Solitary or group practice?

Overall I am content with my solitary practice.

Good thing because I don't seem to be likely to find a compatible group. I fill my need for social contact and group think with groups that are not based on spiritual practice. But sometimes I make a tentative attempt to reach out to the pagan community in the flesh instead of in cyberspace.

Each time has been an enormous failure. Several years ago I went to a few meetings of pagans. I found notices posted in neighborhood bookstores and the locations were in the same neighborhood, seemed like a good start. I mostly found people who thought they were there for a casting call for Harry Potter.

That cured me of that for a while.

This week I went to a meeting of pagans at a pagan bookstore. I have to go on a tangent here...I did not know this bookstore existed and it is a delightful little place with coffee, books, crafts and wi-fi. A great place to spend some time.

The group however, was to say the very least, disappointing. I was greeted warmly, got some coffee and sat down. The leader of the group, an outgoing young lady with a small child, started the discussion. It was supposed to be about wealth and prosperity.

The only group discussion was some heartfelt agreement that wealth was bad and prosperity was good. The idea was that the two are incompatible. There was a short lived contest I will call Poor Pagan during which each attempted to show the others how poor they were.

Then the 'discussion' moved on to the prosperity part and we were treated to over an hour of the leader of the group talking about how prosperous she was. I found out more about her love life, finances and plans for the future than I know about some of my friends. Everyone else nodded along and seemed content to listen and say nothing. I remarked that wealth and prosperity were not mutually exclusive. That was greeted with silence and blank stares so I shut up.

A few minutes later the discourse on prosperity was interrupted by a rousing game of Show Off Your Tattoos, which involved removing some clothing. I don't have any tattoos so I kept my clothes on. Then one of the group announced that people who claimed to be pagan but did not have tattoos and piercings were obviously trying to fool others and not really pagan. This was met by some agreement all around.

Back to more of the ramblings about the prosperity of the group leader. Her child was repeatedly climbing over me, stepping on my feet and wiping Baklava on my jeans and I decided that it was time to go.

I chatted with the shop owner about how good the coffee was, waved a goodbye at the group and escaped. They seemed as relieved to see me go as I was to leave.

Not what I am looking for. Solitary looks really really really good right now.