As it often happens, I've chewed on an idea long enough that I feel the need to put words to it. When I returned to college during COVID, I dove headfirst into a degree in comparative religion because weaponizing my special interests always ends up working out for me and I enjoy the hell out of it. If you don't think that's interesting this is your warning to scroll. XD
It's no secret that I'm one of those witch bitch types and I often find myself drifting into online witchy/pagan spaces. After a few years in the trenches of pagan Tumblr in the 2010s, I have little interest in online community as it pertains to spirituality, but I am an interested observer. And I think this bears saying.
I am not here to judge, as I am admittedly, going to describe myself as well, but you may want to buckle in your feelings for this.
There is a common character that we have all met. She is white, she either grew up conservative Christian or Evangelical, maybe she had a conservative marriage once. But no longer, now she is healing herself and finding new meaning in a spiritual practice that appeals to her in the form of goddess or earth worship., maybe she has even delved into Reconstructionist pagan practices and is trying to learn from the origins of that spirituality. That's all well and good, but alternative spiritual practices are mostly self-driven- and the only religious experience/context she has ever experienced has been under the rule of Christianity- which itself has been an active vehicle for imperialism, racism, and patriarchal abuse for over a thousand years.
One of the largest criticisms of pagan and occult practitioners is the rampant appropriation of closed spiritual traditions, most notably closed spiritual traditions from BIPOC cultures and communities- I'm looking at you Gardner, Kaldera, and Conway. Hell, we can throw Buckland in there as well. After years interacting and then studying paganism, one of the largest problems I often with the white pagan community as a whole is a screaming demand to be allowed access to, or a "spiritual calling" to a closed or inherited practice that they have no business even looking at. (Flowers, I'm looking at you too but there's a special rant for you, you Nazi.)
Exvangelicals flock to paganism but they often do so in a reactionary way, and don't do the work to deconstruct the colonization, the damage, the values, the racism, the patriarchal values- then all that has been achieved is an orthopraxic swapout, and the harm continues. Putting it frankly, it's colonizer behavior gone unchecked for too long and too couched in being fragile about a persons religious practice, especially when unpacking past religious trauma.
And while I'm not known for putting too fine of a point to anything, I think that deconstruction is something that we could all benefit from being less precious about. It's a disservice to everyone when we choose the lazy route of just joining into another mode of existence without learning a thing about where it came from, its history, the cultural context and where exactly we (especially as white practitioners, but definitely white Exvangelicals) need to sit. Because more often than not, it's in the back of the room with our mouth shut, listening and then making responsible choices for how we move in the future
pixelskylines
baratheonpilled
2087
gummygunk
ellievsbear
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
izzy806
romaincrisis
