Using Communications Theory to Explore Emergent Organisation in Pagan Culture*

ARSR 24.2 (2011): 150-174 ARSR (print) ISSN 1031-2943 doi: 10.1558/arsr.v24i2.150 ARSR (online) ISSN 1744-9014

Angela Coco*

Southern Cross University

Abstract

Pagan culture presents a paradoxical case to the traditional frameworks and methodologies social scientists have used to describe religious organisation. A key factor influencing Paganism’s emergence has been its adop- tion of online communications. Such communications provide a means of coordinating activities in and between networks accommodating diverse beliefs and practices and the ability to avoid overarching hierarchical organisation. These characteristics have led theorists to label Paganism as a postmodern religion, signalling the possibility of a different kind of social organisation from that evidenced in modern religions. Karaflogka (2003) distinguishes between two aspects of the move online, religion in cyberspace and religion on the Internet. While the Internet may be an online place for cybercovens and for performing cyber rituals, the analysis in this paper focuses on the interweaving of online and offline communicative practices. I suggest that communications theories, as outlined in Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ model (1998) and Taylor and Van Every’s (2000) communications mapping, afford frameworks for exploring the inter-connectedness of online/offline interactions and a means of identifying emergent organisation in the Pagan movement. The analysis focuses on a particular feature of Pagan organisation, the accommodation of both group-oriented and solitary pagans.

Keywords

Pagan, communication theory, information and communication technologies, Pagan organisation, postmodern religion

* I would like to offer my thanks to the anonymous reviewers of this paper whose constructive suggestions motivated considerable improvements. * This article was scheduled to appear in ARSR 23(3) (2010), a special edition on ‘Religion and Spirituality in Cyberspace’, but due to space limitations was held over to the next regular issue.

Introduction

Information and communication technologies (ICTs), consumerism and the role of media in cultural construction are key factors influencing the postmodern condition. These social forces enable access to a variety of worldviews and the coordination of social engagements across times and spaces previously inaccessible (Castells 2001: 1-2). Such social changes in the structures of social interaction have been accompanied by calls for a new mapping of the religious terrain (e.g., Roof 1999; Lyon 2000; Heelas and Woodhead 2005). Syncretism, personal self-reflection and the negotiation of a mediated community are typical features of the Pagan environment (Berger 1999; Beyer 2003; Ezzy and Berger 2007). Roof (1999: 203) counts Pagans among those individuals he describes as ‘metaphysical believers and seekers’, people who dismiss the ‘religious’ title as invoking some form of organisational affiliation, but who adopt a ‘spiritual’ label. He maintains that Paganism’s survival depends on ‘sec- ondary institutions’ such as the media, bookstores, retreat and therapeutic industries and music industries (Roof 1999: 307). Texts available online and offline in the spiritual market place provide common sources of ideas that mediate the emergence of a sense of Pagan identity and organisation (Berger and Ezzy 2004: 181; Coco and Woodward 2007). Pagans perform religiously both as solitaries (practicing ritual alone) and in groups (Berger and Ezzy 2004: 177; Cowan 2005: 82). Groups may evidence strict hierarchical organisation with associated roles, usually priestess and priest, or flatter organisation with shared leadership. York (1995: 324-29) describes the broader Pagan social structure as a ‘Segmented Polycentric Integrated Network’. However, while such a computational model might map parts of an organisational structure, it cannot tell us what happens at and between the nodes in the network, how continuity in meaning and practice is produced and maintained (Taylor and Van Every 2000). This paper suggests that communications theories as described by Wenger (1998) and Taylor and Van Every (2000) provide a way of examining how Pagans bridge the gaps between online and offline places and, in so doing, enact certain types of organisation. The pervasiveness of media underpinning cultural authority and identity construction suggests researchers focus on ‘religion as communication’ (Lyon 2000: 56). Communication is the key to reality and identity construction and the means by which either/or dichotomies are bridged. The social fabric has become a mesh of flexible networks in which each individual is a node where many discursive flows may intersect (Lyotard 1984: 18; Castells 2001: 130-31). Such heightened intertextuality pro- duces an endless variety of ways that new identities can be constructed

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 152 ARSR 24.2 (2011) and articulated (Kristeva 1980: 15; Lyon 2000: 56). Historically, theories of community-seeking via online communications have suffered from entrenched dualisms between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ or ‘online’ and ‘offline’ timespaces (Haythornthwaite and Wellman 2002: 8). However, social interactions on the Web are embedded in and cannot be divorced from the meanings and structures operational in people’s everyday lives (Berger and Ezzy 2004; Hampton 2004; Young 2004; Baym 2007). Methodologically, this directs research attention to surveying online and offline communications in their interconnectedness. The ways connections and continuity of meaning are achieved between online and offline communicative practices are clearly demonstrated in an Australian Pagan community which I have called Summerland (Coco 2008a). Communications theory provides models for analysing how participants in a group interact, produce knowledge and develop practices that bind them in ‘communities of practice’ (Wenger 1998) or organisations (Taylor and Van Every 2000). In the vast majority of research, Wenger’s framework has been used as a typology for intentionally creating ‘communities of practice’ in the service of education, corporate organisations and virtual worlds (Merriam, Courtenay and Baumgartner 2003: 171; Barton and Tusting 2005: 3). Less frequent are studies that explore informally developed, mobile and continuously changing groups not bounded by pre-set organisational structures and relationships (e.g., Merriam, Courtenay and Baumgartner 2003; Keating 2005). Developed with Lave from their earlier work on situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991), Wenger’s (1998) model provides a mid-range theory that can be applied ‘to locate people, practices and communities’ but not the means for exploring how these are positioned in relation to broader social and discursive orders (Keating 2005: 127). Barton and Tusting (2005: 12) critique Wenger’s framework suggesting that it needs to incorporate a model of ‘language in use’, attend to the problems of power and conflict within communities and incorporate the foregoing into discussions of broader social contexts. It is in the delineation of the ways language is employed and deployed that Taylor and Van Every’s model can make a link between a ‘community of practice’ and its broader social context. Taylor and Van Every’s communications concept of mapping extends the identification of locally constructed knowledge, produced texts and meanings to demonstrate how these enact a broader organisational culture. They theorise the dynamic interplay of actors/texts, interlocutors and environment, that is, how organisation emerges in the interstices between locally situated communicative activity and globally accepted and dispersed meanings evident in authorised texts. The ‘hardwiring of texts’ (Taylor and Van Every 2000: 277) brings tacit understandings of

