Why have a second opinion page at all?
With the current amount of witchcraft and make believe wicca sites and groups in many countries, it is important that we offer prospective seekers a way to find out if their chosen group is really part of the initiatory tradition or not. Setting up a Second Opinion page is a simple and effective way to do this.
1. Empower seekers to evaluate prospective groups
First and foremost, the Second Opinion page gives simple and clear instructions and common sense advice on how to evaluate a prospective group for yourself. This empowers the seeker and will help them in selecting the correct group for them.
2. Be a contact point for private evaluation
If the prospective seeker is looking for more information, there is an email address they can contact. This should of course be a person who is well known in the community of wiccan initiates, someone who has a good knowledge of who is who. They should be able to confirm or deny if the claims of High Priestess Y, for example of being a member of the Gardnerian tradition, are true or not.
3. Psychological impact
The existence of, and web address of, this Second Opinion page should be advertised widely on many web sites and forums. For two reasons. Firstly, in order to simply advertise the service. And secondly and far more important, to advertise as widely as possible to all existing groups, that their prospective candidates could be making use of this service to verify that people are who and what they claim to be.
4. Verification is OK
It is important to cultivate the idea that it is OK to verify that your teacher is indeed the person he says he is. It is OK to verify that your group’s High Priestess and High Priest are indeed initiates of the tradition they claim to be. Of course you would not give out the full lineage, which would not mean much to the querent anyway. But confirmation of the lineage per se, yes, there is nothing wrong with confirming or denying the (public) claims made by someone else.
5. Practical results
I have found that very few people actually write in with questions for confirmation – maybe a handful per year. The impact of our Second Opinion page however goes a lot further than this would lead you to believe. The general knowledge that seekers can, and do, check up on all sorts of false claims, has its impact. Without much effort on your part, such a Second Opinion page will start to clean up the scene in general, simply by advertising that this service exists.
6. Second opinion page example
Feel free to use the example page, as is, or edit it, and use it on your web site.
An example of a Second opinon page
Blessed be!
Merlin
The Second Opinion Page is an initiative of Merlin Sythove
