Call for Expanded Council and Political Action from Head of Council

 

CALL FOR EXPANDED COUNCIL AND POLITICAL ACTION FROM HEAD OF COUNCIL
Yearly Address to Council

Esteemed Senior Advisors, respected Program Heads, Honorable Representatives, and Constituent members of affiliated groups,

Since last I came before this Council, we have passed through a year that has been unlike any other in recent memory.  It has been a year that has strained our resources, tested our bonds of community, and challenged our fundamental principles of belief.  Our community, like others have faced the impact of a pandemic that has upended lives and economic stability and has taken far too many.  In the world around we have witnessed upheavals and political conflicts that have divided us and seemed to ignite slumbering currents of the most reprehensible of human impulses. Members of our community are often more vulnerable and struggle in countries or cultures where their beliefs and practices are persecuted and misunderstood.  Many of our people struggle in pockets of isolation without support or sense of connection to a wider community. 

We have been compelled by the nature of the challenges we faced to consider how we as a people, as individuals, as the collective members of the Occult community chose to act in the face of crisis and to look upon the aspects of our response without turning from the judgement that must be laid at our feet.  There is a strength and resilience within our community that is the birthright of each of us, carried from our elders and teachers and given into our hands which we now hold in trust to pass to those who must come after.  Our Magical teachings, the Wisdom of our Pagan beliefs, the Occult traditions as expressed in our many Disciplines, the Knowledge of our accumulated understanding given into our keeping are the gifts and tools that we as a people and community carry with us and are the foundation of shared hope for what is yet to come.   There are those acts of courage in the face of crisis that can be held up as examples.  Resource boards were established to better distribute information and to connect those in need with food and assistance during the pandemic.  Many in our community came together in groups where they made a point of staying connected and supporting one another and checking on each other so people didn’t simply fall through the cracks.  We have seen people step forward and create services designed and crafted to meet the needs of our community in the areas of grief counseling, job placement, and spiritual/magical ministry for those in need during crisis.  In the face of the upheaval in society and the menace of illness many of our community did not turn away, they did not concede their belief, nor did they flinch when looking upon the magnitude of what we confront.

And yet, as I address this Council, Honorable Representatives, I am profoundly aware of those who no longer are among us.  I cannot but help recall those of the community who due to the upheaval and disconnect caused by the advance of this illness have been lost to us or have slipped away unnoticed in the tumult.  Our people needed us as leaders to speak and often they received only silence.  Our community sought from us support and direction and our leadership many times provided only confusion and showed an unwillingness to consider how to respond.   We must not remain silent, and we must not turn away from burdens of leadership.

Honorable Representatives of the Council we can report that despite these challenges we have maintained and kept in operation the educational programs that you have mandated and that the schools that have been chartered by the Council continue to offer Occult education and remain available to all members of our affiliated groups.  In keeping with the Council’s commitment to education we have undertaken to establish the first Spanish Language school that will provide Occult learning to our Latino membership.  We have also created, by vote of this Council, an online publication which has been dedicated to issues facing our Occult community and will serve to support and highlight the individual groups affiliated with the Council. 

Our community is diverse and is comprised of many different magical/spiritual/Occult perspectives and the make up of the Council should reflect this.  In this last year we have reached out to groups that at the time had little voice or representation on the Council.  While we have increased the constituent membership I do not believe that it is by these numbers that we can measure the success of the Council.  It is my belief that we must measure our achievements against the quality of leadership, the effectiveness of the programs and resources we provide and bring to our community.  

As we now look forward towards what lies ahead of our community we must not falter in our work and when we tire in the effort, we must draw strength from that fundamental well spring of our community.  We are a people that can be defined by the gifts and abilities that we possess, the creative energies and determinations which drive us forward hold an unlimited potential.  And yet these potentials often go unrealized and we have many times squandered opportunities.  We allow our differences to become barriers to any form of cooperation between groups.  There are personal grudges and animosities that effect the outcome of collective endeavors as leaders within groups use their positions of authority to act on personal grievances.  There was a time when we felt that we could afford to continue in this manner, and we could overlook its impact.  I believe that this last year has taught us what we should have already understood.    This Council comprised of Representatives from wide and various groups has learned the necessary habit of consensus.  Together you work with one another to create and oversee community wide projects and have found the capacity to set aside differences.  In this upcoming year I would ask that the Council increase its efforts to include more groups from our community and that we reach out in an active and welcoming manner and that we seek to expand the representation on the Council.  Honorable Representatives, it is my intention, sometime in the upcoming months, to come before you and ask that you create a committee that will work together to first review and then select groups to be contacted for Council membership.

There are many things that can define a community.  Their beliefs.  The way they support one another.  The basic values that motivate their actions.  These define a community.   While these are important, I believe that it is our willingness to assist those in need as well as protecting the wellbeing of the most vulnerable among us that speak to our truest nature.   As we look out upon the world it cannot have escaped anyone’s perception that in many areas and in many countries the rights and liberties of people are being trampled.  Our trans brothers and sisters are attacked from all sides, we see religious zealots far and wide push forward with thinly veiled hatred and bigotry to assault our Occult community, and the rise of far-right groups in every form confounds the imagination.  We as a community respond to these issues with fervent zeal and determination and yet our efforts are haphazard and uncoordinated.  We find ourselves outmaneuvered politically and lack any concerted effort to safeguard our own interest or to effect support of those in need.  It is long past time that we begin the formation of an organizing structure that will gather resources to confront and resist these forces of political, spiritual, social fascism.  For make no mistake, those who seek to disenfranchise us, our community, the most vulnerable have already organized.   Honorable members of the Council, it is my intention to bring before you a resolution asking that you authorize the creation of an organizing group that will work to focus and gather resources to combat these movements.  I would ask that the Council create a committee that would invite others from among our Occult community to participate and that we consider the necessary safeguarding of those most vulnerable a fundamental and guiding principle of the Council.

Against the forces of negativity and self interest we must bring the collective energies of our Occult community.  The passion, the magick, the faith of our elders and those who struggled before us must be the guiding principle of our fight.  We must stand unafraid and unbended before those who would see a return to hateful ideologies and divisive rhetoric.  We must work through our own internal limits that cause us to be divided.  We must be about the great work that calls us forward to build something worthy of our efforts.  Honorable members of the Council, I believe the task worth doing.  I believe that the upcoming year will be one that defines the character of our community, show the truth of who we are, and will define us for years to come.

It has been my great honor to serve as your Head of Council as we have put our hands to the task of working for our community.  Let us continue in this work and let us see that together we will be amazed at what a people such as ours can achieve.