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Being an elder sucks. If you’re good at it, it takes a fair amount of time and effort, and in return you get damn all in terms of tangible rewards. If, on the other hand, you’re a bad elder, there can be all kinds of tasty benefits, but then there’s that inconvenient bit about having to be accountable to the Gods. Hmmm… …decisions, decisions.
There’s a dangerous ego trap involved in being an elder. All these people keep showing up, telling you how knowledgeable you are, how wise you are, how wonderful you are, how sexy and attractive you are. (Okay, that bunch of you over there in the corner, yes I mean you, you can just STOP laughing right now. I mean it.) It can be really tempting to start believing that you actually ARE as wonderful as all these people keep saying you are. Beware, though, because once you actually start to believe that all this shite you’re being handed is true, the next step beyond that is believing that this makes you better and more deserving than the average joe. So it’s okay to be rude to people, and condescending; it’s okay to insist on special treatment. There isn’t anything that you do that’s really out of line, after all, and it’s just so wrong for those annoying whiners over there to be saying that you ought to be judged by the same standards used for ordinary mortals.
Gee, you don’t know anyone who sounds like that, do you?
There are traps that run the other way, too. People will try to stick you up on a pedestal and grovel at your feet. Problem is, they’ll then get really irate when the real you turns out not to match the idealized image of you they have created in their heads. And sooner or later it WILL happen. Here’s a good example:
A coven I know planned to celebrate “Women’s Mysteries” over a long weekend. The female members of the coven gathered at the High Priestess’ home, planning a “girls’ night out” on Saturday, workshops and ritual on Sunday, with Monday for summing up and recovering from the festivities. By a happy circumstance, the event was graced by the presence of the High Priestess who had trained and elevated the coven’s present High Priestess, and who liked to occasionally cast a maternal eye over what her downline had gotten themselves into.
On Saturday evening, the designated drivers ferried the ladies to a local nightspot, where everyone, including the elder High Priestess, proceeded to have a good time. The coveners were aghast. “Did you SEE her? She was DRINKING! And DANCING! It’s UNDIGNIFIED! Why, you’d think she was just like one of us!”
Fortunately, this particular coven’s parent tradition has a custom that requires that the High Priest and High Priestess of every coven must maintain a large cluebat of sturdy construction among the coven’s ritual regalia. I am reliably informed that the cluebat saw extensive use on Sunday and Monday.
So, I ask you: why on earth would any sane person ever WANT to be an elder?
The answer is simple enough: people who want to be elders are almost certainly precisely the wrong people for the job. Most elders fight like grim death to keep people from treating them like elders. Kicking. Screaming. Some of them have a rather nasty bite, too. They’ve got things to be doing that are far more important than letting themselves be propped up on that elder’s pedestal.
So what is it that they do that so all-fired important?
They give stuff away. Really valuable stuff. For free. How stupid is that?
What makes elders valuable, what makes elders important, is their wealth of knowledge and experience. And knowledge and experience are the only forms of wealth I know of that can be given away to others without being diminished. Elders teach. They advise and counsel. They cash people’s reality checks: “You know, George, that really wasn’t quite the smartest thing you could have done, now, was it?” They will point out that the Emperor is in fact parading down the street stark nekkid, and like as not they’ll already have a blanket handy to throw over things so the sight won’t upset the livestock, because they remember what it was like the last time something like this happened.
They’re kind of uncomfortable people to be around, because they because they do inconvenient things like setting an example for people, like it wasn't any big deal to live their entire life, both the mundane part as well as the esoteric side, with integrity and honor. And elders will tell you what you need to hear, even if you don’t want to hear it. One of the more horrible events in my life was when one of my elders looked at me, sitting there, fat, dumb, and happy, and said “I think it’s long past time you were initiated at Third Degree: you’ve been doing Third-level work for months. What do you think about Mabon as the date for the Ritual?”
I’ve had people accuse me of being an elder. The last time it happened I hit the person over the head with a brick, screamed “RAPE! FIRE! MURDER! MARTIANS! TELEMARKETERS!” at the top of my lungs, then made my escape in the confusion. Please, don’t tell them I’m hiding out here. I just know they’re still looking for me…
