Omnist Witch

i read the head coverings passage (& yes i have read the surrounding verses, the entire surrounding testament, even, & yes i know it was written to a specific church don’t yell at me for “taking things out of context”).

it was these three verses:

for a man out not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection* of God; but a woman is the reflection* of man. indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man. neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man.

(1 cor. 11.7-9, nrsv) *reflection can also be translated as “glory”

i remember reading this & crying. i wanted to be the glory of God, too! i remember being so distraught - why didn’t God make us equal? i was always taught that men & women were worth the same, but why did the Word of God say otherwise? i didn’t want to be created for another person.

& i was also upset at myself for questioning God’s holy, inspired Word. for being upset at his “design” for the sexes.

but when i read this, i knew (excuse the christian language) in my spirit that there was something really wrong about it. & i buried that feeling for the next five years bc in evangelical christianity, “the heart is deceitful above all things”. feelings are bad. they are not to be trusted.

i read this passage & knew it was wrong, but bc discomfort is so often equated w being “shaped by God”, i internalized it. i treated feminism like a dirty word. i would whisper to my “equally devout & spiritual” friend abt how yes, no matter what The World says, men & women are not equal, but you can’t say that out loud because it’s offensive to people who don’t know God as well as we do. people who aren’t as willing to bow & submit & erase themselves.

it was only last year that i admitted to a few other christian friends this belief that i had been carrying for so long. i was surprised to be met w outrage & upset - not at me, but at the belief system that let me believe it - that i had genuinely thought i was worth less than any man.

i don’t believe it anymore.

but i have to ask. paul, did you really believe this when you told someone to write it down all those years ago? did you believe you were divinely inspired when you wrote the things that have been used to oppress women for centuries? were you filled with the holy ghost when you chose to degrade everyone with my anatomy when you dictated what to wear when we pray?

God doesn’t care what we wear when we pray.

no matter what way you read it, this passage is fundamentally wrong. it’s disturbing. it’s hateful. how can you read it & not be deeply unsettled? maybe that’s what it’s like to read the bible as a man. as someone who’s straight. as someone who’s cis. maybe you read it & don’t see any problems because for you, there are none.

As you’ve doubtlessly noticed, a lot of my magic is largely based in what could be called Folk Catholicism which refers any of of the varieties of ethnic expressions of Catholicism as practiced in Catholic communities, typically in developing nations. Practices identified by outside observers as “folk Catholicism” vary from place to place and sometimes contradict the official teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Below is suggested reading for those interested in exploring this multi-faceted aspect of Western religiosity. Books:

Badone, Ellen, ed. Religious Orthodoxy and Popular Faith in European Society

Bartlett, Robert. Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation

Christian, William A., Jr. Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain.

Graziano, Frank. Cultures of Devotion: Folk Saints of Spanish America

Ingham, John.  Mary, Michael, and Lucifer: Folk Catholicism in Central Mexico

Nutini, Hugo. Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala: A Syncretic, Expressive, and Symbolic Analysis of the Cult of the Dead

Articles:

Romero, Nelide. et. al. From Disease to Holiness: Religious-based health remedies of Italian folk medicine

Sisun, Antonio. Afflictive Apparitions: The Folk Catholic Imaginary in Philippine Cinema Turner, Paul. Religious Conversion and Folk Catholicism    

Religious Literature:

Fitzgerald, Fr. Maurus. Catholic Book of Prayers

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the LOTR spells I’m still working on revamping from my fifteen year old self’s grimoire.

Oh how much I’ve learned since then.

These are photos taken by Robert Landsburg of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. He realized he would never get to safety in time, so he kept taking pictures of the ash cloud for as long as possible. Then he put the camera securely in his bag and lay down on top of it to protect it before being engulfed in the pyroclastic flow. When they found his body, the recovered the pictures were invaluable to geologists because no one had ever been able to document an eruption that close up before.

Maybe it was

because the only time

I hit a baseball

it smashed the neon cross

on the church across

the street. Even

twenty-five years later

when I saw Father Harris

I would wonder

if he knew it was me.

Maybe it was the demon-stoked

rotisseries of purgatory

where we would roast

hundreds of years

for the smallest of sins.

Or was it the day

I wore my space helmet

to catechism? Clear plastic

with a red-and-white

inflatable rim.

Sister Mary Bernadette

pointed toward the door

and said, "Out! Come back

when you're ready."

I rose from my chair

and kept rising

toward the ceiling

while the children

screamed and Sister

kept crossing herself.

The last she saw of me

was my shoes disappearing

through cracked plaster.

I rose into the sky and beyond.

It is a good thing

I am wearing my helmet,

I thought as I floated

and turned in the blackness

and brightness of outer space,

my body cold on one side and hot

on the other. It would

have been very quiet

if my blood had not been

rumbling in my ears so loud.

I remember thinking,

Maybe I will come back

when I'm ready.

But I won't tell

the other children

what is was like.

I'll have to make something up.

So this is a thing that happened…

Christian Day, a pagan writer and store owner, sent me this love letter after outing my account name on Facebook. Like many people who have an alias on facebook, I have a rather good reason for doing so. (I have a Meatspace stalker, who use to mail me bits of dead things, and threaten my children, because he wanted me to bear only HIS children. It was a living nightmare that I lived for over six months.) Alas… I was not very happy with Mr. Day for this, and told him so.

This screenshot shows his response. 

You are not misreading that. He actually said “…if he rapes you, please call out my name while he does.”

