The Wiccan Style of Telling Stories

Morgan Drake Eckstein

One of my jokes about lineage is that when you ignore the energetic transmission, what you are left with is a bunch of strange ideas and weird stories. Or at least, that is what I received along with my initiation.

Not that you need to be an initiate to receive a bunch of stories as a pagan/wiccan. Attend a couple of open rituals and discussion groups/classes wearing a friendly attitude and you will leave with a hatful of stories. For the really shy, there are books and the internet.

We are a story telling community. It comes from our ritual style, a kind of gather around the campfire, heckle the story teller style of ritual. Our audience is not the sit quietly while taking copious notes audience of the university system; it is not the sit quietly and buy things crowd of the mass media; nor is it the listen and agree style of the major religions. It is more of “And you thought this was a good idea---why?” style. We tend to want to know why we are doing things.

There are some common stories that we all seem to know: the burning bush, the sawed-off broom, and the sliced apple. Most of these seem to be advice about what not to do.

My personal storytelling style annoys some people. Most of the stories that we tell are so far removed from their sources that we do not remember who was originally involved. I tend to insert names (and often myself) into the stories. This is called thievery by non-story tellers---my father used to call it joke telling.

Another aspect of my personal storytelling style is that I have no problem with changing details to suit my purposes. For instance, I have no problem with taking a story from mythology or another religion and changing minor, or even major, details to get it to fit into the piece of work or story that I am currently engaged in. Some people refer to this as cultural thievery, and consider it disrespectful. I call it being creative. Obviously, I do not make many friends with my attitude.

I tend to describe it as being a magpie. “Look, it is a shiny bit! Gimme! It will look beautiful weaved into my nest of lore and magical trivia.” Out there somewhere in the world, a shaman cries because I stole a description from them. And so it goes.

Now, many pagans and Wiccans will argue that my personal story telling style has nothing to do with how they tell stories. And they would be right. After all, I am a story unto myself. I am the militant in-your-face determined to do as I please Wiccan. I am used as an example of how not to be.

So do not do as I do. Never change the details of the stories you tell. Never make the stories personal. Never borrow the shiny bits from other cultures. Be a good Wiccan, respect other people’s stories, and future generations will respect you. And that is all any of us desire, right?

[After the fact---Several people when they first read this article could not figure out why I was writing it. There was several factors involved. One, I knew what the outline of the June 2011 OFM looked like. Two, I was just beginning to work on a prject with the working title of "A Pack of Wiccan Lies." Three, the article was written in between a couple of large university papers---I may have been ingesting too much cafferine at this point. So the article was two parts CYA (cover your ass) and one part brain-fried.]