Category: Pagan Life


Talky Talky

Filed under: Pagan Life — 2 Comments
September 8, 2012

The past couple of weeks have been awful weird for me. I think within a three day span, I had about three to four people on separate occasions to hear of my religion and try to tell me to do something about it which is already embedded in the faith. Lemme illustrate:

Person 1: I told that I used divination to help me determine my issues and the solutions for them, such as tarot. Works pretty solidly for me since I actually know how to do it and done so for a while. They freak out and say it’s potentially demonic and that humans rely too much on themselves when they should rely on God and nature. Thing is, divination, given that the root word is “Divine”, as in “to divine”, as in “to communicate with the divine/divinity using a medium,” is relying on divinity and the collective unconscious of the universe, not the human self.

Person 2: Friend brings up Paganism and Animalism are two different things whereas Animalism is embedded in Paganism as one of the starting points of what we know as Paganism today. Paganism is pretty much the umbrella term for any nature-based belief and Animalism is firmly embedded in it given that Paganism started showing itself around the upper Paleolithic times, which is about 30,000 – 10,000 B.C.E*

Person 3: Some Christian that lives around the corner from me wouldn’t let up that other faiths actually exist and are just as legit as their own, asks me about the basis of my faith. I just say that Pagans believe in polytheism, duality and that divinity is expressed through nature, hence why we don’t have churches or other houses of worship since the earth is already holy unto itself. The lady then turns around and says that while she agree that nature is God-made, still thinks that I lack faith in a God – as in, she thinks I’m an Atheist – and that nature is a work of God, something that apparently I know nothing about, being the deluded, polytheistic Atheist that I supposedly am.

The thing isn’t that they happened necessarily, I’m quite used to witnessing brain farts about my religion. Hey, they occasionally make for interesting reads here on Black Witch! The issue is that they happened so closely together and mostly by folks who know me personally that it almost made me wonder how good of a job I do about explaining my faith without bopping people over the head with it. I mean, some of these questions are like asking a Christian, “Sooooooooo, do you believe in Jesus because Jesus said not to steal and to be nice to everybody. Are you sure you believe in a higher being?” They’re well embedded in the faith and kinda on the 101 level of things. While I’m glad that the people I know are knowledgeable enough to not try to stake me while taking a nap or attempt to bottle my tears because they heard they’ll live forever that way**, it does make me facepalm a little when they still see my faith through the lens of “something quirky she believes”. If anything, it makes me wonder what they think I actually do believe if they managed to bypass some of the more basic facts of my faith.

It should be noted that the average person is not a pro in comparative religious studies but still there are some basics that are well known (or at least should be) for various faiths. Such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all monotheistic religions, Buddhism doesn’t seem to have a violent streak in it, Atheists don’t believe in anything (except the wonders of science) and Hindus have various deities, thousands of them. Since Paganism isn’t very well known but kinda well stigmatized all the same, it is a little understanding that my friends and especially the random person on the street wouldn’t have all their facts in a row. So we’re not exactly working with a tabula rasa but kinda against the tide with some spots of tabula rasa resemblance.

Paganism, regardless whether the average Pagan would like to admit it or not, is still a little known religion. Regardless of how fast it is spreading, and it is spreading at quite a pace, Paganism is still little known and highly stigmatized and the stigma is what rests in common memory. Either that or the misinformation, such as assuming every Pagan to be Wiccan, regardless what kind of Pagan the person has identified themselves as. Or just thinking the person to be outright mad simply because they believe in spells and telling the future.

When the average person hears the term “Pagan”, the idea of a fairly normal person doesn’t spring to mind, simply a person that is straight from the story books as demon-summoners, wicked people and blood drinkers. These folks aren’t very Pagan at all. Have they existed in Pagan religious/cultural history? Oh sure but there’s no religion on this planet that hasn’t gone straight into WTF territory somehow and with such the wide umbrella such as Paganism, we’re going to dredge a lot of folks who are a bit more eccentric than most in our past. However, it doesn’t mean that Pagans today aren’t civilized people, just like any other practitioner of some sort of faith. It just means that you could be a civilized, normal person that is Pagan and the average person may still think you might sacrifice their cat to the Devil, even if you were a card carrying member of the Humane Society.

There’s not much really one can do about it but keep correcting nuances and mistakes as they come along. Sure, it’ll be like straightening up the memory of an Alzheimer’s patient but repetition does make for learning. It is a bit frustrating but necessary, especially if the information can alarm others, such as divination or witchcraft. Now, I’m not going to say that the average person has absolutely zero reason to climb the walls upon hearing that someone reads tarot cards or cast spells given the usual spooky stigmas surrounding those two but it still isn’t a good excuse for them to do it. When it comes to things like divination and magick, prepare to just play a repeat session of 20 Questions over and over again until the person gets it through and through that you’re not going to summon Satan in their living room and you’re not a Satanist simply because you use tarot cards and palmistry to help determine what to do next. That’s pretty much all a Pagan person can do, as well as keep an eye out to identify any myths that they may mention obliviously or take as fact. I know in my personal experience, when I bring up divination to my older friends, they’re quick to assume that I’m summoning demons or other malevolent spirits until I remind them that if you’re doing divination right, no spirits should be conjured at all because they’re not needed. As for the witchcraftin’, I judge on how long the person has known me and how likely are they to freak out about spells and to what extent. So some folks know I do stuff like that and some don’t. Then others find out because they discover I write Black Witch.

Now, this is not for every Pagan as no Pagan has to serve as the cultural ambassador. Newp. You can mention what you plan to do this upcoming Samhain and if anyone foams at the mouth about it, you can just leave them there to froth while you find more rational people. It shouldn’t be a privilege to talk about what you do in your religious faith just as normally as anyone else.

And this goes for anyone who knows someone who is Pagan or Witch: albeit it is always great to get facts from the horse’s mouth, no one is obligated to be your Encyclopedia Pagananica. That means if they say something you don’t understand about their faith and you’ve already grilled them relentlessly before (if not sure, think about if the person was exasperated at the end of it all or had a “Plz stop talking” look on their face), juuuuuust make mental note of it, assume it’s most likely not evil and try to Google it later on if possible. That and remember, if you’re not a practitioner of the faith, you probably don’t know more about the faith than someone who has practiced it for years so it would not be wise “educate” the Pagan friend on things they probably already knew existed in their faith. Nothing is wrong with sharing what you learned, that’s fine – always makes me happy when my non-Pagan friends take it upon themselves to learn about my faith without drilling me endlessly with questions and make me more amiable to clear up mistakes in the nuances – but I will admit it’s a liiiiiittle aggravating when it feels like someone is trying to teach me something that was already well espoused in my faith. So, to be short and dry, your Pagan buddy is not your personal Well o’ Paganism and should you learn a thing or two on your own, please remember that your Pagan friend probably has known this as well. Oh, and don’t forget to listen the first go around, it usually make everyone happier in the end.

And that’s all the Black Witch for this week! Huzzah! Sorry I’ve been uber late with the postings. Either I get caught up in something else, stuck in bed, playing video games performing intellectually strenuous tasks, things like that. I just gotta get back on top of things, that’s all.

*Note: Wicca started in 1957 by Gerald Gardiner, it is not an ancient religion. It was created around the same time the television set was.
**It doesn’t work. Total myth. Do not attempt. Who seriously thought that one up?

Tags: ,
Comment

Religion and Mental Illness

Filed under: Mental Health/Mental Illness, Pagan Life — 2 Comments
August 17, 2012

I remember on a discussion forum I was on at Heavenly Hair, a hairfall forum, that had the discussion of religion as a mental illness. The basic gist is that religion, when seen from a different perspective, can be seen as a widespread mental illness, near schizophrenia. I mean, to have religious faith, you have to believe in something that you can’t see, feel, hear or justify the existence of the same way you can with anyone else. All that one knows about that mythical being – emphasis on the “mythical” – is either based on elevated hearsay or books that feature elevated hearsay with miscalculations and possible logic gaps – and that’s ignoring the modifications due to political and/or cultural gains. This is regardless of religion.