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Coco Using Communications Theory 153 actors to the surface, thereby enacting values and practices and revealing the shape of an emergent organisation. In this paper, I focus on one notable feature of Pagan culture, what Cowan (2005: 82) refers to as a ‘tension’ between solitaries and group- oriented Pagans. There may be tensions in the online groups Cowan studies where solitaries discuss their treatment by group-oriented Pagans. I have noted similar reactions ofﬂine at large gatherings where group- oriented Pagans attend as a group and solitaries feel, and sometimes are, excluded from some group activities. I discuss the reasons the group– solitary nexus may present a conundrum for both theorists and practi- tioners and the usefulness of a different methodological approach to understanding the phenomena. Next, I outline the salient features of Wenger’s (1998) and Taylor and Van Every’s (2000) models. These frameworks are used to analyse information gained from ethnographic research to demonstrate how communications theories of group dynamics can be used for identifying emergent Pagan organisation. Suggestions for future research are then offered.

The Group–Solitary Practitioner Conundrum

Socially speaking, it is tempting to equate solitaries with individualists, those people theorised by Durkheim (1993) and contemporarily portrayed by Putnam (2000) who are not integrated with any religious or social group. Religions traditionally have promoted shared values and provided plausibility structures by which individuals construct personal senses of meaning and belonging (Berger 1967; Lövheim and Linderman 2005: 122). Notions of solidarity and social cohesion anchored by meanings connected to particular geographic places and uniform sets of beliefs and practices have been the means by which traditional theories of religious community have been conceptualised (McAlister 2005). As religions move online, questions are raised as to how new forms of interaction between individual and dispersed believers may affect religion’s traditional role as a source of social cohesion (Kong 2001). These concerns echo broader debates as to whether ICTs dis-embed individuals from shared cultural values (Webster 2002: 81) or whether they have the potential to foster new forms of belonging and community structures (Slevin 2000; Dawson and Cowan 2004; Wellman 2004). In the emerging landscape, characterised by re-sacralisation and re- enchantment, the dualistic and dialectical ways of theorising social relations (such as the individual/community or geography/space oppositions) need to be rethought (Landy and Saler 2009: 6-7). While some believers continue to be engaged fully with their traditional religious community,

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 154 ARSR 24.2 (2011) others take a more individualistic approach seeking insights from many worldviews. Many leave the faith of their upbringing (if they had one) or continue social engagement with their faith while incorporating new concepts that support the construction of an inner, cohesive sense of self (Roof 1999; Heelas and Woodhead 2005). Further, ‘seeker churches’ have emerged, accommodating those who have had no previous engagement with religious institutions and/or who are keen to explore a religion’s belief system further (Roof 1999: 189). Several denominations evidence ‘a coexistence of “seekers” and “believers” in which there is creative dialogue between the two’ (Roof 1999: 299). The ‘subjective turn’ in contemporary culture fosters an holistic approach to life in which an inner spiritual self is developed in close connection with one’s lived experience, one’s management of self ‘in relation’ to others (Heelas and Woodhead 2005: 2-11; Berger and Ezzy 2007: 227). Contrary to the predicted loss of shared values, a change in priorities is evident in younger people’s concerns with the values of family life, and older people are prioritising health. Indications are that the postmodern Pagan spiritual seeker is not necessarily a selﬁsh, socially isolated or ethically bankrupt individualist (Heelas and Woodhead 2005: 11; Berger and Ezzy 2007: 121). Structurally, Pagan seeker identities exhibit ‘networked individualism’ (Castells 2001: 130), a form of sociability in which there is appearing an altered relationship between individuals and community. As explained by Wellman et al. (2003), ‘networked individualism’ refers to:

[…] the…shifting of work and community ties from linking people-in-places to linking people at any place… This shift facilitates personal communities that supply the essentials of community separately to each individual: support, sociability, information, social identities, and a sense of belonging… In effect, the Internet and other new communication technology are helping each individual to personalise his or her own community. This is neither a prima facie loss nor gain in community, but rather a complex, fundamental transformation in the nature of community.

Pagan identities may form in covens and/or through individual seeking and knowledge sharing through both online and offline sources. In either approach, personally constructed relationships with individually chosen sacred entities are the order of the day. Further, Pagan ritual groups may develop very different traditions and practices from each other, and none of these might match the practice of a solitary. This diversity would seem at first glance to foster fragmentation rather than the shared values believed to be necessary for a sense of solidarity and cohesion to develop. However, when one examines the ways Pagans and witches dispersed across a particular geographic area communicate and meet both online and offline, it is possible to identify patterns of regular interaction and

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Coco Using Communications Theory 155 reciprocity among them which constitute Wenger’s concept of a ‘community of practice’ (Merriam, Courtenay and Baumgertner 2003; Coco 2008a). This is not to imply that such communities are warm, closely knit entities with impermeable boundaries but an ‘afﬁnity space’ involving both physical and virtual encounters in which people negotiate meanings and work towards shared goals (Gee 2005: 225-28). Traditional approaches to the study of religious organisation founded upon notions of uniformity in belief and practice are likely to view the syncretic nature of Paganism and its resultant organisation as being too ‘diffuse’ (Bruce 2002) to constitute a social force. However, social practices and technologies are mutually shaping forces (Wacjman 2004); the compression of time and the one-to-many communication capacities of the Internet may mean that such tensions and diffuseness could lose the fragmenting and de-mobilising tendencies characteristic of tele-technologies of the past (Slevin 2000; Castells 2001: 131). It would seem essential then to focus on communicative practices for clues as to how the structures of religious and/or spiritual interaction may be changing in the twenty-ﬁrst century.

