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Cultural Appropriation and Why It Matters
Cultural appropriation is a term you may see referenced in many discussions of modern Pagan religion. It refers to, quite simply, the appropriation of one culture’s practice and belief system by another, but without the true cultural context. For example, NeoWiccans who integrate totem animals, vision quests, and sweat lodge sessions as an homage to Native Americans – but who are not Native Americans themselves, and do not understand the usage of those practices on a cultural level because of it – could arguably be accused of cultural appropriation. Be aware that different people view cultural appropriation in different ways. Some see it as a form of flattery – a…
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Stop Putting “Spiritual” Shit in Your Vagina
Look, I know there are people who hang on every single goddamn piece of faux-spiritual-wellness bullshit advice that David Avocado Wolfe and Gwyneth Paltrow espouse, but seriously, y’all gotta hear me out on this one. I keep getting emails from people asking about the trends of inserting crystals into their vaginas, and worse yet, WASP NESTS. Now, I’m no gynecologist, nor do I play one on tv, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that these are things you should not ever do. EVER. Here’s the backstory. The trend of the vagina crystal, sometimes marketed as a yoni egg because that sounds really spiritual and feminine and pretty and…
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I Give No Damns About Recruiting You
One misconception that some non-Pagans have is that roving groups of Wiccans, Druids, Heathens and other random types of Pagans are out to convert others into following the One True Pagan Way. Evidently, contemporary Pagans gain some sort of Karmic Bonus Points for every new member they sign up, and travel around stealthily trying to recruit unsuspecting souls into joining the Pagan/Wiccan Membership Club. Nothing could be further from the truth, although I’ve often wondered what I’d do with those Bonus Points if I had them. Maybe redeem them for fun prizes, like the old Greenbax Stamps at Piggly Wiggly. At any rate, cut and paste the following into your…
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Pagan Standard Time and Why I Hate It
Pagan Standard Time, or PST, is the practice often found in Pagan communities of people showing up anywhere from 20–45 minutes late for everything, and it’s considered rude by anyone who’s trying to organize event or host a ritual. Honestly, it drives me absolutely nuts. While people may joke about PST, those who continually show up late may find themselves no longer invited to attend events, workshops or celebrations. Seriously, arriving late is not a habit you really want to fall into. Obviously, there are some things we have no control over which may cause tardiness–there was heavy traffic, your car wouldn’t start, or whatever–and I totally get that. If…
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Teaching Minors About Pagan Spirituality
Here’s a quickie preliminary disclaimer: Keep in mind that for the purposes of this discussion, we’re NOT talking about teaching your own kids. This is a question about teaching spiritual principles and practices to someone else’s child. Anyhoo, away we go. One of the emails I get a LOT goes along the following lines: “I’m really excited to learn about Paganism, but no one will teach me! By the way, I’m thirteen–can you help me?” There are some pretty important implications of teaching Pagan religions (or any other religions, for that matter) to someone who’s underage, and a number of points that need to be addressed. Particularly when it comes…
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Blasphemy and Paganism
Here’s one from Ye Olde Magical Mail Bagge: A reader says, “I was at a Pagan event last month, and dropped a candle – I seriously thought I was going to set my robe on fire. I said, “Oh my goddess!” and was immediately jumped on by a woman who scolded me for being blasphemous. I told her that I didn’t think my goddess really cared if I said something like that, but she told me that “taking the goddess’ name in vain” was wrong. This sounds an awful lot like Christianity, which I left recently. Am I missing something? Is there really a rule that says I can’t say…
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Saturday Spellwork: Stop Casting These Spells Because They’re Crap
I know, I know, at least ten of y’all are going to see that headline up above and comment with DON’T U TELL ME HOW 2 MAGICK, but I really need you to hear me out on this. If you Google “Wiccan spells,” you’re going to get a metric fuckton of garbage from a lot of different websites, and nearly all of them are literal and total crap. They’re crap because they don’t work, and they’re crap because they encourage people to do spellwork for stuff that spellwork can’t do, and thus set you up for automatic failure. And then you’re going to email me or one of the other…
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Are You Really Cut Out for Spellwork?
I periodically (and by periodically I mean A LOT OF TIMES) get emails and Facebook messages from people who lead in with What A Powerful Witch they are, and then by the second paragraph they’re begging me for spells. This weird juxtaposition tells me a couple of things. First, it means they’re not as Oh So Powerful as they think they are, and more importantly that they actually think Powerful is something that can be measured, when really what matters more than Powerful is Effective. I’d much rather be effective – and I am – than so-called powerful, which is all relative anyway. The second thing it tells me is…
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Dream Catchers: Totally Not Pagan, You Guys
I love perusing Etsy and Pinterest and getting great ideas and seeing all the clever crafty things that other people are doing to celebrate their spirituality, I really do. But for the love of Zeus’ kidney, y’all. DREAMCATCHERS ARE NOT WICCAN. They’re not even NeoPagan, if we use NeoPagan in the context of “modern Paganism based upon proto-Indo-European religious beliefs.” They’re Native American. And while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with appreciating Native American spirituality, it’s completely a terrible idea to appropriate it. In other words, if you’re not Native American, you are lacking the cultural and societal context in which something sacred like a dream catcher actually works. Now, before…
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High Expectations Are Your Friend
A few days ago, Amazon announced that e-books with excessive content errors – spelling mistakes, formatting problems, etc. – will be flagged with a warning when a reader goes to download the book, and authors across Teh Interwebz are shitting themselves. According to a blog post on Goodreader, beginning on February 3, “Amazon will begin showing customers a WARNING MESSAGE on the Kindle store detail pages of books that contain several validated quality issues.” The post goes on to say that the quality control – and make no mistake, that’s exactly what this is – will be a two-stage system. If a book contains a few small errors, the warning…