It is interesting to read such discussions, especially since I wonder about the notion a lot. It kinda came from all the brain picking I would get from Christians when they tried pretty hard to pick apart my religious beliefs in opposed to just going “She believes something different from me, meh.” Y’know, all the “But your god doesn’t exist”, “You believe God is expressed through the earth? You can’t even prove that” and “You just talk over a candle/wear that necklace and expect that does something?” questions. It lead me to wonder where faith comes in and how it survives as well as how it is expressed – which is a bit lol-worthy in that I’m certain the Christians just picked apart my faith to try to guilt-trip me back into Christianity, not to figure out how to nitpick theirs and others. It also came from when I was looking for a therapist to help me handle some of my issues. It was important to find a therapist that is Pagan-friendly. Since there are not a lot of Pagan therapists and affordable ones at that, I have to think of how to best express my experiences, spiritual and mundane, without the shrink thinking I’m an absolute nutter for no reason at all. There are many stories I have come across of Pagans expressing their beliefs as normal as anyone else and wound up misdiagnosed, wrongfully medicated and even put away in a mental asylum.

I think that it is viable to see religion as something of a mental deficiency but not. In a way, it kind of is because if one is totally swept up in the fervor, there’s no telling what one may do. They could go on to do great things like help people or they could go on a complete genocidal killing spree, both of which has happened within the past 100 years and at multiple instances. If a person is truly fixated by the religion, it can be as crippling as a mental disease. How it is opposite of a mental deficiency is that it gives a person hope and something to mentally rely on while help making sense of the world. It’s even been proven in stats that those who believe in a higher being live longer so it definitely serves some good. This does make sense since if there is some greater force out there that is supposedly omnipresent and can handle anything human, it would cause some overall reassurance within temperament. It’s best captured in the saying, “Relax, God/dess is in control”.

However, there’s the saying I do remember considerably: “When you talk to God, they call you religious. When God talks back, they call you crazy.” I don’t think there’s a truer statement. Regardless how overzealous people appear about their faith, it seems if their deity started talking to them, all of a sudden that’s nutty. As if it’s okay to believe in something but if that something started communicating, something is totally out of line. Hey, if some Middle Eastern guy walked up and said that he was Christ, walked across a swimming pool, could create a buffet from a bag of bread and a bowl of fish, turn a clear pitcher of water into red wine, it would cause some serious panic. Even if a guy simply walked up and said that he was Christ but didn’t do the party tricks, saying that he was indeed the son of God, people would still think the guy needs to be carted off. If someone claimed they were the prophet Mohammed, again the person would be considered stark raving mad. It just seems that almost everyone is a little Atheist at their core. Even when I have explained divination as how I and many Pagans communicate with the gods, I have been looked at as if I told them that we all live underwater and those puddly things we call oceans are just rip currents. I think it’s little mental in and of itself because it means when things get down to the fine line, a lot of people are going to look like the bullsh*tters they probably were. Of course there’s factoring in that a lot of people who are usually pretty fervent of their faith never really had it tested to its limits such as living in a heavily violent and traumatizing place or going through a horrible situation such as having someone wage war on their homeland and every man, woman and child for themselves. I’ve been in situations with others where things weren’t even that bad, not even close, and all of a sudden people who were once staunch Christians or Muslims or other faiths were thinking about trying their hand at Voodoo and asking me how my religion works. So much for that little mustard seed.

Now, I suppose that all this thinking does seem like it could resolve religion moot. I mean, if religion and the whole thing of faith is to have blind confidence in some version of an imaginary friend hanging in the sky and there’s science to explain many things and there’s theory to help explain complex ideas, it would seem that to believe in a higher being should be treated with the same respect as believing anime characters are real. I believe that though science knows many things, it doesn’t know everything. It most certainly is not perfect and is mostly useful for the physical, not metaphysical. The history of science is littered with human error, even today. Look at women’s health and mental health from the 19th century to today for a brief overview. Or just look at race and medicine for the past 300 years, it’s amazing what culturally embedded prejudice can do to otherwise sound and stable medical practitioners. Besides, it’s not like religion and belief in the supernatural doesn’t produce anything useful. Islam is responsible for the creation of math, alchemy is the start of chemistry and potions started off medicine as we know it. Nothing is wrong to have faith in a higher being, the problem seems to come when people think “Welp, we’ve got science. No need for fairytales anymore, we know how the world works.” Yeah, that’s pretty wrong. As aforementioned, just like religion has had its cock ups, so has science (*koffeugenicskoff*) and both had shown their logic fail multiple times on a variety of scales within the last 100 years, easy. Too have blind faith in religion is not considered smart but neither is having blind faith in science since the practitioners of both have held something of importance up and went, “Whoops. Totally didn’t see that one coming.”

There is a difference in having a religious/metaphysical experience and outright losing your mind but sometimes it does seem to cut close. I mean, there is a difference in speaking with deities or spirits and hearing voices but without sufficient training, one can fade into the other because the practitioner can’t discern the boundaries of what they can do. That’s where studying and taking it slow is strongly advised. This is for metaphysics and psionics definitely so one doesn’t drive themselves up a wall because they wanted so badly to be something phenomenal. That and knowing how to handle personal issues so those don’t bleed wantonly into practice. Knowing how to move a cup with your mind or make water freeze the same way is not worth handing the stability of your mind over. Same for being creative, you don’t need to let yourself crack up to create something.

Is religion a culturally green-lighted form of psychological derangement? Nah, not really. If it is a psychological thing, I would file it under “coping mechanism” since it indeed can be a coping mechanism, whether a healthy one or not. To have faith in something greater helping you in your personal worries and troubles, it helps greatly. If it gives you something to grip your sanity on, that’s fine but don’t grip it only on religion, give room for logic – just have it at half and half. Both to keep you grounded so neither drives you insane.

Next week is the Afro-Punk Festival! I will be there and I am excited! So The Arts! is going to simply be a feature of people I’m excited to see:

– Straight Line Stitch
– Janelle Monae
– Erykah Badu

Huzzah! I’ll be wearing lolita both days, thus easy to spot. Punk lolita the first day, kuro lolita the second day (well, with a hint of white due to the AP badge so mostly kuro I supposed). I am feeling better too so I can interact with people. Just know that I am quite introverted so if I don’t wanna chat, don’t worry about it, just say hi and try again later.

Tags: ,
Comment

Blacked Out Blind

Filed under: Pagan Life, Race — 5 Comments
August 11, 2012

Alright. I’m Black. It’s the reason why this column/blog is called Black Witch. My ma is Black, my dad is Black (from Jamaica, actually), my nana is Black, grandpappy is Black, we’re a pretty Black family. Even my cat has black spots on her (dark-greyish? Close enough). Grandpops on my dad side was friends with Bob Marley, my grandma on my dad side knew Colin Powell when they were teens. My family on my mom side up to now pretty much took part in history via fighting in wars from WWII to the Korean War and ‘Nam to Afghanistan. I’m born on Thurgood Marshall’s birthday. I’ve gotten a Walking While Black at my college when I was leaving to go home. I’m gonna be at the Afro-Punk festival in a couple weeks, most likely fangirling horribly over Janelle Monae. As far as having a regular, Black experience goes, it’s pretty much there.

Despite all this, for overzealous Afro-centrists – we’ll call them Afriboos* – it’s never good enough. Being Black and Pagan, these folks are on par with fluffy bunnies and increase the more Black folks you have in your area. These folks are beyond the quarterback pushback from the centuries of racism that has been forced on the race and simply are All Black Everything gone all awry. They reject anything remotely White, they believe that Africa has the first human (which is true) and believe that they hence are above and beyond all races. They don’t like how racist White people can get but may feel perfectly free to practice it towards other races (they reject Whites calling them the N-word but calling Asians and Latins their respective slurs? “Eh, they’re cool with it; they never had it like us.”). Usually frothing at the mouth about conspiracies, their favorite being how the Illuminati is funding Jay-Z’s career and Nicki Minaj is possibly a confused woman wishing to be White or a symbol of all that is wrong with Black America. (If you heard the sound of a car crash, that was the logic in the previous sentence.) Or the conspiracy that the White House is trying to kill them, Obama is in on the Kill-All-Negroes plan and Blacks have had it the worst of all races, hands down, no contest. Usually, they know everything there is to know about Egypt and think if the world enforced African culture instead of Western culture, the whole world would clean up its problems from Global Warming to economic meltdown and Black people would be rich and all the problems of Black America would fade away in a flash. Perms are evil and anyone who has one clearly want to be White. Modern medicine is to be distrusted in favor of strictly natural medicine. Their opinions on homosexuality and gender equality sound like a blast from the past, circa White Americans in the 50’s. They preach that woman is the goddess and other fluffy fluff but these folks slut-shame like there is no tomorrow if the woman doesn’t dress like she came from a Kwanzaa card. These guys can be pretty militant (which isn’t always a bad thing but militancy + misinformed = problems very, very fast) and more suspicious and paranoid of Whites than is considered regular for the average Black person.** Oh! And they wanna return to the Motherland as soon as possible.

