Witchcraft!

Ive been asked why do I dislike/not trust wiccans again and I don’t know how to explain it properly. I was hoping you could point me to some sources

- @thatautisticbabywitch

I'm going to bring in this ask answered by @will-o-the-witch from a while back because I think it's got very good points.

There are Wiccans whom I respect. Those who have tried to deconstruct the religion from its original founder Gerald Gardner (the son of a colonialist who was known for supporting conservative politics in Britian, who appropriated from native cultures around the world, who found inspirations in Aleister Crowley and Margaret Murray, who was far from free of white supremacist beliefs that were products of his time), have been aware of the problematic parts, and have tried to change/improve them. Doreen Valiente comes to mind.

The issue with most modern Wiccans is that not only do they not do that, but also, the people who aren't Wiccans know more about the history of the religion that those who call themselves Wiccans claim to practice.

Many self proclaimed Wiccans today are very much misinformed and misguided by the exact aspects of Wicca from its earliest days that those who know better try to either avoid or do better with, such as cultural appropriation, gender essentialism, historical revisionism, white supremacy, which have unfortunately been perpetuated and wildely spread into 21st century witchcraft movements and communities by popular yet highly problematic authors such as Silver Ravenwolf.

The gender essentialism is kind of a tough topic though because even though there's a lot of examples as to how plants and metals and rocks and such are gendered to the max, Wicca has also been historically rather open to queer people; part of the traditional roles of the priest and the priestess in many circles have been to "gender swap" the priestess for the God and the Priest for the Goddess, because largely, you're supposed to have "both masculine and feminine" inside of you. There were certainly Wiccan handfastings between queer couples before there was nationalized gay marriage, although to be fair, nationalized gay marriage came pretty late in the game in the United States. In every circle and public Wiccan space I've been to, trans people have been welcomed and expected. Take that how you will.

And, of course, there is no Wiccan pope, which means you can do whatever you want! Great! A lot of people use this opportunity to deconstruct why white supremacy is bad and attempt to bring Wicca into the modern era of accessible information and cultural diffusion! On the other hand, that means that shitty people can also do what they want and say it's part of Wicca, and you can't stop them either, because there's no one to appeal to beyond public opinion! Boo! That also means that a huge majority of Wiccans are self taught through outside influences like popular books or social media or taught in a closed environment of their own Coven or circle. A self-taught Wiccan is often stuck with whatever beliefs their book authors carried; unfortunately, a lot of the most popular books are anywhere between thirty to fifty years old.

Wanna know what thrived 30-50 years ago?? I'll give you a hint!! It's bigotry!

Likewise, covens rarely have reason to deconstruct their beliefs since they're taught to a certain standard by other members. So deconstructing the entire culture around Wicca is slow going, because the latter group is largely providing media for the former group. It's a cycle. Changing culture takes forever and it's tough.

Uhhhhh am I missing anything...oh and there's still an impulse on the part of authors and multiple forms of media to call any sort of New Age witch a "Wiccan" or a theology only Wiccan a "Witch". Loose use of terms also complicates things.

The most important thing to do when confronting older sources on Wicca and the occult, as always, is to take a large magnifying glass and go "HMMM, IS THIS RACISM??" And if it's not racism, check again! It might be antisemetism! Read up on all those dogwhistles and cultural appropriation, and you might survive-- if the period-typical sexism doesn't get ya!

That specific copypasta makes them look progressive but I trust y'all to be the smartest cookies in the whole fuckin' pantry and not publish the ask, since it has a direct link to their fucked up website and even dunking on them or publishing with a warning might make your followers look it up to see what's up.

Don't increase their traffic, delete it, and if you really want to warn your followers do what I'm doing right the fuck now and simply make your own post with an info link that isn't a direct conveyor belt leading straight into their own propaganda machine.

and I think a lot about how people thing “children can see ghosts” and it’s so present in the horror genre, and then I see it crop up in magical circles, so I want to address this:

sometimes, a haunting isn’t ghosts. sometimes, a haunting is a thing that’s happening in your own head

I’m not saying this to discredit it, but sometimes the bad vibes aren’t coming from inside the house, they’re coming from inside your head. and that doesn’t make it less real! it’s very real! but sometimes it’s a feeling

and that’s why kids see ghosts. they know that something is wrong, but they don’t know what, so they assign it to something external. they know that there’s a tension, that there’s bad vibes, that something negative has happened that’s bigger than them, and so it’s ghosts or spirits or demons or something. sometimes the thing that haunts you is too big, or it’s something too terrible to name. or maybe it’s something small, trapped just out of sight, but present nonetheless

I want to be very clear: I am not pulling that “people with trauma attract poltergeists” drek, and I am not victim blaming. you are not responsible for the bad things that may have happened to you

but before you go blaming ghosts, before you go calling priests to your house, before you spend October pouring over expensive books and writing to Tumblr witches because your new house is haunted, I want you to take a step back and ask yourself: is my house haunted? or am I?

