Pagan Head-Scratcher: The Online Coven

"DEJA BROOM" denotes a blog repost from my old site.  Feel free to read anew, or refresh your memory to re-live the ranty goodness.  Otherwise, feel free to skip ahead to more modern mayhem

I have to stop poking my head into those online wicca/pagan/whatever forums with the preconceived notion  that I may yet find intellectually satisfying conversations afoot therein.

Seriously.  One day, I'm going to have an anuerism.

Well silly me had some lunch time left to kill and so I'd made the grevious error of browsing a pagan forum site entitled "Newbies, Looking for Advice?" or something similar.  About a third of the way down the page, past the littany of folks saying they are completely new, their parents don't understand them and that they are not sure which book to read next --The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spells or The Only Wiccan Spellbook You'll Ever Need-- was a comment from some young woman saying she's brand spanking new to the path but wants to start an online coven....would the next 13 people who want to join her in her quest kindly email her back channel.

I swear to Gods, upon reading this, I literally made the same confused and frustrated squawk noise that the Gilbert Godfrey 'spokes-duck' for AFLAC does in his commercials.   ACK?!!?!

This, in turn, made me laugh aloud...you know, the whole making a duck noise just justifies the Monty Python sketch about how to determine if someone is a witch (and if you don't get that reference, you probably shouldn't read this blog anymore).


Comedy aside....what the hell IS an ONLINE COVEN? 

I'm completely baffled at how that would work. 

Like does everyone get a copy of the same rite and then agree to perform it and report back their results later in a chat room?  Or is it a real time thing on Skype, with everyone facing their computer screens and yelling their quarter calls and such in unison with the microphone?  Oh no, wait, maybe it is this whole syndicated, coordinated teleconference thing with a bunch of robed practitioners all signing into some monumental webcast and syncing their webcams?

How do they come to share actual energies with each other?  How does the sharing of the cakes and wine work, one guy or gal mailing individual cookies to everybody the night before the ritual?  What are the logistics of creating sacred space, power raising, charging and sharing combined energy?  Is it all an astral, dreamstate thing where you cannot completely let yourself get into the moment of the power because you still have to type or read a teleprompter?

I guess I can wrap my brain around forming online friendships and study groups together with others, but the concept of what a coven means to me is apparently waaaaaaay different than what these newbie folks consider it to mean.  They think it is a closed-door group with a secret handshake, groovy sounding name and someone's photoshopped fancy logo.

I'm sure I'm about to be ranted at by all those "online coven" members who will find a way to lynch me for having a contrarian opinion.  Silly me, I prefer my covens to be real-time and with actual physical participants standing in circle together.  But hey, that's just how low-tech, old school witches like me roll....a lot more actual doing of the Craft and a lot less time spent in front of a computer