#jewish indigineity

[arunswild]

Absolutely, it makes me more susceptible to propaganda, but I also have a more nuanced view of the situation because I'm experiencing it myself. Also, needless to say, my knowledge of Israeli history, Hebrew, Arabic and Jewish studies is definitely better and more thorough than most Americans, making it easier for me to see the historical side of things, read more sources from BOTH sides, and speak to more people. And I don't want to say that I'm more entitled to an opinion, because that sounds stupid, but actually I kind of am?

Except, your point is weak in the first place, because the fact that not ALL the Jews were exterminated doesn't really mean that we should sit around waiting for it to happen. The fact that miraculously some people survived doesn't mean that there's no need for a Jewish home. It's great, but it doesn't cancel out the need for a home base.

Well, I'm sorry, do you know what my friends, family and community have been doing for almost a year? Showing up, every single weekend, by the thousands, in front of Netanyahu's house, protesting his insane actions and demanding that he resign. We've literally sued the government. The fight we've been putting up is actually insane. There were multiple attempts to impeach him, there were multiple attempts to restrain him, he's being tried for multiple crimes, his government was sued this summer, none of it worked (some attempts to restrain him did, but not enough). Anyway, I don't even remember why we brought the Likud up because Netanyahu made it very clear he would not support any renewed Jewish settlement in Gaza.

Don't be ridiculous. The Zionist return to Israel began in 1881, and although there were some tensions, the earlier settlers admired the Palestinian Arabs, they employed them constantly and made huge efforts to learn Arabic and communicate with them. Almost all of the settlements were built on disgusting land the Ottomans sold them. The first armed Jewish groups were formed in response to highway robbers who would attack merchants. Later on settlers tried to boycott Arab workers for ideological reasons, but their boycott failed. Obviously things were tense, but not tense enough to justify ANY of what was done after, under the British. Breaking into family homes, splitting open skulls (???), attacking hospitals, and looting and burning ENTIRE VILLAGES. That's not self defense, because they weren't hurting the belligerents (who, by the way, were not innocent either). They also weren't reacting to anything, because they started the attack. Peace was not attempted before 1900. Duh. Who exactly would mediate what? The Jewish population was miniscule and weak, the Arab Israeli population didn't have an entirely developed national consciousness yet (because Israel wasn't its own province in the Ottoman Empire, it was part of the Syrian province. The idea of the borders of Israel the way they are now is based on the Jewish tradition) and the Ottoman's were trying to keep their collapsing empire together and probably couldn't care less about negotiating peace. What they did care about was limiting Jewish immigration to Palestine, but that's unrelated. However, and this is interesting because rarely anyone knows this, Peace WAS attempted after, under British rule in 1919. It nearly worked, too, except a bunch of stuff messed it up, including both sides disagreeing with regards to a caveat added after the treaty was signed. The agreement was signed by a representative of the Zionist organization who later became the first Israeli president, and the king of Iraq and also technically of Syria. The agreement was for the future Arab and Jewish states to work together to encourage immigration, protect the peasants and the holy sites and develop the economy of both states. Point being, even before the two state solution which was rejected twice by the Arabs, peace was attempted and almost achieved. I probably won't reply if you do, I'm absolutely swamped. Sorry.

These kinds of comments really bug me because it's so clear how confused the person who wrote them is.

So let me clear this up for you, @nagashii

Israel has not stolen Palestinian culture. Of all the ridiculous claims you could make, this one is probably the most silly because it's absolutely meaningless. I'd love to hear what cultural things you think we "stole", but I'm just letting you know that whatever you think it is, you're wrong. I'm not gonna bother elaborating

You're making a very important distinction between Jews and Israel, which is great except you screwed it up. You are assuming that the existence of Jews is not dependent on the existence of Israel, while ignoring the fact that the REASON Israel exists is to protect the Jewish people. Even if there's a very Jewish person who has no interest in Israel, Israel has helped them in more ways than you can imagine. Israel gives money and aid to Jewish community and it's also gained the right to prosecute people who commit antisemitic hate crimes in other countries. So you can say that Jews are okay but Israel needs to die, but you're basically saying Jews need to die, which is, obviously, antisemitic and disgusting.

Israel doesn't have genocidal ideals, don't be idiotic. If Israel wanted to commit genocide, believe me, there would be no humanitarian aid, no warnings, no attempts to evacuate gazans. The IDF has absolutely no interest in harming anyone who isn't part of Hamas, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The fact that Hamas uses its civilians as human shields makes this incredibly hard. I know people who are currently fighting in Gaza. Trust me, killing more people is the last thing they want. Obviously there are some morons who want to kill everyone and take Gaza back, but they're idiots and nobody really gives a shit what they think because they're being childish and narrow. Those few people do not represent Israel.