Sure.

Afriboos wouldn’t be such a trouble if they admired Africa for all that it is, how unique its 54 nations are and how those nations have provided for the world and feel rightfully outraged on how the continent has been pretty much robbed blind, carved up and still reeling from the effects of colonialism and internalized racism. Nah, like weaboos, Afriboos have a pretty narrow view of Africa fueled by all the Alex Haley, Black Panther Party memories and dime store books they could get their hands on. They have Erykah Badu’s discography memorized and it’s either Islam all day every day because that’s the “First religion of the Black people” or a full scale new-agey overload filled with feather earrings, stone jewelry, Egyptian musk and basing everything on vibrations. And if you’re natural, they come like flies, just like weaboos do to anyone who looks Japanese. Afriboos learned about Africa from either White culture-sanctioned/White washed information (National Geographic, History Channel perhaps some WorldStarHipHop) or poorly written and biased books on the Black condition from misguided Black authors who mean well but mentions poorly. And if it ain’t Black, it’s White.

The thing about Afriboos is that they police Blackness (and Black gender/heteronormativity) harder than anything. If you’re permed, you hate yourself. If you don’t know a single whole Miles Davis song, you’re misguided and don’t know your musical history. May the mercy of the God and Goddess be bestowed upon you if you listen to rock or do anything non-monolithic. Hell, you could be listening to Slash while wearing cyber goggles made by a Black crafter and reading a Black-written fan fic of Static Shock tag-teaming with Spiderman Miles Morales before lighting Deadpool up like a Christmas tree after Storm flung the assassin straight from Wakanda, and still your Black card has disappeared in the eyes of the Afriboos. If you’re gay, these folks are convinced you’ve been around White people for too long because homosexuality is “unnatural”. If you believe in Feminism/Womanism, off they will be preaching about how that’s White people stuff, that Feminism/Womanism is destructive of the “natural order of things” and in magical world of Africa, there are no problems like these except for whatever White folks cook up. If you live in the suburbs, you’re desperately ignoring your roots and don’t want to be Black at all. If you went to college, you drank the White man’s kool-aid even though the Afriboos believe that knowledge is power – but your Black self better not become an academic or scholar, that’s turning your back on the hood. The Blackness they police isn’t really Blackness but a lot of misguided stereotypes, wishful misinformation and frightened thinking.

When they do see a Black person doing something non-monolithic and aren’t frightened of it somehow like a bunny around loud noise, they treat this person like they are either the first Negro to ever do it oooooor go off into their slanted history knowledge and talk about how this Black person totally isn’t the first one to do it and the Afriboo has no idea what all the hubbub is about. An example:

Person: Gabby Douglas got two gold medals in gymnastics! Rockin! She’s really accomplished something!

Afriboos: Really? Ain’t nothing but White girls in there! Black people doing it for themselves! That’s new, ain’t ever seen that before. This gonna scare those White folks, watch them change the rules up now that she’s in. They don’t ever wanna give us a medal in anything, you know that, right? Especially not a gold medal.

or

Person: Gabby Douglas got two gold medals in gymnastics! Rockin! She’s really accomplished something!

Afriboos: Oh, please, Black people been in the Olympics! Don’t you know about how Jesse Owens made Hitler mad? We’re the first humans, of course we’re in the Olympics! Those Europeans don’t wanna give us our shine! You talkin’ about Gabby Douglas, like she the first Black girl with a gold medal. I mean, it’s something but she got Dominique Dawes to thank. And she probably had to be all around White people to know what she doin right now – why is she with a Chinese? What, she don’t think a Black coach ain’t good enough? And look at her hair, she ain’t natural! She ain’t really doing for us Africans***, who fought and died for her to be where she’s at right now. Hmph, she ain’t no different from Beyonce and her Black-hating self. How about that Usain Bolt boy? Runs like he’s straight from the Motherland. That’s us right there. He’s from Jamaica, you know they respect Africa. They Rasta. He probably Rasta, too.

Yeap. There’s nothing wrong in being proud of being Black or having your lineage trace back to Africa and there is certainly nothing wrong with acknowledging that prejudice is alive and well but it is a problem when there is a lot of misinformation fueling this info to the point it shoots blindly. The Afriboo simply fire their lasers at any and everything, pretty much like weaboos do. To weaboos, Japan is king and anything Japanese is royalty. If the Japanese don’t dominate in something, the game must’ve been rigged or people are just that racist. Weaboos have limited knowledge of the history and culture of Japan but apply it to everything and assume the rest of the world is inferior, just like Afriboos. Instead of it being a single nation, it’s a narrow, generalized knowledge of the history and culture of all of Africa, a whole, entire continent. Reality is, not Africa or the Africana diaspora move in lockstep. The cultures and history that we have is woven from our collective experiences and situations, just like the country of Japan doesn’t move in lockstep, its history and cultures became what it is today from various instances and individuals being what they are. That means there are perks but there are also flaws. Africa isn’t perfect, Japan isn’t perfect.

Then there’s the desire to return to Africa. Yeah, here’s the thing: You can’t return to something you didn’t originate from. Yes, you’re Black, you have African genes in your bloodstream, there’s no denying that. I do too and it’s spiffy. However, no Black person raised in the Western or Eastern world is going to magically assimilate into Africa. You’ll be with your race but culturally, you’ll still be an American, a European, an Asian, a South American, etc etc etc. I could not be randomly dropped off in Africa and expect to get along fine just because I’ll be somewhere where most of the folks look like me. Newp. I couldn’t even be like that in Jamaica and half my whole bloodline is from there. My aunt is from Ghana, I remember her talks of how America and Ghana are different and how being a Black person in the Western world is different from being a Black person in the African world. Those conversations were refreshed in college by my African friends and Caribbean friends every time the subject of Blackness popped up and they felt the sincere need to set the record straight because Blackness in America is not Blackness everywhere you go. And it’s usually with such insight that usually stun Afriboos into silence…or balking that the friends who chimed in must not really be from Africa/the Caribbeans/been around White people too long. Now, there’s nothing wrong with visiting there or wanting to live there, just don’t expect to magically fit in like a missing puzzle piece.

When on the Pagan lean, these guys usually are the ones in the metaphysical shops waxing poetic, sharing psuedo-intellegent quips, expressing their super limited knowledge of Black history and when it comes to the esoteric, oh man. If you show even the slightest interest in the esoteric and are remotely familiar with things like Indigo children and Eastern Star, they latch on quickly. They treat you as if they have found their lost brethren and converse with you as if you both know some grand secret that the rest of the world is sleeping on. They talk to you as if they are going to teach you something and always mention, “I’m learning so much from you,” despite the conversation is usually pretty one-sided and shallower than a teardrop on a hot plate. Most of their “facts” come from biased sources that usually are based in Christian dogma and rhetoric. If you have to quote the Bible to prove an objective fact, there is a problem. And for some odd reason, they have this thing about Jews. I really don’t fully understand it but either they herald Jews as the all-knowing race/ethnicity/religion but kinda are disgusted by them all the same. They believe that any and everything esoteric has made its way through Judaism somewhere at some point in history. The notion is best displayed when they ask, “Ask a Jewish person what year it is,” expressing that the Jews know some great secret or knowledge, hence why everyone has tried to eradicate them from the earth. Anti-Semitism, how does that work?

And let’s not forget the vibrations and earthy stuff. They seem to experience everything in the wavelengths that they feel. Instead of saying, “Oh, I feel like I can trust you,” it’s “I can sense your aura tells me you’re a good person,” or “I’m not getting bad vibrations from you, you probably have good chi,” or, “You’re a Cancer, I know I can trust you with my things.” Good lord. There’s being clairsentient and then there’s being a New Age airhead. Usually when dealing with people who actually are psychic and are fairly well-grounded mentally, they don’t talk about vibrations as if everyone is emitting some sort of shimmer but just say something along the lines of “Oh, I feel like I can trust you.” And it seems Afriboos desire so strongly to be one with the earth short of actually burying themselves in it for good, they’ll wear more stones than you’ll find in a cave, enough cowrie shells to wonder if there is a factory pumping them out and so many ankhs they probably have a bigger collection than the ancient Egyptians all together as they chatter about being Nubian kings and queens. Organic seems to be what they crave and thus think if it came from the earth, it is automatically healthy and good for humans because Mother Nature would never hurt her little children. Ever. At all. Lolz.