Communications Theory and Group Dynamics

Wenger (1998) and Taylor and Van Every (2000: 288-89) share a focus on the local and situated production of texts and meaning as people communicate with each other. Communication involves both linguistic and non-linguistic features, that is, both verbal communications and the production of artefacts that become sources for further interaction and action (Wenger 1998; Taylor and Van Every 2000; Cowan 2005). Wenger (1998) explored how insurance claims processors with different expertise communicated to achieve shared goals. He argues that such groups can be understood as ‘communities of practice’ where communicating across difference engenders the sharing of knowledge and social learning and provides the impetus for the group’s growth and longevity. Essential to the group’s continued existence are conﬂict and the ways it is resolved. However, the notion of community felt by participants, whose activity is not circumscribed by a speciﬁc, pre-instituted organisation, may incorporate a wider variety of political, historical and discursive forma- tions (Keating 2005: 108). Taking a broad survey through social phenomenology, ethnometh- odology, conversation analysis and traditional communications research, Taylor and Van Every (2000) theorise that organisation does not so much exist in the visible sense but is constantly being made through agents’ interactions and the communicative artefacts they produce. In an argument closely paralleling Anderson’s theory of the construct of

‘nationalism’ and the idea of ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1991) and Brown and Duguid’s (2000: 173-205) argument for the structuring properties of documents, Taylor and Van Every take us a step beyond local interactions, theorising the ways individually authored texts, disseminated widely, eventually become recognised, authorised and owned by members, both near and far, as the ‘truth’ about the ways things are done. Organisation only becomes possible through such mediation; the ways one conversation becomes reproduced in another and carries with it the trace of agency from the first (Brown and Duguid 2000: 289). There- fore all members of an organisation need never meet each other, or become aware of each other’s existence, for organisation to emerge and function. Organisation is what is frozen in material artefacts, such as houses, offices and transport systems; it is ‘the structuring of our physical world that channels our activities to give them a form that perpetuates organisational mobilisations originating somewhere else, at some other time’ (Taylor and Van Every 2000: 277). Organisational texts begin as artefacts: stories, rituals, explanations, spells, festivals and so on. Internation- ally, a core set of texts, magazines, Internet sites and groups forms the basis of Pagan self-definition (Ezzy and Berger 2007: 53). Australian examples include the Pagan Awareness Network, whose stated mission is to, ‘(c)orrect misinformation, raise awareness and educate the general public about Paganism and associated beliefs and practises in order to achieve religious tolerance’ and to ‘(f)oster the growth of the Pagan community through service’, and Spellcraft, an Australian magazine. While Wenger’s approach provides us with a typology of communicative practices, Taylor and Van Every’s model enables us to map emergent structure enacted by such practices. To grasp how organisation is achieved, a mapping analogy is used. Maps (of the cartographic kind) have particular purposes—to define a territory and grasp its features and thereby understand how it may be governed and its members located. Mapping makes things nameable and enables the identification of a collectively shared space. It is communicating activity that, more than identifying objective features of a landscape, declares rights to ownership and possession. Maps are always in reconstruction and to take authority they must be socially validated. People make maps when they take their practices outside their familiar locality. Organisation maps describe social, not physical topography, though organisations may also possess geographical features. They deal with actions not just places and are characteristically revealed by written texts or otherwise form part of people’s tacit understandings. Individual identities are demarcated by the map as well as the kinds of things they

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Coco Using Communications Theory 157 exchange and the boundaries of their powers and responsibilities. So the organisational map also reveals the means of access, where to go for what. Further, the enabling and constraining dimensions of power are embedded in organisational maps. Through these processes the equivalent of a territory is created as may be illustrated by the largest Pagan web portal in Australia, Witches Workshop, with 2,020 members (April 22, 2010). Their stated mission describes the site as:

Paganism, Witchcraft-Wicca in Australia. Especially for Australian Witches, Magicians, Shamans and Pagans living Downunder… Our unique community has come to represent the broad spectrum of Pagan spirituality and philosophical interests to be found in this country. It offers a living community and involvement in the many different types of Pagan lifestyles from all around Australia.

In this case, a territory is defined by the euphemism for Australia, ‘Downunder’, but also what the web portal offers: access to local offline workshops, online networking via the ‘web ring’. Further, the founder of Witches Workshop, Tim Hartridge, is a long-standing personality in Australian Pagan circles. The organisational map inscribed in texts like the one above indicates that Pagans from all paths are accommodated. This is relevant to my interest in the solitary/group nexus. In texts, the properties of material communication, language, become important. The essential map-making property of language is narrativity. Narrativity supplies generic patterns that shape the recounting and enacting of social events. Generic narrative patterns in Australian Pagan- ism that I am exploring here include the welcoming of ‘Pagans of all paths’, the aims to ‘meet other Pagans’ and ‘build community’. The values and practices as revealed in texts like those produced above have become standard motifs in Australian Pagan organisation. Wenger’s and Taylor and Van Every’s communications theories of group dynamics therefore provide useful frameworks for analysing Pagan organisation, since the culture is brought to life and held together by communications of the interactive (online and offline) and textual (books and web pages) kinds.

