Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth
In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.
'In the Old Days...'
“In the old days....”
Lots of New Pagan narratives begin this way: implicitly, if nothing else. Back in Pagan Days, you see, we used to....
Then follows the story of what we did or thought or hoped for, back when Pagandom extended far.
In the old days isn't good anthropology. Good anthropology requires specifics of time and place. In northern Staffordshire during the 1850s.....
But in the old days isn't anthropology: it's myth. Back in the Pagan Dreamtime, in the days before May Eve, the young bucks would spend time in the woods building May bowers. That way, you'd have someplace (relatively) private to bring your sweetheart back to after the bonfire revels.
Or so they say.
Don't mistake in the old days for history, although it may be that too. When pagans talk about the Old Days, we're not really talking about how it was.
What we're really talking about is how it's going to be.
No one travels aimlessly, without a destination, though we may not know it until we get there.
"Back in the old days" is ours.
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