they both remain bullies in the local Pagan community.

How do you combat bullies when they are the community leaders?

~ Jeff, from California

My Response:

Unfortunately I hear stories like yours all the time. In fact, more often than not the bullies in the Pagan Community are the "leaders" because bullies are attracted to positions of power - and will do anything to hold onto that power.

I think you've probably done all that you can for the time being - and you did say that their influence is waning. A lot of the people who have left the original temple have probably realized by now they were duped, but they're too proud to admit it to you because it makes them look like idiots - and they are.

I can also tell you that the ones left in the temple are the most stupid of the lot and not likely to wise up anytime soon. Attempting to educate these morons would be a waste of time - they've already made up their tiny minds, and they are not going to change them. Do you want to associate with people like this?

My advice, for what it's worth, is to carry on with your heads held high and ignore all the fools around you. Go to whatever public events interest you, associate with those that you wish to, and be yourselves.

At the very least, you have each other for support. Many people who suffer from the "wall of silence" have no one to turn to at all in the Pagan Community - and non-Pagans just don't understand - they see it as further evidence of Pagans being bad or evil.

Believe me, I know it's hard to just walk away and let them "get away" with this behaviour, but the fact that you are still in the Community and active in a small way drives them insane. I know my own detractors are driven wild by the fact that I still do whatever I want in the Community, despite their best efforts to have me ostracized. I fully admit to deriving a certain amount of pleasure out of seeing the looks on their faces when I show up at things unexpectedly - usually (in order) a mixture of alarm, repressed fury, fear, and jealousy when people talk to me.

You have the same power because they're obviously threatened by the two of you. You can use this to your advantage, without actually doing anything other than what you want to do.

 

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