Pagan Narratives

Pagans have been active in Australia at least since the 1970s (Hume 1997: 30). Nationally, they are represented online by several portals, websites and Facebook sites including the Church of all Worlds (www. caw.org.au) and The Pagan Awareness Network (www.paganawareness. net.au/aboutpan.html). The material for this paper is drawn from an ethnographic study of one local Australian community which involved

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 158 ARSR 24.2 (2011) participant observation, targeted interviews on particular topics, focus groups, a technology use questionnaire and observations of the broader Pagan scene in Australia. Ethical clearances for this research were obtained from The University of Queensland for the first phase of the research during 2001 and 2002 and, for the second phase, from South- ern Cross University, New South Wales, during 2006 and 2007. Feminist research, particularly the materialist orientation which I adopt, focuses on where people are actually located in the relations of production and re-production and the ways their worlds are configured; the separa- tion of fact and bias is not at issue (Ramazanoglu and Holland 2002: 13). As Blain (2004) argues, we work with a consciousness that knowledge is produced from the dialogical interplay between the researcher’s personal experience as a practitioner, her interactions with ‘insiders’ and her inter- pretations; the act of research affects the researcher and the field. My seven-year experience in a Dianic wiccan group afforded some legitimacy for wanting to participate in and study Pagan culture. In phase 1 of the research, I entered the field by seeking conversations with and support from key informants. I described my research as the Circle Pagan Study and the informants extended valuable information about how to enter and respect the community ethos in both online and offline environments. Wiccans and Neo-Pagans, as grouped by Nietz (1994), form the major part of the community under study. One prominent Pagan posted information about the Circle study on his website which acted as a portal for several Pagan organisations and sites in Australia. My participant observation offline has involved some 513 hours of fieldwork, attending many kinds of gatherings, for example, local coffee meets, handfastings (the pagan equivalent of marriage), public and private rituals to which I was invited, Pagans in the Park (PiTPark) and Pagans in the Pub (PiTPub) gatherings and festivals. At Pagan gatherings, I always publicly revealed my role as a researcher and in time came to be referred to as a ‘pagan academic’. On occasion, Pagans invited me to give presentations about my work in public gatherings like PiTPark and the Magical Fair. I have published under my academic profile in Spellcraft (Coco 2008b). Online my methods included observation, almost daily, and irregular participation on two Pagan email lists for a two-year period in Phase 1. This involved perusing between 10 and 75 online messages in one day. As discussion themes emerged, the dates and posting number of sample messages were noted in small diaries which I purchased specially for the purpose of keeping ethnographic records of email discussions. Phase 2 of the research involved continuing participant observation, interviews and Internet-based searches to identify the range of Australian Pagan email lists in yahoogroups.

Research in online environments raises particular issues to do with researcher transparence, informed consent and anonymity (Sharf 1999: 248-49). Donath (1999) reveals the ways header, subject line, address and salutations in email postings can reveal or conceal offline identity. Pagans were informed and regularly reminded of my presence on the email discussion lists where I used my own first name and university email address. Once or twice a year notices were posted to inform any new people on the lists that I was still researching the community. At the same time, online forums are essentially public spaces and the extent to which a researcher can ensure anonymity and confidentiality to participants is limited (Mann and Stewart 2000: 57-58). Other online groups have experienced onslaughts of visitors when the names of their forums have been publicised (Reid 1996). Such an event would be particularly disruptive for south-west Summerland pagans who value and protect the Australian flavour of their lists (Coco and Woodward 2007: 485). In line with established reporting practices, people’s names, the names of places and of the email discussion lists have been changed in an effort to minimise potential breaches of trust with the community. In the following, I explore three sites of communicative practice for what they reveal about the interactions between solitary and group- oriented Pagans. These are reflected in the meso level, interactions between different groups and individuals; the macro level where one examines texts that represent the broader culture; and the micro level evidenced in individual’s meaning-making and experiential activities. First, I briefly discuss communications between the two main email lists and offline activities in Summerland. Secondly, I analyse the introductory statements on Australian Pagan email lists that are configured in yahoogroups and, finally, these analyses are complemented with information gained from impromptu discussions and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with twenty Pagans regarding their use of technology, their perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of group and/or solitary practice and their ways of engaging with the broader Pagan community. At the times of interviews, five participants belonged to active covens and the remainder identified as solitaries. This number, together with ethno- graphically secured information, provided enough data to reach saturation of information.

Local Interaction Wenger (1998: 125-31) identiﬁed a typology of key communicative practices that lead to identity construction and community building in a community of practice. He speciﬁes fourteen features of an established community of practice:

1. sustained mutual relationships either harmonious or conflicted; 2. shared ways of engaging in doing things together; 3. rapid flow of information and propagation of innovation; 4. absence of introductory preambles, as if conversations and interactions were merely the continuation of ongoing process; 5. very quick set-up of problem to be discussed; 6. substantial overlap in participants’ descriptions of who belongs; 7. knowing what others know, what they can do and how they contribute to an enterprise; 8. mutual definition of identities; 9. ability to assess the appropriateness of actions and products; 10. specific tools, representations and other artefacts; 11. local lore, shared stories, inside jokes, knowing laughter; 12. jargon and shortcuts to communication as well as the ease of production of new ones; 13. relations of proximity and distance, and; 14. learning that constantly creates localities that reconfigure the geography.

