Last week I was watching the documentary “Radio Unnameable” about famous New York radio personality Bob Fass, when I saw Margot Adler . I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, after all Margot had a long and storied career in radio that overlapped with Fass, and even though she had recently passed, the documentary footage was no doubt shot years earlier. Still, the moment brought into focus that while Margot Adler loved the Pagan community, played an important role in the development of modern Paganism, and enjoyed attending Pagan events, she also had a rich, complex, rewarding life completely outside the context of her religious preferences. That seems like a somewhat small revelation to have, but I found it profound all the same, because sometimes it has seemed like modern Paganism was my whole wide world.

I’ve been working on The Wild Hunt on a nearly daily basis since 2004. Two years ago, I realized I was burning out. When you reach your limit doing something like this it isn’t like hitting a wall, sudden and immediate, it’s more like running out of water in a desert. You wish you could simply quench your thirst and continue your journey, but there’s not a drop of relief in sight. So you stagger forward as best you can, until you can’t even do that. Meanwhile, my public profile within our religious movement had never been more pronounced, and I found that a growing number of people saw me as some sort of leader, or perhaps more accurately as a public intellectual who was expected to hold forth on the issues of the day. Both of these developments made me increasingly uneasy, and I started looking for a way I could keep The Wild Hunt intact as a service to modern Paganism, while also allowing myself the freedom to leave. To re-orient my life in a new and different way.

I have been extremely fortunate that a group of like-minded media professionals, most notably Managing Editor Heather Greene, came at just the right time to step forward and help me. Over this last year I have been slowly transitioning out of my responsibilities in a gradual manner, while Heather, our staff reporters, and columnists, took up my old mantle. For the last few months I’ve been more of a symbolic presence and editorial advisor than avid contributor, and I think that this new team has managed to create something that honors the spirit of what I intended with The Wild Hunt while setting it up for a long future as a journalistic outlet for our interconnected communities. Heather now holds “the keys” to The Wild Hunt, its finances, the domain, and all other aspects. I trust her and the rest of the staff implicitly in their ability to carry out our mission. They may not please everyone all the time, but then neither did I.

So this is my “last post” post. This is where I get to walk into the sunset, and decide what I want to do with my life after ten years of active service to my religious community. I suppose I could take this opportunity to pen a “goodbye to all that” type kiss-off, but that has never really been my style. I would much rather hold on to the wonderful experiences and friendships that formed while I was doing this work. I would much rather say thank you to everyone who has supported me over the years, and to ask all of you to stay with The Wild Hunt as they continue their transition into a bright new era. I know they will do good work.

As for me, I’m not sure what, exactly, my future holds. I’ll still be around, here and there. I haven’t stopped being a Pagan, nor do I have plans to stop any time soon. I’ll still use social media, I’ll still chat with my friends. So I won’t completely disappear. However, after I complete a few last obligations, I plan on my Paganism returning to being one facet of my larger whole. I need a break, and I’d much rather focus on things I had put aside in the name of that work for awhile. I look forward to introducing myself in a different way in the not-too-distant-future. I will leave the unique brand of religious micro-notoriety I haphazardly obtained over the years to others, though I would warn them against coveting such a prize (seriously).

So goodbye, and thank you for reading my writing.

Yours,

– Jason