Wicca doesn't market. People find us.
Almost all of Neo-Paganism is the same way.
We answer questions if someone asks, but with very few oddball exceptions, we don't care if we get more members or not. We don't think anything bad is going to happen to the people who don't join up, so why bother?
Proselytizing is annoying to the person targetted and a pain in the neck when you could be out just living your life.
Yet various censuses and surveys list us as one of the fastest growing religions, if not the fastest.
Most of us find that interesting, maybe pretty cool, but not enough to go out and try to get people in. Many of us find the hordes of new people a bad thing as new people tend to come in on their own with no teaching and barely a nodding acquaintance with the religion, and can frequently be downright embarrassing in their ignorance when they represent us to others.
We get members from books, but it's not a marketing strategy. Individual neo-pagans want to write books and think they can sell books, so they do the free enterprise thing. The authors are more marketing themselves than us.
But people are beating down our doors. Go figure.
I guess some religions flourish without marketing themselves because people notice it's there and want in on their own.
Does a wild apple tree in an open field up next to the road, clearly on public land, have to market its fruit?
Go figure.
Julie