The Summerland Pagan community developed these relations by integrating online and offline communications. The following provides examples of Pagans’ communicative practices that over time constituted a ‘community of practice’. I include information about the status of individuals as group Pagans or solitaries as a means of identifying the presence of these roles and revealing their respective statuses in Pagan organisation. Pagans in Summerland developed mutual relationships (point 1) across online and offline spaces which evidenced both harmony and conflict (Coco 2008a). They created innovative ways of doing things together (point 2). For example, Laura, a solitary, initiated L1, the first e-list in Circle (a town in Summerland), in 1999 as a meeting place for Pagans. Some months later, she joined a secretive coven offline. About a year into the list’s operation, there emerged a conflict regarding discussion about a member of the Pagan community not on L1 but known offline by some participants, including Alan, Mike and Laura. Laura asked people to cease and desist, but some participants, notably Alan, leader of a traditional coven and Mike, a solitary, took exception to what they perceived as Laura’s ‘authoritarian’ list moderation. When they refused to stop the discussion and turned to questioning her ‘control’ of the list, she unsubscribed them. Over the ensuing week, a series of private emails and emails on coven lists to which several members of L1 belonged led to the opening of a new list, L2, which was to be more ‘democratic’. The L2 moderators, a mix of solitaries and Pagans who were members of

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Coco Using Communications Theory 161 ritual groups, developed their own private email list to discuss list moderation issues and other list members agreed to the procedure of voting for ten moderators for the list each year. This practice still continues (as of 2010). The online split was felt in the offline community, public gatherings being populated mostly by either L1 or L2 people, as well as group and solitary Pagans. A year later, many Pagans meeting offline were still mentioning the conflict in conversations and were claiming membership of both lists. L2 was seen as a list evidencing more gravitas than L1 and as a welcome contribution to community diversity. Members’ ability to mobilise and continue shared ways of doing things depends on knowing what others know, what they can do and how they contribute to an enterprise (point 7). Sharing this knowledge in the group environment contributes to the mutual definition of identities (point 8). For instance, Alan often organised public gatherings, like the annual offline Pagan Ball, for the whole Pagan community. At one point, he complained on-list about the failing support for offline initiatives. Commu- nications online regarding support for Pagan offline initiatives revealed considerable knowledge about Alan’s character, a mutual recognition of his skills and a shared understanding of his role in the community. He was encouraged to continue, and posts to L2 tried to help him solve the dilemma. Pagans had built up a stock of knowledge from their online and offline engagements that provided continuity in meaning over time. The shared stock of knowledge helped participants to assess collectively the appropriateness of members’ actions and products (point 9). For example, some Pagans assessed Laura’s moderation of L1 and found it wanting. Appropriate artefacts and collective representations were produced, for example, L2 and the Summerland Pagan Club, an outcome from the discussion regarding failing support for offline events. The Summerland Pagan Club is a savings scheme devised so that Pagans can afford to attend offline Pagan events (point 10). Chrissy, a solitary who initiated and coordinated Pagan Pride Day, a public festival, responded to Alan’s complaint on L2 and suggested some strategies that might help. In her post, she invoked local lore in terms of the ‘things we normally do’ (point 10) using jargon, ‘for donkeys’ (a long time), that all others would have understood. Shortcuts to communication (point 11), like the ‘fluffy bunny’ sanction, also have been developed (Coco and Woodward 2007). Pagans use the expression ‘fluffy bunny’ when they wish to signal that particular individuals or practices are not authentic or seriously engaged with Pagan culture. These communicative activities evidence a shared reality among solitaries and group Pagans recorded in memories, online logs and websites and offline places, and serve as points of reference for future interactions. Their narrative patterns include the motifs ‘meeting other Pagans’ and ‘building community’, which welcomes Pagans of all

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 162 ARSR 24.2 (2011) persuasions. The narrative patterns reveal and enact the practice of including both solitary and group Pagans, a custom which echoes a more widely spread phenomenon.

Global Organisation Cowan (2005: 96-97) identifies 5 categories of Pagan online discussion groups: (1) those groups claiming to be online covens; (2) online discussion groups run by offline covens; (3) online discussion groups that may be referred to as ‘covens’ by their members; (4) fan sites for shows like Charmed or Buffy; and (5) ‘sites for which the available data made a useful determination impossible’. The ‘community of practice’ supported by L1 and L2 does not fit neatly into any of Cowan’s categories. The most likely categories are numbers 1, 3 and 5; however, neither L1 nor L2 are run by offline covens, nor have I ever seen the membership in either list refer to the discussion group as a ‘coven’. The available data, however, do reveal the intentions of many email discussion lists in Australia as the following analysis will reveal. It may be that Pagan organisation in Australia evidences a different historical trajectory from those identified by Cowan. In the discussion so far, I have analysed communicative practices in a particular part of Australia which is circumscribed geographically; the question that remains is whether such communities of practice share in a broader understanding of Pagan organisation. To search for evidence, I conducted a survey of the texts of Australian Pagan online discussion groups. A search with the terms ‘Pagan Australia’ on yahoogroups in August 2009 turned up 95 email discussion lists. I added some I knew of, not appearing in the search results, which increased the sample to 98. As Cowan (2005: 96) notes, numbers of yahoogroups (and MSN discussion groups) are not indicators of activity. The pattern of e-group initiation and participation in the sample roughly parallels Cowan’s data. Nearly 30% of the groups had fewer than 5 members and almost all of those contained only 1 or 2 members and had not registered more than one post (which was from the group’s founder) to the list in the whole time of its operation. In other words, these ‘groups’ did not develop into discussion lists at all. I reduced the sample of discussion lists from yahoogroups to those that evidence interaction, which was 58. Describing a sample of online groups is fraught as one needs to ascertain what would count as meaningful in terms of communications practices and levels of activity. One also needs to be sceptical about the accuracy of Internet statistics where events may be counted more than once, or searches that deliver different samples on each try (Cowan 2005: 195; Ezzy and Berger 2009: 166). Nevertheless, one can obtain a

