Something wicked this way comes

Yes, even if you have trauma.

And no, you don't get to claim the suffering of people who died during witch trials because those were not secret pagan witches.

Also, learn your history. Not everything was originally a pagan sex festival, the Wheel of the Year is a recent invention, Christians did not steal our holidays, and cultural development doesn't happen in a vacuum.

This is not great.

because ok, nazis use it, that's pretty bad, but it's like saying "hey, nazis started wearing blankets thrown over their shoulders so everyone who covers themselves with a blanket is actually a nazi or supports them".

nazis have stolen a lot of symbolism over time, even swastika was stolen so you see it embroidered in old photos of table cloths and shirts and coats etc etc long before 19th century even started. and frankly why should we give our symbols away just because some assholes use it?

that rune also reminds me of one of our symbols which means a birch tree or a gate. a 'door' so to speak.

so when i listened to three minutes of some rando whining about "but nazis" with literally NO other argument except that 'nazis use this', all I can think of is:

What does the Othala/Odal rune mean? It means heritage, family.

Now if you know anything about neo-Nazi and white supremacists in Heathen spaces, your red flags all just went up. Because, y'know, dog whistles.

Let's look at the history of the usage of the rune. Now yes, there are two versions of this rune. A version with serifs and a version without serifs. Now, if you see the serifed version -- it's 100% Nazis. Literally that version has only been used by Nazis. The version without serifs, which can be found in the Elder Futhark (but interestingly not the Younger Futhark), can be used in context without association with white supremacists.

But we're not talking about it in context of just using runes.

We're talking about its use as a symbol on its -- something that almost exclusively has been done by white supremacists.

Dog whistles like the Othala/Odal rune because folks like you try to make excuses for their use. That's what lets Nazis in the door.

that said, i see you either completely missed or aren't willing to see the point here - the ancient rune isn't to blame for modern nazis being evil and misusing its meaning. i refuse to believe than a rune that has existed for millenia has "only ever been used by nazis". what about the people who originally used them? were they all nazis, millenia ago?

i concede that nowadays neo-nazi use it to identify themselves. hitler also stole and modified the 'mara' rune (death and rebirth, winter) (might be wrong here, maybe he stole it from another system, don't remember, but it was definitely stolen). that doesn't make the rune evil, only hitler is to blame.

and i'm sick and tired of assholes stealing our symbols. why should I back down and not use our symbol, because someone stole it and uses it to promote a sick ideology? if they do, i'd rather use it twice as often in the original meaning, and beat up every nazi that dares to use it.

btw, if nazis start to wear caps, will you stop wearing yours? wonder what you'd do - ten, twenty years from now, when some teenager finds your old videos and accuses you of following or emulating a neo-nazi leader because he wears one just like yours...

If you want to have a conversation about reclamation, that's fine. But just refusing to understand the danger and consequences some actions have because "you just don't wanna" isn't helping anyone.

the thread might have a point aboit other people's assumptions but you still concede ground to nazis and allow them to steal whatever they want from you. if they steal your bike and run over some kids with it, will you just go "oh i never really liked bikes anyway" and leave them to it?

also, i can see you're not willing to discuss the actual issue which i raised twice now - so i guess there's no point in arguing with you further.

The use of that specific rune on its own was almost always used as their symbol. No one has surrendered its use in the context of runes modern heathens have been using, and in historical context it was just a letter, you absolute bag of overcooked turnips. We aren't surrendering anything, you underpaid cornstalk peddler. You're choosing to miss the point it seems, you five pound tub of yesterday's ham.

You are the cover the Nazis use with their dog whistles.

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

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

When I was trying to archive YahooGroups before they dissolved, I went looking for pagan groups. Found some of the dark-edgy ones. Found the Joy of Satan cluster - they had more than a dozen groups.

Teens for Satan. Black Power Satanism. The Satanic Goth Club. Joy of Satan Astrology. Radio Free Satan. UK Satanism. Hells Army 666. More.

Some of them had descriptions that just sounded like "we like POWER and we take no shit from THE MAN." Which, um, okay.

Until you got to the "files" section of the archives. Elements of Satanic rituals, check. Sacred Tree Runes, check. Alchemical Dictionary, check. Tibetan Book Of etc. etc. Meditation Trance etc. check.

... and most of them had a folder called "Know Your Enemy," which is where they put the hitlerism, the Nazi propaganda, the "how to identify a Jew" documents, the "holohoax" ebooks.

I know that, you know that, but when it looks like supernatural things you look to supernatural solutions and you might not be thinking clearly.

Drafty house. Uneven floors. Pressure changes.

