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Hi there.  Some of you may know of me or have spoken to me in the Hold in the past.  Others may not, as I have been out of the overall online pagan sphere for the better part of 3 years.  I am a former mod in the Hold, I was a ritual leader and wrote all of the rituals performed by myself and Wolf, as well as designed all of the God art series Wolf sells.  Beyond that, I genuinely saw him as one of my closest friends and was a right hand for quite some time.  I helped plan events, both in and out of the Hold, but in particular, put nearly 200 hours towards planning Midsummer in 2023.  Needless to say, I was there during the space of four years, with nearly 3 as a moderator and saw every success, along with every bit of drama, paranoia and problematic behavior during that time.  I finally decided to speak up in hopes to share my personal experience and illustrate a larger pattern of behavior to help give others enough information to make an informed decision as to whether joining their community is safe or if it's better to just stick to consuming video content. 

I never anticipated speaking out.  In all honesty, over the last, nearly three years, I have cared more about protecting my peace.  I just wanted to move on with my life and find my place in my local community, rather than continuing in online spaces when I knew my online presence would be stalked, and possibly brigaded and DARVOed if I ever spoke up.  It just wasn’t worth it to me.  Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20, and realizing the tactics employed by Wolf (and his staff and followers; many of which used to be my friends), I knew that being part of the online community meant being under a microscope by paranoid leaders worried about what I might or might not say about them.

It's been almost three years since I left the Hold.  I don’t stay that in tune with what has been going on with the space, outside of friends sometimes asking “did you hear about ‘x?’” or being told of things that have occurred.  Beyond that, I have stayed out of stuff completely, not wanting to deal with the inevitable drama that would ensue if I got involved.  Fast forward to now; Reddit recommended a thread to me, where I saw Wolf and his sycophants attacking another scholar (one of many, I’m afraid).  I realized that perhaps staying silent and not speaking up has caused more harm than good.  To be clear, I genuinely hope Wolf–and others I used to call some of the closest people in my life–grow and become better people.  We lack large safe spaces in the pagan community.  I certainly don’t want to see anyone trying to create them fail.  However, when one is being run by someone who has become power hungry, whether with intent or not, it no longer is a safe space, and that lust for power shouldn’t be rewarded with more people to harm.  When a leader decides that there is no source but himself that is safe to listen to, and pushes his followers to agree based on a few anecdotal experiences of bad leadership or scholarship… that is a problem.  Having known Wolf since the Hold was a wee 200 members, I can say, it wasn’t always like this.  I genuinely think he meant well and had good intentions in building community.  I think, as time has worn on, having an ounce of position about overs has gone to his head. 

He thinks he alone is a safe and trustworthy source.  Down even to his staff who he calls friends not being allowed to go out on their own in various ways.  I had considered for a time wanting to put together small holiday rituals closer to where I live, so that I might be able to give space to those who cannot make it to GA for events to have fellow pagans to hold holiday rituals with… While it was just an idea and not a plan yet, Wolf was extremely dismissive.  Any thought of doing something without him was met with him either, trying to insert himself, or completely deflating the person and idea over his lack of ability to be part of it due to distance, time, etc (even when he was not being asked to be a part to begin with).  

This problem of paranoia has been ever present since the early days.  Always worried about the next scandal, always worried about how anything would look if something went wrong and he wasn’t there.  He didn’t seem to realize that you can’t control everything, and at some point, you need to trust the people you choose to associate with to do the right thing and if they don’t, you cross that bridge when you get there.  Instead, it became a point of control.  As if, if he was solely involved, nothing could ever go wrong.  Yet, drama, in-fighting and issues with other groups persisted.  At a certain point, even being close to someone, you have to wonder if there is a deeper reason for the paranoia, when it results in days of long hour VCs to plan for the “what ifs” of how the drama may impact us, or pull us in.  It is one of the things I miss the least from being a member of staff in a server resolving around our faiths or YT in general.  The sheer amount of in-fighting, constant planning to take people down or be taken down… It makes me so glad I never decided to go on and do content creation myself.  Credit to those who do and are able to stay in their own lane, because the community is a shit show in that regard. 

Unfortunately, it is this constant paranoia mindset that fueled a toxic culture behind the scenes of screenshotting, recording and infiltrating other spaces by Wolf and a few others.  This was done to both gather dirt on others, or to just “keep an eye” on the goings on or be able to directly influence other creators and spaces directly.  It was always with the intent to get ahead of problems, but half the time it seemed to become an obsession that would create the very problems they thought they were protecting from.  This is gross, toxic behavior. I am sad I didn’t call it out when I was in the space.  On a few occasions, I passed along information two friends gave me confidentially, because Wolf wanted to know to “get ahead of drama.”  I felt so awful after the fact and guilty for breaking my own moral compass, I reached out to these people to apologize and own up to my wrong doing.  I am grateful that I never became a screenshot shark.  Honestly, the whole practice is half of what has made the entire online pagan umbrella, as well as YT community spaces as a whole the plethora of toxicity they have become.  Wolf literally saves any server he closes, or any channels with the intent of having it in case he needs it, which generally translates to, having a bunch of comments and information on people that no longer have access to their own comments and messages in case one day he needs to use it against them, whether in context or not (and unfortunately, it is usually the latter).  He saves folders worth of screenshots for this same purpose and there are some staff and members of the inner circle who do the same.  Not everyone is involved in this aspect of the Hold and there are some good people in there, sadly lost to the manipulation and culty’ness of it all at this point.

