I post pagan stuff

You know who benefits from selling "voodoo" yarn keychains at the grocery store? Not ATR practitioners. You know who benefits from selling dismembered Buddha heads at the local shopping mall? Not Buddhists. You know who benefits from selling that "Indian Bow and Arrow" toy set at the dollar store? Not Native people. You know who benefitted from selling Bindis at Claire's in the early 2000s? Gwen Stefani. No one else. Just her.

You know who benefits from selling "voodoo" yarn keychains at the grocery store? Not ATR practitioners. You know who benefits from selling dismembered Buddha heads at the local shopping mall? Not Buddhists. You know who benefits from selling that "Indian Bow and Arrow" toy set at the dollar store? Not Native people. You know who benefitted from selling Bindis at Claire's in the early 2000s? Gwen Stefani. No one else. Just her.

MIASMA 👏 IS 👏 NOT 👏 THE 👏 HELPOL 👏 EQUIVALENT 👏 OF 👏 SIN 👏

Miasma is a word used to describe rape, murder, evil things we should not do.

Sin is a violation of the Christian god's will.

Sin is not inherently evil because you are born with it and you can be saved. Miasma is inherently evil because it is the religious equivalent of crimes.

I say inherently because yes, some sin is evil, but not all sin is. To say “all” of something, whether in theology or history, is a big big BIG error unless it is quite literally 100%. People seem to have forgotten that too.

Most importantly, a lot of the religious historians we have are Christian and they put their Christian viewpoint on everything. That is why it's so important not to take everything in a resource super literally and to cross reference your sources.

Miasma is not "sin" because you can't compare two concepts that existed centuries apart from each other that may, to your modern eye in a world where christianity is the norm, look similar.

Stop spreading misinformation under the guise of miasma. Most importantly, stop sending asks to tumblr blogs to do your research for you. Google scholar is free. Internet archive is free. Got a question? Research it! Having trouble? Ask people for help! There's nothing wrong with asking someone's opinion on something but to take that person's opinion as law thereafter? Are we forgetting that we're sharing opinions and not facts and that facts need to have sources listed at the end?

Miasma dates back in Europe to the Black Death and an incomplete understanding of how illness spreads. They thought if you smelled the smell of sickness, or people who died, you would get sick. That's why plague doctors look the way they do. Those noses were full of herbs and incense because they believed that protected them from the illness. Other Asian countries such as Japan also had this belief in Miasma. These days it's translated to a spiritual unhealthiness associated with things that are dirty or unmaintained. You'll see in a lot of Shinto-inspired media unkept shrines having an evil energy called Miasma around them.

This does translate into the occult and Paganism as well. It's completely valid to see a spiritual dirtiness and unhealthiness as a Miasma, but I would be careful. There are people (various politicians, religious figures, etc.) who are very spiritually tainted, but it's very easy to fall down a slippery slope of prejudice calling someone spiritually dirty in a tangible sense.

I wholeheartedly agree with the take on Christian scholar nonsense in research. Many reconstructionist faiths rely on what Christian missionaries wrote down about the religion, and it's usually tainted with their biases. For example: early Victorian researchers conflated Hades with Satan, and Persephone with mother Mary, giving us many a mischaracterized translations of stories involving them. The same with many Norse paganism, which unfortunately wholly relies on Christian scholars for their practices and stories. Part of reconstructionism is parsing through all of this by looking at existing Christian bias and making the connections to your research.

Written by Marimo (he/they)🌿

I’ve seen a turn for the better in some witchy spaces regarding consumerism in the past few years, but overall it still tends to be an issue for us as a community. I’ve decided to try and breakdown the pitfalls I’ve noticed in my own journey, in the hopes that it will inspire and assist others. I’ve also provided alternatives and ideas on how to make small changes in our practice to help us better protect the Earth, stick it to the failing system and still acquire our bits and bobs we love so dearly.

