#Neo-paganism

[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."

[neutralgray]

Uneducated: A Question for Modern Witches on Gender

So, hi. I'm learning about the practices and beliefs of Wiccanism as an intellectual curiosity. To do this, I've begun by reading "A Witch's Bible," written by Janet and Stewart Farrar. As far as I know, this is a relatively good source outlining "Gardnerian Wiccanism," which seems to be one of the most popular contemporary understandings of Wicca and Neo-Paganism (as far as I know? Forgive my ignorance, if I am mistaken).

As I read it, I have thus far found it to be a very illuminating read, that goes in depth on the largely progressive, naturalistic, and idealistic belief systems of the "modern" witch. However, as good a source as this book may be, there is one repeated aspect that feels dated by today's discourse-- the concept of gender, and how this topic is discussed.

Now, this book's major components were written in 1981 and 1984, then compiled into a single manual in 1996(?), so it's obviously somewhat dated. We've had four decades of growing social progress since.

In brief, let me explain my understandings thus far, to see if I am on the right track in following this book's vision of Wicca: there is a huge emphasis on "polarity," i.e. opposites. This includes man and woman, written in very binary black/white terminology. This book states that man and woman's nature is inherently different (but equal) on a level beyond physical. Women have a "cyclic nature" due to ovulation and menstruation; whereas men have a "linear nature." Women are afforded more psychic ability because they have the "gifts of the goddess," and can be a symbolic vessel and avatar for the Goddess. However they can also serve as the vessel for the God, if there is no man able to do so during a Sabbat gathering, ritual, or event. On the flipside, a man can only ever be a vessel for the God-- never the Goddess. The domain of Goddess is strictly a role afforded to the high priestess and women in an "ideal" Gardnerian coven structure. (Again, not stating that this IS 100% the case, just explaining how I've understood it thus far.)

So the question burning in my mind is simply this: how have Wiccan beliefs and communities adapted and changed in their thought processes on the relation between sex and gender, considering we live in an age where the topic is now more mainstream than ever? What are the psychic and spiritual roles of man and woman in modern day, considering the newfound greater questioning of what it even means to be "man" or "woman" in the first place?

To anyone in those communities who sees my long winded wall of text in the tags of your community and you actually read it, I hope you'll forgive my intrusion. I don't mean to espouse my ignorance of your religious beliefs. On the contrary, I find many of them to be engaging and very beautiful. However, I consider myself a pretty strong pro-trans ally in the LGBTQ+ community, and I just became too curious on the thoughts and attitudes of modern witches on the subject. I know there are a lot of trans people who are in wicca and neo-pagan circles, so I hope you wouldn't mind my probing. And while I could Google this topic, I feel an appeal to those in the community directly would be more engaging and personal.

[jessicalprice]

there’s nothing wrong with newness

(reposted, with additions, from Twitter)

I think a lot of neo-paganism would be a lot healthier (and a lot less vulnerable to white supremacist influences) if everyone got more comfortable with the "neo" part of it. There's nothing wrong with creating new traditions, and even being inspired by past ones.

Before I get into what I’m talking about, I want to quote some of a brilliant thread by Dr. Sarah Taber:

looking back through europe's pre/history is really interesting, it's just population replacement after population replacement. there's a REASON we have no idea what the Lascaux cave art is about, for example. The cultures who made that p much disappeared 3+ invasions ago.

some places have very old oral histories: Aboriginal Australians have place-names that clearly refer to different sea levels, Haudenosaunee accounts tell of receding glaciers, etc. Most of Europe doesn't have that! Indo-European traditions are really, really recent.

The oldest oral tradition we got is fairy tales. The oldest one (the smith & the devil) goes back ~4K years. Sounds super old! Until you contrast it to Haudenosaunee receding-glacier histories (10-15K yrs) or Aboriginal Australian place names (up to 20-40K years old).

We're still learning a lot about what Indo-European society was all about & it's really hard to do w/out running face-first into a lot of Race Science but it's the base layer for the vast majority of Europe's "traditional cultures." 1 single invasion, relatively recent.

It's why Europe has way less linguistic diversity than p much anywhere else in the world! Very recent cultural resurfacing on most of the continent! And the folks who did it were militarized, hierarchical, & focused on male-owned property. That's what we're working with lol...