Like weaboos, the weird infatuation Afriboos have with sex and sexuality is a bit unsettling. Sex and sexuality is natural and totally part of nature buuuuuut hear an Afriboo tell the story, you would think that sex was this magical, mystical thing that can cure everything from a bad mood to an unsavory personality trait to a cold to cancer itself – het sex only, tho. Bring up the various sexualities in their absolute normalcy such as homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality, demisexuality, etc etc and watch the Afriboo turn into a 12 year old as they scan their brain for something to say, either something creeptastic or about how it’s unnatural – maybe a combo of the two. The kicker is that both weaboos and Afriboos usually claim that since they love/have knowledge of a “niche” subject (Japan/Africa), they are thus more open-minded than the average person.

Now, does this mean anyone who likes Africa, natural things, has interest in the continent and the pan-African culture is an Afriboo? Not at all. Just like simply liking Japan and its culture doesn’t make you an instant weaboo or even otaku. What makes you an Afriboo, just like what makes you a weaboo, is thinking that Africa and the race that stemmed from Africa is superior to all. To learn about Africa and the diaspora through poorly designed sites or books and ignore that Africa is not a singular country but a continent with a long history and thus not 100% perfect is intensely problematic. Learn about the history, learn about what makes the culture and what it means to you as a heritage is fine and completely healthy but to act as if you could stunt on both Sistah Soldier and Assata Shakur? Don’t bother. Afriboos, like weaboos, have their heart in the right place but their minds are miles elsewhere. There’s a whole world out there, it ain’t just black and white.

*Afriboos: I’m deriving this from the term “weaboos”, which are overzealous, and usually ignorant, admirers of Japan. Instead, Afriboos are simply over-infatuated/obsessed with the continent Africa instead of a single country and bear much of the same personal qualities as weebs. Another example of derivation: Koreaboos are those who are obsessed with Korea, usually South Korea.

**Apparently, I have White readers. Hiiiiiiiii. If you’re confused about that statement, please do a quick search on racial interactions (political, economical, cultural, societal, social interactions, pick one) between Blacks and Whites in the last 300-700 years. It’s the stuff they base horror movies on. Still confused? Submit something to Ask Black Witch for clarification.

***Afriboos consider anyone Black, regardless where they were born or raised, as an African and anyone who is White, regardless where they were born or raised, as a European. If you’re half Black/half White, you’re an “I don’t know” or occasionally considered a race traitor/tragic mulatto

Tags: ,
Comment

Summertime Magick

Filed under: Spells & Potions — Leave a comment
July 13, 2012

Summer is a pretty good time to do magick (unless you’re me and abhor heat). Unlike Winter, this season can get you up and moving. Everything is in bloom – or baking from the heat – there are festivals everywhere, more energy roused up. It’s a pretty nice for spells that involve movement and action.

Although, for a person that doesn’t like heat and such, the concept of sun, summer and light is very appealing to me. Since the vast majority (most likely all but I’m leaving room for error) of my magick revolves around the abilities of fire for both creation and destruction, it makes me feel as if it boosts my spellwork where as the winter makes me focus on energy internally. Or makes me light more things.  Fire is pretty much a staple in my spellwork as I use a crap load of candles and even a stick of lit incense for a wand. I like the combustibility of fire and its absolute nature. Once you burn something, it’s gone and there’s no turning back. Hence, I personally prefer candle spells because I like fire. I’mma firebug, it runs in the family (mainly on my dad side).

When I was younger, I used birthday candles and would cast with a big pool of water nearby, such as doing spellwork on the ledge of a filled sink, because my mom had a strict no-fire rule (despite being a smoker, oh lol) and if something happened and I freak out, I can just shove everything into the sink and clean up afterwards without anyone knowing what went on. Of course, I didn’t use incense, too fragrant. I just made do with birthday candles and even a pack of Hanukkah candles a friend gave me. Actually, I still use birthday candles, I just bought some new ones recently.

Candle work stuck with me because they come in such different colors and if you’re new to magick, very affordable. Every Witch is different but I would feel the spell was going better with the visual cues of lighting a candle set for a purpose, seeing the smoke wafting in the air, watching the wax either pool up or disappear, if the wick curls up or break apart. There were times the candle I lit for whatever spell I was doing at the time would flare up greatly like a torch. I know I remember a time a flame went from a normal flickering light to a steadily burning five to six inch flare when I was doing a spell that involved Mars/Ares. All these visual cues would help me feel that the spell is moving forward and that the gods are communicating with me while doing the spell. I get a sense of things going right, things going wrong (I have had spells where things have gone very wrong) and if energy is moving or not. It tells me that a spell has been successfully sent into the universe when there’s a change in the flicker, color or height of the flame.

Besides candles, I use incense for a wand. I don’t always feel like charging or cleansing a wand and that’s already ignoring the fact that a) I don’t have one and b) never really had a strong desire to own one. Maybe if I start learning high magick/ceremonial magick I might get one. But for now, I use incense for wands because they’re more adjustable for magick work since you can get a particular stick for whatever type of spell you’re casting. Money spell? Patchouli incense. Good fortune spell? Sandalwood. Banish spell? Dragon’s Blood. Very versatile. It fine tunes the spell in a way that I feel a crystal can’t (or at least can’t for me). Not only but with incense, it’s used for that one spell so it’s specialized and hyper focused in guiding the energy of intent. It’s easier to charge or charm items because the waft of smoke provides visual aid. As the stick of incense burns away, the more it releases the spell to do its thing. If I did all that with a candle, I would have a mess everywhere from the dripping wax and may even potentially set something on fire with the open flame, something no one wants.  Incense is great general way for me to do magick from setting the circle to conducting the spell itself. Plus, once it’s all burnt out, I can chuck the little stick. A wand I have to put back – and keep out the hands of others who may want to simply play with my spellwork items – incense doesn’t catch anyone’s eyes or the person could be allergic to it and hence not want to touch or simply don’t like smoky things. Not to mention a wand, especially a metal one, is a strong conductor and if the practitioner is working around electricity, the built up energy can cause a spark (okay, the metal ones are likely to cause a spark, wooden ones are fine). There’s just an ease of use of incense for me and much like using a candle, it helps me guide the spell better.

I’ve tried using other methods of fire resemblance such as fire type stones or fire type plants but it simply doesn’t work for me. I see the connection but subconsciously, it still doesn’t make the jump because I associate stones and plants with earth unless there’s a strong connection to another element (for example, a water lily can represent water for me because water lilies, well, grow on water). It doesn’t make me a purist, just finicky. And simply letting my inner firebug shine.

That’s all for this week! Next weeks is The Arts! and look at who we’re featuring:

– Boobs Don’t Work That Way
– The Undertaker [Short Film]
– Miles Jai

Also, don’t forget to check out the current raffle that is going on right now with Princeless. Here’s the post on it!

And apparently the Black Weblog Awards nominations are happening again but I’ll write on that later. Don’t wanna overwhelm myself.

Comment

Trolololo – She Rachet

Filed under: Pagan Life, Race — 7 Comments
July 6, 2012

So, there’s been something recent occurring in the online Pagan community. There was a rehash on Pagan.about.com about minority Pagan bloggers and of course, some commenter named Silvia felt mighty brave in her Whiteness and cried tears about how Wicca should be left to the White folks. Everyone, please witness this demonstration of why saying “Post-Racial America” is a long way off:

This is a very dusappointing article. Other races have their own pagan traditions. Wicca should be reserved for whites. White people have almost no place where they can come together and experience collective pride for their culture and ancestors. Wicca was one of rare exceptions. Now, thanks to Patti, we don’t have even this. I don’t see any point to be Wiccan then.

Firstly, if you’re gonna be racist, please learn to spell. I mean, if you’re going to be heavy on the whole “White race is superior” lean, at least learn how to spell the King’s English. What, are you scared of spell check or dictionaries? I mean, at least back then, racists had used science and literature to justify their bullsh*ttery, the very least you could do is try. C’mon, don’t make baby Hitler cry. That’s my job.

So, in Black culture, Silvia is being what we define as “rachet”. Extremely wretched, honestly. Poor thing must have cried oceans when McCain lost and if we scan the internet enough, probably did a “Leave Santorum Alone!” when people were dropping heat on him because he nearly called President Obama a not-so-presidential word. Let’s pick apart her comment, folks!

