#Neo-paganism

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Green Egg, magazine, Vol. VIII, No. 76, Oimelc, 1976

[thenightling]

Wicca and "Cultural appropriation"

I am sick of other Neo Pagan sects deciding that Wicca is "cultural appropriation" and "problematic." Tonight someone tried to scold me and tell me that I should not say that Wiccans celebrate Yule (it was actually a post with a list of Neo-Pagan faiths that have a version of Yule) because they "appropriated" it from Scandinavian religions that had it first and Wicca was "only created in the 1950s." Okay, let me break a few things down here. 1. Yes, it's easy to say Wicca is "new" because it wasn't an official religion in the UK until the 1950s but let's consider an important point. Until the 1950s Witchcraft was still illegal in the UK. No religion was allowed to be officially recognized that practiced witchcraft until then. America didn't even acknowledge Wicca as a religion option for military personnel until 2007. Scooby Doo acknowledged Wicca as a religion before The American government. The actual word Wicca Is Old English for Witch (masculine spelling). The feminine spelling was Wicce. They were pronounced as Witch-ah and Witch-uh. There was a very slight difference for gender specification. Eventually middle and modern English would drop the a and e at the end and settle on "witch" as an (intended) gender neutral term. Like the word Wizard (which came from Wizened) the word Witch meant (Someone who had their wits about them. Until the early middle ages the word meant "Wise person." And that's how Wiccans use the term now. 2. It's become fashionable to pearl clutch and say all cultures should stay separate and not borrow from each other because it's "cultural appropriation." Some "helpful" people even DMed me Youtube videos about why Wicca is a "Problematic" element in Pagan communities solely because it borrows from multiple religions. But literally every religion does it if you look at it long enough. So does Christianity, and Judaism, and Islam. And even Hermeticism which is part Greek, part Egyptian. Merging the two together. (And a LOT of Neo-Paganism is Hermetic) How come all of those can do it but when Wicca does it, that's the one called out where people are shamed? The people practicing "Real Paganism" forget the "Neo" part. That means "new." It's cobbled together from things that were suppressed and often lost to history. Even the Nordic Eddas are incomplete and were first written down by Christian Monks who altered things to (among other things) make Loki more of a Satan figure than he actually was. Almost all Neo Paganism uses hermeticism. Do you know what that is? It's from an era in Greek history where the Greek God Hermes was merged with the Egyptian God Toth. The two were merged into a single being and that's where a lot of Neo Paganism comes from. The teachings from that period where there was Greek / Egyptian appropriation. The Roman Gods evolved from the Greek Gods. Even when we discuss the beliefs of the First Nations there are overlaps because one Nation borrowed from another and beliefs spread. Modern Voodoo is a mixture of West African, Catholic, and Hattian folk beliefs. Mexican Catholicism is very different from French Catholicism. Imagine The Day of the Dead and Saint Death in Paris. When you believe something, truly believe it, you don't covet it as something only certain people are allowed to believe in. If you think of it as truth - as fact, you want others to believe it too. This is not cultural appropriation. This is cultural appreciation. 3. If you think Wiccans shouldn't be allowed to call their winter holiday Yule, you are essentially saying it's okay to call Christmas by Yule and the Christmas season Yuletide. And Christians can even burn Yule Logs but you'll Pearl clutch "How dare Wiccans call their festival the name of the millennia old Scandinavian festival!" Because Wicca = Bad? Christian = Well, they did that a long time ago and Wicca's new-ish despite being a re-adaption of a lot ancient practices.

Yes, Wicca is a hodgepodge religion of many beliefs cobbled together. So are most religions when you break them down. None are truly safe from "contamination" from other religions. This separate yet equal / segregation and "Wicca's bad because it appropriates" needs to stop. Aren't there enough prejudices that ALL Neo-Pagan faiths need to worry about? We don't need this "in-fighting".

[booksandwitchery]

Revering Nature

Throughout my search for science-based pagan books to help me on this path of mine, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer kept popping up--so I finally read it.