The Jewish people are absolutely and completely entitled to have a country of their own, and the fact that Israel was the land chosen has not only Historical and Traditional but also Legal reasons. I'll reblog this with links to useful explanations. As I said, Israel is essential to the continued existence of the Jewish people which means that yes, we are entitled to it. Absolutely. Whether or not all the actions of the Israeli government are okay is a completely different story. The botton line is that Israel must and will continue to exist.

Hope this helps.

[ace-hell]

Ok so my grandma(dad side) went to a special institution that do research on you family name and give your this weird certificate that explains sruff about the family name, origin, meaning etc. So she did on 4 family names:

Her husband's

Hers-dad side

Her mother's - dad side

Her mother's (again)- mother side

And APPARENTLY i have a linage of THREE important rabbis(which one was literally a sofer stam) but that's not all- one of the family names can be traced to RASHI(רש"י) himself???

AND NOT ONLY THAT, which is HUGE, but there's a big fat chance RASHI is a descendant of THE KING DAVID?????

"european" MY ASS NOT ONLY IM NATIVE JEWISH I ALSO MIGHT HAVE A ROYAL HERITAGE????

I know there are another like thousands who should have it too but literally wtfff

I am so psyched out of my mind WHAT THE HELL

[secular-jew]

1881, Jews rebuilding their ancestral country out of an empty, desolate, malaria infested land. Very few Arabs lived in Israel until the 1920's when the British arrived after the Ottomans withdrew, and some Arabs were drawn to the area for new economic opportunities, from Egypt, Syria, and other Muslim countries. The only Palestinians there were the Jews, many of whom had been there since Judaism was born there 3500 years earlier; small numbers of Arabs also present were called Arabs or Moslems, and did not identify as Palestinians. That came later in 1964 when Nasser and Russia came up with the idea and invented the "Palestinian" people as a weapon against Israel. They recruited Arafat, an Egyptian, to play the role of a "Palestinian" and cultivate a false nation.

[infiniteglitterfall]

jewish shower thoughts

A Reddit comment I can't stop thinking about: "If you think whiteness is bad, Jews are white to you. If you think whiteness is good, Jews aren't white to you."

[faggotry-enjoyer]

You ever see something that's just so wrong and cruel and callous you just don't even know where to begin

[infiniteglitterfall]

Yep. That was when the Greco-Roman Empire renamed the area "Syria Palaistinea" ("Palestinian Syria" - It's hard to read the ancient Greek lettering on this map, but it looks like it ends in an A here too).

Renaming and making it a part of Syria were ways to erase the indigenous population whose revolt it had just brutally crushed.

You can see that the "large red letters" are still smaller than the ones below them that say "ARABIA PETREA." That's because Arabia Petrea was a Roman province, while Palestine was a region in the province of Syria.

Wikipedia has a completely different version of this map for some reason. This is what they show as Ptolemy's map from 150 CE:

On this one it's labeled "Palestina-Iudea."

Wikipedia also has a modern reproduction of one from 135 CE, right after the Bar Kokhba Revolt that had been crushed.

In this one, the region is a province named "IUDAEA," or Judea. That's the pre-revolt name. You can see how the transition progressed.

The kingdoms of Judea, or Judah, and of Israel, went back more than 1,000 years.

Judah "was an Israelite kingdom of the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. Centered in the highlands of Judea, the landlocked kingdom's capital was Jerusalem.

"Jews are named after Judah and are primarily descended from it."

This is Wikipedia's map of what the region looked like around 3,000 years ago:

The indigenous Jews had already been invaded by the Babylonian Empire, persevered through its widescale massacres, regained their independence, been invaded and oppressed by the Greeks, and revolted against them twice.

The third revolt was their last. After achieving three years of freedom, all the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Jewish rebels were either killed or enslaved.

Historian Cassius Dio wrote, "50 of their most important outposts and 985 of their most famous villages were razed to the ground. 580,000 men were slain in the various raids and battles, and the number of those that perished by famine, disease and fire was past finding out. Thus nearly the whole of Judaea was made desolate."

Emperor Hadrian outlawed Judaism entirely. Executed Jewish scholars. Publicly burned sacred scrolls at the Temple Mount, and built giant statues of Roman gods there.

He expelled the indigenous Jews from Jerusalem, made Judea a part of Syria, and renamed it "Palaestina" after the horrible Philistines (who had basically been very violent pirates).

He died three years later, and many of his proclamations ended.

