From kragen@dnaco.net Mon Sep 14 14:00:24 1998 Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 14:00:22 -0400 (EDT) From: Kragen To: Joe cc: rebecalist@bossanova.com Subject: Re: Clinton and Staaarrgghh! In-Reply-To: <35FD4DBF.C816402B@immediate.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII X-Keywords: X-UID: 1976 Status: O X-Status: On Mon, 14 Sep 1998, Joe wrote: > I don't believe you are correct in calling the Wiccan and leather communities > "extreme-minority". It would be difficult in either case to cite numbers > due to the shifting definitions of what qualifies a person to be a > member of their respective communities. For instance, witchcraft and > paganism are closely related and it would be impossible to say who was > "in the community" and who wasn't. I think both belong to the larger "magickal" community. I didn't mean the members of one particular religion (and yes, I'm aware "witchcraft" tends to imply Wicca, but that wasn't what I meant by it) but the overall set of people who believe they can do magic (or "magick"). Here in Dayton, I spotted a Wiccan at a lunch counter (by her pentagram necklace). I asked if there were a lot of Wiccans here; I think her answer is that there are fewer than a hundred, out of a city of 400,000. Even assuming that the Wiccans here are a tenth of the magickal community of Dayton, that still means less than 1% of Daytonians practice magick. > In either case, the numbers of people involved are much larger than > the vanilla world suspects. Yes -- I'm sure many Christian churches in Dayton would be shocked to find that there were more Wiccans in Dayton than attendees at their church. :) (And that's a great phrase -- "the vanilla world". :) (Out of curiosity, what do you think you have to be to be "vanilla"? Not into leather or magick, presumably, but what about bisexuality, "swinging", astrology, or Internet use?) Kragen -- Kragen Sitaker The sages do not believe that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself. -- Wang Yang-Ming