As always, I am no authority on any subject nor am I perfect—but we’re all learning as we go, so let’s dive right in 🌿

A Preface

There are some things that should be made entirely clear before we begin:

You are not a bad person for wanting an aesthetic

You are not a bad person for unknowingly falling into pitfalls. Only if you continue to purposefully do so after knowing better

You are not a bad person for consuming content/objects or for not always making the most sustainable decisions. At the end of the day, we can only control our small part of environmental impact, while the rest is left up to the major corporations that make more pollution than any of us ever will

You are only human. Show yourself some grace and understanding that the internet so lacks.

Forgive the clickbait title (though I do mostly mean it so idk how much it’s just clickbait), but I see a sentiment often in witch communities that I think is well meaning but often being shared through the lens of Christian upbringing. Often people soothe baby pagans with reassurances that not being able to (for whatever reason) attend to your practice regularly is not inherently offensive to your deity specifically because they understand your difficulties. They are not bothered because they are benevolent and love you and want you to take care of yourself and blah blah.

And maybe they do! Maybe that’s your specific relationship with your deity.

The anxiety that your gods are hanging around counting your sins and disowning you every time you forget to do a ritual/journey/make an offering/whatever is not valid! That is a fear borne of Christianity. Worse than that, actually: it’s Calvinism.

And so is the concept that you need to expect forgiveness from your deities.

Your gods— spoiler alert— are pretty fucking busy. They aren’t hanging around waiting for YOU to give that offering, for YOU to finish that ritual. Most of the time you’re unlikely to be getting direct interaction with them even during important or good work. They don’t owe you that! If they have need of something they have more resources than just you to help them get it. I mean all of this in the kindest, most neutral way possible.

Your gods do not care about you.

Obviously that mileage varies depending on the individual deity, obviously there are people (like me) who work with private practices and smaller faiths where there is less of a resource pool, where there might be more expectations or requests, but that is not inherently to be expected.

The Morrigan or Artemis or Cernunnos or WHOEVER (including if not especially Jesus) will not curse you for missing an offering, they’ve got shit to do. Your practice is FINE without you for a day or two. Get to it when you can, offer more if you want to or you feel it’s requested but not for the sake of appeasing your Christian guilt for missing a day.

Hello! I am a person who experiences hallucinations, but I also have a healthy spiritual life. This may raise the question: how do I differentiate actual signs and communication from the gods and other spiritual beings from hallucinations and delusions?

Here are a few rules I have established that may be useful for other people who struggle with this sort of thing:

~ gods do not take physical forms. they will not appear in your room or in your mirror. they also will not squeeze your hand or call your name

~ gods communicate using their specific symbols and signs (example: i notice the sun in my eyes a lot more often when apollo has something to say)

~ other than that, you should only communicate with your gods through some form of divination that you trust, whether that be tarot, dreams, throwing stones, runes, or anything else you like. be careful with scrying if you have visual hallucinations.

~ on the note of prayer, if your thoughts are sometimes so loud that you can't think properly, you may want to get a prayer journal. either a physical notebook, scraps of paper, your notes app, a google doc, or even a discord server with nobody in it. i especially like that method because it is private, you can access it anywhere on any device, you can make a channel for each deity, and you can look back on your past prayers.

~ your gods will not hurt you. they do not want to hurt or punish you. they will not leave bruises on your body or try to make you feel afraid or paranoid. if you are seeing things in the corners of your vision or feeling watched, it is not them. i recommend talking to a doctor/psychologist first, then maybe using some protection magic as an extra measure if it will make you feel more comfortable.

No gender or sexuality is inherently more magical than any other

While someone may incorporate their gender or sexuality into their own witchcraft, that is a personal choice

Pushing one’s own personal ideas of gender and sexuality in witchcraft onto others is a harmful, wether you’re pushing the idea that gender or sexuality is important to witchcraft or not

People’s experiences and beliefs in witchcraft are personal and developed by their own life, everyone’s practice will look different.

Enforcing personal values onto others is generally a shitty thing to do

Divine feminine is very often a terf dog whistle but some innocuous forms of alchemy and energy work do include masculine and feminine as properties

If you want you can mix whatever amounts of masculine and feminine energies in a pot, add vegetables, garlic, herbs, and a meat or meat substitute and make gender soup

Gender and expression or lack thereof are important parts of many peoples lives, and including them on one’s craft can be important as well

I think I’m restating some of the same points