But Wikipedia's page on the Bar Kokhba Revolt adds, "A further, more lasting punishment was also implemented by the Romans. In an attempt to erase any memory of Judea or Ancient Israel, the name Judaea was dropped from the provincial name, and Provincia Iudaea was renamed Syria Palaestina" - the only time the Empire reacted to a revolt by expunging a nation's name.

And it worked.

Even though the Jews managed to maintain a presence in the region, and to become the majority population again, the Arab Empire would eventually take over.

It's been nearly two thousand years after the area was renamed. About 1300 years since it became majority Arab. Roughly 100 years since Arab people living there slowly started calling themselves Palestinians.

And people assume that the Palestinians, not the Jews, are the indigenous people there.

The oldest Ptolemy map of Palestine is dated 150 AD. The large red letters in the center say in Greek: Παλαιστινης or Palaistinis.

[apas-95]

As it apparently needs to be restated - race, ethnicity, and nationality are not themselves the basic drivers of history. Political-economic class is.

The European practice of placing African people into chattel slavery was not carried out on the basis of any innate characteristics of 'blackness' or 'whiteness' - those categories did not exist before the slave trade, they were created in support of it. Europe at the time found it would be beneficial to have a class of slave workers for its colonial projects, and it had the military, political, and economic might to subjugate Africa and African people to that end. Had you asked a Prussian and a Scotsman prior to the institution of African slavery if they were both members of a common 'race', they would have found the idea ridiculous - and yet, transport those two ahead in time, and perhaps to settlements in the Americas, and suddenly they were both Whites. Whiteness (and its necessary counterpart, blackness), then, is not some intrinsic quality based on the tone of someone's skin, but a political and economic category constructed to differentiate between those people that could be oppressed and made chattel by the slave trade, and those that could not.

This is true for all these systems of oppression - though they may be divided on supposed lines of biology or locality, they are not inherently based on biological factors, those are functionally coincidental, and are constructed as justifications for a system necessitated by purely political and economic reasons. Nazi oppression of Jewish, and Roma, and Slavic [and etc.] people was not fundamentally based on any inherent quality of e.g. Judaism, but on the economic needs of German capital under the burden of postwar reconstruction and 'war reparations' paid to the victorious powers. It was not blind hatred, but the inevitable result of a society built in pursuit of profit - one whose ruling class held a cold, calculated need to expropriate wealth, weaken worker organisation, and seize and depopulate land to strengthen the composition of capital. It was still necessary for this system to split the population into one group of 'legitimate targets' for victimisation, and one of reassured, protected accomplices, though there were no obvious physical, 'biological' features to base these on - so they were constructed, both through propaganda that exaggerated physiology, and through the appending of obvious badges and marks onto those targeted. Again, these were sets of features, and categories, created to support a system of oppression and exploitation, not the reasons it came into being in the first place.

Again, these are fundamentally political and economic categories, and can only be properly understood as such. If not properly understood as being based, first and foremost, on material interests of classes, then any analysis of them is unstable. For example: appeals to the supposed ancestral claim of zionists to the land of Palestine, and thereby to indigineity, can only be refuted with an understanding that indigeneity is a political and economic characteristic, of relation towards the oppression of a settler state, and not some characteristic of where one's ancestors were born. None of this is to say that race, nationality, etc don't function as axes of oppression - but that they must be understood as manifestations of the existing political and economic material interests of classes that drive the development of history, if they are to be fought against.

[low-cole-timothy]

If you ask a non-jew what is the symbol of a Jewish wedding they will say it's breaking a glass. But why?

What you don't know is that when the groom breaks the glass the couple are already married. The rabbi has technically already pronounced them husband and wife (though there isn't really that part in a Jewish wedding).

The glass is crushed to represent the grief of the destruction of the temple. The groom says "If I forget you Jerusalem may my right hand be lost, may my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I don't remember you and don't put Jerusalem at the top of my joy" (my translation) Even at the happiest event of our lives we will always remember Jerusalem and Zion (i.e Israel) and how it was destroyed and how we were exiled from it. Then and only then, you may kiss the bride.

The verse is from the same psalm that starts with "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion"

This has been Jewish tradition for over 2,000 years and it doesn't matter if it was Jews in Europe, Africa, Asia - we always yearned to return to the land of Israel.

So if you say we aren't indiginous to the land of Israel or that we have no claim to the land, you need to educate yourself.