I would recommend it to most people, especially those who feel a special connection to the natural world but don't exactly know why. I can see this book offending a lot of people on the right side of the political spectrum, but if you fall into that category I'm betting you found this blog in an accidental or ironic sense anyway.

Ultimately this book is all about reverence for the natural world and the importance of maintaining a spirit of respect, reciprocity and responsibility for the gifts given to us by nature. It makes a strong case for maintaining balance, which is a) weaved throughout pagan religions, b) arguably foundational to them all, and thus c) deeply relevant to my studies. Kimmerer also explains the importance of ritual and ceremony to human beings, regardless of our beliefs (or lack thereof.)

Bits of wisdom I marked down from this important book (just in case this isn't clear, everything inside quotation marks is taken directly from the book) separated by theme:

I. Exploitation of Natural Resources

Kimmerer disapproves of the belief that the natural world is human property to be produced and sold: "The commodification of the natural world is just a popular story told by humans. Strawberries belong to themselves."

II. Indigenous Wisdom & Animism

Thirty percent of English words are verbs, but in many indigenous American tribes this proportion is as much as seventy percent (as with the Potawatomi tribe). The language does not divide between masculine and feminine, but rather between animate and non-animate. We can learn from Potawatomi and other indigenous "ways of knowing" because even their very language acts as "a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world," and honors the universe as "a communion of subjects."

III. The Power of Balance

The author stresses the need to maintain balance with nature and life in general: "Balance is not a passive resting place--it takes work, balancing the giving and taking, the raking out and the putting in." Kimmerer suggests that we should temper our desires with self-discipline, which "builds resistance against the insidious germ of taking too much."

IV. Capitalism and the Death of Contentment

Kimmerer comments on consumer society's tendency to see contentment as a "radicalist proposition" and capitalism's dependence on the creation of unmet desires. This reminded me of The Door to Witchcraft by Tonya Brown, when she writes that we should try our best to have an abundance mentality rather than one of scarcity. We should take from nature only what we need, and give back whenever we can.

V. Importance of Ritual and Ceremony

Kimmerer beautifully explains humans' innate need for ritual and ceremony: "Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. . .ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic." This is deeply reminiscent of my post last year on the psychological benefits of ritual ceremony. This affirmed my belief of why these behaviors are ubiquitous despite all varying forms of thought and belief.

VII. Pessimism in the Environmentalist Community

Regarding the fatalist attitude that has crept into many environmentalist conversations: "Environmentalism becomes synonymous with dire predictions and powerless feelings. Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth."

[sunthroughdarkclouds]

The problem with neo-paganism for me is that they are not living traditions. People want to connect with their ancestors and the spirituality of their ancestors, but the problem is, they've never met their ancestors. They were not raised by their ancestors. They do not share a world view with their ancestors. And, their ancestors did not choose to write things down. You can say they didn't have the technology, or, you could also say, they didn't need to. They didn't need to because they were part of a living oral tradition. And, our later ancestors changed and sometimes deleted those traditions.

Inevitably, even if it comes from a place of good intent, neo-paganism is recreationism, like experimental archaeology, and recreationism has a blurry line between itself and recreation, in the sense of a leisure activity, akin to live action role playing.

Neo-pagans tend to see this as an insult, I guess, I mean I was banned from r/pagan by anonymous mods, but they really shouldn't. It is simply an analysis. I suppose there is nothing controversial about this analysis to me, because I have always seen all religions as made up. The difference is, with a living tradition, you have something made by layers and layers of generations, each of whom have added, subtracted, and changed the tradition in the course of their lives, and in enculturating the next generations. Living traditions are aged. They are rich, complex, and internally contradictory.

Neo-pagans on the other hand learn about pagan beliefs from communities of people who have created a new thing from books they've read, Wikipedia, reddit, or world-built out of whole cloth. This whole thing grew out of Victorian era recreationism, which grew out of the 18th century Romantic movement.