“Other races have their own Pagan traditions. Wicca should be reserved for Whites”: Ah, ha, ‘dis heffa not only can’t spell but doesn’t know history either. Wow. Well, literacy does usually lead to knowledge and she did prove she lacked literacy so I guess looking for intelligence should have been a farther pitch. Y’see, thanks to the draw of Orientalism from the era that Gerald Gardener was in, all that is put into Wicca. That means you have some Egyptian in Wicca (Africa) and you have Eastern philosophy of various sorts such as Hindu and Buddhism (Asia) implemented. I mean, Wicca was established in 1957, how much originality do you think it’s going to have? Shucks, even the idea “An’ it harm none” stems from the “Golden Rule” which is in Christian beliefs, a faith that came from the Middle East. Wicca is a conglomeration of various occult paths, including non-Western paths. Then you have the fact that Wicca is pretty broad due to the fact that it is a religion with a take on polytheism where you can use any pantheon since the face of the God and Goddess is not particular. If anything, the different goddesses and gods are considered the varied faces of the God and Goddess, which is a bisected split of the Great Spirit (Doesn’t that sound so Native American?) of the universe.

“White people have almost no place where they can come together and experience collective pride for their culture and ancestors. Wicca was one of rare exceptions.”: Wow, I think she’s crying White tears*right here. All that whine, so vintage. It’s certainly old, like Monroe Doctrine old. Is this lady serious? She lives in the Western world, where White privilege is rampant. She can turn on the tv and see herself, read a magazine and hear people who shares her opinions, Newt Gingrich can rant and be an angry White guy and everyone calls it “vigor”, she can see movies that star White people – even if the movie is supposed to star minorities. You’d be hard press to find any advertisement that is supposed to be for a general audience but lacks White people. White history and culture is pretty much Western culture and vice versa. Our holidays mainly revolve around White people, history likes to Whitewash until White people look like the victors or the victimized. There is collective pride for White culture and ancestors – waaaaaaaaaay too much of it because that collective pride sure like to be the only one getting the limelight, to the point it will block everyone else’s. Even Wicca has it, just look at the Wheel of the Year’s holidays.

“Now, thanks to Patti, we don’t have even this. I don’t see any point to be Wiccan then.”:Byyyyyyyyyyye, heifer. Now if only we could remove your point to exist. Orrrrrr maybe you just got into Wicca because you thought the Grand Wizard of the KKK and a regular wizard were the same thing and you’re just a tad confused. ‘Ey, if I had low watt smarts, those robes would baffle me too. Here’s a basic hint to tell them apart: look for eye holes in the hood, that’s the Klan. That would be your coven, so bounce.

Now, let it be known that I’m not in the “let’s be kind to racists” group. Nope, they got that way possibly due to not enough pushback. I am not going to sit here and let some two-bit chick tell me that I need to leave a faith I’ve practiced for over ten years because she’s crying White tears over me being there. If she don’t like it, she can cast a time traveling spell and get lost.

Paganism is a very diverse belief system and so is Wicca. The face of Wicca (and Paganism) is Whiter than a snowstorm but that’s why blogs like mine exist. I still remember some simple chick named Dion getting mad I said that, I think during an interview I had with Daughters of Eve. She was complaining that I shouldn’t have said the face of Paganism matches the color of mayo. Lol, it sure isn’t the color of a rainbow, she may need to take off her shades made of privilege before she tries to throw any shade next time. Then there’s the one time a reader posted my column “The Invisibility Cloak” on her blog and some White Pagan with a name that sounded like a bootleg Harry Potter name, Lucius-something, came along and said “Yes racism exist but could you not say racism exists in Paganism?” Everyone, this is what logic-bending looks like.

Listen, Paganism and Wicca can be for anybody, any culture and any pantheon so please give up on the “Won’t anyone please think of the White people?”because no one cares. And thank you Ms. Patti for being so nice to tell Silvia what she needs to hear.

*White Tears: Basically means that a White person is feeling unnecessary anguish over the fact that their privilege is crumbling away and they can’t be as racist as they like. Example of White Tears: Any Republican presidential runner from this current election and supporters of George Zimmerman.

Now, tomorrow starts a raffle for Princeless! Keep on the lookout for a post on it.

Comment

A Dabble Here and There

Filed under: Pagan Life — 2 Comments
June 15, 2012

Ah, dabbling. Doing anything half-hearted or basically doing something in the occult that you simply have no business in. When warning people about dabbling and how it’s not a good idea, I’m often looked at odd or folks think I’ve being over the top (yes, I’m over the top but when I tell those very same people I’m a Witch, they’ve jumped to the roof. Yes, makes perfect sound sense). I understand not everyone believes in magick, witchcraft or even the fact that different pantheons exists but still, dabbling is not a good idea.

Any Witch, Pagan, Wiccan or Occultist worth their salt will warn vehemently against dabbling. Yes, it seems harmless but so is lighting a candle and saying a few words over it but that can also be seen as witchcraft. Every Pagan book directed at teens will warn against dabbling, it isn’t smart. Even the books that I started with such as Where to Park your Broomstick by Lauren Manoy and Ellen Dugan’s book Elements of Witchcraft had a whole section on it.

Since I like being a fairly responsible columnist completely and totally aware that I have young readers as well as non-Pagan readers and newbie Pagan readers, I’m gonna say the same thing.

Dabbling – or “messing with” – usually doesn’t bode very well for folks who know less about occult and esoteric than the newbie Pagan. Here’s a little story from when I was younger of one of my friends who thought “Hey! An Ouija board. That’s interesting” – wait, no, it was his friends who thought that, my friend was staunchly Christian and not cool with it. How do I know? Because he told me as we were chatting over instant messenger. Went something like this:

Buddy: I’m havin a party at my house but I’m not there.

Me: Why not?

Buddy: One of my friends pulled out a wegie board

Me: An Ouija board? Why?

Buddy: They wanna see what they can get with it. Is it safe?

Me: Okay, even I don’t mess with Ouija boards and I’m a Witch, those things can be big trouble. It’s your house, tell ‘em to knock it off.

Buddy: Nah nah, I don’t wanna do that. It doesn’t seem bad anyways, look like an old board game. I just told them I’ll be in the kitchen while they do that stuff.

Me: Where are they doing it?

Buddy: Living room.

Me: It’s your house. And this really isn’t a good idea, you don’t know what can come through if you don’t know what you’re doing. Even if I had to use one, I wouldn’t do it without a circle of some sort around me.

Buddy: Circle?

Me: Witch stuff. Circles are casted either with energy or salt or chalk and they’re there for protection to make sure what stays in stays in and what stays out stays out. So if you summon some weird thing, it won’t trash anything (hopefully).

Buddy: Hopefully?

Me: Wellllllll, if you’re not very strong but you get a spirit or a demon that is, that could be problematic. Let’s hope we don’t get that.

Buddy: They’re trying to summon Elvis.

Me:….Seriously?

The friends were really trying to summon dead folks but I gotten an IM the next day from my buddy:

Buddy: Hey, uh, Olivia?

Me: Something went wrong, didn’t it?

Buddy: It trashed my living room!

Me: What?!

Buddy: Look, I was in the kitchen minding my own business after talking to you and then I hear all this noise in my living room and then all my friends running in to the kitchen with scratches and stuff on themselves! I think they summoned a demon or something! It wrecked my living room! Everything is everywhere!

Me: Dude, seriously? Is it still there? Wait wait. You’re Christian, have you made a prayer to Michael?

Buddy: Help me out!

Buddy: Michael?

Me: I have to explain to you St. Michael? Archangel Michael? Dude with flaming sword? Big name in your religion?

Buddy: No, no, I know who you’re talking about. But will it work?

Me: This is up his alley unless something changed, just ask him for protection, annnnd pray to Christ for the same thing, this is what they’re for, man! And if you know any Latin, that would help.

Buddy: Latin?

Me: Lord’s Prayer in Latin tends to work but I’m sure you don’t get points taken off for saying it in English, just say it.

Buddy: What?

Me: This is just to keep the demon, it doesn’t sound strong.

Buddy: They were trying to get Elvis! What the –

Me: Yeah, about that. If you don’t know what you’re doing with spirit stuff, anything is bound to pop out. And get your friends to help clean up. They made the mess, you didn’t even want that thing in your house!

Buddy: Nah, it’s fine.

Me: You’re too nice. And one more thing?

Buddy: What?

Me: Make your friends help clean up – and get new friends.

Dabbling simply can open up a big can of worms for whoever is messing around with it. I think I’ve had countless people come to me and tell me of their brief experiences with witchcraft and how it usually ended spooky or left them straight afraid of metaphysics, occult and magick, which isn’t that scary with some study.

Also, what dabbling produces: Fluffy bunnies.