[apollos-olives]

i wish people would stop saying that the israeli-palestinan "conflict" is just muslims vs jews. it's literally not. i wish you people could comprehend that it isn't just one religion vs another.

it's a settler colonial racist government stealing land from the indiginous people. it's not "jews vs muslims". it's colonization hurting indiginous people. palestinians are muslim, christian, jewish, atheist, etc. palestinians are diverse. palestine is the birthplace of christianity and judiasm. i have friends and family members who are jewish and christian and athiest, and they all are palestinian and stand with palestine. a lot of israelis are not even religious either. it's NOT religion vs religion. it's a corrupt government using religion as an excuse to hurt the people who belonged there first. that's all it is.

i fucking hate it when people use religion to try to justify their "neutral" stance on the occupation and apartheid happening there.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” ― Desmond Tutu

[secular-jew]

[jewish-vents]

I had an ugly thought, but the more I chew it over the more I’m realizing I’m correct

The reason that (white, Western) leftists are so eager to put a time limit on Jewish indigineity is because if you can time it out, then they know they can wait out having to contend with 1) what they did to indigenous peoples in the Americas, and 2) what they did to enslaved Africans. If they drag someone off their land and forcibly cut them off from their language and pieces of their culture, they just have to wait and then oops! Too late! Not my problem! Victim of the good ol’ cultural melting pot!

But if Jews are still indigenous and still keep our culture after this long, there’s this looming specter from other corners that they are so, so frightened to contend with

And rather than do the work to untangle all this, it’s just easier to lash out at us and revise history

I’m so tired of being their scapegoat

.

[faggotry-enjoyer]

oh i'm definitely gonna lose some friends for this one huh

[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

Thanks for your help with head coverings-by-devorah.

Is the site https://hebrewnations.com/ actually Jewish?

It’s giving me weird vibes.

(My jumblr is @tzipporahs-well.)

Rating: Not Jewish (and also extremely racist and bonkers)

You are right about the weird vibes, it is in the category of what we would call "Biblical pseudoscience". Hebrewnations.com is an offshoot of Brit-Am, an organization headed by Yair Davidiy. The sole mission of Brit-Am is to "prove" that different nations and ethnic groups around the world are actually part of the lost Ten Tribes, which also involves greatly misinterpreting other Indigineous groups' beliefs and origins. On his LinkedIn, Yair Davidiy lists absolutely no qualifications- he calls himself a Rabbi, and yet no Rabbinical school is listed. He calls himself an expert in biblical archaeology, and yet no program is listed, not even a BS or BA.

Yair Davidiy can also be found on Atlantipedia, a pseudoscience website that promotes archaeologicial misinformation, and that's a damning enough fact.

Among his many outlandish claims, Yair Davidiy identifies the French as the tribe of Reuven, the Celts as Shimon, the Italians as Levi (nevermind that Levites are still around today), the Finns as Yissachar, Holland as Zevulun, the Goths as Dan, the Norwegians as Naftali, the Swedes as Gad, the Vandals as Asher, the Scythians as Yosef, and the Normans as Binyamin. (Nevermind that Binyamin was not included in the lost Ten Tribes).

Davidiy also claims that Mashiach ben Yosef will actually be found among the Anglo-Saxons, which he uses interchangably with white USAmericans.

He claims:

There will be a future re-union of Judah and Joseph. Neither the MALBIM nor Rabbi Schneerson were consciously aware that JOSEPH is to be identified with the "Anglo-Saxon" related peoples, i.e. the British, North Americans, and their "colonial" cousins. Nevertheless, their description of the relationship between Judah and Joseph finds some parallels in recent times with that between the Jews and the "Anglo-Saxon" nations. As pointed out in our book “Ephraim” (1995, 2001), the "Anglo-Saxon" nations are really the only cultural-ethnic bloc that is capable (barring supernatural miracles) of physically fulfilling the role ascribed to "Joseph" in Jewish sources. They are the only ones capable of defeating the combined forces of Edom (Germany and Europe) and Ishmael (the Moslem peoples) in armed confrontation. They are also the only ones who unto now have actively assisted the Jews in settling the Land of Israel. They have taken this task upon themselves almost as part of an obligation springing from their own national heritage. This point holds true despite mistaken and negative stands often taken by certain politicians and national leaders in America and Britain against the Jewish-Israelis. There are some bad Israelites, some bad Jews, and some bad people of other origins in Israelite nations. The "Anglo-Saxon" nations in the past have proved themselves capable of successfully organizing the orderly and secure mass movement of their own peoples in settling them overseas, in new countries. Eventually a re-union between Joseph and Judah will take place. The sooner the better. 

Essentially, he has created a pseudo-religion of his own, based in American exceptionalism. He has also allied himself with the American Evangelical Christians who only support Israel because they believe it will bring about the end of times that will purge any non-Christian from the earth (including Jews). He also frequently uses the (Christian) King James Bible translation of the 'Old Testament', which is of course concerning for someone who claims to promote Jewish ideas.

