Over the last few weeks I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries about religious groups and the enclaves they’ve established in the United States. For instance, the Hasidic Jews live and work in Brooklyn, New York without interacting too much with the general population. The Amish live in communities throughout the countryside from Pennsylvania to Idaho. The Shakers had many farms across the US, two not far from where I live. As I watched these documentaries I wondered what it would take to create a Pagan enclave.
The first documentary I watched was A Life Apart: Hasidism in America. The next Amish: A People of Preservation. The last, Ken Burns’ America: The Shakers. All the documentaries showed me peoples who value community above anything else.
It got me thinking about what it takes to create a community as tightly knit as the three I saw on television. How did Ann Lee, Jakob Ammann, and Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov start the Shakers, Amish, and Hasidic lifestyles? Did each have a thought along the lines of I want to create a community of tight knit religious folk or was the process to create these communities more organic?
Lover and I, especially myself, desire to live in a close knit Pagan community. There are a few that I’ve found online such as Laurelin and Four Quarters but I don’t know how populated the communities are. Four Quarters seems less a home where a large group of Pagans live than a camp where Pagans come together to worship then leave to go to their homes where ever their dwellings are.
Before I really identified as Pagan I desired to live in a commune. In my early to mid twenties I thought about it often. I daydreamed my friends and I would buy a big farm in western Massachusetts and live communally, raising children and farming together. I didn’t see many men in my daydream because this daydream partly stemmed from the fact that myself and my friends all had bad boyfriends we saw as the men who’d pump us full of babies but not be around to help raise them.
Watching the documentaries only fueled those longings. The desire to live and work with people who think as I do, who worship as I do, is a desire I fear will remain unfulfilled. I don’t know how to create what I want nor do I know of viable Pagan communities already in existence in which I could enter.
Do you?
Have you looked into cohousing? I would love to find a cohousing community with a Pagan bent. If I ever had the money to pull it off I think I’d buy 20+ acres and set up an ecclectic pagan community with a nice big community building and little houses for each family. I’ll make you a deal. If you find a pagan community, you tell me about it and If I find a pagan community, I’ll tell you about it :)
Lyneya: Thanks for visiting and commenting. You are my first regular reader! How exciting!
Many Pagans I talk to have the same sentiment. What I don’t understand is why it’s so difficult to create. Pagans are great at manifesting yet, for some reason(s), we can’t manifest a community. I think it’s because many of us come from religious backgrounds which thrive on blind obedience so when a leader-ish type person tries to herd us we immediately rebel. Pagans are notoriously difficult to herd. Even cats are easier. After all, all you have to do is shake the Pounce can and the cats come running!
There’s a couple of individuals in my area who have said the same as you: they want to buy land and make it a communal Pagan farming community. But what does it take to create that? I don’t think it’s one person buying land, I think it’s a number of people buying land.
Further, what does it take to create a large community? The Amish number in the 100,000 and the Hasidics even more than that. Can Pagans create those numbers AND be cohesive? Can we created enclaves large enough where arranged marriages are the norm, we are self supporting, and our elders and children are cared for by members of the community?
All tough questions!
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There’s a Pagan Co-op here in Ottawa. Its a townhouse complex. Complete with a hall/classroom and a small playground.
It is not the only one I’ve seen.
People just start renting or buying homes on the same street, or in the same apartment complex and such. Don’t make much fuss about it, don’t make a website. They just go ahead and do it.
I’ve also seen folk buy acreages beside each other and just take down the fences between.
The problem is we want to start big and grand. “lets all go off into the wilderness and build a community from scratch together!” I’ve been there, done that, with eco-villages. They are harder than you’d think, complicated and costly, difficult to sustain. Especially in the first few years.
Better for us to start small and grow from there.
I used to be a part of Circle Sanctuary in Barneveld, Wisconsin. But while the founders had a house on the premises in which they lived, Pagans basically came there to celebrate the seasons – sabbats and esbats and fairy circles, of which I was also a member. I have since moved back to Sonoma County, California. I would love to fine a Pagan community but so far have not found one.