Europe's past has cool stuff like Stonehenge, Cucuteni-Trypillia longhouse culture, cave art, etc! And it's very important to remember they have basically nothing to do w the people who live there now. : / We have just some of their genes & ~none of their stories.

We can't "reclaim" those cultures bc they aren't our ancestors in any sense of a continuing tradition. Could we try? Sure! But at that point we're just making shit up & appropriating someone else's culture. And they're not even there to correct you when you get it wrong.

There’s a reason that there’s so much overlap between people interested in “reclaiming” pre-Christian European traditions and white supremacists/neo-Nazis. 

anyway this has been a super long text wall but tl;dr there's a REASON fascination with pre-medieval Europe is associated with militant dudes who wanna wipe out other people. that's what our ancestors were up to going WAY back.

Once you start "reconnecting" that's the first thing you learn. : / It ain't all maypoles & herbs & shit. so like, associating pre-christian Europe with cultures of invasion & genocide is an accurate understanding of the situation. I shan't make fun of ppl for seeing it lol

I’ll reiterate again: there’s nothing wrong with your neopaganism leaning into the neo part. 

A note about appropriation

It’s really trendy right now to claim that European Christians “appropriated” pre-Christian European traditions, and wow, no. 

It really trivializes actual appropriation by colonizing cultures from the cultures that they occupy, oppress, and even genocide to equate the two. 

The stuff that usually gets cited as “appropriation” of European pagan ritual is stuff like Christmas trees, Saturnalia -> Christmas, etc. 

The thing is, it was not appropriation for European peoples to continue to practice their own traditions after converting to Christianity. A pagan Roman continuing to engage in Roman Saturnalia rituals after becoming a Christian is not appropriating anything. A Germanic pagan continuing to engage in winter traditions around decorating trees after becoming a Germanic Christian (which, incidentally, is first really documented in the 16th century, long after Europe was thoroughly Christianized, but for the sake of argument...) is not appropriating anything. You can’t appropriate from yourself.  

(And no, most non-European Christians also aren’t “appropriating” European traditions by practicing them as Christian traditions--when you’ve been colonized, you are not “appropriating” anything by assimilating into the colonizing culture. Power relations matter.)

That is very much not the same as white people of European Christian descent practicing elements of Native, Indigenous, Aboriginal, Hindu, Jewish, etc. traditions when the people from those cultures A) have not invited them to do so, B) are often penalized for practicing their own traditions, and C) practice those traditions within the context of an entire culture, unlike the outsiders picking and choosing elements like they’re digging through a toybox. 

Moreover, as Dr. Taber notes, there’s no direct link to those cultures to use to “reclaim” their traditions... 

...except, for “newer” (as in pre-medieval) traditions that are preserved through Christianity. Where elements of those pre-Christian European traditions were preserved, they were almost always preserved by Christian Europeans. I’m no fan of Christianity, but European Christians actually have as much--if not more--of a claim to legitimacy in practicing those traditions than neo-pagans. 

And not facing up to this leads a lot of neo-pagans (and even non-neo-pagan atheists from Christian backgrounds who like complaining about how Christians appropriated all kinds of European pagan traditions) very close to some white supremacist/Nazi narratives.

Because it usually turns on a characterization of Christianity as a foreign religion forced on innocent European pagans. (Never mind that the Christianization of Europe wasn’t anywhere near universally violent or coercive--Christians tended to save their swordpoint conversions for other continents. That, however, is a whole different post.)

So at that point, you have to ask “foreign to where?” Christianity as we know it developed into an actual religion in Roman-controlled areas. So it wasn’t exactly “foreign” to Europe. It was home-grown. 

And the idea of Christianity as a religion “foreign” to Europe, forced upon Europeans by... whom? Other Europeans, actually, but that doesn’t fit the foreigner narrative. 

Well, the very easy place to go is that it’s a corrupt, foreign Middle Eastern religion that was forced upon Europeans. And from there, it’s another easy step to This Is The Jews’ Fault. There’s a reason there’s a lot of antisemitic heathenry out there.

(We, for the record, are a non-evangelizing culture with closed practices. We aren’t trying to get you to convert to Judaism. In fact, we traditionally make it hard to convert to Judaism, because we believe y’all can have your own relationship to the Absolute.)