The only good thing is that he doesn't seem to have much of a following.

So, as far as we know, Yair Davidiy is a Jew, but his organization and ideas most certainly are not.

[jewreallythinkthat]

Ok so ... Today's absolutely fucking batshit post that I had to read with my own two eyes

We all know Mohamed Hadid is a foaming at the mouth antisemite but this is a new level.

Let's start with the caption:

1. The implication all Jews are American? Insane, untrue, erasing all Jewish history in Israel which dates back to before the Arabization of the middle east.

2. No one has a single percent of Semite in them because Semite is not a race, it's an obsolete term for a family of languages (including both Hebrew and Arabic) however I need to specify that "Antisemitism" was coined as a term specifically about Jew hate. That's what it means, it's actually nothing to do with the language Hebrew at all, it was an attempt to sciencify "judenhass" and make it sound acceptable.

Now to the post itself:

3. If you demand an end to colonialism, boy have I got something to explain about why the official language of Morocco, a country the width of a continent away from the Arabian Peninsula is Moroccan Arabic... Or to be honest, the reason that Arabs are the main demographic anywhere outside the Arabian Peninsula where they originally came from. I understand that peoples migrate but that involves moving from one place to another, not expanding our and literally colonising everything around you. The Arab conquests of the MENA region are a well documented part of history...

4. Demanding a ceasefire is all well and good but we are all aware that we will never be going back to the status quo of before - which frankly is all a ceasefire with no actual work done to rebuild and move towards peace will do. A ceasefire neccestiates thought on what happens next. This is not to say people shouldn't be advocating for an cease to the fighting, they should, this all needs to end. What people have to also do is also be discussing what happens next. The old status quo was unsustainable, and with the mounting evidence that Gazans who worked in Israel helped with the planning of Black Saturday, we will never again see the relations between the people in southern Israel and those in Gaza go "back to normal".

I would love a ceasefire but we need to talk about what happens next in the same conversation. To ignore that is at best naïve and at worst, willfully ignorant because just stopping and Israel withdrawing will do nothing to help rebuild because we all know that everyone will lose interest if that happens, as has happened over and over again.

5. It's well known that Jews are indigenous to Israel and the ancient kingdom of Judea. It's literally in the etymology of the world. Now, obviously multiple groups can be indiginous to one area, but length of time residing there is not a marker of indiginunity, it's literally a childlike playground tactic. Straight up rewriting history... We all know how bad that is.

Mohamed Hadid has over a million followers. His daughters have a total of 130 million. They can post misinformation and almost ten times the number of Jews who exist in the world will see it. This is so dangerous and frankly this level of deranged lying on the internet does not nothing to help end the war, it just puts Jews outside of Israel more at risk. We are being murdered in the streets, in our places of work and everyone is cheering it on.

The irony of people applauding the murder of Jews calling us neo-nazis is not lost on me and it's unreal that we aren't even allowed to stand up to it. Let's be very blunt here, if you are justifying the slaughter of Jews, who's the real nazi?

An additional Edit:

There will never be a ceasefire without release of the hostages and bodies kidnapped into Gaza. Like it's so stupid to think otherwise. Especially with Hamas currently refusing to give a list of who is still alive (they said they couldn't give a list until they knew the terms of a ceasefire which clearly means they COULD do it, but they are choosing not to)

[hero-israel]

It seems to me that the left's reluctance to acknowledge that both Jewish people and Palestinians are native to the Levant (both seem to be descended from the Canaanites?) is because then they wouldn't have a neat little westernized narrative that tells them who the good guys are and who the bad guys that deserve rape and murder are. I think they don't want it to be complicated because they're intellectually lazy and they delight in violence against acceptable targets, and they need Jewish people to be their white European colonizer stand-ins because otherwise they might have to have an original, nuanced thought. How can one counter claims about Jewish indigineity without being accused of cosigning everything the Israeli government has ever done?

.

[buggywiththefolkmagic]

Personal Do Not Read Witchy Author List

There will be a google doc with updates as I find more authors to avoid. These are all my own personal opinion and I do take the author's actions into account when judging their ability to write legitimate information.

TW: Slavery, serial killers, racism, TERFs, creeps, neonazis, asylums, and a slew of other super unsavory things. I tried to make this list as PG as possible while highlighting the issues with these individual people. 

