The non-Christian half of this equation goes by many names. Through a decades long process of factions splintering off, recent history going lost, and self-identifying as Wiccan becoming increasingly less socially accepted, it has gained, absorbed, and appropriated an unforeseen number: (neo)paganism, witchcraft, the craft, "spirituality," eclectic paganism, Traditional Witchcraft, magick, and many more. A lot of these names have semantic variations in what they actually mean or were originally meant to mean, but ultimately they have all - unfortunately - come to represent more or less the same thing: this unnamed, informal magic tradition of spell jars and eclectic 'deity work' that finds its roots in 20th century Western Occultism.

I would like this post to address the entire spectrum of this problem. From self-identifying Wiccans who still adhere to rigid binary or triple gender role beliefs in their magic, to a resident Hellenic pagan working with Apollo and doing the occasional money bowl - and even into those traditions that adopted aspects from 19th and 20th century spiritualism and occultism out of necessity, like afrodiasporic practices. Not because I believe that all of these manifestations of this problem are equally severe or do equal harm, but because I think everybody who engages with 'spirituality' on the internet needs to hear this and contemplate it. Christian imperialism never left our midst. It just repackaged itself to even more effectively infiltrate our minds and behaviors; because it's easier to make symbolic changes than real, radical ones.

Please keep an open mind while reading this, understanding that while some of this undoubtedly will not be about you, some absolutely will. Even if you yourself do not practice anything so much as mentioned in this post, you will find yourself around it, and if you do not act, you will eventually be colonized by it. This has bearing on everyone in the community, not just those who engage in it actively, but also everyone else who is at risk of having their words and practices co-opted, their history erased, their morals misrepresented, or even just their words twisted.

Other Mothers, Same Father: Imperial Britain and New Religious Movements

In 16th century Europe, the Protestant Reformation swept across great parts of the continent. In England, particularly, protestantism fought viciously to shed the political and theological underpinnings of Catholicism, and gained a strong cultural foothold as the Church of England. From the Church of England sprang new Christian movements, often called proto-evangelical, such as Puritanism, Pietism, Moravianism and Quakerism. Though these respective denominations each went on to carve completely different futures for themselves, they influenced Christian theology and the soon to form evangelical movement immensely, causing a new movement founded in spreading the Gospel, and accepting the Bible as the sole authority.

During the so-called First Great Awakening, the rapidly solidifying evangelist movement gained intense momentum across the 18th century Anglosphere, springing new denominations like Methodism, and rooting itself into the newly forming American identity. It has continued growing, through further 'Awakenings' and revivals, and is now a cornerstone of American culture, as well as a well-recorded religious presence worldwide. The World Evangelical Alliance estimates that some 600 million Christians worldwide can be counted among evangelists.

But something else was happening in western Europe at the same time. Non-Abrahamic schools of thought and spirituality founded in ancient traditions like Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, and Gnosticism started being grouped together as 'esotericism', and initiatory traditions within it, like Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, arose. Then, with the Enlightenment, esotericism gained a branch rooted in Enlightenment thought: occultism. Between the Age of Enlightenment and the beginning of the Victorian Era, esotericism and occultism continually evolved and organized, founding groups like the Theosophical Society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as countless schools of thought like Spiritualism, Mesmerism, Theosophy and Anthroposophy, Spiritual Science, and New Thought, which all influence modern spirituality to this day.

During the Victorian era in Britain, scientific advancements were deeply shaking the foundations of religion, and rapid industrialization was changing the landscape in unprecedented ways. In response to these pressures and changes, esotericism and occultism experienced a boom in popularity. In the English-speaking world, this fascination with occultism carried a distinctly anti-Christian twinge, because it found its origins more in the Enlightenment aspect of esotericism than that which was heavily influenced by organized religion. For this reason, 19th and 20th century occultists believed that true(r) wisdom could be found in what they thought was the 'ancient pagan tradition', and it is to this motivation that we owe the creation of Wicca, Cochranian Witchcraft, Druidry, and other neo-pagan traditions.

Wicca gained rapid popularity after its formation, thanks to its creator's dedication to the press, and the 1960s counter-culture movement in the Anglosphere took a special interest in these forms of spirituality, bringing them further into relevance and giving rise to the New Age movement in the 70s. And, of course, this extremely complex spiritual landscape was changed forever with the advent of the Internet.

A Social History of Contemporary Witchcraft

For more information on the origins of modern witchcraft, please see my post on Wicca.

'Witchcraft' as we know it now is almost impossible to define, because it is never the same between two witches. The popularization of new religious movements after the 60s, followed by the creation of the Internet, meant that what were once fairly niche and structured communities adhering to roughly the same doctrines now started to exponentially multiply. They interchanged (and indeed confused) ideas and ideologies, formed new streams and movements, and spread this game of spirituality-telephone like wildfire. It was being called by many names depending on what corner of the internet you were in, but whatever they called it, people felt that these new ideas were empowering, mystifying, and meaningful.

But, despite the sheer size of the Internet making it almost impossible to trace the recent history of witchcraft step-by-step, we can trace its many constants back to their historical origins. The magic that is now practiced by possibly hundreds of millions of people across the globe, often regardless of what they call it, shares many common features between different self-identifying labels. Many witches and practitioners borrow the concept of the 'astral plane' and 'energy' from Theosophy, 'manifestation' or the 'law of attraction' from New Thought, 'energetic blockages' from Mesmerism, so on and so forth. But, of course, the central-most influence on contemporary witchcraft always has been and always will be Wicca.

Contemporary witchcraft was built on the foundation that Wicca laid. Most people, even if they don't identify as Wiccans, found magic and/or paganism through Wicca or Wiccan-aligned resources. Favorite authors like Cunningham, Murphy-Hiscock, Auryn, Illes, Adler, Buckland, Kelden, etc are or were Wiccans at one point in their lives, or practice a form of magic that is derived from Wicca. Almost all common practices, motifs, beliefs, and tools utilized and acknowledged by modern practitioners are Wiccan in origin. To name a few: - the Wheel of the Year and the modern conceptions of the 'sabbats'; - the idea of historic 'witches' as cunning women; - styling every deity as 'Lord' or 'Lady'; - pagan priesthood; - intention; - 'eclectic' practice; - the binary between covens and solitary magic; - a 'Book of Shadows'; - deity work (as opposed to standard religious worship); - the notion that the same system of magic and religion can be universally applied with different pagan deities; - the unification and flattening of regional traditions into broader categories like Hellenism, Heathenry, Celtic paganism, etc; - and, indeed, calling yourself a 'witch' at all. ... and uncountably more. If there is anything you can think of as quintessentially 'witchy', odds are it either came from Wicca or evolved from the contemporary witchcraft built off of Wicca.

Some are comparatively old and fairly structured elements of a relatively organized religion, like the Wheel of the Year, the soft-polytheist Lord/Lady model, Book of Shadows traditions, and the slightly younger divide between solitary practitioners and coven-goers. Others are completely new and came about through the effects of the Internet, such as the notion of 'intent': according to Wiccans who lived the early days of Wiccan web forums, the notion of 'intent' came about to illustrate that 'doing magic' necessitates a goal for the magic to fulfil, and that simply repeating a ritual from a book with no goal to achieve in mind was not a functional way to approach magic. The more experienced Witches would educate the newbies by borrowing terminology from Chaos Magic's concept of a Statement of Intent, to encourage new practitioners to do magic according to their needs rather than purely for the sake of doing it. In between that time around 2010 and now, 'intent' has transformed from a personal tool to structure your practice into the cosmological driving force behind all magic. Rather than the great cosmological force of 'magic' being channeled through a Wiccan ritual, personal mental processes have turned into the operative power of a magical performance, which seems to reflect a broader pattern of individualization.

White Egocentrism and Post-Colonial Neo-Religion

Individualism, hyper-individualism even, is becoming an increasingly pervasive feature of western society. Spurred on by capitalism, the 'you don't owe anyone anything' propaganda and the milder sounding 'put yourself first' mentality promote an emphasis on personal autonomy, self-reliance, and independence in our lives. Individualism, definitionally, necessitates egocentrism. Individualism and hyperindividualism are well-known to abandon the well-being of the community for the sake of personal gain, and in order for that to feel like a reasonable thing to do one must be both entitled and egocentric. We are all, unfortunately, conditioned to be entitled and egocentric by modern, especially western, society. Yay, capitalism! But some experience it more severely than others, and white people in particular are taught extreme entitlement and egocentrism by postcolonial capitalism. There are many ways in which those traits show up in western religious expression, but I want to call attention to a few specific ones that I think do by far the most harm and are by far the most pervasive.