For example: I can bet five bucks right now some random kid in the world right now is trying to summon Thor or Loki, both Nordic gods, simply because they saw The Avengers. Dabbling is this kid not really bothering to look up Thor or Loki’s back story and mythologies, simply and mostly going to go off what Marvel is telling them and remembering faintly somewhere that at one point in human history, these two were regarded with serious business. Thus, somewhere in this kid’s head, it’s a fantastic idea to seriously attempt to summon an actual god of Thunder and an actual god of thievery. Well, at least those two deities get along like Kenan and Kel, so there’s that but they’re definitely not for noobs, especially when one of the deities is known for being a trickster. If things go well, here’s lies a potential Asatru fluffy bunny. If things go disastrous because, well, summoning tricksters isn’t always a good idea, nor gods that like life loud, then you’ll have an unnecessarily frightened person who will shut up like a telescope and squawk like a parrot when they meet other people who do magick or anything with metaphysics or the occult. If nothing happens, that could just be one more annoying kid for Pagans to deal with (“Iiiii tried summoning Thor but he didn’t come. I guess it’s just fantasy after all. Do you really believe in that stuff?”). They’re not being patient, they’re just jumping in and without proper guidance or information, it can be problematic.

So if you’re a noob to Paganism and Witchcraft, keep researching. If you’re not interested in Paganism or Witchcraft, you just wanna see something happen, please head to the nearest exit. There’s not a lot of room for dabblers and less room for people who’ll actually put up with them.

That’s all the Black Witch for today! Next week is The Arts! and this is who is being featured next week:

– Busty Comics

– Princeless

– Afro-Punk Festival

Comment

Game On!

Filed under: Pagan Life — Leave a comment
June 1, 2012

I consider myself a casual gamer. I love playing games but not overly obsessed with them – unless EA Games puts out a new The Sims or some really violent or interesting game comes out, then I’m a hermit.

One game I’ve recently played is God of War. I’ve played 1 and 2 and I’m thinking about getting 3 (I’ve tried the demo), it’s not a bad series. Usually I can play a game without analyzing it – okay, I analyze a little but that’s just the person that I am. While playing, you have to pretty much slaughter the pantheon because the character, Kratos, is a myopic guy who backed out on a deal he initiated with Aries, the God of War. Besides seeing an example of why people should never make deals with deities, it became a little weird slaughtering some of the very deities I pray to. I know I kinda cringed some when I had to rip off Apollo’s head pretty gruesomely to use him for a lantern and a weapon in GoW 3 because weeeeeeeell, he’s the god of creativity, the sun and music. I think as I had to make Kratos slowly pull and twist the head of Apollo, sinew by sinew I would say, “Sorrrrrrreeeee. I have to do this to progress in the game! This is totally not personal, I like ya! Plz don’t give me writer’s block and creative dry spells.”

While playing, a thought hit me: “There are a lot of games and movies based on various mythologies but I wonder what would happen if there were a Christian version of God of War? I dunno… maybe title it Son of God or Saviour or something. Like someone wants Jesus to bail them out of something in exchange for undying servitude and then gets sick of it but Jesus doesn’t like that and thus Heaven or Hell! Let’s rock!” I have a feeling if someone had to play a game where they had to stab and pretty much obliterate their deity – I dunno, stab the spear of destiny straight through Christ and try to break the holy dude apart using the cross or something – it probably would ruffle a few feathers because of the common complaint, “Dude! This is…aw man, I am so going to Hell. He did not die on the cross for this.” Granted, Aries is a god of war so it’s a good setup for a bloody action game but if you’ve been around gaming for a long enough time, you learn just about anything can be a bloody action game. Look at American McGee’s Alice and Alice: Madness Returns (my favorite series). Heck, I think I even played a game on Newgrounds once where Jesus got sick of being Mr. Nice Guy and went on a straight rampage, even used his cross for a weapon. The thing is, however, if there were a big release of a game that type or one where Jesus plays the bad guy you’re supposed to destroy, it would still rile up a lot of people because of how much instilled reverence Christianity has that other religions don’t get.

There are so many games based on mythology. There’s even this list on Wikipedia that tells you the bulk of games that involve them. I especially remember Shin Megami Tensei because of how it used beings from various pantheons and mythologies, even the Abrahamic* ones, which just about never happens. This is spiffy but the downside of using gods in games is that the gods kinda get rendered to seem like pretend, as if they don’t exist and were nothing but stories told way back when before the Abrahamic religions came along. Depicted as ancient thinking, pretty much.  For example, though the superhero Thor is indeed a character, he is a creative spinoff from the actual Nordic god of the exact same name.

Sticking with Thor but going beyond games. The most recent popular movie is The Avengers, which has two Nordic gods in the whole showing, Thor and Loki. I haven’t seen the movie yet but I would pay massive money if Christ were ever included or had his own flick in such a fashion, where his likeness is turned into a superhero down to the matching name, and have to fight evil that way (I dunno, he’ll fight the Devil or something). Commonly in movies, either the gods of old will aid the explorer or adventurer, be the source of a curse, a challenge for the modern average person, anything that polarizes what is supposed to be the norm (which is usually Christian focused), or turned into a superhero to help save the world. They’re comedies or actions, but more dramatic movies about faith are usually reserved for Abrahamic faiths – okay, Islam and Judiasm, though it doesn’t risk getting whittled down to fodder like other the pantheons, does get demonized (especially Islam) so it’s mostly Christianity that mainly gets the chance to be seriously considered in film. I mean, The Passion created a lot of stir when it came out and I mean a lot. I think about two people died during viewings, there were cases of stigmata in the theatre and there was mucho controversy. Even The Secret and The Da Vinci Code were taken with seriousness and those were a joke of a movie, book and theory but because it was related to Christianity, it didn’t get sloughed off as simply bad movies in and of itself.

Now, would I become offended if there were as many God of War games as there are Final Fantasy? Nope. Didn’t stop me from getting God of War 1 after playing the demo, which didn’t stop me from getting God of War 2, and that didn’t stop me from trying out the demo of God of War 3. There are already so many pieces of media that involved non-Abrahamic mythologies (Hercules, Thor, The Avengers, Kid Icarus  etc etc) that it would not make me rage, really – I mean, there was already a lot of action going on in those pantheons’ mythologies so why not? As long as the pantheon is not demonized (*koff*constantproblemofafricanreligions*koff*) I’m a spiffy kitty. I mean, I’m thinking of looking at Thor and maybe The Avengers because hey, Nordic deities. I’m a sucker for superhero movies and mythology. Plus I think it’s a little cool that there are games where I can interact with some of the very deities and sprites I believe in and I can watch movies where they’re being awesome or odd or however they are. Despite it all, it’s pretty rad, just has its weird feeling parts.

Black Witch Meet and Greet next Saturday!

Where: At the Washington Monument in Baltimore, MD
When: June 9 @ 12 PM
Why: Meet Black Witch and socialize with other Black Pagans
What: Meet and greet. If it is not too far a walk, to a metaphysical shop and library. There will be cupcakes cakepops.
*Abrahamic: Christianity, Islam, Judaism

Comment

“Okay, Mr. Illuminati”: Redux

Filed under: Pagan Life — Leave a comment
May 11, 2012

If you’ve been a long time reader of this blog, you most likely saw my first (and only?) mention of secret societies on BW: “Okay, Mr. Illuminati”. I still think that is among one of my favorite posts.

This is a revisit since I have heard so much since then since Beyonce had birth (even if you’re not a fan or don’t even really like her, such as myself, you learn this stuff anyways whether you want to or not.), Nicki Minaj’s meh performance on the Grammys and just people passing along hearsay. I find it absolutely stunning, honestly stunning. The stunning part is that all my friends who are part of the occult and even a few who are part of societies such as Freemasons and O.T.O., an offshoot of Golden Dawn don’t spew any of this – we all saw Minaj’s performance and laughed at how the Illuminati would probably destroy whatever screen they were viewing if they A) saw the same or B) Saw “Stupid Hoe” – and the people who I know that knows absolutely nothing about the occult are the ones screaming about how the world is about to end and Illuminati Illuminati Illuminati. Actually, if the Illuminati saw the “Stupid Hoe” video, they would have probably have assumed it was a very colorful minstrel show. Yep, definitely that.

I’m sure you have seen many different videos about this on the internet. A friend of mine had posted one about Kat Williams being punished by the Illuminati for “letting out its secrets” or something like that, as described by Professor Griff of Public Enemy. Let us watch, don’t forget your popcorn and snacks:

Let us review:

First and foremost, if you see a vid that says it has the “truth” in all caps and won’t tell you about what, it’s probably going to be a joke going in.

