And still quiet. But I’m still here. I also still get letters and other things, I appreciate still getting those. Still doing MultiMind Publishing, it takes a lot of my time. But I still see things on the BW side.

I have seen a big major difference in Black Paganism since I have started this blog and definitely since I have become Pagan over 20 years ago. It’s really nice to see that there are more people in the Pagan faiths. And that they are getting recognized more and not as “hiiisssss, evil bad thing to be the straw villain of Christianity”. That includes cultural closed practices such as hoodoo/hoodun and voodoo/voudon. Even in popular films such as Sinners. Very nice, very nice indeed.

But y’all need to not believe every air that you breathe, social media is extremely different than 16 years ago. I do see a major lean to fluffy bunny ideas getting touted as general fact or as the standard. People who are no flavor of Pagan – but sure are major flavors of bigot, both outward and of the internalized variety – hijack major parts of the faith, mess it up big time to fill in the broken pieces and sell it to you with a hefty price tag. Or to get you comfortable to hate others in a way that systemically benefits them. Wanting to learn psionics (which isn’t Paganism but gets lumped with us, which isn’t inherently bad) shouldn’t have you finishing with thinking the world is flat. Wanting to learn spellwork shouldn’t have you hating the existence of Jewish people. (Disliking a government is a different story but a group of people? Not ok. You’re absorbing Christian bs, not Pagan teaching.) It’s genuinely wild to see how much Paganism and “heathenry” gets cherry picked down to stones and mishmashed gods on social media. All for clicks and views, maybe a little heteronormative Christo-fascist brainwashing thrown in for flavor. It’s really mindblowing how it gets eaten up so much and so readily. And the fact there is an invisible algorithm in the background showing you this like a steady downpour while making it all look seamless.

Actually learn crystals if you’re genuinely interested – and not that fluffy bunny nonsense I so commonly see, actual information derived from sources way older than a 20 minute old TikTok account – but please don’t fool yourself into thinking “All Natural is All Good”, that is such amazing duncery, I’m gobsmacked. Nature is dangerous. Nature does not care about your two gender bs. Nature owes you nothing, it deserves to poison you and does. You’re a human, nature is much beyond that. And you do nothing but harm nature when you think living the crunchy, herbs-only, crystals-only life does anything fruitful than make some random wannabe-boho White person rich. It takes blatantly from nature, gives nothing back. And by humans who can’t tell the difference between a mint and hemlock without an app! I’ve seen so much applied on nature in such an outstanding selfish way it is appalling to me anyone believes this dreck. Nature is tornados that will tear up a city in the night. Nature is an ocean that will happily drown a beachfront community with a single wave. Nature is viral spread.

Nature is not being barefoot, pumping out kids and thinking you don’t need rights because you’re a woman living on a distant ranch tired of the city life and think your life is better when a man dictates it. Nature is not learning the scant ideas of the magical properties of a Costco spice rack and trying to convince people they don’t need a doctor if they just apply vanilla to the temple. Nature is not doing Wakanda cosplay when you know next to nothing about the skin you’re in nor it’s actual history but you’ll go to some remote island with a megalomaniac who somehow convinced you “women should be dominated, it’s their place”.

That’s not nature at all, that’s just a bunch of suckers and their hapless, helpless devotees. Insecure people afraid or tired of the world that just are ripe for the picking because a human told them some fantastical bs and called it “nature”. Facism isn’t nature. Misogyny isn’t nature. Anti-Blackness, internalized and externalized, isn’t nature. Capitalism definitely isn’t nature. It’s all ridiculous. Very human nature, oh, yes, indeed, but not the same nature that sends a devastating hurricane to your home. It’s all just hatred and insecurity in cherrypicked nonsense. Nature is wildly neutral, humans aren’t. Especially the hateful ones.

Is science perfect? No, it’s insanely racist, prejudiced and far too heavily centered on Whiteness, maleness (not masculinity, just being a cis guy), straightness and Christian-heavy ideals. Same with medicine. And they still act like it’s a chore to fully admit and commit to rooting out those problems, from psychology to astronomy. They’re also part to blame of why people think eating berries they can’t identify in a forest they don’t know how to navigate are believing nutballs that tell them they should eat berries they can’t identify in a forest they can’t navigate. All that broken trust not properly forged makes people believe in nonsense like this. And when people want to believe in the wild and outlandish, they come to my religion and think it’s a choose-your-own adventure sandbox game when it extremely isn’t. It’s wildly disrespectful.