Individual Egocentrism and Egotism Individual egocentrism shows up in the most offputting ways of all, compared to its counterpart entitlement. While entitlement is often the driving force behind cultural appropriation and ethnocide, which is perhaps more cosmically disturbing, egocentrism in neocolonial religion can be quite terrifying to witness personally. The foremost egocentric feature that nondenominational Christianity and contemporary witchcraft share is the emphasis on personal empowerment through religion. Religion is not a communal expression of faith in the consensus reality one's culture has constructed, but a tool for personal satisfaction and stability. The community, or the culture, is always secondary to the individual. This much is obvious, cannot be hidden: it shows up even in such simple things as correspondences, where coming up with your own associations based on what jives with you is recommended over learning the cultural narrative. The same is true in evangelism: faith, church attendance, and religious products are commodities for personal satisfaction and actualization, and can be abandoned if they don't fulfil those needs to the desired extent.

Christianity is hard to imagine without this level of disinterest in other people, perhaps because monotheism teaches that there is a center to the universe to begin with. Ironic, given Christ's original selfless message. Regardless, as a result, living our lives in a Christo-secular world means that we are imbued with egocentrism from birth. On a personal level this often spirals into egomania. Both of these religions, in their cultural contexts, breed delusions of grandeur in their adherents. You are so special, you are so good, divinity is calling YOU to do its bidding! In evangelism it's being told by Jesus to move to LA and preach the gospel in a Starbucks, in 'Paganism' it's being called out to by myriad deities, being 'trained' by your 'patron deity' to become their 'priest'. To be an oracle and spread revelations to an audience you've not yet garnered. To personally be the mouthpiece of the god of your choosing, no matter who is listening.

It's disturbing, and worrisome. Individualism, egotism and hyper-independence create a social environment without support networks, without structural accountability, without mutual respect and trust. Much like in evangelism, cultic behavior - in the modern sense of that word - is rampant in our community. And, much like in evangelism, abuse on religious grounds is everywhere and extreme, with no way to combat it effectively. Micro- and personality-cults are appearing left and right in pagan communities, spearheaded by people who believe themselves worthy religious leaders. Nevermind that you can't be a 'pagan priest' because 'paganism' isn't a religion and 'priests' are exclusively Christian. Nevermind that the various forms of clergical service that European pagan religions had could only exist in the context of service to a community, not a personal relationship with divinity - assuming we know anything of them at all. Nevermind that being 'spoken to' or 'called out to' by pagan gods was not a thing before the Internet invented it. Nevermind that the age of oracles is decidedly ended. After all, 'paganism' isn't about practicing the religions of the cultures whose names are unfortunately claimed for this purpose. It's about practicing white religion, something that feels comfortable, but still rebels against the Christianity we've come to hate. Only we cannot imagine a world without it, so we just reinvent it.

Racial Egocentrism I would like to draw your attention, for a moment, to what is known as the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, AKA the American Restoration movement. This movement was formed in the Second Great Awakening of the 19th century, from several independent strands of evangelical revival that highly idealized early Christianity, not unlike the convergence of occultist groups that idealized what they conceived of as 'paganism'. These evangelists sought to return to what they considered the 'one true faith' of Christianity, and unify all Christians without creeds, cultural differences, or denominational banners. They wanted to just be Christians, no further specification necessary. As any denomination does, evangelical and nondenominational Christianity has deep structural and doctrinal flaws, but nevertheless seeks to place itself at the center of Christendom, treats itself as the modern baseline that anyone can return to or join to align themselves with the true nature of Christianity. It is reminiscent of Wicca, and its notion of an ancient pan-European pagan religion with consistent core tenets that anybody can practice under the banner of 'pagan' or 'witch'. Of course, there was never a pan-European pagan religion, or witch-cult, or other such thing. That would require a universal European cultural identity, one that was distinctly lacking in actual history.

Western people cannot think away whiteness. Whiteness is accepted as a standard fixture of reality, within the racist model where race is an objective feature of the natural world. Thusly modern people apply whiteness, forcefully, to cultures and religions that existed before the entire concept of whiteness did. Racism as we know it now only emerged after the colonization of Europe by the Christians, and indeed it perpetuates the colonization of pre-Christian Europeans by forcefully applying whiteness to cultures that couldn't be white, because whiteness did not exist. It was only after they were already colonized that the process of flattening, destroying, and misrepresenting their cultures took hold to absorb them into the delusion of a culturally unified white race. From Christian scholars skewing, misrepresenting, and destroying the memory of their faiths, to Nazi Germany producing false historical texts attributed to them, to us, modern people engaging with their cultural heritage in retrospect, colonizing them by forcing them to conform to our deluded notions of race and racial unity.

It is not a secret that neopagans are more interested in practicing whiteness - and you do not need to be white to practice whiteness - than the religions whose cultures they claim. It only takes a little squinting to see it. Disregard, or even condemnation, of the historic practices that these religions find their roots in is a common feature both of neopaganism and of evangelism. Though both of them were founded by movements that severely idealized their mental images of what the 'original religion' looked like, in practice they show little interest in their features. An easy example in the case of neopaganism is love magic. For most historic pagans and folk believers, love magic was a standard fixture of adolescence, methods ranging from harmless divination to sometimes kind of gross spells. Modern pagans, however, on some delusional claim of universal cosmological immorality, condemn love magic and love divination altogether.

But that's a cheap shot, how about the fact that most neopagans fundamentally disagree with the philosophical, metaphysical, and cosmological underpinnings of their religions? 'Mundane before magic' is a prime example about which I have written at length, where neopagans and witches discard the original form of their religion in favor of the more modern, whiter notions of scientism. This isn't to say you cannot believe in science and be a pagan, but it is to say that you cannot claim to practice a religion whose entire construction and justification you disagree with. Then there's the issue of moral realism, hard good/evil binaries, and punitive justice among pagans, when their religions generally teach subjective morality and take a restorative approach to justice. Further, European pagan religions were orthopraxic, in contrast to Christianity's orthodoxy. This means that rather than believing that religion is made up of correct belief, like Christianity, it is made up of correct practice. European pagan religions, and their sister systems like justice and medicine, were oriented around the right rituals, the right protocols, the right actions, not organized and dogmatic belief.

And yet, where have the rituals gone? Why is every pagan community full of people asking for ideas on how to 'get back into their practice', or practicing contrived rituals whose roots are in 20th century occultism rather than the actions the ancients valued so much? Much like evangelism's departure from tradition in Christianity, its rejection of ritualization and mysticism, tradition and perpetuity in paganism are dead. Much like business casual pastors standing on a stage with electric guitars blasting in between unchecked, scripture-less preaching, much like the Mysteries of the Eucharist have turned into a symbolic, dry-cracker-fueled half joke, magic has disappeared behind the noise of 'spicy psychology' and 'intention'. Rituals have changed from the anthropological definition of time and space carved out from the ordinary, into quick, symbolic blips of an ancient understanding. The barrier to entry is low, all you have to do is claim to believe, and you're saved. You do not need to sit with discomfort, you do not need to be made to think or ask questions, you do not need to deconstruct your preconceived notions.

All of which is not to mention the worship of anti-cosmic and adversarial beings, purely on grounds of them being 'misunderstood', the rejection and indeed even loathing of primary deities purely because subconsciously, to us, they are too much like God, the rampant heno- and mono-theism of pagans whose religions have the word polytheism in them. Theocentrism in general, the constant emphasis on 'the gods' as some defineable category that paganism has, and that those 'gods' should be at the center of someone's faith and practice, rather than the beings and features that ancient pagans actually centered, insofar as anything was centered at all? One must ask: at what point is it no longer the same religion(s)? The answer is that we are way past that point. Neopaganism is not the search for ancestral religion. It's the construction of a new, uniquely white religion, in response to Christianity. Why else would it use a Christian-made label for itself, pagan, that the old believers thought of as an insult?

Neopaganism, witchcraft, 'paganism', whatever you want to call it, is nothing more than white people's shameless appropriation of countless ancient religions. And the goal of it is nothing more than to rebel against Christianity, one of the few traumas white people have in common, while never actually deconstructing it. This is why these features that ancient paganism didn't have (heno/monotheism, theocentrism, orthodoxy, mundane before magic, etc) are ones directly reflected by Christo-secularism: they're directly transferred, one-to-one. There was a brief window in history, very brief, where almost all Europeans had indigeneity in common. But we are so deeply immersed in our own colonization now that we have gone to spread it to the rest of the world and rescinded our right to claim that title as a group. So far, it has come, that we are somehow intensifying the indigeneity of our ancestors even in their death. Because we feel entitled to everything they had, because we're white.