*Alestier Crowley. *

   He's a literal piece of garbage. Misogynistic, thief of a toooon of closed practices, has entire cults still dedicated to him, called himself a voice of God (both Abrahamic and apparently like 5 Egyptian deities??? I mean excuse me sir how about no??) He also declared himself ‘above’ Gods back in 1922 calling himself Ipssissimus. I hate Crowley so much I have literally stuck a picture of him to a dartboard before. He can suck an egg in the afterlife. He also put his own wife in an asylum for 'alcoholism’ because she wanted a divorce. The only thing he ever did right was get kicked down a flight of stairs at a temple once by a poet.

*Anastasia Greywolf*

   Appropriates at least Jewish practices if not every Indigenous practice there is. Wholeheartedly encourages people to use magic instead of going to a doctor for things like oh I dunno EPILEPSY And claims she has spells for like Marvel-level super powers which uh no Ana. You don't. Lots of Christianity for a supposedly FULL pagan and wiccan author. Her spells are all controlled like...so wrong. So, so wrong. Don't ask please. I can't begin to describe it. Advocates for smudging and uses phrases like "Cherokee Rituals", and the Romani G-slur. 

*Gerald Gardner*

   Made his own branch of wicca, the first technically, and his own coven had to make rules just so he wouldn't spill everything to any reporter that asked. Used Crowley as a main resource.

*Jason Miller*

   Claims to do Hoodoo. A horrible formatter, and generally super dismissive of being a rootworker and other potentially closed practices, has not been initiated. Has claimed that anyone can petition/pray to Papa Legba without initiation because "Vodou is a congregational religion/practice". From the Vodou and Haitian Vodou practitioners I have talked to that is VERY incorrect, it may be congregational but you still have to be involved in the community to be trusted with those practices because so much of it has been bastardized for media and racism purposes. He is also a student of Catherine Yronwode, who is another SUPER problematic figure in the Hoodoo/Rootwork community.  

 A link of his own words on culture appropriation which includes mild inaccuracy towards Indiginous Peoples and that they don’t ‘own’ certain practices when it’s very clear the wording of those practices DOES in fact come from those peoples. He’s fine with people being Yogis, or Shamans, or calling satchel spells mojo bags, and other such phrases and won’t correct people if they use such words out of context because “language changes”. Also says if someone within a practice says it’s closed to go to ANOTHER AND ANOTHER until you find someone willing to teach you??? That’s not how it works sir.

Source: https://www.strategicsorcery.net/on-cultural-misappropriation/

*Lisa Chamberlain*

   Not an actual person. This is a ghost writer name for a bunch of garbage literally copy and pasted from wikipedia into books. I wish I was kidding. 

*Lisa Leister/Lester/whatever other spelling she's used.*

   Such a major TERF. Like JK Rowling level TERF. Claims magic comes from a womb so anybody that doesn't have one isn't a real witch. Like WTF lady.

*Raymond Buckland*

  Where to start...uses the G-slur often. (His grandfather was romani so it blurs the line of blood quantum.)  Very sexist and obsessed with the idea of a woman getting uh...undressed for rituals while men stay dressed and more things I cannot say ina PG space??? As magic?? VERY anti-minor and LGBTQA+. Toxic, just plain toxic. Can't do it. I have read his Blue Book and it's the least problematic thing he wrote. I'm alright with it.

*Silver Ravenwolf*   WhOOO boy. So super anti-christian, which is fine and dandy...if you didn't claim to be in a lineage of braucherei/hexerei. Wiccan, like the type of wiccan that says no other witchcraft exists and yet has written folk magic books??? She really needs to make up her mind. Claims Satanists don't actually exist. Claims most Jewish powers worshiped "the Goddess" (whoever that is)??? Very cult-like language about "not telling friends and family about your new life/reality/experience/whatever". Also SO MUCH APPROPRIATION. SO SO MUCH. She also gets her history wrong, on a lot of basic information that most non-witches know about like say the Salem Witch Trials.

*Catherine Yronwode* Ooh man. So Catherine Yronwode’s career started as a comic book artist. She’s worked on such things like the Elvira comic, DNAgents, and a gaggle of super controversial trading cards which included the Kennedy Assasination, a serial killer collection, and the AIDS epidemic. Of which she was sued for using one half of the Hillside Stranglers duo in said killer trading cards without his permission, the judge sadly threw the case out because and this is a quote, “ If Bianchi had been using his face as a trademark when he was killing women, he would not have tried to hide it from the police.” There were two more from her comic days, but those aren’t super relevant besides the one that pushed the envelope of what sort of trading cards should be sold to children. On the magical side of things, I will be blunt here: As one of the ‘big bads’ of the Rootwork/Folk/Hoodoo community? I really REALLY dislike her. She has made numerous false claims about New Orleans/Haitian Vodou and that it’s only a very recent practice, non-religious, and slaves never used it because it didn’t exist yet??? History books and entire generations will disagree. An example would be this link of an open letter to her written by a New Orleans Voodoo practitioner and someone she wrote a whole article about: https://conjureart.blogspot.com/2013/10/open-letter-to-cat-yronwode-and-lucky.html

She owns a few different websites namely https://www.luckymojo.com/, has written numerous Hoodoo based books, and actively has accused numerous people who have asked her for sources and or disagreed with her of plagiarism and has slung more mud that you can shake a stick at. 