Some ugly history we should talk about

So back to the beginning of this post:

There's nothing wrong with creating new traditions, and even being inspired by past ones.

Like, I think that for the most part, the impetus behind most attempts to create neopagan practices, traditions, communities, etc. are really positive, especially when they're earth-focused. We're killing the planet, and if more people worshiping it helps turn that around, A+.

But like many people with a lot more expertise than me have pointed out (especially Indigenous people), a lot of neopaganism is suuuuuuper appropriative, and a lot of times the appropriation gets hand-waved away or justified by either claiming it's done respectfully or claiming that it's not harmful because, as opposed to Christianity, neopaganism is small and well-intentioned and all that.

Gd hippies, again

Generally, we're not talking about how much of this stuff was started by hippies--whom most contemporary Americans tend to think of as perhaps a bit silly, but not harmful--and the hippies were like POSTER CHILDREN for "the cool things in other cultures should belong to us." Like, they wrapped it up in a lot of Love And Universal Brotherhood language, and I guess since Christianity does the same with its colonialism, everyone was largely like "yup, that must be their motivation, love and peace, yo."

But if you have ever seen a hippie get called on appropriating Native stuff, for example, most of the time the Love And Universal Brotherhood shit goes right out the window and you end up with the Kareniest Karen you ever did see because there's a LOT of colonialism in there.

And also, fuck the Victorians

And what we also don't generally talk about is how much Victorian occultism got filtered through hippie New Age stuff into many forms of modern neopaganism. Like Gardner was inspired by the Rosicrucians and influenced by Crowley. (This might get boring, but I spent a lot of time flirting with neopaganism in college, especially Dianic and Celtic Wicca, and as is my wont with almost everything I get passionately interested in, I rabbitholed HARD on "how did this come to be the way it is?") 

Any time I start following a thread through the labyrinth of history and I end up in Victorian occultism, I start to get really, really nervous. Most of the underlying assumptions there are ugly as hell, and the number of things in contemporary society it influenced are myriad and that influence is, often, unacknowledged. 

So the Victorians got Very Into Archaeology, and were fascinated by ancient civilizations like those in Egypt (modern writers refer to Victorian "Egyptomania"), the Near East, China, and India. And on one hand, they loved the aesthetics and the sheer ancientness and believed that these cultures had a treasure trove of good things waiting to be "discovered" by white people. On the other hand, they got really insecure, because none of these sophisticated ancient societies were in Europe. (I go into a lot more detail about this in a series of posts about bad archaeology and the Minoans.)

So they became obsessed with discovering some sort of ancient European society, first to rival these civilizations and then to have taught/inspired/built them, and you get things like basically making up a sophisticated Minoan society that "predates" Near Eastern ones. You also get things like Atlantis as the progenitor civilization of every major world civilization, and a lot of similar theories. The descendants of these theories are things like Ancient Aliens conspiracy theories.

They all boil down to "there's no way brown people could have come up with all this tech/civilization/literature/etc. before white people so the explanation is either Ancient White Superpeople or aliens." And at the root of this is trying to prove that if other cultures have stuff white people like, it must rightfully belong to white people now because it must have originally belonged to white people.

And one of the ways that this interacted with Victorian Christianity--that it was made acceptable in a strongly Christian society--was to posit that all ancient civilizations were actually monotheistic. They just worshiped different "faces" of God. So you could be into occultism and invoke Isis and all that shit and still go to your Christian gentlemen’s club. 

Fuck the Romantics, too

And I'm not going to go into it here because I already did in the Minoan posts, but parallel to the interaction with Christianity and the assumption of monotheism was interaction with the Romanticism of the time, which resulted in positing some sort of ur-Goddess worship.

None of this, incidentally, was based on actual evidence. The idea that all of Europe once followed one universal, matriarchal goddess religion was a theory that a random judge was like, "hey, this feels like it makes sense to me" and everyone was like "yup, let's run with it." And so they "reconstructed" a lot of pre-Christian religion based mostly on Romanticism and insecurity about advances in European civilization coming from the Near East.

And I could do a whole thread about how this stuff prepped a lot of Victorian Europeans and Americans to listen to the Nazis.