It all makes it difficult for me to practice my faith at times because all the fluffy bunnies gurus and their followers gunk up the resources I and other Pagan practitioners use. They delegitimize any faith that isn’t the Abrahamic 3 with their over-manicured video reels and staged lives, complete with ring lights and product sponsors. They want covens because they think it’s all about crappy DollsKill outfits and bad makeup. They assume self-work means swiping a debit card and a limited edition tarot deck they don’t know how to read. It’s easy to spot the fake ones because they don’t genuinely care about any of this, it’s just there for the moment “because of the state of the world” – the one they helped create, none of this happened in a vacuum. It’s just a problem because while they’re easy to spot, there are just so many of them.

They appropriate and bastardize cultures of color, some of them thousands of years old. They ignore the time and dedication that comes with faith practice, they want to speed-run it. They co-opt symbols to make their bigoted beliefs seem legit, such as Nordic and Ashanti symbols. They think saying “Ashé” does something. They think pretending to be Vikings (as depicted by Hollywood) does something. Know nothing of the history but wow will they sprint to “hate queer people and gender equality” with break-neck speed. They uphold White supremacist beliefs, even the pseudo “Pro Black” ones. It’s the same bs, different packaging. One dead giveaway: they all tend to essentially despise the same people and uphold the same privileges. Jews are bad. Gays are unnatural (as long as you don’t actually look at nature). Black people are somehow animalistic. Muslims are backwards, dangerous or both. Women should be quiet, human xerox machines. All a load of bs but holy crap, slap a geode on it and some half decent phone footage with tarot cards sprinkled about and you got yourself a following. It’s mind-boggling

Just think for yourself. Paganism is about that. We have community but we also have solitary practice. We also don’t have a guidebook in a good chunk of the denominations of Paganism, unlike the Abhrahmic 3. Because you’re supposed to learn via introspection and properly educating yourself via books (not written by people that want to sell you Surfshark). You’re supposed to take your time, not speed-run into a drug habit and other self-harm or communal harm. Have an open mind but not so open your brain falls out. The world isn’t flat. Rose quartz alone isn’t going to fix your problem, try therapy. Anyone who says queerness is wrong and women should be led by men are not selling anything but misery, it’s classic advertising. People of color aren’t bad and White people, in general, are not in danger as a group, there is no race war. Anti-semiticism is a terrible political and ethical stance, Judaism isn’t evil, only governments. These aren’t “hot takes”, this is just plain reality. There are systemic wrongdoings taking place but it isn’t some secretive cabal, it’s pretty commonplace systemic prejudice like racism, colorism, classism, queerphobia, sexism and misogynoir. The usual suspects, just add greed at the various intersections. Maybe throw in some eco words because what’s greenwashing without greenbacks?

It’s wild to see how grifters and insecurity create platforms and use faiths like mine to bolster themselves. Especially since stereotypes and lack of knowledge of Paganism and other nature-based belief systems thanks to very Christian-influenced (well, Abrahamic faith influenced, mainstream Western Christianity just does the most damage of the 3) ideals made it that way. Pagans didn’t come up with the spoOOoOooky vibes on our own, they were labeled on us and shoveled through pop media a bunch. Then they got reworked with an aesthetics theme and shoveled through social media a bunch.

It’s ok to feel unsure about the world. I genuinely don’t ever know if there was a time when all felt “right with the world”, probably because that time didn’t really exist, you just didn’t see it on your phone screen or it simply didn’t phase you. You can’t buy a rock to make yourself feel better. There’s no juice detox for poor self-image and a lack of self worth. But, hey, there’s a dimwit on the internet happy to make you believe that (for a price) and a predatory algorithm just as pleased to show them to you. There are some major wrongs in the world but forgoing modern medicine or despising trans people for existing (but these transphobic, medically inadept people somehow want to embrace Pagan ideas, idk wtf) isn’t going to fix that. Add to it, oh, sure. But fix it? Not at all.

If there’s anything that remains true in these 16 years: fluffy bunnies ruin everything but it just been easier to do so. The internet isn’t a mistake, nor is social media but it’s important to note “truth” nor reality doesn’t come in a glossy, curated instagram reel or an AI designed post. Nature is not your friend, you work with it. And a lot of you have been getting fed a lot of messed up propaganda of the same old things, just with a new boho tune meant to feed off of insecurity.