Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Chips on Shoulder Etc
As many of you know, for over forty years we Frosts have gone through attack periods which (to us) seemed endless. During that time we felt as if the whole world was, if not trying to kill us, at least trying to damage us severely. First it was the Christians. Now more recently it's been self-described Wiccans/pagans.
We endured it all with what we like to think of as quiet perseverance. Thus at this point it looks worth while to review our thoughts on other people's dilemmas brought on by their being (gasp) D-different: being outside the "normal" pervasive Christian mainstream or particular "Wiccan" sects.
When all the flap started, our first inclination was to strike back; but fortunately reflection showed that such a mindset was not going to be the best way. We lived in a small community, and it would have been only too easy for people to attack us, maybe burning a cross or two in the front yard--and in fact, through our forty-some years of living the Craft, some have attacked!
In one incident we were shot at and people left a bomb at the hotel where we were scheduled to speak. (Apparently they didn't trust Jesus' ability to take care of it.) On another occasion, people tried to steal the wheels off the car while we were doing a radio show.
Our answer was not to hit back, but to use a more subtle approach. It was not difficult in those early days to get both radio and TV time, so we went on a tour of the States, clocking more than 2,000 hours and several thousand miles of time and travel. Finally, when people attacked us, we could fall back on our local community because now we had become not just Witches, but St. Charles' own Witches.
In St. Charles, when the high school history teacher invited us to speak, the self-anointed "opposition" got a subpoena to stop us. (In that time people were not so forcefully aware that when one tax-exempt religion badmouthed another tax-exempt religion, the attacker risked their own tax-exempt status.) The students were furious. We rented a disused movie theater in town to speak to them on their own time rather than during school hours. It was standing room only, because students and parents from all over the area came to see the show.
Months earlier, the county's ministerial alliance had refused our request to join with them; now its representatives decided that they too would like to investigate this phenomenon. We agreed to meet with them in the presence of the press. The press, in the form of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, had a romp at that meeting. They were 100 percent on the Witches' side.
The effect of all this furor and work (work on our part, we hasten to add) was an abrupt cessation of local attacks. And when people did attack us, they became the bad guys and we were the poor innocent persecuted victims.
There are a lot of good friendly honest Christians out there--especially (Pay attention here, boys and girls.) when you have demonstrated over time that you don't shave your palms on full moon and go out looking for something to sink your fangs into. If you get those people on your side in any debate, then be assured: You will win. Confrontation simply doesn't work. And if you become rigid in your total opposition to Christianity in all its forms, then the opposition in turn will become hardened in its response to you.
Yes, of course to maintain your religious freedom, when that freedom is violated, you must respond with form and protocol that are both legal and relevant. Again, this approach assumes that you have done your homework, that you know what is legal and what is effective--and what is illegal, what is irrelevant, what is useless, and what may well have a negative effect, thus making your quicksand deeper. Recall the old adage: A picture is worth a thousand words. Photograph the attackers or their actions or their vehicles.
Over many years we have learned that a lawyer who is a member of a minority group sometimes has a tendency to be more supportive and will occasionally even do pro bono work for you, or at least may reduce his fees. Do not be afraid of trusting the law courts when it is a straightforward civil matter. A neighbor blocks your driveway because you (gasp) celebrate different festivals than they do? Sue. A local church is causing you trouble? Offer to meet with the leaders of the church in a neutral setting ... with reporters present. Point out to those leaders that neither side will win if they continue to be negative.
It may seem to many that simply striking back is the answer. It is not. It drags you down to the same level as the attacker is on. Get that chip off your shoulder and replace it with friendship. Many of your opponents can't stand such behavior. It pulls the rug right out from under all the stereotypical assumptions they've embraced so enthusiastically.
Your lifestyle and the lifestyle that your kids and your associates display are the example which you must set to show that you are the good guys. We've had well over forty years of experience in this arena; and so far most of the people who have attacked us for standing on our rights are other self-styled pagan/Wiccans. With allies like these, who needs enemies?