Toxic mold syndrome can mimic depression and anxiety, cause listlessness. Guess what extreme anxiety can do. It can mess with your head. It can mess with your memory.

If you have scratches on you and you dont know where they came from, see a doctor. See a doctor. I dont know why you wont see a doctor. They can tell you if it comes from an animal. They can tell you if you're suffering from a mold allergy. They can tell you if you're experiencing side effects of gas exposure.

I wholeheartedly believe in ghosts. Absolutley not debating that ghosts and spirits and whatever you think you're seeing. I am posting this in a pagan facebook group. I 100% believe in ghosts.

I also believe in carbon monoxide.

This is why we need to stress, and I mean really stress, that mundane explanations are just as important as superstitious ones, and why I genuinely worry about our echo chambers.

Yes, I know we all want to believe that the feelings of dread may be coming from an evil presence in the room, but also certain hvac systems hum at a frequency that causes confusion and anxiety.

Yes it seems reasonable that your doors open and close on their own because granmas ghost is still hanging around. But please consider that the foundation of your house might be shifting.

Yes, you might feel a sense that something bad is going to happen, but that can also be generalized anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder.

And being in a circle that refuses to accept that mundane explanations for supernatural problems feeds and triggers delusions. The pagan/witchcraft community is extremely neuro diverse, and these delusions can trigger spirals and put people in very... very bad places.

Please accept mundane explanations.

You are not 'crazy' for seeing ghosts and your house is not dirty for needing an inspection.

If you get an inspection and it comes back clean, you can feel smug about being right. If you dont get an inspection and you're wrong you and your children could get sick and die.

What white people hear: never use sage ever, don’t ever buy it, don’t own it, don’t even look at it.

Look, y’all. There’s a couple of facets to my talk today.

1) Yes! You can buy sage! You really, truly can! Buy it from either native sellers (go to a powwow! Eat our food, buy our stuff, watch some dancing!) Or buy it from a seller who sources the sage from native people. Pick one. And no, buying it from 5 Below doesn’t count.

2) you CANNOT smudge. This isn’t just you “shouldn’t”— this is a YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF SMUDGING. Waving a sage stick around your doorways IS NOT SMUDGING. It is smoke clensing. Smudging, depending on the tradition and tribe, could easily have dancing and drums involved. You, as a white person, do not have the cultural BACKGROUND to even know how it works. At all. Period.

3) please, for FUCKS SAKE, stop making posts here on tumblr where you tell other white people about cultural appropriation and what they can and cannot do. Please stop, your license has been revoked because none of you bother to get the facts right. We native people are FULLY CAPABLE OF DOING IT OURSELVES. Consider instead: a) reblogging our posts where we talk about it! We’re here! We have made posts!! b) Making a post that states what we said and then LINKS BACK TO US. Screenshot with a link if you must. Stop centering your own voices in these conversations. You are already centered in everything, stop centering yourselves in a native space.

I’m tired of this nonsense, y’all.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk ™

——

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How you see you as a witch:

What you are actually like as a witch:

The metaphor goes even further. Addicts are still people, they deserve support and assistance. People don’t get addicted to something because they’re stupid or didn’t try hard enough. Terrible circumstances simply reached a point where being high was less painful than being sober. Nobody is immune to that.

Cult members are still people, they deserve support and assistance. People don’t get into cults because they’re stupid or didn’t look for red flags. Terrible life circumstances make one vulnerable to cult recruitment tactics, these groups are predatory, and actively seek to use from vulnerable people. Nobody is immune to that.

It's a complete fabrication. Those accused of witchcraft were not witches and would never have self-identified as witches.

You are not the granddaughters of the witches they didn't burn because they were not witches in the first place. Can we also stop perpetuating the disproved Margaret Murray myth of the unbroken line of a pre-Christian witch cult? It's a fabrication based on poor scholarship.

People who were accused of witchcraft were not all women, some were men, some probably fell outside the perceived gender binary which raised suspicion. People were accused of witchcraft for political reason like jealousy, owning property someone wanted, a woman being able to read (or reading the wrong prayer book during Catholic/Protestant conflict) being an older widowed women with a cat. There's also a lot of documented history of Jewish people being accused of witchcraft.

Being accused of witchcraft does not make someone a witch.

I've said this over and over. Just because you think something looks like witchcraft, doesn't mean it is witchcraft. Just because it looks like a magical practice, doesn't mean it is witchcraft. Calling people witches who did not self-identify as witches got a lot of people killed. Don't call people witches who are not witches.

That's not to say that Christians at the time and in places of power didn't believe in witches, because they most certainly did. They were just highly superstitions and suspicious of anything that didn't fit into their highly structured world view.