How to create a multi-faith Pagan Temple or “Eclectic Coven”

06 May 2012 Leave a Comment

by christuusgnosis in Uncategorized

No, I’m actually not going to give a course in pre-masonry architecture like adobe or strip and lathe. I might post a couple links to it. No, you can just lease a large open covered space, with your donations gathered for Services rendered to your different clients using the Space for their Rituals or Gatherings. If you want to build an adobe feasting mound or something, go nuts, this isn’t the article.

This is crossposted and will be integrated into the Order of the MEEK eventually.

What I would like to outline, is how you can go about creating spaces to gather and have celebrations with the same level of comfort and security as other more established spiritual belief systems.

I just realized that I have created a new TLA.
An MPT (Multi-faith Pagan Temple). How about ESC (Eclectic Spirituality Coven).

That is so excellent.
Having a good TLA is the first step towards mass penetration of your Temple Marketing Strategies.
They work better than free T-Shirts with Temple branding.

Churches and their Pagan equivalents, the Temples, Covens, Blots, Kindreds, Feast Halls can operate as a non-profit, requiring a board of directors, or as a Single Owner Proprietorship.

I suggest that a Single Owner Proprietership of a Temple or Coven space makes it easier to maintain control over membership, which is necessary to limit and mitigate the damages caused by independent agents of disruption. There are always a few of those. Using the membership and assessment processes of a Temple allows the identification and exclusion of disruptive entities. A limited partnership or society also works, but it is important that a Temple is not defined as a Society, because then it is not considered a Primary Spiritual Space for tax purposes and is then relegated to a sub-set of religious support services. The christian administrations love to tell you that a pagan temple is not a church but a religious support service organization. You may need to give them a letter of self definition prepared by a lawyer or Notary Public. Along with your business fees.

It is, of course, a Business. This business of Spirituality and the the Right to Gather for expressions of it.

Myself, personally, I prefer Temple or Gathering Place as a Title, but really, you can call it anything as long as your Mission Statement clarifies that you and our people refer to your equivalent of a christian church or temple by this particular name. You do not have to use the christian term church, even for tax purposes as long as you are clear in your description of the main gathering place as a place for spiritual gatherings of people engaged in common spiritual practices.

By sub leasing or renting the space to different pagan groups for dances, feasts, and gatherings, you can easily maintain a functioning multi-faith pagan temple in almost any large space, and you can even sub lease from another temple yourselves at first until you have enough donations to get a dedicated space.

Another way to supplement the income of a pagan temple is to offer some form of external service organization sponsored by your temple for poverty or outreach services within your area. It has been very lucrative for the christians.

Keep in mind as you slog away against an unmoveable pyramid of administrative hurdles, that it is your right, your very basic Human Right, to establish a place for you and others you trust to gather and celebrate your beliefs and spirituality.

The very fact that there are no significant multifaith pagan temples is not an indication of an absence of these belief systems, it is an indication of the inherent suppression of these belief systems within the social structure of the country. Otherwise these spaces would already exist, except that equality and human rights are only concepts on paper and television broadcasts. Finding them in the real world is impossible sometimes.

In China, many christian churches and Falun Gong gather in private homes, or you can even consider renting a coffeeshop, yoga space, hall, or community centre for your first gatherings and meetings as you prepare to find a suitable space to lease with enough washrooms a food services facilities to match your membership. Many christian churches exist legally for years while practicing in different spaces that become available.

Services rendered to members can also increase the profitability of the Temple, allowing it to expand much more quickly. Temples that offer childcare can easily supplement the income from member fees.

Keep in mind, you do not have to be free or take donations. You are allowed to have a set fee for services. Every church sells coffee or something downstairs afterwards. Workshops, seminars, T-shirts, books, and other merchandise, can all help build the size of your temple by increasing its solvency.

Keep in mind the general nature of people. They are ignorant and superstitious. It may be better to find some other set of marketable images for your Temple or Coven than the ones you actually use in your Rituals or Gatherings. Seriously. It may be in your interests NOT to put a 20 foot tall pentacle on the front of the building. It also would limit your membership, as people who are not aligned with the pentacle may find it offensive or indicative of a bias toward people that dig pentacles.

Since paganism and eclectic shamanism are quite broad and varied practices that encompass groups from almost every ethnicity, it is probably useful to your organization to discuss amongst its members and create a list of the Gods that your particular Pagan Temple is aligned with. Almost all Pagan Temples have a certain set of Dominant Deities unless they are an APT (Atheist Pagan Temple). Which is common as well. The Deistic pagans will almost always have to create a master list of the Deities whose contemplation is embraced within that Temple.

Many pagan groups do not actually get along very well, and their practices or beliefs may strongly oppose each other. There is a reason you don’t see a lot of Celtic imagery mixed with Egyptian. These god sets are opposed to each other for the most part. It is not discriminatory to define the gods who your temple is dedicated to support and exclude those of another faith, unless you have opened your doors to a “public ceremony”, and even then your presentation staff or priests/priestesses or Mentors should be direct ceremonies towards your common stated spiritual goals.

APT’s have a special problem in Canadian law in that the current christian administration doesn’t accept atheist Pagan practice to be considered spiritual. Which is a denial of the basic rights of atheist pagans.

Myself, I am not a Wiccan, but I believe that Dianics are perfectly within their rights to limit their membership to females, and it should be up to individual covens whether they wish to accept queer people, just like the christians. The same with all pagan orders. Although I would prefer people were more inclusive, 2000 years of christian hegemony that methodically controls the human sexual impulse is pretty hard to unravel from our consciousness, and many paths have very set and ordered sexual interactions.

Laws in each province vary, but there are always instances where alchohol might be served in a christian church hall, like at a wedding, so there is no reason that your pagan temple cannot have a Feast night for some spiritual reason, like to simply gather and be together.