because the odds are strong that it’s not your house. the odds are very strong that you need to look inwards first. maybe you’re just uncomfortable in a new place, and you need to do something to make a house feel more like home. maybe you feel trapped, but you just need to cut someone shitty out of your life. maybe you feel trapped and you need to find someone good to bring into it. or maybe the thing hiding in the shadows isn’t there now, but the memory is lurking

Having PTSD and being in my childhood home feels haunted as fuck. Part of this is a sort of nameless feeling of dread, or awful, or impending doom - and the fact that those feelings are so hard to identify and explain coherently is actually a symptom. In my bedroom, I might have a flashback to being literally trapped in it, without "seeing" a specific image or knowing that's what's happening, but my body turns on the same response. Analyzing that feeling is like being asked to calmly explain how you're feeling while you're in immediate physical danger in the present. Outside of that, I have renewed hypervigilance making me constantly trying to pick out and identify every little sound in case it's a threat. It's exhausting, and it can absolutely be treated.

There is one difficulty with this interpretation, namely that child sacrifice is consistently singled out in the Bible as the most heinous of all sins. According to the Bible itself, there is nothing noble, honourable or worthy of admiration about the willingness to sacrifice your child. That is what the pagans do. It is what the king of Moab did, and was rewarded by victory in war (2 Kings 3:27).

Abraham, whose original name Abram means ‘mighty father’, is chosen ‘so that he will teach his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just’ (Genesis 18:19). Abraham was chosen to become the role model of father-as-teacher. To portray him as a man willing to sacrifice his child is at odds with everything else we know about the Bible’s moral vision of parenthood and child sacrifice. So there must be another interpretation.

The answer is given by context. God consistently promises Abraham, Isaac and Jacob two things: children and a land. Seven times God promises the land to Abraham, once to Isaac, three times to Jacob. They are promised children: as many as the dust of the earth, the sand on the seashore, the stars of the sky.

Repeatedly, both promises are delayed and sidetracked. Abraham and Sarah have to wait until they are old before they have a single child. Sarah is infertile. So is Rebecca. So is Rachel. Repeatedly they are forced to leave the land, through famine or family conflict. The land does not become theirs or their children’s throughout the whole of the Mosaic books. Abraham has to haggle to buy a cave in which to bury Sarah. Isaac is challenged for using the wells his father dug. Jacob has to pay a hundred pieces of silver to buy the right to pitch his tent.

Something very strange is being intimated here. Children and a land are the most natural of all endowments. Almost everyone has them. What makes the patriarchs and matriarchs different? Only this: that what everyone else has naturally, they only have as the gift of God. Most couples have children. The matriarchs, except Leah, were all infertile. Their children were seen as the gift of God.

Likewise with the land. Most people have a land. What made Abraham different was that he was told at the beginning of his mission to ‘leave’ his land, his birthplace and his father’s house. The patriarchs were nomads, Hebrews, travellers, outsiders. Israel becomes the people who have a land only by the grace of God. From this fact, the Bible, draws a remarkably legal conclusion. ‘The land must not be sold permanently,’ says God, ‘because the land is mine and you are but strangers and sojourners with me’ (Leviticus 25:23).

The Israelites do not own the land. They merely inhabit it, and their right to do so is conditional on their recognition that it does not belong to them but to God. And what applies to the land applies to children likewise. Abraham, whose name means ‘mighty father’, is to live out an experience that will establish, once and for all time, that our children do not belong to us but to God. Isaac, the first child of the covenant, is the child who belongs to God. Only thus is parenthood to be conceived in the life of the covenant.

The trial of the binding of Isaac is ultimately about whether Abraham is willing to renounce ownership in his child by handing him back to God. That is what the angel means when he tells Abraham to stop, saying, ‘Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’

The story of the binding of Isaac is opaque to us because we take it for granted that children have their own legal identity and rights. But this is a very modern proposition indeed. Throughout the Victorian era, social activists had to work hard to mitigate the brutalities of child labour — children being sent down mines or working long hours in factories. In Roman law, the principle of patria potestas meant that children were the property of their fathers who had the legal right to do with them what they chose, including kill them.

Only when we take this background into account can we begin to understand that the binding of Isaac is God’s way of teaching Abraham that patria potestas has no place in Judaism. The Bible is saying to the people of the covenant: Just as you do not own your land, you do not own your children. Thus is born the biblical idea of parent-as-educator as opposed to parent-as-owner.

This is also what the Bible means when it speaks of God as a parent. God is a non-interventionist parent. During the early years of his people’s history he intervened to deliver from slavery, but increasingly as they matured he too moved from parent-as-owner to parent-as-educator. God does not do our work for us. He teaches us how to do it for him. For God himself abides by the laws he gives us.

saying tarot is a closed practice to romani people is like saying moneylending is a closed practice to Jewish people. Not only is it wrong, but it's racist as hell.