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Coco Using Communications Theory 163 ball-park notion of the incidence of events. Cowan (2005: 97) and Ezzy and Berger (2009: 172) use ‘messages’ to the group as a criterion in defining activity. This approach fails to capture the often much larger portion of membership whose participation may not take the form of posting, but who, nevertheless, may belong to the community of practice. I would suggest, following Lea (2005: 190), that in the context of a ‘community of practice’, lurkers, people peripherally associated with the discussion group (Cowan 2005: 160-61), often may be people who are observing and learning from the input of others. Lave and Wenger (1991) referred to this subject position as ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ from which a member moves from initial acquaintance to more active involvement and commitment to the group enterprise. This trajectory is evident in Witches’ offline (Merriam, Courtenay and Baumgartner 2003: 173) and Pagan’s online (Cowan 2005: 159) interactions. My definition of the parameters of ‘activity’ attempts to capture the ongoingness and regularity of messages which would support continuity of contact with peripheral others in the ‘community of practice’ regardless of the numbers and density of messages. By ‘active’, I mean groups that have registered posts in the most recent month (up to February 25, 2010). This is almost, but not entirely, an arbitrary distinction as I have observed that some quite active groups, like University Pagans in Australia, can go for periods of two to three weeks with little activity, often coinciding with holiday periods. Also, what I would call active groups record postings in all months even if these vary in frequency from day to day. From the 58 groups identified, 24% could be categorised as active according to my definition. However, the remaining 76% did evidence continuity in communications over the periods of their existence. Activity in many of the 58 groups began dropping off in 2008 (Ezzy and Berger 2009: 72) and petered out in 2009. This trend signals the beginnings of a transition period in Pagan organisation and may be the result of migration to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, and Pagan blogs (Ezzy and Berger 2009: 175). It is worth noting that Facebook’s membership began increasing exponentially in the period 2007–2008 (www.readwriteweb. com/archives/facebook_growth_explodes.php). I will refer to all 58 groups to discuss the content of texts but confine my examples to those drawn from active groups. The texts analysed are the active groups’ opening descriptions of themselves on their yahoogroups’ home pages. A content analysis reveals that the main reasons for the groups’ existence are as a vehicle for Pagans to meet each other and build community. Most email lists also state that they are open to people of all paths; usually either not mentioning a distinction between group- oriented Pagans and solitaries or welcoming both, as the Witches of Melbourne list (922 members; active) illustrates:

WitchesofMelbourne is a place for Australian Melbourne Witches to meet, share experience and build community. We welcome people from all paths (Covens, Circles and Solitaries) and traditions, all backgrounds, and all levels of experience.

This meeting on discussion lists is clearly not meant to be a completely virtual activity (though it may be that for many). Of the 58 sites viewed, 46% referenced a speciﬁc geographical locale in the group’s name title, for instance, Adelaide Pagans, bunburywiccansandpagans and newcastle- wicca. A further 25% that did not use an Australian place name in the title explained their geographical spread in the group’s description. For example, gcpagans (237 members; active) says:

Welcome to Gold Coast Pagans! We are a place for Pagans who live and/or work on the Gold Coast to meet, share experience and build community.

One should note how gcpagans use ‘shortcuts to communication’ theorised by Wenger as most Australians would guess that ‘gc’ refers to the Gold Coast. As the above samples illustrate, all Pagans, groupies and solitaries are invited to participate in local ofﬂine events. So there is a practice of accommodating both group and solitary Pagans for the sake of developing solidarity while at the same time acknowledging that these get-togethers involve engagements with difference. This phenomenon stretches to ‘glocal’ interactions (Wellman 2004: 29; Robertson n.d.), the cultivation of local practices and long-distance relationships where a further 18% of the online groups listed aimed for a broader sweep, referencing the whole of Australia and the Southern Hemisphere, for example, witchesdownunder, young southern wiccans and Australian Witches. Witchesdownunder (196 members; active) states:

This group covers information useful for witches in Australia: Southern Hemisphere correspondences, moon phases, meditations, the goddess, the god, members [sic] poetry and much more. But of course…anyone is welcome to join…not just those from the land of Aus.

The large proportion of yahoogroup descriptions that include Pagans ‘of all paths’ and that are targeted to Pagans in a specific geographical locale point to a Pagan understanding of gathering face-to-face regardless of belief or practice. Of course these gatherings may evidence purely social or more religiously oriented activities like public rituals, workshops or study groups. Nevertheless, while it might be fairly easy for people to share ‘intellectually’ in the virtual environment free from the physical limits of Cartesian space (Holmes 1997: 5-6), it is much more difficult to accommodate practices and beliefs different from one’s own in actual ritual activity, online or offline. To shed some light on the experiential dimension of the solitary/group distinction, I asked Pagans about their practice, their use of online media and their perceptions of the advantages

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. Coco Using Communications Theory 165 and disadvantages of group and solitary working. These interviewees were drawn from responses to an invitation to participate in an interview posted on L1 and L2, responses on a technology use questionnaire that was disseminated at a three day festival on which people indicated a willingness to be interviewed and random face-to-face approaches by the researcher.

