WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE TIME FOR FAIRY LIGHTS IS OVER?!

I am half tunesian and half german and it was so hard to me to find my practice, because nothing ever felt right. So I (unintentionallly) did what she sugested and looked into my roots, there I found either the norse magic or the practice of the Berber, wich I found next to nothing on, because of the opression they experienced.

Hm, yes this is good.

Hm, yes this is good.

Let’s talk about Odinism.

Despite claiming to be an “indigenous European religion,” Odinism is neither ancient nor remotely harmless. It grew out of the original Nazi movement and fully retains the white nationalist ideals it was built upon.

Research psychologist Arie Kruglanski says white nationalist radicalization is comprised of three things: A need for significance, a narrative that permits violence, and a community that validates that narrative.

Odinism messaging exploit the first part by projecting sentiments of self-empowerment and anti-authoritarianism out into the public, attracting “lone wolves” who resonate with this messaging. This is something I’ve noticed with Odinist memes.

My poor mom went by years without knowing why the fuck she was having all these debilitating symptoms.

All it took was me making her add some more salt to her diet and have an isotonic drink daily and she IMMEDIATELY (as in, less than an hour) stopped feeling faint whenever she got up from kneeling down and her hair is slowly falling off less and less.

It’s not normal for any of that to make you light-headed or nauseous, or get blurry vision, headaches or palpitations.

It’s not normal for your body to suck at regulating its temperature and for your heart rate to go insane if you’re just mildly stressed.

It’s not normal to want to be active and “productive” but be unable to get your body to do anything so you just lay there, or if you manage to get anything done, you’ll need a whole week to recover.

It’s not normal to be tremendously tired all the time no matter how much you rest and sleep, even if people think you’re just “lazy”.

I’m pointing all these things out as abnormal because chronically ill people tend to not realize that our symptoms are symptoms.

Our individual bodies are the only bodies we’ve experienced and since most of us don’t look any different from others and aren’t taken seriously when we complain of any ailment, we assume our symptoms happen to everyone. They do not.

People with no physical conditions (at least not impairing ones such as being a bit short-sighted) do not have their bodies make life difficult for them, unless they’re temporarily ill. But we are ill ALL the time.

Take yourself seriously. Doctors and healthy people already don’t, so if you don’t take yourself seriously, who will?

Just a little addendum: Mugwort can be dangerous due to mildly psychoactive properties in the herb. Use with caution and avail yourself of the following list of free-use alternatives:

Basil (any kind, noting that Sweet Basil smells the best)

Sage (any type, but keep in mind that White Sage is becoming endangered)

Rosemary

Peppermint

Lavender

Cedar Tips or Shavings

Which translates to "burning something emitting smoke"

You’ve heard people say “There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism.” And that’s very true. Individual consumer and lifestyle choices will not have an appreciable effect on broad socioeconomic problems; not using plastic straws and dumpstering all your groceries isn’t going to appreciably counteract the petrochemical industry. There’ll be no individual solutions to collective problems; only the broad and sweeping change made possible by a mass political movement can save us. It’s true, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

But too often, people take that to mean “Do nothing.” People take it as a justification for apathy, inaction, nihilism. And that’s not the way forward, either. So I’d like to pair it with another twee little quote for us to live by:

“You cannot begin building at the moment of crisis; by then, it is too late. The structures we need must already be in place when the insurrectionary moment arrives.”

Your #ZeroWaste lifestyle is just that, a lifestyle, and isn’t going to affect change on its own; but it’s also practical, educational, will develop habits and teach skills that we’re all going to need. The community garden isn’t going to solve food insecurity, but it is bringing people closer together, teaching neighbors to be friends and friends to be family, and someday it just might be all we’ve got. Locally sourcing the commodities you use isn’t just about “supporting the local economy” or w/e, but about developing connections, learning the structures we’ll need to navigate should a day come when “local” is all we can depend on.

No, lifestyle changes aren’t going to change the world and are not what your political activism should be focused on. But we have a long way to go and a lot to learn, and it will be too late to start learning at the moment of crisis.

Declaration 127 was a good start, but that’s all it was:  A start.  It’s not enough to put your name on a list.  It’s not enough to be not-racist.  Saving our faith means being anti-racist; it means taking action.  We are our deeds, yeah?  Milquetoast liberal slacktivism like what The Troth™ does is not good enough; change requires action.  If you want to save our faith, you have to make it clear where you stand, and you have to stick to that, and act on it.  Make sure you are welcoming to people of color and folks from other marginalized groups.  Stand up for them.  And when boneheads do show up and try to come up in your space, you speak up; you out them and other them; and you run them bastards out.

I’ve heard other white folk say that, because they themselves aren’t racist, they shouldn’t “have to” be anti-racist.  Well, you shouldn’t have to, but you do; and them’s the brakes.  Do you want our faith to keep growing, to survive into the future so that we can pass it along to our children?  Or do you want it to die for another thousand years?  We can save it; but we have to stand up against the boneheads who are trying to ruin it.

Trigger warning for Nazis and antisemitism.

I came across the above image being shared by a friend, and I would like to point out some problems with this simplistic approach.

For context, I am a Jewish man, I read and write elder Futhark fluently, I am familiar with runic divination, and I have MANY close Norse neopagan friends: even my sister is a Norse pagan. This post is not an attack on the pagan community. It is a reminder that we MUST address reality, not fantasy.

I understand the sentiment this image is trying to convey, and if you are a Norse pagan, you should resent and defy Nazis for abusing something that is important to you.

However, the reality is that symbols carry meanings given to them by humans, and Nazis have given hateful meanings to Germanic symbols, beginning under the third Reich and continuing to this day. Those symbols include the Futhark runic alphabets, specifically odal and sowilo, as well as symbols like the equal armed cross, the valknut, vegvisir, and mjolnir. These symbols have carried deeply hateful antisemitic meanings since before you, and most of your parents, were born. You CANNOT ignore that, or make it go away.

It would be blind to assert that the swastika does not belong to Nazis, has no antisemitic and evil meaning, and is not tainted by their use of it. Indigenous people groups who value that symbol in their own cultures have reacted differently. For example, some Desi cultures still use it, but the Navajo people do not, because of the Nazi implications it now irrevocably carries. If you are white, you DO NOT get to "reclaim" the swastika, no matter how much you love other cultures.

While I understand that these symbols and others are important to my pagan and wiccan friends, you can't deny the darker meanings that they carry. If you are going to be using them, you are accepting upon yourself an obligation to educate people about their meanings - ALL their meanings - and to make it abundantly clear that you are an ally of the Jewish people.

Unfortunately, when I see people wearing or using Germanic symbols, I WILL think "I wonder if they're a Nazi" every single time. Every time. It is an inescapable reality that these symbols are being used as silent dog whistles for hatred of Jewish people and other "non-whites."

If you don't want people to suspect you of being a Nazi, you have ONLY two options.

1: Don't use Germanic symbols

2: Make it FIERCELY evident that you are an ally to Jews, POC, and queer people

Gentiles, you are invited to reblog this post.