Entitlement and Autonomy After Colonization

White entitlement gains complexity when the object of the entitlement is someone or something that cannot fight back. The cultures whose religions we are appropriating no longer exist except in memory and history books. They cannot jump off the page to defend themselves, correct our mistakes, tell us that they want their heritage and legacy respected. Living minorities can retaliate against oppression, or at least resist it in spirit, but the dead cannot. Anyone can oppress the dead. And anyone who is indoctrinated or imbued with whiteness can act with white entitlement towards the dead. Neopagans seem to think nothing wrong with this. When confronted with questions about why they deviate so strongly from what the religion(s) they claim prescribe, their answer often revolves around the inconsequence of their actions. Sometimes it's that "there's no sources" to work with, so they're basically forced to make it up as they go, other times it's that the original culture is dead so it doesn't matter what we do, or that "times have changed." But do the religions we supposedly align ourselves with not emphasize the autonomy of the dead? Moreover, do we modern woke people not claim to be against appropriation and think that ancestor work is oh, so important?

Cultural imperialism is the dominant feature of white supremacy in the 21st century. White people, or perhaps western people at large but especially white people, are spiritually homeless. Colonialism took communal values, interpretations and beliefs from us, and then supplied us with enough audacity and entitlement to take it from others as a weakened replacement for our own. When it is being done to cultures that have been absorbed into the idea of 'whiteness', like pre-Christian European religions, it's deemed acceptable, and nobody bats an eye at an 'eclectic pagan' with fingers in every pie loudly proclaiming that they're against cultural appropriation. But the mechanism is the same. The entitlement is completely unchanged. The arguments of 'well the culture is dead,' and 'well times have changed,' are weak excuses to be able to turn a religion - that they don't really believe in in the capacity that it was believed in by its original adherents - into whatever suits their needs best. Even if what suits their needs best is a reinterpretation of modern protestantism. Worse yet is that by creating a new religion, borrowing the aesthetics and terminology of the ancient religions and nothing else, those who relied on the language supplied by anthropology to explain their cultural traditions, those who grew up in folk traditions are being absorbed into the white narrative. The culture of white peoples is continually being erased by the illusion of 'white culture', and so neopaganism perpetuates white supremacy and colonizes indigenous European survivals (and peoples).

In both neopaganism/conventional witchcraft and evangelical Christianity, the closer somebody is to the traditional roots of their movement, the more of a systemic victim complex they openly express. More traditional evangelists often mirror the emphasis traditional branches of Christianity place on their perceived persecution. Preaching about the persecution of Christians in Rome and Martyrdom, or even going so far as to claim that they are still actively being oppressed on a large scale in the modern day. Wicca and its mythology does the exact same thing. It pretends that the witch-hunts were truly a genocide on their direct spiritual ancestors, and that Christians oppress them to this day. Further, just like evangelists, because religion is a matter of personal identity, any criticism of their approach to religion is treated as oppression. To the point of not only attacking each other in retaliation, and breaking off into bizarre factions, but also to the point of vilifying other religions altogether. Resistance against their entitlement is treated as a violation of their personal autonomy, and those who revolt against their colonization are not seen as vulnerable people or cultures, but as an institution dedicated to diminishing their personal rights.

The Autonomy of the Dead Though many pagans online claim to be animists, few are in practice. One symptom of this is the lack of agency ascribed to the dead by modern practitioners. Ancestor work is a touchy topic in the community, with many white practitioners betraying their toxic relationship with their own whiteness by staunchly avoiding the entire subject, let alone body, of their ancestors in between now and two thousand years ago. Ancestor work is often reduced to thinking about your ancestors' actions and repenting for them so that you may cleanse yourself of your colonial sins, though, as illustrated, it hardly comes to fruition. More importantly yet, an impossible contradiction has been created in our treatment of our white ancestors.

On the one hand, they are unilaterally described as directly oppositional and adversarial. Many report that their ancestors hate them, reject their practices, or say racist things to them, as though they have a phone line into the afterlife through which these messages can be received. But almost none actually put effort into establishing a relationship with their ancestry or ancestors, especially not before claims of rejection and hatred are made. On the other hand, precious little autonomy and agency is ascribed to the dead when it comes to their rights, or their influence over our lives in modernity. Aside from the blatant appropriation of their cultures, and disregard for what effects this might have on them, they are also never honored, nor welcomed into our spaces. They are not seen as capable of change or growth after death, depicted and understood as the exact people they were prior to their passing, as though most animistic religions do not teach that there is much learning to do in the afterlife. Not one of these people has enough of an emotional investment in their ancestors to be patient with them like you would a living family member. To let them have their feelings and see if with time something can be accomplished, to help them work through it. It seems that agency is only ascribed to the dead when it can serve as an excuse to avoid them at all costs.

It is no coincidence that this has happened. The Christo-secular world has a phobia of morbidity, so that accounts for a great deal of these symptoms. But it is also that Christianity teaches that the afterlife is stationary and constant, and believers have no agency in what their afterlife looks like. They will either go to The Good Place or The Bad Place based on their actions in life, be magically transported there after death, and will stay there, unchanged, for eternity. Aside from shallow neoliberal approaches to decolonization, which account for the other half of problems white people face when trying to reconcile their ancestry, people view themselves and, by extension, each other, as stationary figures, to whom life and death is happening. From the Christo-secular perspective, we are passive, and life and death are moving around us and coming over us. This explains why neopagan religious expressions don't seem to take any interest in funerary custom, death cosmology and eschatology, as they generally apply the same sense of circumstantial victimhood to what they believe 'paganism' is. But animistic religions do not teach passivity, nor that people are just victims to circumstance in their own lives.

The Autonomy of the Self Pre-Christian European religions were religions of struggle. How this feature presented itself varied, and how it was represented in the literature from or about the religions is even more skewed. But religions that are as old as time to a given group of people reflect the nature of life, and the nature of life is to struggle and fight. It was even more so then, especially for those not in the elite, towards whom sources are often biased. It is because of this that active participation in one's own life, and indeed perhaps even the afterlives or the lives of descendants, are so highly emphasized. It is one's own responsibility to move through life, to travel to the afterlife, to navigate the world tree as it were, to borrow terminology from my own religion. Often the success of descendants is spiritually generated by ancestors through their great deeds, teaching how such expressions of personal agency and willpower fuel the living for generations after one's death. Often the very most important themes in pagan mythologies and symbols are the willingness to fight against inevitability and do great things. But what white people lack most, even those who would number themselves among the very wokest, is accountability. The lack of it is a monstrous problem in the west, perhaps its own institution on a systemic scale.

Despite the religions whose names they claim being religions that revolve around taking accountability for the state of your life, religions that promote being an active participant in your own existence, neopaganism expresses a strong belief that everything will simply be handed to the believer on a silver platter. A hallmark of a person who has never truly struggled, whose ancestors have not truly struggled in quite some time, perhaps. A lot of this sense of anticipatory entitlement to the world also loops back around to the aforementioned egomania. Often, the conflictions in belief seem to suggest that the world is not inherently spiritual, but they are. Rather than there being an external web of magic that human actions take place on, magic is inherent in a person in the form of 'intention'. Rather than tools having inherent, naturally magical traits, a 'universal substitute' imbued with personal power can perform any function needed. Spiritual gifts are not obtained in life or learned from external individuals but something one is born into. Mundane over magical for thee, but not for me. Sometimes the entitlement appears as true laziness: that reading signs is a matter of ruling out mundane possibilities until it couldn't possibly mean anything else, rather than a skill of discernment one has to learn. That an AI chatbot or a Discord bot can truly perform a tarot reading, with no real explanation for how or why. That rather than the world being a complex web of interlocking ecology, both physically and metaphysically, from where one could theoretically divine anything from a single augur if only they were brilliant enough, it is thought that you really only have to wait until the most obvious, impossible symbols start crossing your path at the hand of 'the gods'.