If you are going to practice neo-paganism, know your true roots, at least.

[sag-dab-sar]

what is the best way to find real, genuine, information on various Deities? and, besides intuition, how can we know this info is true?

By vetting sources

Look for authors in the field that studies those ancient societies & religions (well if they are ancient and ""dead"") not random neo-pagan website that cite nothing. Pay attention to the age of the source and see if there are any other sources that agree or disagree with the claims. You can certainly use blogs & websites for modern pagans/polytheists but its about where they get their info and if they provide or are willing to provide sources.

Use the CITATIONS found on the wikipedia page of the deity and vet them to see if the info is reliable.

Internet Archive is your friend you simply need a free account and you can borrow books including old ones that have been scanned in.

JSTOR allows you to read 100 articles per month also with a free account.

Academia.edu is also useful and has a free version, again vet sources, especially authors for this website

Deepdyve is a website that isn't free but it isn't outrageously expensive for what it offers. If you have the spare money to put into this. Its how I found the article about Ereškigal and her throne or lack there of and also Mesopotamian household deities.

I also have this small post for info on Greek & Mesopotamian deities. I don't really rely on intuition when finding & vetting sources, thats more so what I do in my practice with the information I've learned.

Hope this helps 🤍

[awenydd-andros]

Happy Vernal Equinox, also known as Ostara.

artist: robin_ph

[montaguewhitsel]

As anyone who has read my poetry and stories knows, I am into fairylore. This is my last blog (so far) on Charlotte Bronte's novel Shirley, exploring all of the references to fairies and their role in the story. It uses my familiarity with old Neo-Pagan faerylore and my studies of 19th century British fairylore as sourcing for the analysis.

[keysatthecrossroad]

Hekáte, Mother of Witches,

Bring fortune and joy to your followers,

Hold us close to Your cloak,

Accept our offerings of garlic and wine,

Accept our devotion of You - dear Goddess of All.

[chthonic-sorcery]

🚩🚩"Witch/Pagan" community PSA 🚩🚩

Goêteia is not evil, you dipshits.

I'm so sick of these neo-pagans getting all their information from Tumblr, Pinterest and TikTok.

Goêteia is literally just the Greek term for magic, for sorcery, which were one and the same.

Ancient Greece didn't have the word "witchcraft" it had Goêteia, and then later mageia, where we get our modern term magic from, although mageia was a misappropriated term from Zoroastrian priests or Magi.

It's so funny seeing baby witches claim Goêteia to be evil on one hand, then on the other worshipping Hekate, literally the goddess of Goêteia. The goddess of sorcerers and necromancy.

It screams puritanical morality policing. It's such a christian-centered way of looking at ancient religion.

Y'all need to open a damn book.

Goêteia was described as a "lesser" form of magic (mainly in the later Medieval period, roughly starting around the 8th century,) not meaning any less powerful, just simply the easiest or "closest" thus "lower" magic to achieve. This ability to more easily achieve success in magic was later taken and used by christian theologians to paint goêteia and Goêtes as "lesser practitioners."

There does seem to be little difference between Theurgy and goêteia as well,

Surprise!

Both Goêteia and Theurgy sharing the same goddamn workings through evocations of gods, the animation of statues, mediumship or what could be considered "divine possession" having a god or spirit speak through you, the use of iynx wheels / iynges, and mystery rites.

The only 'real' difference Theurgists claim, is that they "don't practice secularly/for selfish reasons" but supposedly rather to become closer to the divine. It's a nice sentiment, but total bullshit, because even in the Theurgic doctrine the Chaldean Oracles they bind the goddess Hekate to do their will.

Additionally, Theurgists had a more Neoplatonic belief, they essentially viewed a singular Oneness as supreme, the emanation from which all things return, a concept which was picked up by early christian theologians and is likely why while Goêtes were demonized in the later centuries mainly by early christians and christian philosophers, Theurgists on the other hand were seen as "pure" and "holier" despite Theurgical and Goêteic practices being pretty much exactly the same down to the tools and incantations.

