Elizabeth Barrette
Blogging is a fun and effective way to reach out to people and share your ideas. You can write about anything and post it online. What you write depends on your purpose for starting a blog. It may be for education, community connection, personal expression, or other reasons. Pagans in particular find blogging helpful for interacting with others in their faith, especially if there aren’t enough people locally to form a coven.
A blog also allows you to share developing observations over time. As your experiences change, so will your posts. You can then look back over earlier ones to see how things have evolved. This is valuable if you have just begun studying Paganism, if you teach students about your faith, or if your coven holds regular events that you want to promote and remember.
It is easier and more efficient to begin blogging when you do some planning first. Let’s look at some helpful steps.
Choosing a Topic
The topic for your blog can be as wide or narrow as you want. Some people just write about whatever catches their fancy that day. Within the context of this discussion, a Pagan blog is necessarily topical. You may want to write about one specific thing that changes over time, such as the Wheel of the Year, or about a handful of related subtopics, such as exploring the deities from different pantheons. The narrower the topic, the deeper you can go with it. The broader the topic, the more ground you can cover. It depends on your taste.
There are all kinds of ways to choose a focus for your blog. If something already fascinates you, then by all means write about it. If you don’t have a specific subject yet, then look at various Pagan blogs already in print and try to find either a new topic or a new angle on a current topic so that you’re not duplicating other people’s efforts. Understand that it is much easier to stand out from the crowd if you write about something uncommon, but conversely, many more people will set out searching for the popular topics. So it’s a tradeoff. Let’s consider some possible subjects.
Your Personal Path
Many people blog about their discovery of Paganism and what they have learned. Each journey is unique in its own way.
The Gods
You can write about one deity (such as Cernunnos), a particular class (such as moon goddesses), or a pantheon (such as Hawaiian), or you can ramble among different ones.
Spellcraft
Magic is very popular, and people often search for spells to cast. Whether you write about the theory or the practice, this can attract a lot of readers. You may wish to rotate through different types, such as spells for love, prosperity, healing, etc.
Specialties
Most Pagans have one or more skills. You could write about divination, astrology, stone magic, energy work, herbalism, and so forth.
Coven or Solitary Work
Group dynamics can provide endless inspiration, whereas private practice offers opportunities for introspection. Since everyone is either working together or working alone, you have an audience with either focus.
Choosing a Venue
There are two basic options for hosting a blog. One is to put it on your own website, and the other is to use a blogging service. Compare and contrast the features of possible hosts before selecting one. Using your own website requires more skill to build the site in the first place, more money if you pay for hosting, and more work to attract an audience. However, you get much more control over what you can do with it. A blogging service’s big advantages are the large pool of users and the ease of construction, plus most of them are free at the basic level, although some offer premium features for a fee. The downside is that they’re more likely to set restrictions, and they may kick you off for any reason or no reason. For Pagans, this is really important.
The most vital step in choosing a host for your Pagan blog is to make sure that it is either Pagan-friendly or tolerant of diversity.
The most vital step in choosing a host for your Pagan blog is to make sure that it is either Pagan-friendly or tolerant of diversity. In theory, America guarantees religious freedom, but in practice, Pagans get stepped on plenty. Look for a host that already has some other Pagan blogs, if possible, or at least has a wide variety of religions represented. Such hosts are less likely to hassle you about your topic, and you don’t want to do all the work of launching a blog just to have someone delete it because they dislike your religion. For this reason, it is also advisable to back up your content on your own hard drive.
WordPress
This tool is a complex, relatively powerful way to create your own website or blog for free. You need to understand some coding to make it work, but you can do a lot with it.
LiveJournal
This is one of the older blogging networks. It’s a bit buggy, but it offers easy-to-use templates, generous post size, and a substantial audience.
Dreamwidth
This service is among the newer blogging networks. It’s still in active development, with a modest but growing audience and nice templates. Dreamwidth one is getting better over time.
Designing a Layout
The layout of your blog influences its effectiveness. People typically read a page in one of two patterns: F or Z. In both cases, the most attention falls on the upper left corner, so put your most important information there. The top line gets moderate traffic, followed by the lower left corner. Lighter attention goes to the middle (F) or the lower right (Z). People should know you have a Pagan blog immediately, so try to incorporate that into your title bar or left corner logo. Put less urgent material farther down.
Choose colors with an eye toward legibility first and magical correspondences second. People can’t read what they can’t see clearly. That means you need something with high contrast and low irritation. Black on white and white on black both work well, although bright white can cause eyestrain after a while. Soft colors work great as long as you maintain contrast. I like black print on very pale blue for my blogs, with darker blues for framing. Avoid very bright colors in large blocks. Yes, some people have a bold red background, but that doesn’t make it a good idea.
How do you use brighter colors? They work well for titles, subtitles, and link text—small things you want to emphasize so people can find them. Images serve a similar purpose and also help break up the text. In a blog, this is often accomplished with post frames and user avatars, but you can also insert images into your posts. This is where you should consider magical correspondences, such as your patron deity’s colors or a green/brown palette for earth magic. If you use a blogging host, look closely at the offered templates, because many of them actually have elemental or other magical references. Pagans do code!