In fact, it is 'the gods' around whom the most disturbing symptoms of privilege show. It is in how neopagans believe themselves to be sought out by the gods, their worship or even companionship to be specially requested. That the gods appear to them personally, speak to them directly, attend to the smallest matters in their lives. That they all have a deity for a spiritual parent, in extreme cases even an entire harem of deities from various pantheons with whom they have personal, usually romantic relationships. It gets so bizarre, at times, that I begin to feel it is spitting in the face of those who have sacrificed in prayer every day of a war-torn life and never been helped by their gods, and I do believe the gods have the power to interfere in such matters! Which leads into the next section:

The Autonomy of the Divine In many ways, the autonomy ascribed to 'the gods' is only a tool for their pagan adherents to evade accountability. One has already been mentioned, the way that people truly believe the gods are seeking them out personally, which detracts from one's own responsibility in practicing religion and building relationships with your gods, downplays that religion is a personal choice - perhaps to further the victim complex, persecution on religious basis narrative - and aggrandizes the person making that claim. Moreover, it leads to what people sometimes dub 'salad bar paganism', where people have a fairly random selection of deities from various pantheons in that semi-omnist model of "paganism." That appropriation is frequently criticized in the community these days, but is briskly refuted on grounds that the deities in question told the eclectic it was okay. Yet another kind of agency described to deities that only exists to evade personal responsibility. By attributing words and actions like those to the gods, people place the responsibility for their immorality on a non-human being that cannot respond empirically. It makes the gods complicit in their crime of entitlement. 'Revivalism' as a code word for simply ignoring all primary and secondary sources in favor of pop-spirituality would have their personal opinion on what a deity believes and wants weigh as much as that of mythology, a collaborative, deeply cultural, symbolic narrative. Not only is it once again placing the self above the culture, often as an outsider to said culture, but it is also forcing that culture's heritage into a level of personhood it can't have. It's a familiar pattern, strongly resembling modern Christians ascribing all of their deeds to Jesus. God wants them to harass people in the street, Jesus told them to throw that rock at that queer person, God hates this and that, but God needs us to do x or y.

And there is another strong parallel between evangelism and paganism here, in much the same vein of evasion. When modern protestants do bad things, or experience hardships in life, these things are attributed to the Devil. Neopagans blame energy. Negative energy, energy blockages, curses, even - which are of course negative energy sent by other people. Funnily enough, I think evangelicals on average attribute more positive things to their God than neopagans do. This is completely anecdotal, but where I see quite a few Christians thanking god for pre-sliced fruit, refilling hairspray, or cured cancer, neopagans do not match their negativity-offloading with the inverse, and do attribute their victories to themselves. Be it because of 'mundane before magic', or because after the spell you do have to 'put the work in', or else it won't work.

Reactionary, but Not Radical

I've already posited that neopagan religious expressions exist in retaliation and response to Christian trauma several times in this post. I think that much is very obvious, but because it is a shared trauma and sensitive topic, it is not often discussed or examined among pagans. I do see that people are, often, quite frank about their personal Christian traumas, which I would admire were it not so often used as an excuse of some kind. I already went into the history of anti-Christian tendencies among occultists, and how it bled over into modern neopaganism, which is a western occultist stream by nature. I think the amount of religious trauma neopagans have on a personal level and how conversion to paganism is often a response to it speaks for itself, and doesn't need elaborating on. But, like any toxic relationship with a parental figure does, the expression of this trauma leads to some significant ironies that are worth exploring. Because in ignoring and perpetuating those ironies, much harm is being done.

Religion versus Spirituality One very transparent rebellion against Christianity is the refusal that pagans show to treat pagan religions as 'religions', for many reasons. Most obvious is the unwillingness to identify as religious, as self-styled pagans commonly perpetuate the notion that there is a binary between 'religion' and 'atheism', and that any break away from those two concepts is what constitutes 'spirituality'. In order to distance themselves from what they hate, they claim that 'religion' necessitates the same kind of organization and hierarchy that they see in Christianity, and they thus are 'spiritual, but not religious'. They are blithely unaware of the fact that the dichotomy between 'spiritual' and 'religious' is very loaded with anti-indigenous sentiment, and western anthropology is even catching up with that. It is becoming increasingly clear to anthropologists that 'religion' cannot be easily defined, because at its most complete it is the entire sum of a given culture's way of understanding reality. If you were to want to truly encompass the scope of 'religion', science would be a religion, and some argue it is. The characterization of 'religion' as 'like Abrahamic religion' is Christo-centric, white-centric. And, inversely, the attribution of 'spirituality' to all religions that do not conform to the standards set by Christianity is a kind of pan-indigeneity. It flattens those religions into a monolith and looks directly past their unique forms of organization, structure and transmission - pagan religions included. It is also a heavily ethnicized word, treated as exotic and more arcane than 'religion'.

Further, people tend to define 'spirituality' as being less dogmatic, less strict, and more oriented around one person's journey unbound by organized culture or communal experience. There lies another tie to hyper-individualism, but also to entitlement. Because neopagans refuse to treat pagan religions as the religions they are, they refuse to treat them with respect and reverence. Spirituality is supposed to be less weighty, and despite the material at hand being endangered, deeply damaged, colonized heritage from a dead culture, despite that material representing the entirety of a peoples' way of existing, it is treated as though it can be picked up and discarded whenever. People do not treat their conversions to 'paganism' as conversion, but as a new hobby or aesthetic trend to be picked up. And the rest of their treatment, when it comes to study, honoring, practicing, decolonizing, doesn't suggest that it's anything other than a trendy hobby, a facet of identity consumption. Pagan religions are not treated as religions, despite being indigenous heritage from a long gone ancestral culture, often cultures whose descendants still live and breathe and practice what remains. They are products, commodities for personal satisfaction, for metaphysical decoration. They are an aesthetic adopted to convey something to other people, not enrich oneself. Nothing is safe from consumerism.

Consumerism, Materialism and Prosperity Gospel For a more elaborate explanation of colonial cultural consumption please see my post about ethnic envy.

Consumerism presents itself both materially and not. Materialism does occur frequently in both religions, as both are very white, and whiteness is deeply imbued with capitalism. Some examples are very obvious, crystals and incense for neopagans, modest-chique clothing and white cars for evangelicals. But there is also the cultural consumerism, and the consumerism that's hidden behind a veil of piety, using materialism as tangible proof of one's devotion. Loaded bibles, fancy grimoires, altar decorations and cross necklaces. Everything about religion is commodified, so that it can either be consumed or displayed. It reaches such extremes that people have tons of altars strewn about their home, one for each deity they worship, which is one of my favorite pecularities about neopagan domestic religion.

But there is another highly capitalistic mindset that has infiltrated white religion, and it is prosperity theology. Prosperity theology is a common feature of evangelical Christianity, and it views the Bible as a contract between humanity and god, that in exchange for worship God will provide security, wealth and comfort. It has its direct presentations, like the parallel between evangelists thinking that poverty is punishment for insufficiency and neopagans claiming that you cannot be good at magic if you're ugly or poor - because surely if you were good at magic, if you did have enough of a soul and that inherent human intention-power, you would be pretty and rich. But more abstractly there is also the fact that most neopagans believe in egregore theory - the idea that the gods require human worship to sustain themselves and be able to exist. It feels equally contractual and transactional, and it's no wonder that there tends to be a sense of superiority about what you can offer the gods. It's no wonder that people expect returns from the gods for being a good worshipper and giving them objects, rather than upholding their rituals and values, or being a good person.

Enlightenment Influence and Performative Rationalism See my post on performative rationalism for a more elaborate explanation.

Both the Campbell Movement of the Second Great Awakening and Western Occultism share significant enlightenment influences. Their descendant religions, as such, have syncretized themselves with rationalism and later scientism, to various extents. Some, especially the more traditional streams of white religion, still have distinctly irreconcilable differences between their beliefs and those of scientism. But many, especially more modern, Internet-founded streams of neo-religion, prioritize bending as much as possible to scientism. Where 'science' describes a method of gaining knowledge, which is not inherently harmful, scientism is a deeply colonial belief system and enjoys many perks under white supremacy. It is viewed by many as an objective form of knowing, and thus as the ultimate truth the universe has to offer, that all religions must defer to and accept, or they have failed morally. Belief systems that do not rely on science, do not accept scientism, et cetera are accused of being dangerous, primitive, backwards or downright unintelligent. If you, as a practitioner, irregardless of your culture, do not prioritize the conclusions of science over anything your culture teaches, you are seen as endangering yourself and others in your stupidity. Cry about decolonization they might, neopagans do not actually do all that much deconstructing, and as a result they still enjoy the privilege of not being oppressed and condemned for their beliefs, no matter how much they claim to be. They still fall neatly in step with the status quo, never questioning or challenging it.