(Agustine of Hippo for an example of these theologians, who wrote in "De civitate Dei contra Paganos", or "On the City of God Against the Pagans" how all "pagan" (non christian) gods and beliefs were secretly agents of Satan and evil, here to trick humanity into sin and that paganism, essentially any non christian faith, must be stopped–

He also wrote about how sorcerers/magicians (Goêtes) were charlatans, tricksters, that magic and sorcery were merely tricks of an invisible opposition to the divine and how only god could hold such supreme power. These ideas still seem to be deeply embedded into christian faith, particularly Orthodox and Evangelical, today.)

Practitioners of goêteia, the Goēs, was also understood to have the ability to initiate souls into mystery religions, or, in other words, to ensure through his superior knowledge of the Underworld and its workings that the souls under his care would receive preferential treatment after death, an easier way to paradise, such as the Orphic Hymns.

This likely also helped "other" the Goēs, as most practitioners of magic, of goêteia, of these mystery cults were made up of societies "unwanted" or marginalized people, such as women, foreigners, immigrants, the poor, the disabled, and the elderly. Early goêtes were described as being Thessalian (primarily women, particularly described as "old or decrepid") or. ethnically, not considered "fully Greek" to many of the era. Many critiques and fears of goêteia come from this "otherness," the fear the ruling classes of Greece had of groups they continued to harm, they feared the power they held within these mystery rites and practices.

With reliable accuracy from these critics, goêtes were (perceived to be) moral transgressors, who operated from the fringe of society in a private mago-mystical setting, offering their service for coin.

Or, in simpler terms, the Greeks were just really fucking racist

which is nothing new.

In fact, because goêteia itself is a synchronization of mainly Egyptian and Jewish magic, the Greeks and later christians went extra-hard into villifying it because they saw these people as lesser, as barbaric.

We have to understand where the fears and judgements of these critics were coming from, and continue to remain impartial. The ruling elite feared these practices because they feared losing their power, especially rich Greek men, and those early christian philosophers who saw everything outside their own faith as lies, manipulations, or tricks from "the Opposition" as well as the extremely racist and ethnocentric beliefs they held.

[innominatadea]

You know, one of the things that's the most disappointing when breaking into paganism is the lack of spiritual music. Due to the erasure of European pagan religious groups during the expansion of Christianity, at most we might have a poem that got preserved but the notes and instrumental of the music are lost. I used to adore singing hymns when I was Catholic (Evangelical worship music is usually bad rock and Mormon hymns sound like a bunch of people on lithium humming yankee doodle). I feel that music is such an important part of spirituality that is mostly absent in neo-paganism. I want Psalms praising Persephone, bardic verses beseeching Thor, yuletide carols and other holiday music. *sighs* Maybe we can make our own, if you know of any that have been published please let me know!

[lunar-witchin]

crystal magic basics 💎

a quick guide for using and caring for your crystal

— cleanse l it's important to cleanse your crystal of negative energies before and after you carry it for an extended period of time or use it in your practice.

methods of crystal cleansing

— water cleansing | mix sea salt and clear water from a natural source — such as rain or a stream. submerge your crystals and let them sit overnight. (don't use this method with crystals that are water soluble)

— smoke cleansing I pass your crystal through incense or herb smoke of your choice

— fire cleansing | quickly pass your crystal through the flame of a lit candle or match (safely and carefully! not all crystals are safe to pass through fire, so please do your research)

— salt cleansing | cover your crystals completely in sea salt and allow them to sit overnight before uncovering them

— earth cleansing | like salt cleansing, bury your crystals in dirt or soil and allow them to sit overnight before uncovering them

— program I after cleansing, you can program your crystal with your desired intention so long as it aligns with the properties of the crystal itself

methods of crystal programming

— visualize | hold your crystal in the hand that feels most comfortable, and imagine a soft light filling your crystal while you focus on your intention. rest when you feel you've activated the crystal

