Last week, a younger member of my outer community emailed me with a story that bothered her. She’d attended a ritual led by people she didn’t know and when she told one of them about her path as a Witch, they started running down a list of everything she was doing wrong in her practice. While understandably bothered, what bothered her most her disappointment. She thought that within the Pagan community, she wouldn’t run into the kind of size-you-up-what-are-you-well-that’s-stupid attitude she’d encountered in the Church of her youth.

I told her, sadly, that no communities were exempt from that attitude; even, and maybe especially, our own.

“Every divine word came into being through that which was thought by the heart and commanded by the tongue [of Ptah]. . . And so justice is done to him who does what is liked, and evil is done to him who does what is hated. And so life is given to the peaceful . . .” (Memphite Theology, from Frankfort, 1948)

If a good example is set by the leader, it will be effective for all eternity, and all his wisdom will become one with the eternity of the cycles. (The Wisdom of Ptah-Hotep, Jacq, 2004)

I fear that in these volatile times we are too easily turned aside from the wisdom of ancient Egypt. Politics in America is never a tame beast, but the current season is fraught with demagoguery and hyperbole of a level I have not seen in my own lifetime.

And yet, with all its modern challenges, good leadership still emerges from the same principles it always has: personal integrity; honesty; honor of both one’s self and others; fairness; compassion and courage.

The Egyptians are said to have been a conservative society, not because they resembled anything in today’s civic life, but because they had experienced extremes of upheaval and knew their survival depended on maintaining the balance of Ma’at.

So it is that (to my knowledge) we have no records of protests and dissension left to us, though there surely must have been some at times. We do know that when the Egyptians threw off the oppressive religion of Akhenaten and reinstated the temples, they did everything they knew of to erase the memory of the Heretic from history.  They did not want his words lingering to re-introduce chaos into their recovered balance.

Since every word has power, since we are all gods speaking divine words, it behooves us to ponder what creative works we send out when we speak. For many in the blogosphere, words are particularly powerful, and we do well to heed the lesson of the Egyptians to moderate our speech into something truly effective.

How will you make your every word count today? What will be the first words you think, then speak, in the morning? And what will be your last words upon retiring for the night? Couch your waking hours in good speech, in medu netjer, sacred words that bring life, affirmation and truth to yourself and others. In this way you will “become one with the eternity of the cycles.”

I posted this a long while back with a focus on boundaries as an activist, and I included it in my book The Leader Within, but this is a fairly good general primer on boundaries for leadership. It's essential for anyone in a leadership position to understand the concept of boundaries and to work with their own issues around this; ultimately, I think that the only way we get healthier groups is if everyone involved in a group is working with their boundaries.

A lot of activism and leadership begins with changing your self and your own life so that you can begin to effect change in the world around you. Some of this kind of personal transformation work can be very difficult.

If I could reach through the folds of time and explain a few things to new-Priestess me, here is what I would say about who I might want to re-consider letting into the Coven:

The woman with the brassy-sassy personality who called you at work crying because it looks like she'll be getting fired wants to know because if it's because the Gods rejected her offerings...and gets rancid-offended when you suggest it's probably less about the offering and more because she slapped a co-worker that morning...she's going to be a bit tough to work with.

In Part 1 and Part 2, we looked at Team Intrepid as it began an event planning process for a Pagan event without creating any structure for decision-making or establishing any goals, and diving right into minutia of the event. And making the wrong decision first can have a lot of impact on later planning.

Event Venue Choices

Let's say Team Intrepid assumes we'll be doing the event at Green Tree Park. They aren’t making this decision for any strategic reason, it's just that the team leader lives near the park and is familiar with the park. 

In Part 1, we looked at Team Intrepid as it began an event planning process for a Pagan event without creating any structure for decisionmaking or establishing any goals, and diving right into minutia of the event. And this process can work as long as everyone agrees on everything. 

My apologies to Anne and the crew at Witches and Pagans for being absent for awhile. I started several pieces--one of which is polished and ready to publish, but it still sits in my draft-box. Every time I would start to write something seemingly poignant and important, the world would change with either horror or triumph and would render the piece no longer relevant--at least for now.

Several years ago....