let's queer the concept of religion with mama @conreligion-haver - Tumblr Blog

sol conreligion-haver • 27 • ey/em/eir

spirituality blog of a household tradition builder

Note: I'm sex and kink repulsed. If you're following from a heavily NSFW blog I'll probably not follow you back. If you call me a puritan or say I'm sanitizing your spaces by existing in proximity to them I'll fucking hex you. I am not going to judge you for what you're into. Please return the favor by not forcing me to engage with things that harm me. If consent is as important to you as you say it is then fucking act like it.

Hey Sol, can you explain those words in your about?

Goddess-centric pagan: My work and worship center feminine godforms. This is not out of belief in some tiktokified "divine feminine" whose magical uterus is built for baking and housework — as an intersectional anarcha-feminist, that concept is ontologically evil. I am a sapphic oriented aroace and connect my preference for centering goddesses in my worship to my orientation. I've invented the term sapphotheism for this. My work takes inspiration from other goddess traditions, but I don't consider myself to belong to any of them.

Conreligion: You know what a conlang is? Awesome. Imagine that idea, but applied to religion. Yep. I made my own. I know, I know, you're just raring to send me an anon about how terrible I am for doing that. Well, the good news is that no one's forcing you to look at it, engage with its ideas, or adopt it, and in fact, my partner and I would really rather you not do the last thing for the foreseeable future as we've basically just started building the thing. Like seriously. It has no name yet, even. Anything I say about it here should be taken as a devblog, not evangelism. If you take it as evangelism despite being repeatedly told it's not, that's both your fault and your problem.

(I'm sorry for being so rude in the last paragraph, by the way. It's just that there's a lot of stigma around doing what I'm doing and I've been very traumatized by it. I sincerely just want to figure out the best way for me personally to live, and live that way. I don't have any illusions it'll ever get bigger than that, and right now I don't want it to.)

Okay, so, what else influences your path?

Antifascist Norse Heathenry: I found my way to Heathenry in general and the Fellowship of Fire and Ice more specifically in July of 2024, at the beginning of a highly difficult period of my life, and I am grateful to them for being there for me during that time. I learned a lot about connecting to the land and forming reciprocal relationships with spirits during my time in that community, and even though I left due to administrative issues I won't go into, I still consider my time there to have been productive and mostly positive.

Pop Culture Paganism: I don't use this term anymore because it's become clear that what I was doing under that name was not what the rest of the community that uses that name was doing, but it was where I got my start. Nowadays, I define myself more as a Patchwork Bard, a term my partner and I created to define a type of spiritual engagement with art that prioritizes drawing connections between recurring symbols, archetypes, and entities to better understand both the metaphysical and psychosocial worlds we inhabit.

Nonhumanity: I am not, on a fundamental and spiritual level, human. In addition, I believe I have lived several lives in universes outside of this one, some of which you may recognize. These two things are related but not the same. For the purposes of this blog I will define myself primarily as a light elemental — not in the fluffy new-agey "lightworker" way or the subtly racist "light = goodness" way, but in the sense of light as expulsion of energy.

Cool, anything else?

Not really, but if you're a queer (especially aroace and nonbinary) pagan who wants friends and is cool with the general kind of person I am, feel free to give me a follow. Maybe we'll vibe. If we don't, no hard feelings. Also if you're another conreligion enjoyer hmu and we can infodump at each other with no expectations.

#pinned post #conreligion #pagan #goddess spirituality

lokisspanana

I hear analysis that Loki betrayed the gods in the mythology stories but i read it as sometimes what happens when you build a community and don’t watch out for everyone.

In all myths where Loki betrays the gods. Loki is first kidnapped and tortured into an oath. He keeps his word on forced oath and in return help fix the problem he caused.

The gods failed Loki because he went missing, no one noticed or rescued Loki before he’s forced into an agreement. Loki is left to be tortured. They were quick to get their apples and hammers however. Cared more about golden hair than a person in their group.

I do wonder if Loki snapping at the gods is result of someone who while in a community was not treated as equal, was not cared for, often abandoned to violence. The rebellion that happens when someone is not treated as equals.