She also praises a book on Marie Laveau and yet discredits herself by calling New Orleans Voodoo a new religion/neopractice??? She’s just confusing as all heck to me.

*Christian Day*   This guy’s just a creep. One stuck in the early 2000s mall goth phase even though he’s over 50. He also appropriates Hoodoo and owns two Hoodoo shops as well as multiple other witch shops in Salem and recently New Orleans on the French Quarter (Which is pure tourist fodder and not a reflection of true New Orleans Voodoo/Vodun/Rootwork). He has also harassed ex-employees so badly it’s landed him in court. His book The Witch’s Book of the Dead also reads very much like a list of accomplishments rather than anything useful. All about his television spots and experiences doing that. (Did I mention he was in an episode of Ghost Adventures? Yes, that one with Zac Bagans??? And it did not make us witches look too great, honestly speaking.)

Sources for Harassment Claims: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/salem-witch-gets-protective-order-against-warlock/

https://www.wcvb.com/article/warlock-christian-day-ordered-to-stay-away-from-salem-witch/8228072

*Yvonne and Gavin Frost*   I dunno how else to say this, I really don’t. These two? Pedophiles. Multiple writings of theirs included not-safe-for-work-or-children rituals that must include minors. Avoid. AVOID AVOID. AVOID ANYONE WHO USES THEM AS A RESOURCE! This should NOT be okay in any circle. They are VERY used within the Wicca religion so please be careful!!

*Orion Foxwood* Some of his information is very sound! I can’t fault him there. He does have a tendency to blend different traditions without actively TELLING you he’s blending them though. He’s and this is a direct quote, “He is a witch and Elder in Romano Celtic-Traditional Craft, High Priest in Alexandrian Wicca and teacher of the Faery Seership tradition. He is also the founding Elder of Foxwood Temple and a primary founder of the Alliance of the Old Religion, a national network of covens in his line that have united to preserve the ways of his Elders. He was the co-director of Moonridge, a center for metaphysical, Craft and Faery studies in Maryland” That’s an awful lot of traditions to juggle and not only write on but actively teach. He also performs conjure, which in of itself might not be an issue but Conjure usually blends into Hoodoo really quickly if one isn’t careful! A lot of the traditions he talks about from his family sound quite familiar, he’s clearly from Appalachia but his books on the subject blend in his other practices instead of keeping them separate. 

*Starr Casas*   She’s in the same category as Orion, only she doesn’t necessarily give her credentials to be teaching Hoodoo, and even wrote a whole book filled with Hoodoo love spells. She also co-owns a French Quarter Conjure Shop, which if you ask any practitioners from New Orleans...is catered to pure tourists and not a true example of the crafts from the area. 

*Shawn Engel*   I’m gonna be blunt here. More appropriation of the Jewish practices, Hoodoo, and other information that is just plain UPG without saying it’s UPG and encourages throwing hexes at political party members solo. I read The Power of Hex and had to put it down numerous times just to gather myself and not throw it away, I don’t know if it was tone or sheer level of appropriation...likely both.

*Kate Freuler*   Of Blood and Bones is chock full of Hoodoo, full stop. Only acknowledges that something comes from Hoodoo once and also gets basic mythology information on the Deities she mentions wrong in some cases. Also a lot of the book seems to be UPG because the bibliography is super small for a 300 page book.

*Dorothy Morrison*   I picked up Utterly Wicked once. A very odd book full of Hoodoo and Vodun spellwork and misinformation, the author is also Garderian Wiccan so even the writing of a book full of hexes is slightly...concerning compared to the Wiccan traditions and redes. Odd is the best I have to describe how I personally feel. I will say this again: Voodoo Dolls are not used to cause pain, stop bastardizing that single aspect of the practice. Thank you.

*Helena Blavatsky*

 I dunno how else to say this either, her philosophy and occult knowledge, called Theosophy is a portion of what inspired Hitler. Pure unadulterated racism veiled in a ‘Atlantian Race Theory”. Horrible stuff, read for a class project once and felt disgusting.