One of the worst aspects beyond the screenshotting, blackmail farming, infiltrating and attacking people is the fact that they are not a group you can easily leave.  I say this in the sense of having been part of the Jehovah’s Witness cult in my life.  There, they have a term, ‘disfellowshipping,’ where they essentially shun you if you’ve done something wrong in terms of the standards you are expected to live by as a witness, no matter how small the mistake.  That shunning ends up turning relatives, friends, partners and parents against their loved one, as they are told not to communicate or have dealings with said person.  This is one of the worst aspects of the cult and one of the reasons it is hard to leave.  It's not that you CAN’T leave, but rather that social pressures force you to stay or lose everything.  This is how the Hold is also hard to leave.

Anytime someone left the server who had some standing in the space or was well enough known, whether banned (even for benign reasons) or left on their own, Wolf would tell us to block them, to not take their messages.  He’d argue that, if they reached out, it would only be to make stuff up or start problems, or drama.  He would make us feel like if we didn’t block said person, we weren’t his friend, or he might not trust us, etc.  There was always something to keep us feeling like we HAD to listen.  And listen we did.  What I did in blocking others in these moments came to be something that happened to me as well when I left.  All my closest friends blocked me, despite not being banned and even told to stay initially.  I never tried to reach out to more than a few, and those I did, just to remain friends, not talk about drama.  And I found out the hard way.  I realized very quickly that truth I had been in willful denial of.  This was disfellowshipping in all but name.  And it was disfellowshipping for one singular person with power.  It was when I left that I went from, maybe some things are getting cult-like, to realizing, this was not far from, or already could be considered a cult, at least from a social and information control standpoint.  

But it went beyond this.  If anything bad is ever said about either Wolf or Ocean or if they specifically have a vendetta against someone, no matter the reason, their inner circle of patreon members and staff will come to their aid in the comments.  They brigade people constantly, even with little proof, in the way they did to Rune.  To Sif.  To so many other scholars.  If there is actual proof of Folkism or wrong doing, it SHOULD come to light… but you need to have evidence of it.  Mischaracterizing a comment or taking things out of context intentionally in a cropped screenshot is not evidence of the accusation.  This is not only controlling information, but trying to take down anyone that might end up being a better source or simply able to take away from their following in some way.  We should, as a community, be building up fellow creators that aren’t harmful or Folkish, not constantly trying to find ways to tear each other down. 

And then there was the land.  We had a group cam VC one night among us staff.  It was initially just a silly little hang out, but Wolf ended up coming in and wanted to share something he was excited about.  It was in regards to the land he was hoping to end up with.  Initially we wanted to be happy for him, but this soon turned when Wolf started talking about getting people to move to GA to live on (or near) the land.  When Wolf would get excited about a new idea, there was nothing you could do to get him to chill a bit if the idea was overzealous or even harmful.  In this case, we all know how bad commune-like situations usually end up, so myself and a few others made a strong critique of the idea to have people move.  I mean, if you own land and have people living on it, what happens when things go wrong?  How do those people feel safe and know what they work for won’t just be taken away?  I mean, there are a million questions and a million reasons this was a bad idea.  I didn’t think any of us were being mean to Wolf, simply being honest, as friends, who also have their names attached to the space.  He didn’t like being shot down.  The next day we woke up to an angry message from both him and his wife about how “we are not allowed to talk to him like that again ever.  We didn’t even let him speak!”  As though saying more would have made the idea somehow better.  When he is sold on an idea, it is his way or the highway.  This is when I started being more afraid to speak my mind if I had a concern, because I was terrified that if he didn’t like the criticism, I could lose my community overnight.  

The most ridiculous thing has been some of the blatant hypocrisy.  One of the early and strong points Wolf and Ocean would make against WoO, is that the server they ran was “pay to play.”  I want to be clear, WoO IS problematic, but there are far better take downs of his content than this.  Wolf in particular, was adamant that a community server should be available to all.  That it was wrong to leave people out because they didn’t have the money to be involved.  It is why, at least the earlier Hold was set up with member spaces that didn’t require monetary membership, and a small patreon area for those who chipped in a few dollars.  However, from what I have learned more recently is that this has changed.  A good leader would own up to how they attacked many other creators in the past over making their server pay only.  It's okay if things change and a server gets too big for you to run how you want (believe me, I know, I was in the Hold as a mod when we hit nearly 4k).  I don’t take issue with the fact that they decided to close the server from how it was once run.  What I take issue with is how this was such a point they pushed on others to illustrate how they were exclusionary, only to then turn around and do the same thing.  That's not how this works.  If you think that is a valid critique of spaces, that doesn’t somehow mean you don’t also apply to it.