Avoid things that annoy people. Don’t put ads all over your site. If you must have some, put them on the bottom and make sure they are relevant to your content. Anything that blinks or moves is especially bad, because it distracts people from your writing. Don’t set music, videos, or any other sound to play automatically; use a button so people who want those things can turn the features on and off. Use an accessibility monitor to measure how well your site meets special needs. It will tell you if your contrast is good, your graphics have appropriate text tags, and so forth. Good accessibility maximizes your potential audience.
Posting Content
The most important part of a blog is the content. You must write interesting material in order to attract an audience. Frequency and reliability are two key aspects of this. Blogs that update more often become popular faster than those that do so less often, to a certain point. Too much traffic can overwhelm readers. Updating once a day to several times a day is ideal. You need to post at least once a week for best effect. If you can’t post every day, make a schedule—such as Monday, Wednesday, Friday—and stick to it.
Consider three basic types of posts. Anchor posts are long, original discussions of a topic. You need periodic anchor posts to show your knowledge of the blog’s subject area, ideally with things your readers can’t easily find elsewhere. Recurring posts are questions you revisit regularly, such as a Friday reprise of your weekly activities or a monthly esbat report. These build continuity, especially if you ask your readers what they are doing too. Forwards include all manner of things written by other people that pertain to your topic, whether you’re forwarding posts within a blogging network or linking to outside news articles. For best effect, include your own opinions about the material rather than just pointing to it. Forwards that include your own commentary add variety and also keep your blog active without requiring you to write everything yourself.
In a Pagan blog, look for interesting bits of your main topic that you haven’t seen other people writing about, or where you disagree with the current materials, and make those your anchor posts. Esbats, sabbats, and other seasonal stuff make good recurring posts. Look for news about Pagan issues, because that’s not always easy to find—you can attract an audience just by serving as a really good newsfeed for people.
Building an Audience
Half of a blog is the writer, and the other half is the audience. When you write, you communicate not just about your subject but also about yourself. Readers today like to get to know their writers. So blogging is also a great way to make friends.
First, introduce yourself to your readers. Tell them who you are and how you got here. Explain why you want to write a Pagan blog, and share some of the important things happening in your life right now. You don’t have to reveal personal information—indeed, be cautious about doing that online—but make sure readers understand your credentials for writing about this stuff.
Next, establish expectations. Cyberspace is a lot like Underhill in fairy tales: it is what you make of it. You get what you permit and what you reward. So if you expect people to behave decently and you remove those who misbehave, you build up a nice place. It is easier for people to meet your expectations when they know what those are. Therefore, begin with clear ground rules about what you will be doing (such as your topic and posting schedule) and what you want them to do (such as be polite). Set boundaries for things you will not allow, and enforce those. To do this, you need strong moderation tools; you can do what you want on your own site, and a good blogging network should allow you to suspend or ban trolls. Understand that if you don’t moderate your blog, it is likely to turn into a brawl fairly often; if you manage it responsibly, you will attract positive people who will help you keep it running smoothly.
A good blogging network should allow you to suspend or ban trolls. Understand that if you don’t moderate your blog, it is likely to turn into a brawl fairly often; if you manage it responsibly, you will attract positive people who will help you keep it running smoothly.
Finally, use audience interaction to attract and keep good readers. If you’re hosting your own blog, you’ll have to do some extra work to build an audience using ads or other methods. Handing out flyers or business cards at a Pagan event may also help. Blogging networks often have an invite feature, or you can look for blogs you like and comment there until people follow you back to yours. In your posts, ask questions that get people talking. Pay attention to your regular commenters and respond to their input. Answer comments as often as you can. Once you have a month or so of posts, ask readers what they’d like to see more or less of. Let them help you develop your blog. They’ll come up with ideas you never would have thought of on your own.
Writing a Pagan blog can be a great adventure. Following the steps for advance planning will improve your chances of success. Think about what you want to write, find an appropriate host, set up your blog, and start writing. Adapt as you go along. Usually you can build up a useful amount of audience interaction within a few weeks, but it takes about a year to establish a blog—or most new projects—securely enough to last over the long term. So plan ahead and good luck!
Elizabeth Barrette has been involved with the Pagan community for more than twenty-seven years. She served as managing editor of PanGaia for eight years and dean of studies at the Grey School of Wizardry for four years. She has written columns on beginning and intermediate Pagan practice, Pagan culture, and Pagan leadership. Her book Composing Magic: How to Create Magical Spells, Rituals, Blessings, Chants, and Prayers explains how to combine writing and spirituality. She lives in central Illinois, where she has done much networking with Pagans in her area, such as coffeehouse meetings and open sabbats. Her other public activities feature Pagan picnics and science fiction conventions. She enjoys magical crafts, historical religions, and gardening for wildlife. Her other writing fields include speculative fiction, gender studies, social and environmental issues. Visit her blog, The Wordsmith’s Forge (http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com) or her website, PenUltimate Productions (http://penultimateproductions.weebly.com). Her coven site, which includes extensive Pagan materials, is Greenhaven Tradition (http://greenhaventradition.weebly.com).
Illustrator: Rik Olson