#WHICH ISN'T ABOUT THE RELIGION THING EITHER TO BE CLEAR I'M JUST TRANS

[vulpinesaint]

haha yeah i'm just like all the other men i think about the roman empire all the time... [ dreamily imagines saint sebastian tied to that tree ]

[wolf-claw]

"White friendly" and "Terf friendly","TRAs stay away" how interesting. But are you a Terf yourself? Do you take no issue with a trans person interacting, so long as they don't consider themselves an activist? I have to give you credit, at least you're honest in that others who have a problem with your points of view can see that and can block you accordingly. I'm not here to debate or anything like that, while I disagree completely with some of the things you've said concerning cultural appropriation. I just have a few questions to try to understand your point of view if that's alright. A lot of white pagan practices are inauthentic, written in the mid-to-late 1900s and much more revivalist rather than based on historic tradition, borrowed from closed practices and some of those practices are also, white. Do you genuinely not understand the difference between a closed practice and an open practice? A lot of religions that come from PoC are open to practice, not all of them are closed or would-be considered cultural appropriation to practice. Or is it that you'd advocate for more European or otherwise white practices, to become more exclusive, and closed? What about biracial people with roots in both PoC practices and white practices, where do we draw that line?

Honestly I don't even have an issue with people practicing a faith to which they have no ancestral connection, I just have an issue when they twist the image of the deities to make them look "inclusive". Meanwhile many ancient cultures left clear depictions of deities, if not in image (like Ancient Greek pottery) then in the lore. Secondly, here's a thing I always find odd - paganism is ancestral. I know many pagan cultures influenced each other in the past and that's one thing, but if you go for a path that is foreign to most if not all of your ancestors, how can you not ask yourself why? And in many cases, I have an impression that militantly anti-racist white pagans see non-white pagans as props with which to annoy racist white pagans. Like they'd rather have a black person worshipping Odin to annoy a racist, than have them reconnecting with the gods of their own ancestors. But that being said, the issue itself, in my opinion, isn't really in a person of one race worshipping gods of another, but in saying that those gods of another race were actually "race mixed" or something like that (always incorrect in terms of depictions). But now I am just repeating myself, anyway I hope you got my point. Outside of that, I personally don't get the impression that gods care about either racism or anti-racism. To take myself out of it on order to be as objective as possible - I have met Hekate worshipping witches of both persuasions with equally effective magick. Whenever someone tries to convince me that a deity is (anti)racist I get the impression they're a charlatan.

[traegorn]

hi! i want to be clear that i mean no disrespect in asking this. as someone who knows the history of wicca, how it was created in the 50s and has largely appropriated other pagan traditions etc, ive always wondered why people still find it compelling? in a more answerable format, why do you choose to be wiccan over a different pagan tradition that doesn't have that history as its baseline? i know theres no easy answer to this and the question likely sounds ruder than i mean it to. for context im part of two of the cultures wiccans have taken a huge chunk of practices from, as well as being trans (i know you are too which is why i mention it) and the extremely binary gendered "god and goddess", "divine feminine and masculine energy" stuff makes me uncomfortable. in researching, it seems like a lot of the cultural appropriation aspects of it were added by early practitioners in the 60s and 70s, but that still makes it deeply ingrained in the religion. i genuinely want to be more understanding and compassionate, and since you are pretty involved in the wiccan community specifically like answering questions and stuff i wanted your perspective. sorry if this is uncalled for in any way.

There's a lot here, and I don't necessarily agree with the way everything in the ask is framed (and I never like comments about "appropriation" without going into specifics because that can mean many things) -- but I can tell you're asking in good faith, so I'll do my best.

I'm not going to dig into my relationship with the god and goddess as a nonbinary Wiccan because I've answered it so many times before. I've done a whole podcast episode on it, so that's out there if you want to know what my feelings are on the topic. You're asking me how I found faith in a religion that's less than a century old though.

And the answer is... because it's what I believe in?

I mean, you're asking me to explain faith. My personal journey (which, uh, I've also gone into detail with in another podcast episode) was one where I started with what I believed in and found something that asked the question I already felt I'd answered? I don't know if that makes any sense.

It's never been about Wicca being ancient (though I certainly came up in an era where that was still a very common belief in the community), but what I found in it. We fetishize practices and traditions being ancient in a really unhealthy way. Something being older doesn't make it inherently more authentic or real, but time and time again people fall into this trap.

Early Wiccans fell face first into this one, and even though the truth eventually came to light about it, the rest of the neopagan community never really moved past it. Like how many "Celtic Shamans" are out there pretending they're doing something ancient still? To a lesser note, think about how many Norse Heathens don't admit a good chunk of what they practice is reconstruction.

You ask "Why do you choose to be wiccan over a different pagan tradition that doesn't have that history as its baseline?" And I ask, as a white Midwesterner with no cultural connection to those other traditions -- how would it be any better if I laid claim to those either? Not to mention that it's not what I believe. My conception of divinity isn't an outfit I can change. I can't just say "Okay, I believe in [X God]" the next day out of nowhere.

A person's faith isn't hot-swappable.

I don't know if I fully answered what you asked, but that's what I've got this random Monday morning.