*Christopher Penczak*Whoo boy. On the surface he seems alright, one of the first ‘male’ witches I had ever heard of except for Scott Cunningham. But the more you dig into his work the more inaccuracies and Christian bashing you see. For example: Christianty was the first patriarchal society. Uhm...I believe you’re kinda forgetting the men who ran Rome and Greece there sir. He also fully proposes the ‘burning times’ were like a ‘witch holocaust’. NO! NO IT WAS NOT. You can’t compare the hundreds of years and MAYBE a thousand-ish people dying to the millions that died in the short timespan the Holocaust was a thing. Fuck Christopher for that comparison and also for claiming it was a ‘burning time’ to begin with. (History says that most were hung...or tortured. Burning is a very small number of that list in general. 

He makes a lot of sweeping statements and sees witchcraft as a religion and NOT a practice. He whitewashes, fully harps on the Wicca = witchcraft = religion thing and THEN hones in on the difference between “white and black” magic and how cursing is evil and yet highlights certain practices that actively practice...cursing...as they have for generations??? He (atleast) doesn’t demonize Satanism but does still backhand the idea anyway, that they CAN’T be witches because witches only ‘heal’. Cultural appropriation and fetishization of ‘Native’ practices while calling them primitive all in the same breath, I just can’t with this guy. I really can’t. 

*Amy Blackthorn* 

Owns a tea brand called ‘Blackthorn Hoodoo Blends’ she is white. When questioned by BIPOC individuals she complains and blocks them instead of explaining why she chose the name Hoodoo for just teas. TEA. She is also the author of Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic, Sacred Smoke (A book on smudging yikes on trikes), and Blackthorn’s Protection Magic. 

Proof of blocking: https://thisblackwitch.com/2016/04/01/blackthorn-teas-whose-culture-is-it-anyways/

*Tarl Warwick *

Is more commonly known as Styxhexenhammer666 on youtube and other social media sites. Has written a pile and I mean a PILE of occult based books including ones on Hermetic magic, ritualistic magic, demons, solomon, folk plants and healing, Kabbalah, and many MANY more. 

He makes no claim to being Jewish, and given his political wishy washiness, and multitude of controversies which includes claiming the Holocaust wasn’t ‘that many dead’, Charles Manson deserved release because he was ‘extremely innocent and didn’t kill anyone’, and fairly recently also wrote and published a book on Critical Race Theory and why it’s ‘garbage’. I can’t support him no matter how accurate some of his information may be (if any at all). 

*Temperance Alden* This really pains me to say, Temperance in her Wheel of the Year book made a claim that birth control “stunted her magical abilities” because it affected her hormones…in OTHER words unless you are a perfectly hormone producing WOMAN you don’t have great magical power. AVOID. AVOID. AVOID. That is a slippery slope to claiming medication will harm you, not to mention how TERF-y it is AND completely disregards that magic is for well…everyone. Such a stupid gatekeep-y concept. 

*Sarah Kate Istra/Dver*

Advocates for using ‘spirit animals’ regardless of Indigenous beliefs and concerns. Is also a known ally with the Piety Posse, a neo-nazi group of pagans who claim the term polytheist can only apply to them and if you aren’t a Hellenistic pagan…you aren’t pagan at all. They also advocate for animal sacrifices, blood tests to prove purity, and other horrible HORRIBLE stuff. 

*Sannion/H. Jeremiah Lewis*

Obvious Neo-nazi, keeps images of swastikas on his personal blog, and not the ones that the nazis stole from, the nazi one. And super SUPER transphobic.

*Edward P. Butler*

Major persecution complex, spends half his twitter complaining about how monotheists are destroying…I dunno…everything? Also defends Krasskova quite heavily. Antisemetic as well.

*Galina Krasskova*

Hellenic pagans watch out. Defends the AFA. A ringleader of the Piety Posse. There’s a lot more horrific stuff about her and I won’t go into extreme details. But TW: Romanticizes SA with deities, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice. Compares debating to the holocaust, lots of victim blaming, gatekeeping, and screams folkish. 

*Diana Cooper*

Racist. Hard stop. Also appropriates chakras. Has a weird belief that food controls skin color and that Africa will never be a good country because it’s the solar plexus of the universe…or something like that. I got 20 pages into the book and literally couldn’t go any farther. Did I mention this book was supposedly on dragons???

*Judika Iiles* So much appropriation, advocates for making altars and working with closed deities. Lots of incorrect information including dangerous spellwork like obsession spells. And one in particular that has roots in a racist stereotypes. Avoid please!