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All I care about is art of Fat Women 🌹💘

credits:

He reins far and wide

Across the country side

He's the Master of Seasons

Lord of the Harvest

King of Peace

He rules the land with honor and glory

All people bow to his feet

He's a king of plenty

O our Freyr

So wise and powerful

Beautiful to behold

Son of Njorthr

Brother of Freya

Husband of Gertha

Rider of Gullenbursti Boar

Sailor of Skithblathnir the best of ships

King of the Forest and Fields

Peace Keeper

Lord of the Phallus

O Freyr

O Freyr

O Freyr

You bring us the bounties of the land

You are the reason for our seasons

O Bringer of Sunshine

Lord of Rain

My King of the Land

Long shall you rein

(from the anon asking for resources about moving on from an evangelical upbringing.) I know it might sound like a "just google it" question, bc there are a small handful of books on the topic, but I'm asking you since you have an outside perspective, and a level head that I've always appreciated from following you. And it sounded like you've been having some in-depth convos about evangelicals lately, so it just seemed worth asking?

Oh don't you worry. I've tried "just googling it" myself and there's really nothing out there.

Because I didn't grow up with religion myself, I don't personally have a lot of hard-hitting resources, but I'm sure @the-illuminated-witch does. I know she recommends the book Recovering Agency: Lifting the Veil of Mormon Mind Control as a resource that could potentially help a lot of ex-Christians, Mormon or otherwise. She also wrote a really tidy post on coping with religious trauma which you can find here.

I do know from experience that deprogramming and reprogramming the mind is not a simple task. As much as we can can logically reject the misinformation we were raised on, it's oftentimes still part of the brain's basic "operating system" and therefor not something we just "will" ourselves out of. Trying to do so, or trying to simply repress the trauma, is only going to make it come out in subconscious ways.

This is where hard-hitting psychotherapy comes in. And I don't mean just a regular talk therapy, but therapy that specializes in deprogramming/reprogramming. I've had good experiences with EMDR therapy, something my ex-Evangelical friend introduced me to.

It's a future goal of mine to compile resources for coping with religious trauma in a blog post, especially since it's an experience many pagans struggle with. But as of right now, this is all I really have to offer.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot out there when it comes to resources for healing from religious trauma. What books I have been able to find on the subject are normally first-person accounts written by victims, which can be helpful in some ways, but because they’re more autobiographical they don’t contain a lot of resources for actually doing the work. Of these first-person accounts, the one I found most moving and relatable was Girl at the End of the World by Elizabeth Esther. 

There are some books written for those leaving more extremist sects, like the Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses. As Zan mentioned, Recovering Agency is the best I’ve found in that department so far. Not everything in these books will be applicable to people whose trauma comes from more mainstream evangelical churches, but the basic techniques for deprogramming and moving on are pretty universal, and Lindsey’s book specifically addresses a lot of the things Mormonism shares with evangelical Christianity like purity culture, misogyny, end-of-the-world prophecies, prosperity gospel, etc.

It can be helpful to learn about cult thought control techniques, which are often employed by these high-demand churches to control members. Steven Hassan’s work is very easy to understand, and his BITE model has been really helpful for me -- it’s also the metric I use now for groups I’m considering joining.

If you’re like me and process trauma best by intellectualizing it, analyzing it, and then working through it, it might be worth your time to read about the history of evangelical Christianity -- sort of a “how did we get here?” approach to help you understand the larger cultural patterns at work. For me, this has been really helpful, as being able to track how Christianity has changed over time helped me realize that there is no “One True Church” and that by leaving I wasn’t turning my back on the truth. I’m currently reading Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, which does an excellent job of mapping out the movements that culminated in the MAGA cult. Also on my TBR for this summer, although I haven’t read it yet, is The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby, which examines the role of white evangelicals in working against racial justice. 

As for actually healing from trauma, my therapist and I have been approaching it much as we would any other source of trauma. (My therapist uses a mix of CBT and DBT, which works really well for me because of CBT’s focus on undoing irrational thought patterns paired with the more hands-on approach of DBT. Find what methodology works for you.) As a victim of child abuse, the way my childhood trauma has affected my life is not dissimilar from the affects of my time as a Mormon. Of course, there’s some added layers to religious abuse since my trauma was perpetrated by an entire congregation instead of a single person, so it’s a bit more complicated. At the end of the day though, a lot of the techniques I’ve used to help recover from living with an abusive parent have also been helpful in recovering from being part of an abusive religion.

Every witch....every single one....goes through this. We all have times where we can manage a regular practice and everything seems to be going smoothly. And then life will intervene, illness will happen, things will be busy with work or school, or maybe our mental health won't be in the best place, and witchcraft will fall by the wayside for a time.

Try returning to the things that originally inspired you. Make a witchy playlist for your down days. Wear that special jewelry or that cute witchy outfit without waiting for a special occasion. Weave witchcraft into your everyday routine so that you can do it with little to no effort. Find magic in small things as well as big ones.

The important thing to remember is to be patient and be kind to yourself. Try not to get frustrated or discouraged, and whatever you do, don't give up. Things will turn around again. They always do.

And you are STILL a witch, no matter if you practice every single day or just intermittently when you can manage it. Everyone has to take breaks now and again. The craft will be waiting when you find your groove again.

I don't veil myself, but the friends I know who do it do so whenever they're doing anything ritualistic or magical. Some of them also just will wear veils around the house just to feel like their clairsenses are more in-tune.

And yeah men can veil if they want!

For most pagans, veiling isn’t a modesty thing -- so you don’t need to worry about keeping your hair completely hidden or anything like that. In Religio Romana, what matters is that the crown of the head is covered. As you might imagine, that leaves a lot of options.

My partner (who is a man) and I (woman) both veil the same way by covering the tops of our heads with a scarf or bandanna, then tying it at the nape of the neck. It ends up just looking like we’re serious about cottagecore fashion lol. Here’s what that looks like (not my photo, but I wanted to show what it looks like from the side/back):