Another, more obscure influence from Enlightenment thinking can be found in the Campbell movement, and is reflected in neopaganism and its founding witch-cult theory. Enlightenment thinkers John Locke and Edward Herbert sought to "reduce religion to a set of essentials upon which all reasonable persons might agree." Campbell, who was a student of Locke's, went on to elaborate on this idea by striving to unify and restore apostolic Christianity, by removing all obstacles that could divide Christians. He believed that one such obstacle was the uncertainty around how to interpret the Bible, and believed that the only way it could be interpreted and the only way it was intended to be read, was as literal fact. White supremacy mirrors this unifying movement by creating a mythological past of united whiteness, and striving to create that by eradicating all cultural and philosophical differences that European people had. Wicca, in turn, emulated this by espousing the witch-cult theory that posed there had been a pan-European pagan religion that was being persecuted by the Christians. All of them have as a final goal to create a single, monolithic group of people that can bend the outsiders to their ways. Further, there is the problem of mythic literalism, which came to a head with Campbell's insistence on the Bible as a factual source, and still influences both anthropological interpretations of pagan mythologies as well as popular ones. People have not developed sufficient literary skills to be able to think of ways a mythology can be interpreted other than more or less literally. As a result of this, a bizarre balance is struck between ignoring the myths entirely, and condemning them by taking them literally.

Moralism and Moral Superiority Mythic literalism adds a layer to the problem of divine agency previously discussed. On top of placing one's own responsibility on the gods to offload complicity or accountability, sometimes undue responsibility is also placed on the gods for actions that humans symbolically or culturally attribute to them. Because in Christianity, God is the superior moral arbiter, who decides what is good and what is bad in his system of objective good and evil, neopagans ascribe that same responsibility to pagan deities. They are forced into the role of perfect moral examples and expected to perform that duty well, and failure is reason for condemnation and abandonment. Consider the trend of pagans who refuse to 'work with' such figures as Zeus or Óðinn because, despite being placed in the hole that God left, they are not equipped by their mythologies to fulfil that role, and thus turn into a scapegoat for the hatred people feel for God. The lived experience of somebody who hasn't unpacked their evangelical trauma moving on to paganism will invariably be that pagan gods fail them just like God did, except this time it's not a preacher claiming God can do no evil while you assess his failures in the world, it's yourself placing a deity in that position, doomed to fail from the start.

There is no inquiry into the role of morality being depicted with nuance in mythology. In a world where moral realism is the predominant model, and most believe that good and evil are not just objective, but measurable, mythologies that dissect morality are useless. They fall flat, and are sneered at. The condescension neopagans have for their own adoptive mythologies doesn't seem to be a problem to them, even when it gets to such extremes as being directly contradictory to the religion they claim. Take Lokeanism, which often condemns Óðinn for 'what he did to Fenrir' among other such things. Not only is there no acknowledgment that the undisputed meaning of the myth is that if Fenrir hadn't been bound the world would no longer exist, but the entire myth and its meaning has a kind of dualism shoved down its throat that flattens the entire narrative, and turns the characters into caricatures. The morality depicted in the myths should be subject to discussion, undoubtedly, and some actions that the gods are depicted as performing in the original mythology should be condemned. That much is not a question. But there is a difference between discussing the material and foundation of your religion, and disagreeing with it completely, but still appropriating its aesthetics.

Further, ascribing a superior moral judgment to your god of choice is how alt-right Christianity came to be so fervently convinced that their will is God's will, and leftist neopagans are not immune to this same process. White leftism is a weak imitation of true intersectionality, and the white leftism most popular among neopagans has truly dangerous features, like the tendency toward extreme punitive justice. One cannot learn to deconstruct Christianity, nor colonialism, without deconstructing objective morality. One cannot understand or put into practice the restorative practices that pagan justice and morality promoted. Neopaganism likes to present itself as the religion of the woke, the leftist's solution to the binary between alt-right Christians and militant atheists. But it doesn't live up to how much it pats itself on the shoulder for its harmlessness.

White Woman's Spiritual Evolution: One to the Other, and Back Again

One fine day I found myself reading a TikTok comment I almost couldn't believe. It was on a video of somebody pretending to control fire, to which I hoped I would find something amusing in the replies. It was so revelatory to me I wrote it down in my journal, to revisit and think about, which is how I know exactly how it read.

tips i wanna give as an ex witch, very spiritually gifted. make sure to never do a spell on someone who is truly for god. i learned the hard way. i js wanna add i'm now a follower of Christ. god bless <3!!

Everything about it, honestly, is gold. From the 'ex witch' just as how 'ex christians' style themselves, to the casual statement of 'very spiritually gifted' which betrays the hallmark arrogance. I was soon to find out there was an entire community of self-styled 'ex witches' who found Jesus and are now practicing evangelists. The traffic goes both ways, with frequent exchanges and reverts. It's a traffic that reveals a new syncretism emerging, with ex-witch evangelicals still believing in the witch-cult theory or espousing that 'witches' are healers, or other fascinating blends of mythology. It should be no surprise: after all, they both serve near-identical social functions, acting in retaliation against each other while being almost perfect mirror images. When one fails, you can return to the other, until that fails again too. It plainly displays all the features here described. The lack of critical thinking and deconstruction, the relational ties and shared ancestry of both religions, the lack of respect and sense of risk, the lack of significance in conversion, the lack of effort being put in.

It's not just these extreme cases who reflect this broader pattern, however. Think of how many people enter the space in retaliation against Christianity, try that for a while, but eventually fall back on their interpretation of 'folk magic', which generally serves to blend the most comfortable aspects of each into something posing as a compromise, with not much reference to historic or living folk magic and its cosmology and beliefs. Or even how many people find other Abrahamic religions through paganism and end up converting to Judaism or Islam, or worse, fall down white supremacist new age pipelines, which neopaganism and witchcraft also share their roots with. And, ultimately, how most if not all pagans eventually leave the space by finding something that is easier to practice, scientism included, and falling back on it time and again for failure to connect with paganism.

Conclusion

A connection with paganism cannot be established through the pop spirituality, neopagan lens. It is a fundamental misrepresentation and misunderstanding of these religions, and until significantly more cultural literacy is injected into the zeitgeist, most people do not have the tools nor humility to engage with cultural heritage sensitively, especially not that of cultures that cannot act on their oppression. This post has effectively been created to serve as a sequel or elaboration to my essay titled Yes, I Hate Wicca. In that essay I did not manage to adequately delve into the great structural and systemic problems represented by contemporary witchcraft and neopaganism, especially as descended from Wicca.

Preparation

Of course, learning about your own environment is very important, and the importance of intentional sit-down research cannot be overstated. But I notice that many people, myself included, hit walls at a certain point in the research - and that's because the history, the anthropology, all the various resources we read aren't geared towards practitioners (logically so) and thus do not provide us with any handles or clues on how this information could be applied in daily life. Sometimes not even in a fairly mundane and common sense! In my opinion, it's not worthwhile to try to use that information alone in search of connection, because it will keep you contained to your body. While being studious is worthwhile, and basic research is always pivotal, I would try to reserve deep study for only the things that you're most interested in at first, so you can make room not only for things you find a particular personal investment in, but also for practical and hands-on learning. Because that is a balance that is not often well-struck in the broader community of practitioners. There's often a particular disparity between practical learning and theoretical learning, with some even making their priority on one of those two a marker of their identity, like those invested in the "revivalist/reconstructionist" dichotomy. In reality and in functional practice, everybody needs a healthy balance between practice and theory. That healthy balance won't look the exact same for everybody, but it should always be at least close to 50-50.

There's something to be said, before delving to deep in, about not falling too deep into notions of strict mundanity or strict spirituality. I have a longer form post explaining the fallacious and harmful nature of 'Mundane vs Magic' from various perspectives, but I cannot overstate how important deconstructing this is when trying to form a spiritual connection with your local environment. For us, by nature of what we are and how we perceive the world, we often find the magical contained within the mundane, or hidden behind it. You must not fall into the trap of neglecting all the physical and tangible features of your environment in favor of the pursuit of something highly esoteric and intangible. You have to effectively balance your instrumental and perceptive abilities with your spiritual and psychological experiences. Focus on the things you can already see and perceive, make them as native to you as they are to the land, so you can know them in ways that don't require your eyes - because seeing the spirit world is about sight unseen. It's about zoning in on the picture that appears when your eyes aren't focused, rooting down in the shadows in the periphery of your vision. If you're looking for it, you'll never find it in a way that satisfies.