If you're grappling with your feelings of inferiority about how what you consider Civilization mostly came out of the Near East, not Europe, at some point you have to grapple with the role of Christianity in all that. 

And the thing is, Christianity is actually NOT a Near Eastern religion (as noted above). It may have gotten started by Jewish followers of a Jewish teacher, but as soon as it actually started becoming a separate religion, it was centered in Rome (both the city and the empire). But if you're attempting to reconstruct European paganism to which you have no direct links (other than, perhaps, some traditions filtered through Christianity) because it was wiped out by Christianity, and you want to feel superior to Middle Easterners, well, the obvious move is to Blame The Jews. So Christianity becomes a Jewish religion forced on Europeans and I guess we'll just be vague about who was doing the forcing so we don't have to treat it as Europeans continuing to beat each other up. From there, it’s a direct line to the Nazis’ “Positive Christianity.”

The “neo-” part is great, actually

To get back to the original point, most neo-pagans are lovely people and I consider them more likely to be fellow travelers than I do most Christians. HOWEVER, insistence that they're continuing ancient European traditions is A) not true, and B) based in some bad shit.

And downplaying the "neo" part of neo-paganism can help create a hospitable environment for white supremacist attitudes and ideas. Again: there's nothing wrong, inferior, or illegitimate about creating new traditions, and being *inspired* by whatever you can learn of older ones.

But even among neo-pagans who don't get seduced by (organized) white supremacist thinking, I do see a lot of attitudes that are kind of similar to those of New Atheists in regard to "organized religion," and Judaism and Islam (generally under the heading of "Abrahamic religion").

(I've done whole threads about how the term "Judeo-Christian" exists almost solely to let Christians erase/co-opt Judaism and be Islamophobic, and I should do one about how "Abrahamic religions" often serves as a cover for displacing anger at Christianity onto Judaism and Islam.)

And here's the thing: adherents of pretty much every belief system in America that is mostly made up of white people have a LOT of deconstruction to do.

Christians need to deconstruct the ways Christianity has animated and benefited from colonialism, white supremacy, antisemitism. 

People who've left Christianity need to deconstruct how they still benefit from Christian hegemony and those things.

White Jews need to deconstruct how Jewish whiteness was built on anti-Blackness, and how we often use the conditional nature of Jewish whiteness as a shield against having to grapple with our own internalized white supremacy or acknowledge our white privilege.

I want to return to that "people who leave Christianity" and the deconstruction that needs to happen there, because I think it explains a lot of the parallel attitudes (and vulnerability to white supremacy) in neopagan and New Atheist circles.

Just ceasing to believe in the tenets of Christianity doesn't automatically deconstruct the attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, worldview, etc. instilled by growing up in Christian hegemony.

People who convert to religions like Islam or Judaism or even who marry a Hindu or otherwise join communities of people who are actively engaged with non-Christian traditions that have existed for a long time can get a big boost, I think, in that deconstruction because they're interacting with people who have never been Christian, whose parents were never Christian, whose grandparents were never Christian, and whose practices may have been *influenced* by Christianity but weren't instituted by Christians (or ex-Christians).

If you're leaving Christianity--or at least, a culturally Christian upbringing--and you're not becoming part of an established counter-tradition, I think, it's a lot harder to notice those assumptions and deconstruct them because you aren't getting that in-your-face contrast.

So you get a lot of ex-Christians who very much want to not be Christian anymore but are having to figure out what that means without living in a community that provides established counterexamples, and a lot of times have a lot of anger at Christianity and end up keeping a lot of the supremacist assumptions of Western Christianity and end up displacing some of that anger onto other traditions, advocating for a secularism that hasn't disentangled itself from white Christian norms, etc.

A lot of neopagan communities with which I've interacted are in this weird middle space, where most of the members are ex-Christian and are attempting to construct a counter-tradition, but they're doing it without the framework of an established counter-tradition.

And that's really fucking hard work because you don't have the benefit of a community with hundreds or thousands of years of its own non-Christian thought to counteract normative Christian-based attitudes and assumptions. The danger, I think, is in not recognizing that "reconstructed" traditions that are actually still based on stuff coming out of a Christian, white supremacist society don't actually provide the counter to Christian normativity that you might hope.