By creating a Pagan Temple or Eclectic Coven as a Business entity and keeping books, other group benefits may be able to be passed onto members, such as group insurance, or group healthcare with a trusted set of doctors, group legal aid, childcare, group purchases of bus passes, and many more useful benefits that the organizational and accounting structure of a properly run business is allowed to write off or subsidize.

Probably the most compelling reason that an eclectic witch or pagan might consider joining and becoming a visible Temple, Coven, or Gather Place, is the group protection that these spaces provide. Having a network of like minded people is necessary for survival, and of course, this is the number one reason that there are almost none in existence in our “religiously tolerant” country.

Be warned though. The entrenched hegemony got its power through murder and coercion and robbery. They’ll do it to you over and over again. There are a number of high profile scholars in the occult who lived in Canada. They wrote some excellent groundbreaking work in the field. And every one of them died penniless with unbelievable things written about them.

You don’t see Covens or Pagan Temple because the people who try to build them don’t set out with the concept in their mind that they must be warriors building a fortress for their belief. Get it straight. They’ll kill you, so build security, have entrance cameras, be prepared to follow people that follow your members, have an investigative services team once you are big enough.

That’s where the Temple and the Coven and the Gathering Place can help you most, is making a refuge where you can’t be singled out. Unless the Temple itself becomes infected with politics, which it will if you are not careful. Then you have rival temples of non conducive gods and beliefs, but that’s not much different now, just we’re gonna add a few thousand more.

Really, it would be bad if we had rival Temple Wars, but with properly designed Temple security and proactive protective services, you congregation can gather and celebrate happily. Especially if everyone has their own ceremonial sword or axe or something. We could rent out arenas for “coven wars”.

Just kidding. But that would be gross and cool. Pagans are a bit sick when they fight.

Divided, you will be conquered.
So Gather.

Keep in mind, there is no specific Pagan Deity or Belief, other than what you define for yourselves in your charter. So you are not bound to any particular bias of peacefulness unless you so define it. It is more important that your charter stress the importance of its members survival and protection, and follow through with that protective service. Dead or bled dry members can’t pay membership fees.

It might even help you to clearly define your enemies. Enemy cults, enemy gods, what to do to them. The christians do that to an extreme amount, so it is a perfectly legitimate practice. If enemies can be made into Allies, that’s a positive outcome, if they can’t, you should probably find a way to destroy them or they will continue trying to destroy you. That’s what enemies do. Identify people who seem to be preying or draining your members and trace them to their source. You’d be surprised at how devious and common it is to have church members “spying”. The power of numbers, the trampling of sheep. Seriously. You’re already almost dead or you would have more Temples than this already at this time people, get a grip.

They are still killing you. Pagans, neo -pagans, heretics, get it straight, the christians and muslims will team up together to oppress you, so you can’t flee, only fight and grow or die.

Perhaps you should consider your charter to include the concept of “We will be the best friends and worst enemies that anyone has ever had”. Rent your sacred space to a couple of Dojo’s for their practices. I would say stockpile weapons and food for the apocalypse, but I think its been done. You can still be a bit tougher without going the full on evil route. But keep “evil” as a backup, since it is only relative to its foe.

Build your friends and colleagues up, help them raise their houses, tear all your enemies and their property down. That’s what they will do, so make sure you have the house and they are wanderers now. It is the way of all life, so enshrine it in your “holy laws” for the christians to read and understand clearly.

Little peaceful greenie witchies who can’t grasp the necessity of self preservation and revenge always get drugged and raped in Canada. Get a Temple at your back so if you can’t do the revenge part yourself you can barter services or items to a warrior who will respond to your attackers. Its the OLD WAY. Before we believed in corrupt assholes in uniforms enforcing the laws of the christian masters. Before we believed in the lies of lawyers and judges and pieces of paper not worth wiping your fucking ass with. Like the magna carta. The same man that signed that beheaded 10,000 germanic pagans in one day because they refused to convert to christianity. The king’s powers are stronger now.

You don’t have to follow any of my satirical advice, I’m in a gnarly mood.
In fact, reading is optional, remember that.

You are free to make a loving happy peaceful world temple of purity sanity and loving happiness and kindness.
You are free to decorate your temple as you like. Even pink.
Grrr.

I think white walls with projectors of changing deities is the way to go, or rotating pictures of the same deity. The APT’s can just have trippy shit. People could donate a loonie to get their deity projected for X number of minutes. Like a Deity Jukebox.

If you make your Temples strong enough as a business entity you may be able to use business techniques to absorb a former church that becomes for sale.

The problem that most eclectics face, or most beginning seekers, is that the established Orders are obviously not geared to them, but amongst themselves they also have wildly varying paths. Yet all have the same need to interact with others. Look at the different functions that other religious institutions fill for their adherents, and you will find you can offer something similar, even if it’s a weekly coffee gathering just to connect. Creating workshops and larger working groups can increase the interest in your belief system, but you might be able to gather people with non instructional events and participatory “rituals”.

Normally a “coven” would have a series of secret instructions and levels, but this is not really applicable to many eclectics so just treat the concept as a Gathering Place at first for different practitioners to meet.

Make sure you operate as a business, as that is how the Temple or Coven will benefit from tax returns if it can keep solvent past a year.

You aren’t required by law to state your earnings until tax time, and you don’t have to keep books if you have no expenses, but if you want a heated space with toilets for 365 day a year use you will need to be operating as a business entity like any other “church”.

Being a charity is not desireable as you lose control over the administration due to the “society” requirements. Running a charity as a separate business connected to your Temple and renting it’s space for it’s facilities is usually a better methodology.

(wip)