Blessed be each one who seeks. Gavin and Yvonne
PS One more time a not for profit 501C3 is not a church a church is a religious association.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
604 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 601 – 604 of 604In 1968, Gavin and Yvonne Frost formed the first Wiccan church, the Church of Wicca, and continued lobbying for their cause until, in 1972, they gained federal recognition of witchcraft as a religion. In 1985, their persuasive arguments convinced a federal appeals court that Wicca was a religion equal to any other recognized as such in the United States. The Frosts' School of Wicca, also established in 1968, became the first craft correspondence school and continues to publish Survival, the longest-lived Wiccan newsletter in circulation. The School of Wicca has brought more than 200,000 people to the craft and has handled as many as one million requests for information in a single year. Authors of the controversial Witches' Bible (1975), the Frosts have coauthored 22 books and have appeared on hundreds of national television and radio shows to promote Wicca. Since 1972, Gavin and Yvonne have lived under a vow of poverty, turning over all their material possessions to the Church of Wicca.
It was in his final year at the University of London (King's College) shortly after the close of World War II that Gavin grew interested in the prehistoric peoples of the British Isles and in the reconstruction of their spiritual beliefs. At London University there were several people of the English upper middle class or lower aristocracy who wanted to form a witchcraft coven. Through contacts with Thomas Lethbridge, an authority on witchcraft who worked at the university, Frost and his friends got in touch with a group of witches in Penzance, who agreed to initiate a few students if they met certain conditions. Frost was among a group of four who were blindfolded and taken out to a place they later identified as Boskednan, a Nine-Maidens Circle. (The breath of nine maidens heats the celtic goddess Cerridwen's cauldron of inspiration.) They went through an initiation similar to the initiation that would appear many years later in The Witch's Bible and it was on that occasion when Frost got the scar on his wrist, the spirit-through-fire scar that is still visible. Roots of that coven's practice have always intrigued Frost because they seemed to owe nothing to Gerald Gardner's work and because the order of service (the same as that shown later in Gavin and Yvonne Frosts' The Good Witch's Bible) did not resemble that of most other groups.
After earning an honors degree, Frost was requested to work for the Department of Atomic Energy and offered the opportunity to work on a doctorate in pure research. He completed his doctoral thesis on research into the separation of potassium and sodium ions by filtration, and moved on into research on the detection and classification of alpha waves. Then an old school friend contacted him and asked him to work on research in the infrared spectrum. Frost and his significant other, Dorothy Whitford, moved to de Havilland Aircraft in Hatfield near London. Here the research concentrated on investigation of long-wave infrared radiation for the British equivalent of the Sidewinder missile. Much of the testing of that missile was carried out on Salisbury Plain, and it was necessarily done at night. This gave Frost daytimes to explore nearby ancient monuments such as Stonehenge, and time to talk with local historians on what may be called the pagans of Stonehenge.
Gavin and Dorothy married and elected to emigrate to Montreal to work on the Canadian missile program. Upon arrival they learned they would immediately be assigned to Quebec City, site of the Canadian Missile Research Institute. Frost declined, joining instead Canadair's Training and Simulator group. His son Christopher was born in October 1954 in Montreal, and his daughter Sandra in April 1957, also in Montreal.
On one assignment Frost visited Chile when an F-86 had landed on a jungle strip near a remote mountain village, and its engine refused to start. The group needed about four days to locate the problem and get the plane flown out of there. In those four days in the village, Frost got his first taste of religion and healing as practiced by shamans. The villagers could not believe that an outsider, especially a Caucasian, would have any interest in their procedure or would be receptive toward it. But Frost saw many parallels in what they were doing to what he had been taught in the coven in England and had put on his mental shelf with the move to Canada.
When Frost moved to California, he became senior project engineer on the radar system in the F-104. This gave him the opportunity to travel extensively world-wide and achieve high-level contacts in many countries. When the opportunity arose to become the firm's European representative, Frost took it and moved his family to Munich, Germany.
Although the hours and work expectations were still high, there was more free time in Munich to investigate the fascinating subject of German sorcery. Gavin Frost studied for initiation with a group of German sorcerers in Geiselgasteig, the old Bohemian artists' colony south of Munich, but because Dorothy had no interest in the occult or in writing for a living, the family was beginning to fragment. Upon their return to the States, Gavin and Dorothy divorced.
It was here that Gavin Frost and Yvonne Wilson began the long process of establishing the spiritual path they called Wicca as a religion.
Post a Comment