There comes a point in groups where we want to allow everyone to feel they are just as valid to have an opinion, but sooner or later someone comes along who is completely wrong and suddenly that philosophy falls apart.
In a recent group meeting this Tuesday, one of the members of my coven said that they felt the elements of air and fire were emotional and the other elements were not. There was a point where I had to sit on and crush my natural reaction to blurt out “Water is the most emotional of all elements! Air is intellectual”. I wondered if there was a better way to correct them rather than head-on. How do I say nicely, you’re correct from a perspective. Then I realised, there just isn’t an accurate way to say it, you’re correct when someone is wrong unless you’re ready to accept that none of this stuff is true. When you’re happy to accept none of this stuff is true then excellent, b*gg@r off and stop wasting the time of the rest of us who are trying to use these systems because we believe in them.
If left to call air emotional, this person would have struggled with any astrology reading which would have widely differed from most other astrologers. They flipped through cards I had handed them with adjectives associated with Gemini, Libra and Aquarius and jumped on every word like “talkative”, “peace keeper”, “people-pleaser”, “social” and “curious” to justify why they are emotional signs. Nearly all these things are communication-related rather than emotion-related and people-pleasing is more about avoiding emotions than participating in them.
Why did I bother to try to find a way to say “you’re correct” when someone was so fundamentally wrong? Well, this is how dangerous our culture of “be polite to everyone; everyone is valid” has become. That we are happy to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of people pleasing. Well, that does not reflect the truth. It is a type of fear. It does not belong among the behaviours of someone who practices magic after they have worked with the magic mirror.