Witch School and Pagan Leadership

Today, I am dealing with the concept of leadership within the Pagan community. In the Pagan movement today there is surprisingly small amount of real grass roots leadership. Of course, Paganism as a whole has very independent people, who live by a personal vision. Straightforward hierarchal leadership simply has limited appeal to a faith that believes each individual has a personal relationship with deity and act as their own priestess or priest. Therefore, leadership is not granted or given by any form of central authority that is widely recognized. Instead leadership is earned and gained through actions and activities. Authority comes from respect of your peers and member so fhte community.

Witch School is in the education business and that makes us in the leadership creation business as well. Witch School and it's predecessor, The Daily Spell has been focused on developing leaders, which includes Mentors and Clergy, on behalf of the Correllian Tradition and the community as a whole for the last decade. Further Witch School is working to develop leadership for the next century. It is important that we have quality leadership in order to meet the demands of our dynamic and growing community.

What is a leader? For me, leadership is about taking effective action and improving the overall quality of life for a family, group, and/or a community. Leaders come in all shapes, sizes, colors, gender, and images. You cannot pigeonhole a leader by simply by their exterior, but by their internal character and qualities. Leaders simply have the guts to lead and the qualities that allow them to act.

The most basic ingredients of a leader is to have a guiding vision, passion and integrity.

A guiding vision allows a leader to know where they are going, what they are to do to get there, and to have the strength to persist in the face of setbacks and even failures. They have the ability to communicate the vision and make clear the benefits of their vision. They know that they can make a difference, and that difference is summed up in their personal guiding vision.

Passion is a love of what you do and love of doing it. You need passion for the people who you are leading and for whom the people who will receive the benefits of success. Passion is communicating hope and inspiration to people and having them believe and act on the guiding vision. Without passion, there is no hope, no inspiration and no vision.

Integrity is the one quality of leadership that is less learned but more of a byproduct. It represents a consistent behavior between the guiding vision and the actions of the leader. They must walk their talk, and show through actions that they believe what they are saying. Integrity is what creates trust.

Integrity requires self-knowledge, candor and maturity. All of this requires honesty of thought and actions, a steadfast devotion to core principles, and a fundamental soundness as a whole.

The traits are not inborn but are qualities that are learned and acquired. Very few people are born leaders, and the vast majority of leaders are self-made. In this way leadership is about personal transformation, and it is about what is in a person's heart and soul.

Witch School with its core principle of offering an anyone, anyplace, anywhere, anytime education, seeks to thread these principles through out our system. It is only by strictly adhering to this guiding vision have we succeeded so far. It is our hope that by teaching and acting according to our guiding vision of a better world that we will generate a new generation of leadership. Witch School expects its members to become part of the leadership that guides the Pagan community in the 21st century.

In part 2, I will discuss the way Witch School has programs to generate leadership and how it is transforming the community.