#yeah

Every alternative spirituality discord is either called some shit like The Cozy Cottage (14+) and moderated by some high schooler who will curse you for saying you aren't a huge fan of Taylor Swift's music or it's called smth like 𝔏𝔦𝔩𝔦𝔱𝔥'𝔰 𝔓𝔬𝔦𝔰𝔬𝔫 𝔊𝔞𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔫 and everyone in it acts like a Vampire: The Masquerade player character came to life even while they're pissing and moaning about "LARPers" ruining Teh Craft™. Now and then you'll find one called, like, The Book of Abramelin or some shit and it'll be run by one guy who likes Crowley too much and is lowkey trying to start a cult. All of these will have otherkin and non-traumagenic systems at the end of a very long "not allowed" list that also includes Nazis, child molesters, and people who send unsolicited dick pics, except maybe the one run by the Crowley fanboy who is all three of those things and mercifully doesn't know that otherkinity or plurality exist (no one tell him). I need to find more occulty discords run by psychiatrized queer people with understandings of reality that are as strange as mine. I'm starting to think nowhere else is safe

offshoreoilrig

istheveilbetweenworldsthinrightnow.com

Veil status: normal

Tomorrow's veil: normal to thick

Download the app for convenient, add-free updates on the invisible barrier separating the material realm from the astral plane

laluna-xviii

i think it’s very important to be at least be a little playful with your own religion. feeling comfortable and safe enough in your own faith to have fun with it is genuinely so, so important to me. it takes some of the pressure off of always ‘getting it right’. and besides! i like to think that the gods really do appreciate the trust we place in them when we allow ourselves to be truly ourselves, with all our vulnerabilities and flaws, in their presence…

don’t get me wrong; reverent, formal, ceremonial, worship is beautiful!! but so is being able to drop all formalities and just talk to your deities… telling them everything that’s on your mind when you need to, or maybe when you’re just too overwhelmed to worship more traditionally. it’s about being able to pray formal hymns and prayers at their alter (if that’s something that feels right for you), but also feeling comfortable enough to simply reach out and talk to them as if they were an old friend or family member that loves you dearly.

cultivating balance is so important for maintaining a healthy relationship with your religion! so just make sure you don’t forget to actually enjoy your practices. at the end of the day, worship should feel fulfilling, whatever that means for you.

The "Wheel of the Year" was a form of esoteric climate change denialism practiced by majority-white neopagans during the fall of the Imperial World. Scholars believe it began as a mass attempt to manifest the four classical seasons as they were in the pre-Christian British Isles, but ultimately, they accomplished little more than sustaining a collective illusion that the seasons described in that model still existed in any meaningful form.

doubleca5t

The only difference between a chud religion and a woke religion is whether or not said religion has the weight of the government or other powerful institutions behind it. No matter how beautiful and egalitarian and morally aspirational the original texts of a religion are, there is absolutely nothing stopping institutional actors from twisting those words to defend the powerful and demonize the powerless. Bitches in the U.S. will be like "Buddhism is such a peaceful religion, you never hear about Buddhist extremists" yeah of course YOU haven't heard of Buddhist extremists you couldn't find Myanmar on a map if your life depended on ir

#this is why i have a conreligion #i actively do not want institutional power

sitting-1n-silence

I think people need to think more critically about the idea that they're no authorities on witchcraft. Because within living traditions, there are definitely people who have more authority than you, and these people set a tone for their houses/spiritual families.

You might not like it, but there is a kinda of hierarchy within many living magical traditions. These hierarchies exist for a reason and play an important role in receiving spiritual permissions

windvexer

I feel like it's a pendulum swing between toxic extremes that leaves no room for functional traditions.

People who are solitary practitioners with only online contact with others, and who are probably practicing eclectic NeoWicca without realizing it (no shade in my game, but things are what they are), probably don't have exposure to ""actual"" traditions that you can't just look up on MysticSymbolism.com and begin plugging in spells from Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells. I don't mean to denigrate any of that. I just feel that contextually, it's how a lot of people currently interact with witchcraft culture.