Performing Solitary When Pagans talk about being solitary, they seldom refer to it as a once and for all lifetime identity. They may move in and out of Pagan ritual groups, and many, as solitaries or coveners, participate in the public Pagan festivals, moots and study groups that are provided by different groups and covens throughout the year.1 Some Pagans can be described as being ‘solitary by default’. Adrian noted, ‘I guess I’d describe myself as an eclectic witch. I’m not in a coven or a group based working group… From my point of view I’m still searching, I don’t really associate with the Goddesses and the Gods, it just hasn’t clicked with me yet, it may in a few years or tomorrow’. They were in the process of learning their craft and/or searching for a suitable group. Danny’s belief made certain requirements of him. He was keen to start a coven of his own. However, he maintained that he needed a partner, who would also be his ritual partner as priestess, before he could start a coven (Field notes, January 20, 2002). Lightwave became a solitary when her group disbanded:

I guess I am semi-non practicing at the moment. Just, just per circumstances reasons. Um, and ‘cause, like, when I was in a coven, I found it a lot easier to do rituals and stuff with them. Because they were a group of people I grew to trust and they were my best friends, they still are my best friends… But,…I got into the habit of that, I sort of forgot how to be solitary. So I’m sort of just…trying to get back into it, like, on my own. And yeah, I’m ﬁnding that a bit hard.

A second group could be called solitaries by choice. Many Pagans in this category had practiced in a group and decided to pursue a solitary path. Others had always been solitary. Holly described moving on from group practice:

Just getting together with women and…actually doing magic in a grounded down to earth way, and doing magic is part of political action and protest…that was very exciting. But that was…another phase of my life when I was doing a lot of that, and then, my kids had to go to high school…so I came to (Circle)…and again back to being a lot more solitary.

1. In the following, the words ‘group’ or ‘solitary’ in brackets after the person’s pseudonym indicates their practice status at the time of their interview.

Holly went on to explain that she was happy with her spirituality, which encompassed all of life, and she did not need a separate ritual space to get in touch with this. Mari (solitary) expressed similar ideas:

I think, that right now, is a time, for me to concentrate more on—where I’m going in life, much more so than my spiritual path. I think, I’m at a stage spiritually where, I am content. Like, within myself, that I don’t—I don’t know—I don’t really need to search all that hard to… Like, although I’d love to meet some people, I don’t need to.

All-time solitaries like Mike, a solitary hermetician, had never been involved in a ritual group but ran his own offline meditation group once a week. As we saw earlier, he was also an active participant on L1 and had a keen sense of the Pagan community he felt there (Coco 2008a: 521). Regardless of their solitary or group status, Pagans met in both online and offline spaces. Online fora provided one of the main avenues for communication of Pagan events. There are many offline public gatherings throughout the year around the states in Australia. These assemblies ranged from large two– to three-day events like the Australian Wiccan Conference, to public rituals run by particular covens and social outings such as PiTPark or PiTPub. Nearly all interviewed Pagans attended at least one and often several of these events in the year prior to their interview. Akasha (group) used them to organise her Pagan social calendar, ‘just finding out what people are doing, if there’s any clubbing things going on GLBT list (Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transexual Pagan list) that I’m a moderator of, when we’re next going to go out… It’s my social pages, just to see what people are doing.’ All but two interviewees participated in several Pagan online discussion lists, including overseas Pagan fora. Their reasons for participation online were to reduce isolation by finding and chatting with like-minded people. Adrian (solitary) who initially located Pagans on WitchVox, and from there met individuals offline in Circle, reflected:

It was kinda weird because I’d never really spoken to many people about it (Pagan spirituality), I’d spoken to my cousin ofﬂine and a few other relatives, then it was a big release when I was talking to someone online about it… Initially I was interested in Wicca because that was all I thought there was. Then they said, ‘oh Wicca’s not all there is around’, because that didn’t sound right for me yet, and they said to check this out and there’s heaps of other possibilities and other things.

Yasmin’s (solitary) comments exemplify one of the reasons given by all Pagans for seeking out Pagan online fora: ‘well, the discussion lists for me, have been a source of learning. I’ve come across a lot of different aspects, like, the Kabala’. Of course there are Pagans who do not use

ICTs. Affectionately referred to as ‘the Pagans in the hills’ by some Summerland Pagans, these people nevertheless ﬁnd out about public Pagan events and attend them (Field notes, March 31, 2002). Solitaries, though not participating in the more regular activities of a ritual group, and coveners participate in communicative practices that link them into the broader Pagan community where they participate in public Pagan rituals, workshops and social events populated by Pagans beyond their solitary or group ritual practice. When discussing their perceptions of the relative advantages and disadvantages of solitary and group practice, interviewees discerned values in both group conformity and in solitary focused practice. The advantages of group participation and by corollary, the disadvantages of solitary practice, mainly concerned issues of discipline, personal validation and energy raising. Those who belonged to groups, at the time of interviews, spoke about the value of the discipline in group participation. Shelagh, a peripheral participant who negotiated her way from pseu- donymous, online, shy contributor to ‘innovator’ over the years stated:

But the reason I joined a coven was because I wanted the discipline that a coven would bring…‘cause if I’m left to my own devices it’s like ‘{sigh} Oh yes full moon tomorrow night—oh yeh—I might do something—oh look— I’ll do it next month’. But if you’re with a coven you’ve got a role or you’re expected to participate to some extent so you do…and you feel so much better for it.

Several solitaries echoed Shelagh’s and Lightwave’s insights, that as solitaries they did not practice as often as they might. The other reported disadvantages of solitary practice were that one could not bounce ideas off others. For instance, Elphin talked about the need for validation:

I think the low point at the moment with being solitary is that I know there is no one else out there who is doing what I’m doing. So many people out there, what they do is based on people they’re associated with. I’ve got a book on dragon magic, but it’s dragon magic with a very heavy Wiccan inﬂuence. I found good things in there, but…it doesn’t gel.