I recommend trusting your senses, and that includes your gut. Don't let anxiety or compulsion set the tone, but try to keep a keen eye on it. If you see something out of the corner of your eye, no matter how fantastical it may have looked, take note of that, acknowledge its existence, because in being perceived by you it is already real enough to be important. And similarly, if you enter somewhere and you're genuinely taken with insurmountable bad feelings, just go! Listen to your gut, temper any anticipation with reasoning and healthy emotional coping, but don't ignore big feelings and intuitive interpretations.

It is also good to remember that nature and the spirit world are not strictly outside, but also within the context of your home and even yourself. Your house spirits can be some of the most compelling spirits to regularly find yourself around, as they often do know you quite well or will come to know you quite well. Every house has its own spirit, the spirit of the structure, which in my experience is often a pleasant one. Not every house has an occupational house spirit (e.g. a Celtic brownie), but in many traditions they can be lured or negotiated with, so you can certainly acquire one of your own and build a very meaningful relationship with them.

But what makes up you is also not to be neglected. Something I talked about in another post of mine recently was the benefit I found in attempting to deconstruct the perceived boundary between self and not-self. I always experienced a very rigid border between my self and the rest of the world, and it lay in my skin - but I understand now that I am not separate from the world and the world is not separate from me. We bleed into one another and are indistinguishable on a greater scale, and that realization has given much depth to my spirit work, because I am not just asking something external to engage with some mythical "me" that I cannot even personally define, I am intentionally putting myself forward in ways determined by my goals, and making space for the world and its creatures to respond accordingly. The cosmology of your faith system can be a source of inspiration on how exactly you can do this in a way that applies well to your practice. For me, I found a lot of value in experimenting with the roles and abilities of the various parts of the self described in heathen cosmology.

Of course, what feels like the very most central aspect of (bio)regional spirit work will always be the individual spirits. There are many different kinds of beings that occupy a given region, and they all carry equal amounts of potential for spiritual significance to you, personally. I think going out into the world with an open mind in that regard can prove extremely important. People are prone to neglecting creatures they cannot easily relate to or don't view as living beings, and while for many working with herbs and animals is in that regard much easier, do not completely overlook the quieter neighbors you have. The grasses, the rocks, the fossils, the buildings, the dirt, all have their own existences wherein lessons can be found. How exactly you decipher them is something that will always come down to your tradition and your prerogative, but here are some helpful methods I have learned.

Localization

A big source of inspiration for myself has been the awareness that in the Germanic language area - where I'm from - pagan practice and religiosity was much more directly bound to the landscape. Before the migration period, which forced believers to decouple their religion from the specific land they were on, individual land-features and landmarks were a central point of focus in practice. This is something that can be extrapolated to fit practice in the modern day in various ways.

Explore your local surroundings and familiarize yourself with notable landmarks. This can be as obvious and accessible as historically significant buildings in the area, which I also highly recommend, but also things like visible mountains, interesting trees, big patches of plants, any notable feature of the land that stands out to you and you feel a particular way about. You can build relationships with them, and come to them for particular purposes. Folkloric accounts of magic places can serve as a great guide for what you could look for and potentially even how you might look for them. Examples of such landmarks and their use cases could be:

Naturally occurring holes, through trees, through stones, through mountains, through hedges. They can be passageways, portals, entrance gates, and all other functions you could give to what is essentially a huge hagstone; cf. Odinstones and holes in trees, and their uses for healing diseases or enchanting objects. Different kinds of entrances may lead to different kinds of places.

Make grand land features the objects of your worship. Grand or special trees are fantastic places to enshrine, and the biggest hill or mountain you can see is a fantastic metaphor for some kind of Otherworldly destination, like the folkloric 'going under the mountain' as an understanding for the afterlife or the Otherworld. Big rocks, waterfalls, anything that strikes a chord in you.

Water of any kind is a fantastic magical ally. Visit the ocean like you would visit your mother if she is near you, and talk to her as such. But lakes, streams, rivers, ponds, creeks, all are invaluable. Flowing water is like the blood of the earth and can be magically applied as such, nevermind the fact that many of them act as metaphorical spirit highways. Lakes and ponds and the likes are not only densely inhabited by interesting spirits but also fantastic divinatory tools and portals to the Otherworld in their own right.

Rings and groves, as well as crossroads can be portals and divinatory objects as well, but also great places to enshrine, great places to frequent, to gain favors, or to perform sitting-out rituals.

Buildings should by no account be excluded from this list either: historical landmarks as equally as local haunted structures and the subjects of urban myths are all good places to try to make connections with spirits, to honor as significant, or to even just visit once to have that understanding of them.

Not all landmarks have to be usable. Sometimes the value is just in having been there, having seen it, and knowing what it is like. The power of familiarity is a great one when it comes to regional magic, and sometimes information about a certain place reveals itself much much later - but you can only learn it if you have context for what that place or feature is like.

Exploring does have its risks: people, animals, plants and land features can all do harm. Make sure you're adequately prepared for wherever you're headed to. Always at least have water and a way to contact help if you need it, no matter what kind of environment you're headed into. Also be aware that exploring your land can put you into contact with spirits who may not immediately want you there or respect your presence, and especially in rural areas there may be a risk of such things as elf-shot or other otherworldly diseases. Carrying protective items is a great idea to ward this off, but also be prepared to research spiritual cures for ails you contract after your explorations, especially if they seem unusual or don't respond to normal medical treatment.

Another skill I practiced over time that I found a lot of value in was just spending quality time with the land. It is its own entity, on top of housing many others, and I noticed that I did my best meditations on it when I completely plugged into it without any distractions. I always loved spending time outside and appreciating the outdoors, this much is true, but I would often still be listening to music, or reading, or generally otherwise occupied with a task of my own, not really related to the land. I've found a lot of pleasure in completely allowing myself to be absorbed into the present, wherever I am. Where I live, because it's so rural, this amounts to me laying in the sun and listening to the wind and the birds, or at night the owls and coyotes. I also like fishing for this reason, or foraging trips and hikes. But elsewhere this could be the sounds of a park, the voices of passersby, the babbling of a creek. If sitting still or napping outside is something you would find difficult, tasks oriented toward or in service of the land can be a great way to achieve the same thing while still keeping your hands and conscious mind busy. Picking up trash is a great one, looking for bones, general exploring, climbing trees, birding, et cetera, all can be good.

And do not underestimate the power of play! Dance, sing, chase the occasional squirrel, hop and skip, jump over things. Climb stuff, find chalky rocks and draw on other rocks with them, gather sticks and build a little hut, feel everything you see, look for funny shapes in the clouds. Solemnity loses its meaning when it's not contained to serious rituals, you must give it meaning by contrasting it with complete lightheartedness. Something not all people will be willing to do, which is justifiable because we do not all live in the middle of nowhere, is talking to the land. I personally don't mind looking insane, I am anyway, so I walk around chatting up every tree I see, but it can be as simple as asking for safe passage or saying thank you for things you see or find. I recommend doing these things out loud, even if just whispered.

When you give yourself honestly to the land, in all these ways, it will give back. It may take time for it to take effect, but you will see: you will encounter more animals, see more interesting things, find more meaning - you will feel like the land speaks back to you. How you "hear" it will undoubtedly vary person to person, but it will come. If you build that connection by taking initiative within it.

Observation

A wonderful and easy habit to consistently maintain that will prove extremely valuable for building long-term connections is an observation habit. When I created a pocket notebook for myself for this purpose I never went back. Making a habit out of observing your landscape and your experiences within it has countless benefits. It is a fantastic record that you can refer back to regularly, to see the patterns in the behavior of the land as well as how they might change over time. It also helps you to start noticing connections and coincidences that might prove useful for divinatory purposes or general understandings of the environment and how it is being engaged with, such as animal migrations and behavior, seasonal patterns, auspicious moments for particular kinds of spirit work, etc.

You should tailor your notes and inclusions to your personal interests, but good topics to start with are wildlife observations, weather observations, spirit observations, thoughts during meditation, visions and notable daydreams, coordinates or relative locations of features that stand out to you, ideas that struck you while exploring, and general feelings. Doing this is also a fantastic mindfulness practice: it gives you a chance to offload your thoughts while you're on the go, so you do not need to remember all your experiences and try to process additional information on top of that. You can put your thoughts and observations down, with all the relevant information you want, and move on. It keeps your mind clutter-free and open to new things, and it can also act as a great way to prevent needing to use your phone if you find that needing to Google things or take photos is distracting or takes away from your experience.