In this context, there is no hierarchy because everyone is solitary. Just talking about your practice with other people doesn't make you non-solitary, IMO. And when these witches don't interact with (or believe in) spirits or gods, I feel like the core practice left over has to be individualism, which is how you get posts like "people literally just make correspondences up, there's no basis for them" or "witchcraft has no rules, do whatever you want" or "anyone claiming to be a teacher is a red flag! Nobody can ever tell you how witchcraft works or how to construct your path."

I remember an ask someone got a little while ago, along the lines of asking if it's "ick" to want a mentor in witchcraft!! This is the chemical tank into which hierarchy, teaching, and mentorship has been dipped.

But I also believe that this unhelpful, and IMO passively absurd approach to individualism in witchcraft, doesn't exist in its own vacuum. I feel it's in response to groups that exist IRL and especially online, who are at the other end of the pendulum swing: that there is only one true way to do magic, or only one true way to do witchcraft, and this 27yo has figured it out and will gently-but-firmly ensure that you get your silly little ideas of contacting your "spirit guides" out of your head unless you do it through their rituals they channeled from their 17 past lives as a high priestess of Mesperyian, also your ancestors have a special message only they can tell you. (This is only one of the most recent sort of iterations... it's been happening forever)

I feel that the common discussion on authority, mentorship, teaching, and heritage is held static by these two poles.

Maybe I haven't had all my coffee yet this morning but I do sometimes suspect that some practitioners are not aware that people having parallel paths that involve the same teachings, initiations, spirits, actually exist - and that within those groups, some people are indeed given or required to take various positions of leadership and authority. And that this happens not because it's the will of a power-hungry initiate, but because the default and most pure state of practice is not "solitary."

twunkish-cleric

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think the ideal religious practice is one that makes you act better in your everyday life. Knowing all of the scriptures or epithets is good, but you should really be focusing on bettering yourself as a part of your religion.

Knowing all of Jesus' parables is nice, but do you actually stand up for your community? Do you love your neighbor? Understanding the metaphysics of your pagan practice is good, but do you go out of your way to avoid littering? Do you pick up litter in your local natural area? Are you kind to the earth? It's cool that you can list all of Zeus' epithets but do you practice Xenia? Do you donate to important causes? Do you set boundaries for yourself but also give whenever you can?

Gods don't just enter our lives to teach us about themselves, but to teach us how to be better people. Incorporating good deeds and genuine kindness into your religious practice isn't just nice, it's kind of the whole point

smarmykemetic

"In envisioning the future in terms of the past, the pagan effort to revive or reconstruct premodern religious traditions not infrequently runs into ethnocentric considerations probably unknown to premodern man. Are techniques developed in Sioux spirituality open for everyone to explore or should this be considered 'religious theft'? May a modern Asatruer [sic] look to Wicca or ancient Egypt for inspiration or should he or she uphold a symbolic purity of tradition? . . . Such issues have not found universally accepted answers but are at the heart of perennial debate and conflict in pagan worlds. While many pagans consider any ancient tradition to be open to anyone irrespective of race or ethnicity, many heathens (who form the subject of this book) claim tradition on the basis of ethnicity or race. Racist pagans tend to biologize spirituality. Somehow, gods and goddesses are encoded in the DNA of the descendants of the ancients. Blood is thought to carry memories of the ancient past, and divinities are believed to be genetically engraved upon or to reverberate from deep down within the abyss of the collective subconscious or "folk soul" of a given ethnic or racial group. Consciously or unconsciously informed by centuries of racist discourse, adherents of this philosophy often find mixed ancestry problematic, of course. . .Mixed blood purportedly mixes up the memories of the ancient past and the engraved divinities of different heathn traditions, resulting in spiritual confusion. . . Pagans of this conviction tend to dismiss as New Age all pagan belief systems based on more than one heathen tradition. Despite racial pagans' claims of clear ethnic and/or racial foundations for their traditions, there are in fact more inventions of traditions, ethnicities, and races than most racial pagan activists acknowledge. Such inventions often become integral to the articulation of identity in the cultural economy of globalized reality and/or get inserted into the context of a neonationalist project aiming at political self-determination for the racial or ethnic community imagined."

Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism by Mattias Gardell

ginger-hex

Candle reading made easy

Hey loves, I don’t want to make this post suuuper long so imagine me blowing a welcome kiss to all of you and let’s get started…

The generic practice of reading fire is called pyromancy.

We can break a candle reading session down to 3 main parts:

Observation (flame watching)

Gathering & understanding (decoding fire’s messages)

Final question & Goodbye (ask if there’s anything else you should know before leaving, thank and salute fire/salamanders)

During the observation phase, watch for:

Length of the flame 1-2 min to know WHEN-the timing = PAST

Shape of the flame 2-3 min to know WHAT-the actual matter = PRESENT

Direction & behavior of the flame 3-4 min to know HOW-the true nature of it = hints at the FUTURE (see where the fire is pointing to know what type of matter it is; concentrate on the opposite direction telling you how to counteract to solve or banish whatever it might be; it also indicates what elemental energy is strongly supporting/protecting you in taking action as well as in related spellwork)

Presence/Absence of Smoke 2-3 min to understand the SOURCE of your awareness

*Keep a compass handy!

Salamanders/fire will try to communicate with you as soon as you light the fire/candle so pay attention from the very beginning. Fire energy is impulsive, blunt, active, carefree and wild. This type of divination detects negativity like WOW because it easily speaks the brutally honest truth regardless of how you feel or what’s happening. It brings up issues that we refuse to deal with. Again, it’s pure blunt energy. Because of its wild nature, fire will also charge us with optimism and explosive determination to overcome problems and bad news: typically after pyromancy we feel motivated and “ready to go”.

Length

Long-extra long: something has been bothering you for a very long time now (trust your intuition, probably for years) which you never actively faced; you’ve been quiet for too long; unsolved problems from the past are challenging your patience; relevant stuff that had to be cleared much earlier

Medium: Something that has been lurking in the back of your mind for 1-3 months, a plan or an idea that could change/shake your life but is not currently a priority to you; it might be something you heard from another person or a vague thought

Short: something intense that happened within the last couple days, a very recent thing is bothering you and has almost caught you by surprise; unexpected news from day to day, a new sudden event that physically or emotionally shook you

Shape

Double: Two things that were generated consequentially or have a common link, two entities/people united by a common theme

Super-thin line: Something you felt or suspected but never had proof of evidence about, a subtle suspicion, a doubt, an insinuation; a sneaky or secretive individual

Regular: Something/someone that you accept and is part of your routine, your own mindset, something very close and not disturbing; a solid milestone in your daily life

Round: One thing in particular that constantly “fills you up”, makes you feel complete, full, exploding or either extremely delighted; a person who represses/suppresses you, someone ghosting you on purpose just to humble you or to make you feel lesser

Behavior

Steady: things are happening in the background, far from the “public eye” and without you even realizing; you - and people around you- are calm, clueless, peaceful and the surroundings seem safe; good vibes are in the air but definitely keep your eyes open and intuition awake

Shaky, wiggly: things are visibly happening before your eyes, making you confused, uneasy or giving you mood swings; anxiety; you are able to feel bad vibes around you: take control of the situation and protect yourself Weak, petite & almost extinguished: matter/person X is now annihilating you before the eyes of everybody, but still no one defends you; seek help in others, protect yourself and take action to win this ripe, suffered battle

Directions

EAST: AIR - communication, mindset, mental/spoken/written things, logical reasoning, ideas, plans, spring, morning, sunrise, masculine… WEST: WATER - emotions, unconscious, gut feelings, passivity, illogical reasoning, intangibility, blue, flow, moisture, fall, sunset, feminine… SOUTH: FIRE - action, guidance, strength, activity, blood, warmth, creativity, masculine, red, impulse, summer, noon… NORTH: EARTH - stability, firmness, art, finance, grounding, material things, tangibility, stillness, death, birth, winter, midnight, green… (+ ALL YOUR PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE about the elements and how they can be interpreted, what meanings they have in our lives and their specific correspondences)

Smoke

Absence: you are the source of awareness: your body and soul have sent you signals about matter X and you had an inner awakening which led you to this reading

Presence: someone else enlightened you with their words and made you fully aware of matter X; something popped up as an obvious proof that you weren’t expecting to find: this has awakened your inquisitive mind and led it to this reading.