The energy generated in the group situation could be much more powerful than that invoked in isolation—though a couple of people felt that solitary energy-raising was much more powerful. Yasmin noted, ‘If you’ve got a good group of people, who you work well with, there is an amazing amount of energy can be raised… Um, working as a solitary it’s a lot, you can’t raise that sort of same energy…although you can raise quite a lot’. Three of the interviewees explained that they practiced in their ritual groups, but also as solitaries. That solitary practice enabled one to touch deeper levels of the spiritual self was also reported by others. Tristram explained, ‘I still operate solitary as well as being in a

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2011. 168 ARSR 24.2 (2011) coven. One of the things is, when you’re working as a solitary you use your intuition to guide you much more. There is nobody else to take account of. I ﬁnd that the rituals I do on my own, or with my wife, are much deeper spiritually really’. A common (and not unexpected) theme in solitaries’ perceptions of the disadvantages of participation in ritual groups was that there was no one telling them what to do or what was right and wrong. Surloch said:

I’ve always thought that being in a group would be limiting…you’ve got restraints placed on what you can tell people or, there’s all sorts of rules that you’d have to abide by. Some groups more than others, I mean, I could join a learning circle and they’re completely open, but even then, sometimes, you’ll have like a day when you gotta research something in particular. And like my mind goes all over the place… I just work best as solitary.

In groups, a practitioner often could not pursue a course of action that they felt suited them; they chose to set aside their own opinions at times. In public rituals, Elphin (solitary) explained, ‘if it’s something that’s more personal, like it’s for somebody I specifically know, then I’ll throw in my all and just try to push aside some of the references and try to tune into my own vibe to get as much as I can out of it’. Alan and Bede, both practising in groups, noted the related issues of interpersonal power plays and rivalries. These were human qualities that were to be expected and just needed to be ‘balanced properly’. Bede felt that conflicts arose due to age differences and inexperience: ‘It’s only when people get into a bit of power—they’re easily brought into line. Because we’re older and we can handle things a lot—they always try to—as if they know more than the other one’. Pagans’ solitary experiences reveal that this subject position is not oppositional to that of a group participant. However, the type of solitary positioning evidenced in Teen witches’ experience appears to be qualita- tively different from the ‘solitary by choice’ and ‘solitary by default’ categories I have suggested, in that all of the conditions for real choice available to Pagans generally were/are not available to them. Four participants, Lightwave, Rod, Mari and Holly, who were in their early twenties at the time of interviews, reflected on their teenage years. Echoing some of the concerns Teen Witches reported to Berger and Ezzy (2007), they mentioned such experiences as aloofness from older Pagans in public gatherings, learning most of what they did from books, feeling isolated and needing to be ‘discreet’ about their Paganism. However, since Teenage experience was not the focus of interviews, extended comparisons with other research that has focussed on Teens specifically cannot be offered here.

Young (1990: 313) says there are inherent ‘problems with the privileg- ing face-to-face relations by (traditional) theorists of community’. Such an ideal is founded on illusory notions of unmediated social relations which wrongly equate mediation with alienation. These views deny the necessity of time–space distancing necessary to personal reﬂection, the accommodation of difference and the construction of personal ‘self’ narratives. Postmodern society, in which relations are highly mediated by information and communication technologies, provides expanded opportunities for such identity-forming processes which, in turn, are resulting in a reconﬁguration of religious/spiritual structures. In the brief examples given above, we see how the time–space distancing in communications, facili- tated by email lists, enabled different identities, both group and solitary Pagans, to engage with each other and devise means of getting along without demanding unity or uniformity in belief or practice. They resisted attempts to institute centralised authority structures online. The construction of a new email list in Summerland did not result in a schism, the characteristic method of dealing with difference in religious communities, but an expansion of the communicative options available for the whole Pagan community.

Communications Theory in the Study of Religion

New forms of information and communications technologies enable people to structure their relations along more democratic and less hierarchical lines. In this changing social terrain, communications theory provides a useful approach to the study of religious organisation as it focuses on actors, their communicative activities and the ways they bring new organisational forms into being. Communications theory directs our attention to the identiﬁcation of narrative motifs that map certain subject positions, related roles and social structures. I have demonstrated the ways the motifs of ‘building community’ and ‘accommodating Pagans of all paths’ translates into organisational practices in which both group Pagans and solitaries share in the business of promoting Pagan culture. Pagans treat group and solitary subject positions as available options that they may adopt depending on their life situation and developmental needs. At the national level, Pagan organisation accommodates rule- bound hierarchical covens, less formal groups with shared leadership styles, local informal social and information moots and solitaries in the rounds of general communications and regular ofﬂine gatherings both large and small. This range of groupings appears to accommodate the Pagan seeker/practitioner at any stage of their spiritual development.

Traditionally, hierarchical organisation and the establishment of a canon of beliefs and practices has been the means by which social movements have endured. At this point, it is by no means clear how the highly mediated quality of Pagan identities, Pagan culture and the rhizomic nature of its development might continue in the long term to become a religious social force. Communities of practice are identifiable at the local level, and their activities reflect and participate in the broader sense of an Australian Pagan community. The ways many local groups in Australia reference geographic places in their online fora bear further investigation particularly with respect to the questions that intrigue virtual community researchers. Further, the kinds of groups surveyed in this research would appear to add a dimension to the typology of Pagan online/offline types identified by Cowan; a comparison of the trajectories of Pagan organisation in the United States and Australia could be fruitful. Participation in Pagan online environments may be plateauing or migrating to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. At the same time, Pagan covens, study groups and less formal gatherings like Pagans in the Pub continue to socialise newcomers. Whether these activities are sufficient in number, maturity and longevity to continue to grow and sustain the community remains to be seen. It would be valuable to explore how Pagans conceptualise succession planning for advancement of the craft. An investigation of the traffic and interconnectedness in Pagan online networks with offline events in Australia may shed further light on these issues. As Paganism transitions to the next stage of its development, communications theory could be usefully employed to identify new narrative patterns supporting forms of Pagan organisation.

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