— communicate | while holding your crystal, have a conversation with it. this can be out loud or in your head. be sure to make your intentions clear and show gratitude when you feel your crystal has been activated

— familiarize | carry your crystal with you for a few days or weeks while you focus on your intent. eventually the crystal will activate by picking up your intentions

— charge | lastly, after you've programmed your intent into the crystal, choose a suitable method of charging it with energy

methods of crystal charging

— sunlight | put your crystals outside or on your windowsill in sunlight for the day. (this may cause color fading in certain crystals)

— moonlight | put your crystals outside or on your windowsill overnight in moonlight (pretty much exactly like sunlight but without the possibility of crystal color fading)

— your energy I hold your crystal in your hand and focus your energy into it, allowing it to charge

when you’re finished using your crystals, be sure to store them in a cleansed, sacred, and safe space.

and that’s it! you now have access to magic rocks. enjoy!

[booksandwitchery]

Intro to Grimoires

Recently read The Beginner Witch's Guide to Grimoires by Julie Wilder, author of the White Witch Academy textbook series. This was a short, cute little introduction to grimoires for witches of any belief system, but it also had great words about witchcraft in general. Wilder offers a lot of sage wisdom/information, which I will transcribe and/or paraphrase below:

Your intuition will always be the voice that feels bold, expansive and full of possibility. Your fear-based voice is the opposite--it is small, familiar, and contracting. Intuition isn't woo-woo; it's juist about listening to yourself.

Witchcraft definitely carries some existentialist vibes. Within reason, witchcraft involves making a choice without overthinking it, taking notice of our thoughts and feelings, and then noticing patterns that occur as we lean into these choices.

On Grimoires:

I. A grimoire's purpose is to document and guide a witch on their magical path and practice.

II. Grimoires give you a way to remember specific incantations and the steps of your spells (if applicable).

III. You can use grimoires to look back and see what your favorite forms of magic are--track your preferences and inclinations along your journey!

IV. You can use your grimoire to discover your magical leanings and aesthetic style

V. Grimoires are great for tracking the progress and results of your practice.

VI. Your grimoire should feel special, but not so precious that you are afraid of using it often. It can be a notebook, journal, digital document, or even a three ring binder. Some people even use their own homemade paper, which I want to try so badly now.

VII. A grimoire can contain drawings, visualization entries, imagery, symbols, correspondences, poems, notes, spells, incantations, etc, etc...

VIII. Bond with your grimoire. Yes, this is cute and fun and wholesome. Let your grimoire be a reflection of yourself.

I definitely recommend Wilder's book, it was super adorable.

[bizarreauhavre]

Modern paganism, 1959, (surrealist movie).

[redacted-coiner]

Heresypunk

[PT: Heresypunk]

Heresypunk, a subculture/punk term referring to the acceptance of any and all spiritual and religious practices. No matter one’s personal religion even if pre-established or new, anyone can be Heresypunk.

the belief that all religions and spiritual practices can coexist

acceptance of both pre-established religions as well as neoreligons.

acceptance of those who are not religious but are spiritual.

acceptance of “contradictory” spiritual/religious practices

acceptance of those who practice multiple religions.

acceptance of those who make their own religious/spiritual practices.

against the harm and pain that religion has caused for victims of it, and to be there for those who are hurt.

against force of religious practices and against the misuse of religious foundations for profit.

against the use of religion to justify bigotry (ie: “being gay is a sin”)

Note: This post does not support people who are bigoted towards those who may be, Queer, Alterhuman, Neurodivergent, Disabled, POC, etc. this isn’t for you, fuck you.

(I tried to make a flag couldn’t think of one, if anyone got any ideas feel free!)

[Tag] @radiomogai, @liom-archive, @imoga-pride (technically not one but eh @blankqueer )

DNI is listed within my pinned post. Please go read it before interacting with any part of my content. Ask to tag!

[haveyouheardthisband]