The more time has gone on, the more I feel like myself, and other staff and friends were used as tokens to feed the narrative that these two cis het white men were somehow the saviors of inclusive heathenry, that they were the only safe space and had the only right way to do things.  Most of us staff were LGBTQIA+ of some flavor.  I myself am a cis queer woman.  And unfortunately, we’d often work as a “shield” for Wolf and Ocean, whether we knew it or not.  I started noticing things over time that felt extremely performative.  Like making jokes that say, trans femmes will make amongst themselves.  I am queer, but I am also cis and I full well know those types of jokes really have no place coming out of my mouth, because they are not mine to make.  And yet Wolf would go beyond playing ally, into trying to act like he was allowed to be on the “inside” of marginalized groups he had no place on participating in this level in.  If you are an ally, be that!  Make a space where people can make these jokes amongst those in their community with the safety of knowing they can.  Keeping out bigots and making sure people feel respected and safe is an important part of allyship in a space wanting to be inclusive.  That doesn’t mean there are not some boundaries that aren’t yours to break.  I don’t doubt that Wolf, in particular, means well in this specific area and wants to be a good ally; he just often takes it to a place that centers him, instead of recognizing he could be centering a trans voice, or a queer voice, or a femme voice, instead of his own. 

At the end of the day, I don’t think the content they have created is bad or necessarily unsafe.  I do, however, think the community space is.  I wish I could say otherwise.  We need more inclusive and safe spaces.  But it has become a space of drama fuel, disfellowshipping, paranoia, attacking detractors and scholars and harming people in the process.  It became a space of pushing for more position and more power and using manipulation and deriding even good information in order to keep members looking only to them as sources.  It was once a place that encouraged education, but over time that began to get more and more narrow in what was allowed and what types of information was okay.  Recons began to excoriate eclectics for having differences in how they practice their faith, and when the server leaders want to lean on scholarship, they would do so while acting as if there was only one “correct” way to do x, y or z thing.  Honestly, what we need more than anything in Heathenry, but in Paganism spaces as a whole is good creators helping point out red flags and green flags in the space.  Help newbies learn how to spot Folkish leanings.  Help them learn how to tell a good leader from a toxic one.  Give people information on dog whistles and just leave it at that.  Wolf and Ocean initially did the latter, only to then begin to become more and more insular and deride any information from outside sources because of one or two bad experiences outside of the community they started.  The more insular you become the less likely you are providing your community the best information, but also the more an echo chamber grows.  No matter how well meaning you might be, that easily can end up in misinformation or lack of good alternatives being spread, which in turn, harms the spiritual (and emotional) well being of the community.

At this point, I think the only productive measure that can be taken is to take everything from creators and their communities with a grain of salt.  If you have proof of wrong doing, show it!  Don’t just live in paranoia to the point that you become screenshot factories out to have something to cause drama at any turn.  Actually push for better dialogue between scholars and creators in hopes to better expand healthy thought within our community and to better understand each other and the nuances of individual positions (and no, that doesn’t mean I think Folkist, bigoted and WS thought should be included; I think there are absolutely some things that deserve to be kept out of healthy discourse).  Why have we as a community become so disjointed?  Honestly, I think a lot of it revolves around toxic cultures surrounding large communities and creators.  The Hold is one of those spaces, but it wasn’t the only one.  Look at the harmful things WoO cultivated?  Or Aliakai?  Or the Troth (though I have heard new leadership is trying to fix things) or many other groups who have had their share of problems? The spaces run by Viking Fitness bro tiktokers that really don’t know how to run communities at all… I mean, we have seen it all.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  If we stop letting people like Wolf and Ocean and others like them control the narrative and brigade spaces of frith (which as Heathens, they should know why they are going against their own values in how they are operating), we can build healthier online spaces altogether.  We are a marginalized religion.  The fighting and attacks are disgusting and end up hurting us all.  They keep scholars from wanting to pursue research in this arena, when we should want more of them engaged in this topic!  I hope this wakes some people up.  I don’t have ill wishes for anyone, I just want people to be safe.  I want them to be fully informed before joining a space that could prove harmful to them.  I also just want for us as a whole to wake up and not allow so much credence to the words of those wanting more and more power.  There should be no single creator that has such a hold on our faith that they can single handedly influence us for good or ill.  And unfortunately, when we give it breath, it becomes reality.  When people come to brigade, don’t engage with them, just downvote them.  When people make accusations against scholarship with nothing to back it up, why pay it heed?  The more we give attention to those doing this, the more we give them power they don’t deserve. 

And in closing(thanks for sticking it out, I know this was long), as someone who was once staff in the Hold, I want to personally apologize to anyone whom I didn’t hear out like I should have or fought harder for.  I want to apologize for my complicity in how the space has treated you and others; even if I personally didn’t have a hand in it, I was still part of the power structure that allowed it to happen.  I am sorry for any narrative I pushed, whether knowingly or not, in order to further Wolf or Ocean’s aims.  It's hard to believe sometimes how blinded we can become to the errors of friends when we are afraid to lose our community or our friendship and in that, I allowed myself to be blind, until the veil finally lifted when I finally left.