Hello everyone and thank you for being here!

Without further ado, here's how to use this space:

Community Guidelines

1. Respect each other. This shouldn't need to be said, but it will be just in case! Please speak respectfully, mindfully, courteously of your fellow pagans, polytheists, animists, and monastics. Thoughtful critique is useful and constructive, but venting, whining, and bad-mouthing is not conducive to the monastic way.

2. This is a monastic-focused space. Discussions should stay on topic and pertain to our pagan and polytheist monastic spiritual orientation. This is not really the space for pagan 101 discussion, and I'm sure many of you will be sufficiently far along your path to be beyond such material anyways. That said, all non-monastic related discussion should go in the Off Topic forum, or in a personal thread in the Hermitage section. More tangentially related pagan/polytheist discussion isn't always off-topic, however, so please use your best judgment when posting.

3. There are many ways to be a monastic. It is not our place to judge another's path or practice, decide whether they are monastic "enough" or not. While the idea of what makes one a monastic is a question we can explore together in community, we are not here to field the simple questions of "am I a monastic?" or "does X make me a monastic?" Ultimately, we answer to our Powers and our Powers alone. That said, you are welcome here if you:

- Are an avowed monastic
- Are a novice monastic
- Are a religious hermit
- Practice a specifically polytheistic mysticism
- Maintain a strong contemplative practice

4. The Cloister has no moderation team. At least, for now. I would prefer that everyone simply exercises good judgement when posting, speaking from the heart rather than the ego, and keeping disagreements to a minimum so that we can remain a self-moderating community of equals.

How to Use this Forum

Use this space however you'd like. The Cloister is open to those already on the path, as well as those seriously considering it. Again, this is not the place for 101 questions - if you join, you should already have a basic, working idea of what monasticism and contemplative worship is, and how it might relate to your Gods or tradition. You should also have a good understanding of what polytheism is. While we accept many kinds of polytheisms and views of Divinity, for clarity we recognize that polytheism is the belief in or experience of multiple Divine Agencies.

For those without blogs, or who want a blog-like experience exclusive to the community, feel free to make yourself a personal thread in the Hermitage section.

Aside from user avatars, there is no image uploading to the forum. This is to keep hosting and maintenance costs down for me. Please use an outside image host for sharing pictures, video, and other uploads.

And lastly, please do not share anything posted here in confidence without the permission of the member in question.

How to Join

To join the Cloister, click here to Register (or use the link at the top of the page.)

After accepting the terms, you will fill out a few fields for username, password, and other information. (Feel free to use a name or pseudonym; the user list is not public, so if you register with a name it will not be seen.) You must provide a sensible name or description for your religious path. This is to prevent spam accounts.

Once submitted, I will receive a notification and will manually approve you and give your account permission to use the forum.

You will be notified by email that your account has been approved. If you do not receive this email within a week, check your spam or promotions folder. If you still haven't received it for some reason, you can reach out to me via the contact form on my blog.

That's it! Feel free to make an introduction post so we might get to know you a little and enjoy the forum.

Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank Danica Swanson for introducing me to the monastic path so many years ago now, as well as her generous hospitality when I had the pleasure of staying at her Black Stone Abbey (as it was then called). I would also like to thank the contributors to the Polytheistic Monasticism anthology for helping to build up the movement, as well as John Beckett for spending the time and energy to offer a Monasticism course at a reasonable rate.

I'd also like to thank all the Indigenous peoples on whose traditional ancestral lands many of us, including our webhost, are collectively settled on. We are grateful for the stewardship through which they have kept these lands since time immemorial, and we are humbled to be able participate in the sacred cycle of cosmic reciprocity alongside them in our own traditional ways.

Emoji image pack by Md Tanvirul Haque.