Again: Actually building a non-Christian tradition more or less from scratch, deconstructing white supremacist Christian assumptions so you're building on foundation that doesn't contain a lot of timbers that are just Christianity with the serial numbers filed off is really fucking hard work, and mad respect to the people actually doing it. It's much easier to just use what's already been packaged up for you.

I think the good news there is that if you do that deconstruction, and the communities you found and the traditions you start do that work, it's not going to take hundreds or thousands of years to have communities that provide strong, genuine alternatives to Christian hegemony. I know some kids raised in neopagan families that very intentionally do that work (although to be fair, both of those families have one parent who was raised in a non-Christian religion, so maybe they have a head start) who seem to have really internalized it.

But they are really clear on the whole "we're creating something new here" element of it. And I think that's incredibly, incredibly key to their authenticity, their sense of purpose, and their ethics.

And in general, I look at Christians and cultural Christians who aren't practicing, as a Jew, and think "man, you have it easy." But looking at neo-pagans who are actually Doing The Work to build something that's authentic and resistant to fascism, I think "man, I have it easy." (Incidentally, as much as Unitarianism often gets a bad rap for being bland, they've created some beautiful and moving rituals as well and are down with new ritual and I love them for it.)

Anyway, to wrap this up: 

Creating new rituals and religious traditions is good, actually 

You don't need some sort of unbroken religious history to be legitimate or authentic

It's cool to be inspired by ancient cultures without claiming to be them

Oh, and also: 

For members of older non-Christian traditions: it's really really easy to fall into the default of rolling our eyes at the new and I do it a lot intentionally at Christians, because being reminded that there was plenty of Civilization in the world before Jesus is good for them, I think. 

But it behooves us to make sure we're careful about when we deploy that.

Like, ESPECIALLY if you have the background of being raised in an old, non-Christian tradition with a strong community, I think being a sounding board to friends who are trying to deconstruct their own internalized Christian hegemony is a way to be an ally. Obviously, it doesn't automatically make anyone an expert on this stuff, but just the sniff-test of "that assumption seems weird to me" can, I think, be helpful.

Make new ritual.

It’s awesome.

(Image credit: Cottonbro Studio)

[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 🤍

[sapphireginger]

Stiles is terrified, exhausted and so done. He runs as fast as he can, as far as he can before collapsing in the snow. Maybe just lying here is the right-the only-thing to do.

Bad Things Happen Bingo: Magical Curse

@badthingshappenbingo​

[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.

[haloquin]

Two Book Reviews: Reclaiming & Honouring the Wild

As a Reclaiming witch myself, when I saw Irisanya Moon had written a new book in the Pagan Portals series: “Reclaiming Witchcraft”, my first thought was “why didn’t I think of that?!” I’m glad I didn’t, though, as Irisanya has done such a wonderful job of sharing a sense of the workings that make Reclaiming what it is. “Pagan Portals – Reclaiming Witchcraft” by Irisanya Moon (Moon Books, 2020)…

[world-v-you-blog]

The Uses of History, 15 – Utopian Interlude

The Uses of History, 15 – Utopian Interlude

(Image credit – Wikipedia) We humans live with the conviction that somehow, if we will it hard enough and direct our course with sufficient skill and resolution, we can some day create Utopia. We can conceive of almost endless versions of the Perfect World, the Perfect Society, of “Nowhere”, which is what the word “Utopia” actually means in Greek. Sir [Saint] Thomas More borrowed the word when…

[keysatthecrossroad]

Hekáte, fierce and mighty,

Bring justice to Your devoted,

Let all be safe in Your embrace,

Open up the Crossroads for us,

Let us thrive in Your garden,

May all hail Hekáte, Enodia, Mother of the devoted, Queen of Witches, Goddess of All!

[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.

[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.

[haveyouheardthisband]

[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!

[thenightling]

To me the "Witch Tip" to smudge used / old books (Does no one know what smoke does to book binding and paper anymore?!) is as bad as when I saw the "tip" to leave chocolate out as an offering to the nature spirits if you know there are stray dogs around, so the spirits will be incline to protect them. Is someone deliberately trolling occult groups with this stupidity? WHY do people fall for this stuff?!