– Illuminati Rituals: Mansion parties sound nice, a bit vain though so not my thing. Two guys kissing as an Illuminati Ritual? Wow, if that were true, then a small secret society from the 18th century is more progressive than over half of the U.S. states in the 21st century. Lol, I wish. Orrrrrr it could just be Prof. Griff’s homophobia shining through. It’s the latter, I bet. It was blowing Kat William’s mind because let’s face it, there’s no normal, lackadaisical way to get out of the awkward moment of walking in on a couple making out. No, “Oh hai, I was looking for the bathroom, is it on this floor or do I have to go back downstairs?” And the drugs, that would stun just about anyone. It’s not an Illuminati ritual, dude, it’s a coke head being a coke head.

– Illuminati Global Police: Okay. Remove “Illuminati” and keep “global police” and you have a pretty basic depiction of America and its very centralist stance towards the world (“We’ll keep the order here folks, don’t worry. We’re America, we know what’s good for the world – it’s whatever’s good for us!”) What Williams described is the same stuff you’d hear if you listened to NPR, Democracy Now! or even Stephen Colbert. Add “Illuminati” and you might as well just say “’Foreign policy’? ‘Neo-colonialism’? ‘Imperialism’? What are these words?”

– Williams being arrested: He’s a Black guy in America, this does happen pretty often. That and running into super sheisty people. Some people just bring drama with them that can ripple onto others, sounds like Williams just got hit with a wave. Nothing to do with Illuminati, just having crappy fortune.

Usually the videos are poorly done, with wack job editing – this one we all saw just had wack job reasoning – and have more fluff than a pillow factory. Usually the videos pick on the quirky and famous such as Kanye West, Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, etc etc etc. These videos fuel the imaginations of the paranoid and easily duped. However, it was kinda funny that one time when Lupe Fiasco called Mtv part of the Illuminati once in a tweet – all the while people were calling him part of the Illuminati. Illumin-ception!

What is remarkable is the stunning lack of facts that these videos spew and loosely link together. I ought to make it more of a habit but it is wise to ask people who cry wolf how do they know it’s Illuminati and what history of the Illuminati do they know to back up those facts. Usually it’s either more jibberish or they clam up quick as someone has hit the emergency brake on their lol’lercoster of lacked logic.

A small revisit from my favorite book Watkin’s Dictionary of Magic

Illuminati: A term used by occultists from the late fifteenth century onwards to describe spiritual adepts who had received mystical insights or “illumination” from a transcendent source. The Order of the Illuminati was founded by Adam Weishaupt, a Bavarian law professor, in 1776, but this was hardly esoteric in any mystical sense and based most of its “secrets” on the work of Voltaire and the French Encyclopedists. Weishaupt and another enthusiast, Baron Adolf Knigge. later adapted the order’s teachings in order to infiltrate Freemasonry. A decree in Bavaria in 1784 banned all secret societies – including Freemasonry – and the order declined. However, it was revived around the turn of the 20th century by the occultists Leopold Engel and Theodor Reuss. In recent times the idea of a secret brotherhood of adepts or Illuminati has been popularized by fantasy occult writer Robert Anton Wilson and New Age spokesman Stuart Wilde.

Alrightie then. I decided to look up Volitare and the French Encyclopedists. For some secret people, there are lots of Wikis and sites out on them and that’s just for basic information. There’s one for Volitare, les encyclopédistes (caution, it’s been flagged for missing citations so here’s some stuff from University of Chicago and another site to buy the books), and le (“la”?) Encyclopédie. You can springboard from that and go even deeper but that’s up to you, readers. I’m just throwing out the basics. You can look up Leopold and Theodor yourselves.

I have this very strong feeling that most people who rant on and on about Illuminati don’t know about these texts or even how the Illuminati got started. It’s already false that they are believed to be devil-worshippers, what other nonsense could be out there? I understand the need to have some understanding in this crazy world we’re living in but blaming normal things for abnormal stuff? Nah, man. People fear what they don’t understand, true fact, but what they’re fearing is more something within themselves than in the world. I can (and already have in the first post) explain away fame in the music industry in a way that makes perfect sense and not at all loony. Granted, Prof. Griff should have known better than what he said but just because you’re in the music industry doesn’t mean you’re 100% bright about it.

I honestly think that if people put this much energy into more proactive issues, such as investigating and bringing to light why Black culture has such a jaw dropping rape culture that supersedes even American culture’s obsession with it, the general fixing of the education system, so on and so forth, I feel that tons of positive change might have happened right now – or at least create less negative change. And less derpy videos.

And that’s Black Witch for this week. Next week is The Arts! and we’re featuring videos!:

– Mr. Rococo
– Sh*t Lolitas Say
– Sh*t People Say to Lolitas

Don’t forget, Black Witch meet and greet in Baltimore, MD on June 9. Meet other Black Pagans and socialize.

Comment

Who Do You Believe?

Filed under: Pagan Life — 2 Comments
May 4, 2012

It’s not every day I read Very Smart Brothas but occasionally I do when referenced by someone else or another blog. The Root referred to their “Just Out of a Relationship” piece but the poor linking instead took me to the front of their blog and I saw an eye-catching piece titled “My Problem with Church”. It was eye-catching for me because a lot of what the writer Damon Young wrote, reminded me of when I was Christian and trying to go to church.

This is the part that struck me most:

“…the main thing limiting my appearances to one per every three months is the fact that I just don’t feel anything when I go.

I understand that everyone isn’t going to catch the Holy Ghost whenever they attend service, and I also get the fact that even in church, your personal relationship with God — not your connection to the parishioners — is what really matters.

But while I do always enjoy myself when I’m there, I never seem to actually be doing what I’m supposed to be doing. While we’re supposed to be praying, I’m thinking about how many calls and texts I’ve missed since I’ve been there. While we’re supposed to be paying attention to the word, I’m scanning the crowd to spot familiar faces (and thinking some, um “unChristian” things about some of them). While we’re supposed to be standing and singing, I’m wondering if the people behind me notice that it’s been a month since I took the suit I’m wearing to the cleaners.

This isn’t a new development, btw. Even as a child, I was never able to immerse myself into church the same way some of my classmates and family members seemed to. And yes, I realize that a good percentage of that was probably an act — many of the kids were likely just going through the motions to appease their parents and teachers — but I didn’t even care/feel enough to fake it.”

I totally remember feeling and doing all of this. Since childhood I had banged into my head that church was part of the well-balanced breakfast for your soul and that a good person/Christian goes to church – though my family didn’t commonly go, but there were family ministers and my mother side was faithful and religious enough I guess. I still remember once when I went to the church that owns my apartment and I sat in the pew. I felt like an anthropologist surveying the crowd than an active participant. I didn’t know where anything was in the Bible so I would flip random pages until my book looked almost just like the person beside me and read whatever was on the page. I did it so many times and even was corrected occasionally, I’m surprised no one thought I was illiterate. I would watch people praise and get up and jump around, clearly catching the spirit and me sitting there wondering what that feels like. While bowing my head and attempting to pray, I felt like I was just doing nothing, only mimicking everyone else and curious of what was wrong with me.

Just like Young stated, I could not immerse myself into it ever since I was a wee young lass. I could pray, read the Bible and read all the mini-comic tracts (which I still like to do, they are entertaining) as I liked. I’ve even been saved about three times at the most because I was concerned about the state of my soul, did the confessing of Christ being my Lord and saviour, everything but get baptized. Still, nothing and I don’t think dunking me would have had any additional effect. When I watched others getting immersed in the spirit, I would wonder how they do it, when they start screaming and crying and talking in tongues. I didn’t think anyone was acting like Young did – well, no, it did cross my mind these folks could very well be acting but if so, it was Oscar-winning acting. I just felt like a square peg in a round hole. Yeah, I could have faked it but with no passion? Nah. And what’s the point if God is omnipotent, meaning “He can see straight through the bulls**t”. That’s worse than simply displaying no feeling at all to me.

This however, is where Young and I split. When Young asked his friend about the disconnect, this is what she said:

“’Your problem is that you expect your relationship with church and God to be easy. It’s not. You have to work at it and want it to be successful. It’s actually like any other relationship with friends or even a romantic partner. Things aren’t just going to magically work. You have to put in the work for it to work, and the basis of this effort is the love you have for your friend. You want things to work because you love them and you know your life is better with them in it. You’re not connecting with church and God the way you think you should be able to because you’re just not trying hard enough to keep a consistent dialogue. As close as I am to my best friend, if I went two years without calling her, we definitely wouldn’t be as close anymore.’”  