A method I enjoy for full days out exploring is to draw a dividing line to imply a new day, note the date, weather, and anything else you deem important (e.g. lunar phase, personal cycle, holiday, etc), and take all my observations under it, so I don't need to write down the date and general conditions under every individual observation. I also use my pocket notebook to store information that I find useful: mine is modular, so on any given day I can easily include whatever little booklets or whatever I need, but generally speaking I have the big four lunar phases in my monthly calendar spread, the tide charts stuck in the back, as well as various little prayers, booklets on invasive plants, etc. If you would be interested in a more elaborate post on how I do my own observations, formatting, important information to include, etc, let me know, I'd be happy to.

By the token of observation, this extends to my hard rule of GOOGLE. EVERYTHING. If I don't want to use my phone in the moment, I write down what I'm perceiving to the best of my abilities (this is a skill you will have to practice, but it's a very good one), and Google it later. But I feel no shame in using my phone either; when in a rush, I take photos of what I see but don't know, I use the Merlin app to identify birds and bird calls, I google every creature and thing and phenomenon I've never seen before, all of it. Just a cursory search will reveal to me at least the name I can call it by, so I can more easily note it next time. Trying to reduce friction can prove pivotal here. The idea of having everything very neatly noted down in a notebook is very idyllic, but is it really achievable? Will you truly take out the notebook every time? I will tell you right now, after a decade and a half of consistent journaling: you will not. Allow yourself to let apps like Merlin or iNaturalist, or just your camera, take some of the work off your hands. Make it easier to record MORE things by doing it faster and easier, so you can use your time for other things and not spend it regretting that you didn't stop in the middle of a literal goose-chase to write down that it had a white bar on its wings. I will however warn you against 'plant ID' apps and the like. They are garbage. That would be an example of taking the sentiment too far and forsaking quality and personability for complete convenience and commodity.

Consumption

There was a time, ages ago, where everything a person took in and put out was confined to their immediate environment. To varying degrees, this can still be true for us today, and becoming aware of that fact and engaging with it consciously can be a great aid in building meaningful connections on a local scale. You can start by making yourself aware of which things that you consume (in a broad sense: eat, use, absorb) on a day to day basis are in some way local to your area, and use those as a jumping off point on how you can localize your consumption even more. If you can afford it, engaging in local food is a fantastic way to physically make yourself one with your environment, as well as to learn about and sensorily familiarize yourself with your area. Seasonal food, locally grown food, local food traditions and dishes, famous and historic restaurants, all these are great ways to take the region into yourself, which is very rewarding and illuminative about local resources and history.

There is, of course, also the act of living off the land yourself: foraging, hunting, fishing, et cetera. They are not accessible to everybody, but if this is something you could try I would recommend doing it at least once. Even if it turns out that you can't stomach death, or that you simply do not find any value in it, the experience is extremely healthy to have had, and it teaches somebody a lot about life and death and the way that ecosystems and members of them sustain themselves and each other. I have written a little on some ethical considerations of animal death in spirituality before, if you're interested. Uncomfortable as it may be, I think truly being able to connect with an ecosystem does necessitate learning about the inevitability of death, including at your own hands. This not only in the context of you directly inflicting a death for subsistence, but also in how your consumption elsewhere, directly and indirectly, is causing death, and what moral and ethical lessons are in those deaths.

Foraging is well known as a fantastic way to get acquainted with local plants, and I cannot harp it enough, even if you have to travel a little ways to do it. It's a great opportunity to learn about them as individuals based on their habitats, growing habits, associates, and ecology. Pay attention to which animals use which plants, and how and where. It can reveal a lot about the nature of the plants and their relationships with other animals, and in turn you could look for implied instruction and clues about clever harvesting or potency in the choices animals make. It is beyond important, however, that you forage with care. Be mindful of what the ecosystem needs, and only take as much as you are confident you can use. It's better to start small. In order to build even more meaningful relationships with the individual spirits of these plants, I recommend dedicating yourself to focusing on one plant at a time. A great way to do this is to use it and it alone in the form of a consistent base recipe, such as drawing a cup of tea of this plant two times a day for two weeks to a month. This way you can truly notice the effects it has on your body and spirit, take notes on your experiences, and cultivate a genuine connection with a given spirit. Doing this also ensures that you know which things have which effects when you start combining them, which is of crucial importance when noting the effects of medicinal or magical ingestibles of any kind.

The things you end up consuming may seem mostly irrelevant to spiritual pursuits, but in reality are not. Sensory understandings of your environment are valuable in their own right - there is great merit in knowing how things reared on local soil make you feel - but there are also many lessons about seasonability, and indeed about medicine and magical attributes of the things we consume, if you look closely. What grows when matters, and the times when people eat or ate things has big implications about the needs of the human body and how the land provides for them. Some Native American beliefs have it that the earth provides what we need in the specific contexts that we need it: that antidotes grow near poisons, and the right food for the right season of the human lived experience grows at the right time. I personally reject the notion of a perfect design, but I do think there is great wisdom to be found in this idea, and it is very worthwhile to explore those ideas and how they are reflected around you.

Learning about the things you consume through active experience also gives you the opportunity to extrapolate this further; if you already have an understanding from your theoretical research about how 'correspondences' and folk-medicinal associations work, you can use those frameworks to logically deduce your own about the things you consume locally. 'Correspondences', to borrow from witchy lingo, should not be seen as strictly spiritual in nature, but held up in comparison to more 'mundane' features and attributes of the things we consume, like nutritional value, general benefits and detriments, chemical components, et cetera. This is well supplemented with intentionally ritualizing your consumption. You can start doing this based on its components, like for example using eating salmon as a way to gain cunning or foresight based on its folklore, or taking a smoke break with a state of mind that leaves you open to the calming effects being both 'mundane' and spiritual in nature, be that as one or in two separate ways.

There are also many ways to use your local materials that do not involve ingesting them, which is somehow both over- and underrepresented in the broader community in my experience. Overrepresented in the sense of one-time use in throwaway spells, and severely underrepresented as more permanent fixtures in your day to day life. The power of practical use cases for materials you find around you is severely underestimated, when in reality it has historically made up a very significant portion of the corpus of folk-magical practices. Natural materials were consciously used in construction, and though you are presumably not building your own house you can still engage in some of these practices like placing protective branches over your windows and doors, using particular rocks and stones as protection talismans, so on and so forth. Local materials can also be used to make various tools, from very practical tools like brooms and walking sticks, ropes, cloths, quills and utensils all the way to the much more arcane, like magic staffs, incenses, garb, and whatever ritual tools fit your fancy. Also do not forget about the power of wearing things on your body: dried berries have historically been used as beads, and bones, shells, teeth, pretty sticks, anything can be made into jewelry or other ornamentations.

Something else you can do - if with great care for the potential ecological repercussions - is promoting the growth of beneficial and magically useful species near your house. Stinging nettle is an amazing warding ally and I love having it grow near my house whenever possible, especially my door.

Cooperation

When you have familiarized yourself with your region and created an emotional bond with it, you can start engaging in reciprocity and putting a focus on utilizing your environment. But a healthy relationship with the milieu can't be achieved without common ground and mutual respect. For that reason, I recommend establishing a set of 'house rules'. Spirits have their own cultures, local groups of spirits have their own expectations and behaviors. Try to learn about the things that are often seen as rude by spirits in folklore and see if it is helpful for you to stick by those parameters. For example, I had to learn based on my interactions with my land that things like looking over my shoulder out of anxiety are seen as rude, that I am expected not to take pictures of things that beg my reverence, that I am to keep some things secret, that I can't return directly to my shrine after doing baneful work. This is where your observation notebook can come in again: it is very wise to take note of adverse experiences as much as positive ones. Measure the way the environment interacts with you, how it appears to respond to you. If you suddenly find yourself lost on your way to somewhere, were you ever meant to be there? See what offerings get what responses. See which spirits appear when and where. See how things change depending on the time of day, your behavior, the weather. If you were having a very successful day, and that suddenly turned on you or all opportunity seemed to suddenly vanish, what might have happened to cause that?

When you try to assimilate yourself into spirit culture, spirits will often reciprocate that by trying to engage in your culture. This is how healthy relationships are fostered and how you can create working relationships based in mutuality and friendliness rather than obligation or tension - though there is room for tension and contracts in practice to be sure, but not to start with and not with your average spirit. I should add that this notion of engaging with the expectations and culture of spirits does also extend to animals: respecting them and their boundaries, trying to understand their body language and speak it back to them, et cetera. You will have terrible luck trying to foster relationships with local critters if you cannot even signal to them that you're not a threat.

