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So I am a witch. I use that term specifically. I’m not Pagan or Neo-Pagan. My tradition Swamp Yankee by temperament and a preponderance of blood. Problematic as fuck, since anything that isn’t as stolen as the swamps from the First Peoples is kind of OG Satanism. But I am a coward and I don’t like Ayn Rand, so there I am. But I spend a lot of time with various and sundry flavors of Neo-Pagan, and thinking a lot about it.

There was a post ran across my dash recently about Christmas, and the supposed Pagan roots thereof. The jist of the post was that chances are the holiday wasn’t chosen by the early church to overwrite the Pagan observances of the Solstice so much as what’s 9 months after the Annunciation. From there it picked up the pre Christian traditions around that time of year because why wouldn’t it? Celebration of Christmas is sort of a modern thing anyway, if one does the historical research.

It’s a simpler argument than “we need to convert these people and make them forget what they were doing before.” It makes more sense that people would turn their traditional Gods and spirits into saints than have them turned into saints for them. That’s something that could theoretically be done with the current technology, but not so much with word of mouth. The post ended with the assertion that it’s disingenuous and appropriative to go off about the Pagan roots of Christmas if you are not part of a cultural group that kept pre Christian winter solstice traditions specifically alive since your part of wherever. My Swedish and Norwegian ancestors were Lutherans, not the fucking Harga, so if I say God Jul, it’s got Jesus and that little girl with the candles on her head in it. Also, I am barely Scandinavian at all, so if you call me a nordic appropriating cosplayer, you’re not wrong. Talk to my dad. He sent me one of those sweet little wooden horses for Christmas this year.

There is an argument that you cannot choose your religion, and your religion gives not one scraggly fuck whether or not you believe. It’s a part of culture, and it’s a part of you, and you get to eat it and like it. I don’t believe in Jesus Christ, but I sure talk to him a lot, especially when I stub my toes. I find this argument persuasive, which is the extent to which I will advocate it. This is one of the reasons why I am don’t call myself Pagan or Neo-Pagan, because my grandparents and great-grandparents were all God-fearing, and that fear is part of me. I am a witch, and I don’t believe, but I am such a fucking Lutheran/Congregationalist combo, and I’m stuck with that. I bleed church basement baked ziti. I get my back up when Catholics get up to their Catholic bullshit. I’ve got opinions on every Protestant sect out there, and I can tell you about them if you want. I pass. I pass easy. No one is surprised when they find out I’m a witch, but only occasionally do I get pegged as one unbidden.

But here’s the part where it gets interesting. I know kids raised by Neo-Pagans who don’t pass as Christian. Are they Pagan? All arguments of authenticity aside, they’re lacking some of the cultural knowledge that most of their peers have. They see some Christianity around them, but it’s not part of them or their understanding, and well, maybe the general run of Christians don’t notice this shit, but it sticks way out to me. But then, I know what I am looking for.

Is it ethical to raise your kids according to your beliefs if they run counter to your traditions? I say yes, but sometimes I get the notion that folks I respect and think are wiser than me disagree, and I am not sure why. Sometimes, when it is directed toward those in my demographic, it’s an eat-mayo-and-die missive, and while I respect the anger and the reasons why those sentiments exist, I can’t convince the others to go along with it, and there are some I’d like to see choke on the mayo before my turn comes up.

(Aside: sometimes you’ll read something from a person fed up past the breaking point by the appropriation of their culture, food, etc by white folk, and they will, quite understandably, go off, and someone of my pigmentation and milieu will get defensive and inevitably ask if they should just eat mayo and die, thus the name.

Some of the people who make the initial statements probably do legitimately believe that white people can only ethically take part in the most mass-produced horrors they’ve spawned, I’m sure. Most, I suspect are just appalled by how we tend to commodify and make asinine the things that they love while claiming to have elevated whatever it is. They also rightly diagnose things like capitalism and imperialism that are huge parts of many white peoples’ cultures [especially anglophone white people to an extent that without those there is very little left] are FUCKING HORRIBLE FOR EVERYONE and that the world would benefit from their absence. Anyway).

The point is, my culture is defective and I want to abolish it. That’s probably not possible, though I think seizing the means of production would get us 99% there. But then the snake eats it’s tail and says “What is your culture if not capitalism and imperialism at all cost? What do you have left that isn’t bound up in those two things? You have mayonnaise is what you have. Your culture is uniquely and exclusively hostile to socialism.” The fact that a snake can say all that while eating its tail gives you an idea how tricky the damn thing would be to kill. So my culture is defective and I want to change it into something that isn’t complete shit. For some reason, I believe that magic and witchcraft have a place in this, but I don’t know what place that is, and I fear a lot of fellow practitioners try to dodge the responsibility or the guilt of our defective culture through our practices. I think that’s the wrong way.

My swamps are stolen. My swamps are poisoned. I have them because they were stolen, not by me, but for me. And I did help poison them. I have no power to clean them or return them, but I have a really tiny chance at getting that power, and I want to be able to use it right. Not to get the stains off. Those really are mine, and mine forever, but because I like to try to do right, even if my tradition spends most of its time with an embodiment of evil.

So yeah, I have given you 100% of your daily cringe, but I’ve got to think about these things, and writing them down helps. I am probably way off. Probably missing some things. Probably a disingenuous cosplayer, but what can one do?

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