Hopefully you’ll get inspired by this post and learn something useful to spice up your divination practice:) I thank you so much for reading, xox msmoonfire

littlewildmother

Studies show that engaging in ritualized behavior significantly improves outcomes on measures of grief and feelings of control, even when the person participating in the ritual has little or no belief in the ritual’s power. Just a reminder for no one in particular.

littlewildmother

Research has revealed that, while rituals are universal across human cultures, the content and actions of those rituals vary widely even when they have the same intended purpose. This suggests that it is not the actions that matter, but that you are taking any action at all and naming it ritual. It can be an elaborate ritual with dozens of moving parts and participants, or it can be as simple as lighting a candle alone with the intent to remember someone.

The healing is in the doing.

json-derulo

OP did not link to a source, but the studies I have been able to find on this subject are consistent with the claims in the post:

Mourning rituals impact grief outcomes in East and Southeast Asia: A mixed-methods review - Le et al, 2025

Rituals Alleviate Grieving for Loved Ones, Lovers, And Lotteries - Norton and Gino, 2013

How funerals mediate the psycho-social impact of grief: Qualitative analysis of open-ended responses to a national survey in Japan - Becker et. al, 2022

loreleisteeth

"your god isnt real" gets honestly so funny when we start talking about polytheist animistic religion, like. i can bask in the sun, i can gaze at the moon and the stars, i can drink and party, i can make love, i can feel the rain on my flesh and the wind in my hair and the earth between my toes,

sure i might believe things about those things that you dont, but those things ARE real and they ARE what im worshipping at the root of it, you can feel what im feeling just like. go touch grass,

"it doesnt feel magical or mystical, it just feels like im standing on dirt" yep. thats the divinity in it, it IS just the earth and the sun and the sky and the bonds and joy between people, those things literally give you life. they keep you going and pushing forward, keep you happy and healthy, they also bring you hardships and horrors, we are at the mercy of nature, all im doing by practicing my religion is appreciating the world i live in,

Ra travels through the sky at day, keeping us safe by lighting our world and fighting Apep, he gets swallowed by Nut every night, where she keeps him safe and veils the sky, staring down in yearning at her brother Geb, only to give birth to Ra again the next day,

so im thankful, im thankful theres a sun in the sky to light up our world, im glad theres a sky to hold the sun and im glad theres an earth to look up at the sky,

Kemetic framework doesnt work for everyone, everyone sees nature differently, different cultures developed different associations, but nature is definitely real, and its okay to have a deeply spiritual bond with it, or a gifting cycle, or a magical practice,

so if youre fixating on the "but its not a literal allpowerful dude in the sky with omnipresence whos literally doing all of these things and communicating with u and giving u miracles", then all i can say is get your head out of the bible, youve got the wrong idea entirely about how varied religion and spirituality can be, which to be clear is okay, so long as youre aware your perception of religion as a whole might need some work if ur gonna speak on it as a whole,

mizzticism

Horticulture really is the harmony of all elements, whether you subscribe to the Fire Water Air Earth elements or wuxing (Water, Earth, Fire, Metal, Wood)

The process of photosynthesis is the Wood (plants in general) in Earth combining Water and carbon dioxide (Air) to produces oxygen (Air) and energy using the light of Fire (Sun) and we use tools made from Metal to do it more.

I wrote a lil poetic chant to go with it

불과 물이 흙에서 만나

밥이 되고 숨이 되니

쇠 들고 땅을 일궈 풍요를 얻으라

And an English version with the other element systems if any other witch wants to use it!

Fire meets Earth, Water joins Air

Give us breath, give us bread

prosperous be, who work the land

may the cycle never end