Now that the land has given you so much, in the form of experiences, consumables, and mutuality, it's time to start giving back. A simple way to start giving back is in the form of offerings, but be wary of the trap of transactionalism. You can give back without giving physical things, and that is a good skill to hone. Some acts, because you were meant to do them and could not not do them, are not consumptive but often seen as such in the highly consumption-oriented frame of mind we are conditioned to be in. You are not taking from the land by being on it, you are inherently engaging in reciprocity by taking in sights and putting out appreciation, or breathing in air and breathing it back out. Being too oriented around physical taking and giving can cause problems not only emotionally but also practically; introducing foreign substances into the environment should always be done with caution, even if with good intent. Nevertheless, here are some ideas to start with:

Feeding animals is an obvious way to start. Animals can act as proxies for the divine, as messengers and intermediaries between various worldly realms, and as powerful spirit allies. But you cannot do this carelessly. Feeding animals should not be done for the sake of feeding them and nothing else, lest you create dangerous situations. Be careful to not accidentally condense animal populations in a certain area, to not bait dangerous wildlife, and to not accustom animals to being fed by people. It can and does get them killed, even in relatively domestic(ated) environs. Things like bird feeders or scheduled food left in the same place over and over will condense populations into a certain area, causing unusual inter-species interaction, promoting the spread of diseases, and discouraging healthy migratory behavior. Instead, make your decisions mindfully and slowly.

The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to focus on specific individuals or groups of individuals, and build contextual relationships with them. For example, I have two families of jays (stellers jays and camp jays respectively) that stay in the forest around my house year-round. They are intelligent, not dangerous, and people do not tend to mind them, so there's not much risk in them approaching my handful of neighbors - but thankfully they do not. I feed them when they approach me and sometimes leave them gifts dispersed through the woods. They do not come very near each other most of the time as the camp jays are a bit afraid of the stellers jays, so they take turns asking me for food. They are my closest working animal allies, and I ask them to spread messages, requests for favors, and to help me find things I need (including abstract asks like where to go). They do not rely on me for food, I do not inhibit their migratory behavior, and I have not endangered them in any way. They would share their land with me anyway, so I feel comfortable engaging in a friendly relationship with them knowing these things and that I am not giving them any food that might endanger the local ecology (beyond perhaps leaving a few abandoned hoards that some squirrels will gratefully use). In other contexts, like when I need a favor from a particular animal like bear, I may choose to leave a one-time offering very far away from any human settlements that couldn't be mistaken as intentional feeding by bear, and would be natural for bear to eat. This can be in devotion to a bear-god, for a favor or have a spell on the food that has a certain purpose imbued in it. These things have to be done with immense care and respect for the balance of the local system. Choose a few allies you can connect with somewhat naturally, instead of putting yourself at the center of the local food chain.

Nevertheless, building a working relationship with a handful of animals near you is a wonderful experience. You can also have shorter-term or different kinds of working relationships with other animals, through a variety of means: observation, augury, behavioral analysis, working with remains, mimicking and communicating with them, using them as messengers and proxies, et cetera. Small birds, mammals and bugs have close ties to the Otherworld, whereas bigger birds like corvids can be worked with for their intelligence and recognition, or birds of prey for their divine associations and excellent eyesight. Fish are excellent for communing with the dead, large animals for lessons in strength, so on and so forth. Naturally, the same value can be found in non-animal spirits like rocks and plants and natural features, but the means and experiences will be different. I could go into it if requested! I'm just trying to keep this post somewhat concise (a fruitless endeavor, clearly).

Naturally there is also giving offerings to those spirits that you cannot easily perceive with your own instrumental capabilities, and they too are worthwhile to offer to. However, just because you intend an offering to go to an incorporeal spirit, doesn't mean a corporeal one won't consume it - so the same rules of care and caution apply. But, of course, not all offerings need to be consumables. Other ideas:

Make art with what is around you. Braid grass into intricate patterns, draw on rocks and leave them in prominent places or throw them into the water, carve sticks, stack things if you can do so without disturbing the environment too much. Anything goes, even things that would be highly impermanent. Be creative and resourceful.

Offerings can also be reductive in a positive way. Picking up litter is something you should be doing regardless, but a very worthwhile activity is learning how to recognize invasive species and eliminate them. Doing so is even better if you can (and you should) learn how to utilize these invasive species whenever possible.

Steward your environment. Many places worldwide deal with things like tree illnesses or other natural afflictions that have gotten out of hand. Learning how to look for sick individuals in your environment is often pretty easy and a very valuable offering.

Enshrine something. Building a shrine and ensouling it is one of the best things I ever did for my practice when it comes to my land. If you live somewhere you can do this, I highly recommend it. You can do this simply by finding a place that resonates with you and performing whatever ritual you like to hallow it, but if you need specific pointers I recommend something that has a good work surface or could be given one like a tree stump. I like to ensoul my shrine by giving it blood, so it can become its own living thing - I mix blood, water and booze for this purpose and spread it around while saying hallowing prayers. I also built a miniature dolmen to encourage spirits to take up residence in the shrine. The only non-natural feature at my shrine that stays there permanently is my ceramic offering well that rests atop the dolmen. My shrine is off my own land and actually deep in the woodlands of the local nature center, and the rangers there know of its existence, but respect it. If you can without danger, be open to people engaging with your shrine if they encounter it! There will be bad faith actors who may take things from it, but there may also be kind souls who will leave things. Such is the nature of a shrine. I use my shrine to worship at and do workings, but I take great care to always pack out everything I bring.

Education, of yourself and others, is a fantastic offering. Make people passionate about the land, teach yourself how to do right by it, correct misinformation when you hear it, get mad at people for being careless with the land. Donate to local education centers and organizations that steward the land.

And of course the aforementioned localization process should be ongoing. The land is always changing, so you always have reason to be exploring and spending quality time with the land and meditating on it, which is its own offering too.

When you have an established mutual relationship with your land and its inhabitants, you have a fantastic foundation to build off of, and from that point onward it becomes increasingly difficult for one talking head on Tumblr to give you ideas that are relevant to your personal practice and belief system. That said, I'll give some ideas relevant to mine in hopes of sparking some thought and inspiration.

I already briefly mentioned that it is very worthwhile to make local features the object of your veneration or worship. This extends to individual spirits, like individual tree spirits or other wights and ghosts you encounter. Venerating and honoring them is very fulfilling and can be a great way to bridge the gap between the highest of divinity and oneself that many people seem to struggle with.

Speaking of divinity, you can also absolutely find your gods in your local landscape and you should be looking for them. Many pagan gods have or had indweller qualities at one point, and taking your worship out of your body and mind and connecting it to things outside of you is excellent for your mental wellbeing and practice.

Using landmarks as conduits in rituals and for communication even with powerful spirits that aren't necessarily tied to your landscape in any way is a method that I found greatly improved my abilities. We are not supposed to do magic all alone with only our bodies and minds to use as tools. Even spirits that mostly exist within my practice as literary narratives or mythic ancestors, like the venerable seeress Weleda, I do my best work and communication with when I use the land to aid my trances. I use holes as metaphorical graves and beautiful trees as allegories for Yggdrasil.

Closing Remarks

I would like to note that the order in which I have placed these steps is not mandatory and you can and should deviate - within reason - wherever necessary. These are all important functions of local spirit work, in my opinion, but not everyone's process will look the same, and not everyone's needs are best acted upon in the same way. There is much precedent and historical account of, for example, going to entreat spirits you have no previously established rapport with for the sake of an immediate need - even if for long-term relationships that may not be the best solution. In terms of fostering actual connection with spirits more concretely, offerings and favors are the number one gateway, communication and familiarization should come soon after, personal involvement and cultural assimilation are a natural consequence of that, and from there you'll find you've already built something strong and beautiful to work from. As long as responsibility, respect, and the most current intersectional and ecological considerations take the highest priority in your practice, you can do whatever you want.

Though this post primarily focused on the other-than-human in your spirit work, community and humanity are NOT to be neglected when it comes to (bio)regionalism. People are also just animals, and they are certainly a part of the environment whether they like and acknowledge it or not. We are social animals and in order for us to function as best as we can according to our own natures we must engage with that. Make friends, do local things together, get to know the people around you, form bonds. Culture and community are great teachers, be they your own or others'. Either way you should heed them and pay great attention to them.

Further Reading

It's a bit ironic to provide more theory in a post about practice but what can I tell you, I love reading. So here are some helpful books in this pursuit.

Thrifted local field guides of all clades and orders;

Local authors, indigenous and not;

Ecopsychology, ed. Theodore Roszak, and especially his first essay therein: Where Psyche Meets Gaia;

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold;

Gathering Moss by Robin Wall-Kimmerer;