Facebook has been less than helpful during all this… As a matter of fact, they have sided with HIM, yanking my post with this screenshot on it, and putting my account on a 24 hour hold for “Harassment.” of Mr. Day.

I have… No real game plan at this point, other than not allowing this to go unseen by the many Pagans on the web. I have had such an outpouring of support from my friends and the general pagan community on facebook that it honestly made me cry. On another note, I have had to un-relax, knowing my stalker is still out there and can find me now. But, I will not back down. This shit IS NOT OK for our so called “Pagan Leaders” to do.

He owns two shops, Hex and Omen. HEX is in both Salem, MA and New Orleans, LA and Omen is just in Salem, MA. Avoid him like the plague he is and don’t let him or the people he associates with profit off you (they, Laurie Cabot groupies, own shops in Salem too).

Christian’s at it again.

He threatened to kill a nearby shop owner’s dog (Pumpkin from New England Magic who is ADORABLE) a few years ago out of a nasty feud with the owner, who is SO SWEET!  Of course he denied it.

His boyfriend Brian is just as sick when it comes to people who support Lori Bruno (that fucking feud…oh my GOD.  Don’t even get me STARTED on that).

Now…this.

He’s a media whore…He actually said this to me. He has no problem admitting this to me.  He knows how to cause controversy because “Well, bad publicity is still publicity…The Wicked Witch will still fly!”

This is why I can’t stand Salem now.  This sick bullshit.

but as someone who went to divinity school and knows a ton of pastors between 26-50... most of them work two jobs to stay afloat or have to partially rely on a partner’s better paying job. and all of them have significant student loans from, you know having to pursue master’s level education on top of undergrad.

storms

radiohead songs

when the air pressure changes and the wind picks up

going to witchy shops

arctic monkeys songs

black, green, purple, or red dresses

Ravens or crows hanging about

black, heeled shoes

grey skies

forests

full moons

tarot cards and coffee shops

the smell of lavender

long dark acrylic nails

when the rain hits your window and the wind howls late at night

lightning illuminating your room for just a moment

matches

dark full-brimmed hats

cursive handwriting

Necklaces with little bottles on them

collections of tea

seeing spirits in public and knowing no one else can

using a pendulum

using one word spells during the day

driving in the rain

carrying crystals in your pockets/purse

writing in your grimoire on a rainy day

playing with your energy

candles lit

calling yourself a witch

~~~~~

I’m playing my guitar again. I gradually drifted away from it after I got married eight years ago, but I picked it up again last week. 

I was surprised at how much I remembered. Putting fingers to the frets awakened muscle memory I thought had long ago disappeared.

My father has played guitar for decades, and he taught me to play when I was in high school. Dad often played his guitar in church during solo performances, or “specials” as folks in our Baptist churches called them. (1) When I was about 8, I started singing in church with him. 

I always get weird, conflicted feelings when I think about singing with my dad. On one hand, I’m glad that he taught me how to sing and, eventually, how to play. I love listening to music, and as I recently rediscovered, I love playing it even more.

But some of the songs we sang together were just … creepy. 

I know very little about world history. I didn’t even know until recently about popular topics like the French Revolution or the English Civil War. 

I still don’t really  100% understand evolution, if I’m being perfectly honest.

My teacher told me that Satan was present in “dark band t-shirts” at Media Play. 

We were taught in sixth grade that the end times were upon us, and that when Jesus comes we will hear a loud noise from the sky. I still flinch when I hear something loud coming from above. 

To this day I am paranoid about anything referencing witchcraft, demons, or Satan. 

I went to school during the first same sex marriage debates, and the teachers were very comfortable telling us how same sex relationships weren’t God’s plan. 

We did an exercise in health class that compared having sex with multiple partners to spitting chewed up chips into a bag of water. 

…and compared sex with multiple partners to a rose with all the petals pulled off. 

We watched a video about a man who claimed that his father and bestiality made him gay and who renounced the “gay lifestyle” before dying of AIDS. I still think about this video, and every so often I try to find it. 

Our health textbooks were misleading; one statistic read that birth control is only 66% effective. 

I was lead to believe that anyone who has sex before marriage is a “slut” and is straying from God. Our health textbook curriculum featured a famous basketball player who married in his 40s as a virgin(!!). 

I was never taught about consent, sexual assault, sexual abuse, or rape. 

I was taught that secular colleges try and corrupt Christians and take their faith away. 

The teachers may not have all believed the Bible to be the literal truth, but it was taught as the literal truth. 

I was taught that were are all born as broken and sinful beings, and that we need faith and NOT works to be Christians.

Same sex relationships were not discussed aside from health class and snide remarks from religion teachers. 

I went from discussing black history extensively in my public school to maybe reading a couple Langston Hughes poems in February. Racism and xenophobia were not discussed. The school was mostly white. 

After 9/11 and during the Iraq War, I regularly heard boys talk about killing “towel heads” and using other racial slurs. They were never punished. Some are now in the military. One is a history teacher. 

Texts we were allowed to read in English class were limited. Harry Potter was banned from read-alouds in fifth grade. We couldn’t read Catcher in the Rye. The most inoffensive and bland selections from writers like Walt Whitman and James Baldwin were presented without any context of their lives, identities, or beliefs. 

Sometimes I still feel like I’m doing something that is perceived as “wrong” by having sex with my spouse and living with him, only to remember that I’m married now and that it’s “acceptable.” 

I will never come out as a queer woman to my coworkers or family because of the fear and rejection I experienced at that school. 

🚫TERFS/Evangelicals/Christians DNI🚫