I’ve heard the same myself. That the relationship with church and God isn’t going to be easy, that it will always need work to become something plentiful and consistent dialogue would be needed. Where Young is trying to stay and willing to make things work for himself and his faith, I bounced to a new religion that made me feel the work I put into it was worthwhile. Faith, regardless whether you believe in God, Goddess, both or plurals, is a relationship but some relationships simply don’t work out for various reasons. Does this mean that Young should consider a new faith? Nah, not necessarily. If he’s not pulled to anything else, then nope. If he honestly wants to be Christian and fully believe in the Bible, nope. Some of the best Christians I know don’t act like frothy-mouthed Bible thumpers and don’t start rolling around on the floor for the slightest things but are simply steady, gentle and firm in their practice, truly happy with their religious choice. It’s just a commitment thing overall and if you, the practitioner, is willing to make such a commitment to have the best relationship with the Divine as possible.

There’s various reasons why I left Christianity and have absolutely zero intentions to come back but hey, I, too, tried. I think most who are Black Pagans now have tried to make it work with Christianity but simply couldn’t because it doesn’t work out for everyone. I couldn’t get with the basics of the faith – I don’t agree with everything in the Bible – and the people in the religion didn’t exactly make me want to stay either. When I was studying the Bible like a minister in training thanks to getting into P.O.D. heavy, I learned that there were some parts that I simply did not believe deep down in my core and what parts were modified thanks to politics and history. (“Thou shalt not suffer a Witch/poisoner to live” I’m lookin at you) Since I am a bit of a history buff as well, seeing how the Bible has been wrangled time and time again from a book that is supposed to be about love and peace to pretty much the bottom line of reasoning for some of the greatest travesties this world has seen. Yes, that’s the people taking the Bible and ripping it apart for their own gains and not the Bible itself, I understand that. However, the god of the Bible seems too bipolar to me and even flawed some: “I am a jealous and wrathful God” – jealously and rage is technically supposed to be big on the sin-o-meter so it sometimes baffles me how a “perfect” god could have such issues. If I want to have a relationship with God, I don’t want to fear him nor should I; we should be able to work together. If I don’t want that kinda relationship with a human, I don’t think deities should get a pass. The various gods of Paganism aren’t perfect either but at least you come in knowing that. I just couldn’t buy the idea of Jesus being my Lord and savior and wanting to invest my time, energy and passion into helping build an already fractured relationship with Him and His pops.

Then there’s the fact that Christians can be their own exit sign. With Black Christianity, it can be suffocating and even downright scary, like dealing with the brainwashed sometimes. I’m grateful for my friends such as Amani and Nastassia to remind me not all Christians are one misinterpreted scripture away from picking up a gun or bomb and committing terrorism but when I’m around the average Black Christian, I do tend to be on my toes depending on how much chicanery I care to deal with at that moment. I still imagine meeting Wondaland Arts Society and it turning into something from the Valley of the Voodoo Dolls or Children of the Corn and I’m on decent terms with them, it’s just most of them are strongly Christian and when you’re not, trouble could be afoot. When it is Christianity in general, I just hope I’m not dealing with a nutjob who have incredibly transparent and short-sighted concerns about me not running to Jesus and attempting to convert me like they’re working on commission. Now, this is not to say that Pagans are perfect in every way, I can just deal with the bull better because I genuinely want to be part of the religion. I never felt the same for Christianity, practicing simply felt like a chore.

The one idea that does haunt me, though: If I did come back to Christianity, how much bashing would my stint in Paganism receive? Considering the average Christian, it would be free-for-all potshots probably, telling me that I made the right choice, I’ve turned away from wickedness, I’ll no longer risk burning for all eternity (lol, right), and how I’ve turned to the light…which is full of hypocrisy, crassness, blatant sinning – even Young admits to it when he says “and thinking some, um ‘unChristian’ things about some of [the parishioners]” – and other modifications of the Bible that absolutely drives me up a wall. I don’t think that’s positive, anyone railing on the previous religion they had because it means no one learned a single thing, regardless if the person who is doing the bashing is the person who converted or the Christian hearing this. I may pick on Christians and admit to disagreeing with parts of the Bible but when I do meet with new Pagans who came from Christianity with a salty attitude about it, I try to remind them that they didn’t just leave Mordor – Christianity is not evil in itself, just some of the applications of it.

At the end of the day, religion and faith is what you make of it. It sometimes requires working harder at it or simply moving to another faith.

That’s all the Black Witch for today! I would like to announce a first ever Black Witch Meet and Greet in Baltimore, MD on June 9. We’ll meet up at the Washington Monument in Mt. Vernon and get to interact with one another and visit a metaphysical shop, Grandma Candles Too. So come and meet other Black Pagans!

Comment

Do the Creep Walk

Filed under: Pagan Life — 1 Comment
April 13, 2012

Creepers, ick. They’re in every religion but it seems Modern Paganism has a special breed. They’re usually guys, most likely middle aged, near it or beyond it, and prey on gullibility. Forget social, these guys just try to charm anything with a punami and preferably under the age of 25. They lean on the whole “Horned God” aspect to the point it’s pretty transparent they couldn’t care less about religion, just how quick it can get a girl in their bed and how slow it can make them talk to a police officer about it.

Exhibit A:

The Old Goat seeks young worshipers*

Hi I am The Old Goat and am 49 years old
I live in constantine, KY , US
The Old Goat is ofcourse a Horny old devil…and seeks only the most energetic maidens and
ladies for deep worshipful relationships. Desire immediate responses from those desiring to form
a true coven…live-in is available for the most sincere supplicants…have room for upto 8
devotees. A journey together towards the innermost realms of wisdom, understanding, and
pleasure. Single, Divorced, Widowed, if you have pets or children your are still welcome plenty
of room on my country property 20 miles west of Elizabethtown / 69 miles south of Louisville
Ky. A completely unified group is necessary, therefore only those seeking a true communal
coven experience should reply…cooperation and mutual love a must ! We will form a Non-profit
Religeous Organization and work together towards goals of self sufficiency, educational
outreach, and deprograming the biased “Christian” mindset in the world around us….ofcourse
concentrating also on coven cerimony, rit

There was another I found but it was too embarrassing to post here, mainly for the guy, not me. That and I have kid readers, I don’t really want well-deserved hate mail from disgruntled parents. You can look around for it, of course but I think sites are getting better at detecting this predatory stuff – or the predators are super well blended at this point, peppering their pseudo-knowledge with “No one understands but you, you have the gift. I could refine that gift” or “the government does not want to me to teach this but I will anyways because you are the perfect person for it. Training will be strenuous” and other wack things to younger, more gullible folks

Let’s break down what this guy got here:

* Pedo-vibe encrusted title – Check
* Within range of being a target audience for the AARP – Check
* Thinly veiled “I wanna get in your pants – but in the name of religion!” first sentence? – Check
* Distorts the definition of religious proceedings and groups (“a true coven”) – Ka-chek
* Pretty much wants to create his own harem of sex-kittens, in the name of “religion” – Check
* Promise to pretty much to give you the moon in knowledge and wisdom – yep, check
* Sounds like this dude wants to create a compound that would peak the interest of the FBI – Check
* Wants absolute trust – check
* When he says “mutual love”, it means “absolute control” – check
* Wants to pull a sham to go tax-free and to create false legitimacy – Nice trick, still, check
* Wants to deprogram the “biased ‘Christian’ mindset” – Yeah right, check
* Women only – I seriously want a guy to apply just to read the reaction, check

This dude is about as wack and rachet as all things. Good grief, he sounds like a comic book nerd that bought a little too much into those tales. Now, I can pick up the nonsense and fluff miles away but more impressionable women and girls who are new to the craft may actually buy into this. It may sound like this dude is totally liberating and soooooo different from the usual “Christian” ideals but he’s just preying on any chick lacking any sense that something is amiss. You can’t always call the girl stupid because though this dude couldn’t get any more blatant about his real intentions, they’re usually more trickier than this. I should know, creepers like this would contact me when I was about 16 or so through WitchVox. The younger you are, the more you attract, which is pretty disturbing.

In short, if anybody writes to you like this, simply run. Run fast, run far and run away. And if they’re letters like these, before you run, please forward a copy to the FBI or their local police department.

And that’s the column for this week! Everyone, I would like you to know that I will be at the CityLit Festival in Baltimore, MD tomorrow and possibly at the Ting Tings concert. So if you wanna bug me, there’s your chance.

The winner for the poetry contest will be announced at midnight so if you haven’t submitted, do it nao! Check out the About Me/Contact Me to find out how to send them.

Comment