Giving Up "Hope" As A Constructive Act

This post is about ecological pessimism, environmental collapse, despair, and other stuff that tends to be hated by optimistic environmentalists.

So a few weeks ago I wrote about coming back to Earth-Based Paganism and how Pagans aren't as environmentally friendly as we think we are.

Something I didn't go into and was considering not going into was this:  I'm actually an ecological pessimist.  I don't believe that doing this stuff is going to "save the planet."  I wasn't always like this.  I used to have an attitude a lot like a liberal environmental activist (what I often mentally call "Lisa Simpson" activists).

Screenshot from "The Simpsons: Tapped Out"

A Lisa Simpson activist is someone who has a very shallow understanding of what is really going on, who makes very surface changes to their lifestyle without fully registering how much ecological damage is not due to their personal choices, and who believes it is possible to grind it to a halt and totally reverse it.  And while I love my Lisa Simpson friends... I am not really among them anymore.

I believe that if the whole "developed" world decided to immediately grind our ecocidal activities to a halt, change the entire structure of our energy system, uproot our agricultural system to totally revamp it, and change all our personal and corporate habits, we might be able to slow or stop climate change and other forms of ecocide that are presently occurring.  The problem is there is zero chance that this will happen.  Absolutely none.  The major factors driving ecocide aren't going to change until it's too late.  Most of the things we do change don't actually make much difference big-picture-wise, and when positive changes are made they're just backfilled with other ecocidal garbage. 

Collectively we're extremely easy to deceive, and it's really easy to just repackage the same bullshit and sell it to us while we think we're super green for it.  And most people either deny that there is a problem to the point where they will do nothing or are barred from making those changes anyway through educational gaps or economic oppression.

Essentially, we're wrapped up in this twine ball of environmental destruction intermixed with capitalism that we really can't get out of.  There's too much money involved, too much comfort involved, too much power involved.  We aren't going to undo it; it's just going to need to die.

There's a major criticism of my thinking that goes around, and many folks I respect a great deal use it, which is that by telling people there "is no hope" we discourage people from making changes needed to push toward a sustainable future.  The reality is I don't actually believe "there is no hope."  I just have a different focus for my hope.  The thing is, I want you all to make positive changes to your lifestyle, but I don't believe these things actually "save the planet."  That's not the goal at all.  Instead, when I try to be more "eco-friendly," this is what I'm doing:

1. I'm trying to reduce the individual suffering done to the other forms of life that call Earth "home."  Even if my actions do not prevent climate change in any significant way, it only takes one plastic straw or one single-use bag or one bottle's worth of microbeads to harm a creature, perhaps even multiple creatures.  By not using these things I at least help those individuals (I'm reminded of the sand dollar story I heard as a child in which a little girl is throwing sand dollars back into the ocean to prevent them from dying, and she is criticized because she isn't actually making a dent in the number of sand dollars dying, but remarks that she made a difference to each one).
2. I'm preparing for our current lifestyles finally being so unsustainable we have to change them anyway.  I want to guide people in a direction that will cushion that fall, and that means teaching them ways of doing things that are more deeply sustainable.  Our excuses for why we aren't obligated to change our ways--a common trope among social justice warrior types who like finding some beautiful social cause for garbage--are going to be useless in the future whether we like it or not, so our dependency on those excuses is going to harm us.  We will need to have these habits and know these skills to build something better when we need to.
3. I'm doing it for spiritual reasons and to make me feel better in a situation where I don't have much power.
4. I'm doing it because it is good for me, and just as all life, I have a self-preservation instinct.  A lot of actions that are more environmentally friendly are also healthier for the people who do them both physically and mentally.
5. If I'm going to have to live through ecological disasters I may as well have fun with it.  Many of these projects and activities are fun for me.  There's no shame in that.

In some respects, I think dropping the type of "hope" people are trying to preserve and accepting that the result we are expecting is not likely to happen can be a very constructive act.  I'm picturing myself as a Lisa Simpson activist in college... and I burnt myself the fuck out, because instead of really looking to the future I was tricking myself into thinking my actions could "save the planet."  When they didn't, and when inevitably things got much worse, I got super fucking depressed and spent quite a few years doing practically nothing at all.

So instead of falling into the ridiculous "save the planet" booby trap, I accept that things are going to go to shit.  I took time to mourn (and occasionally take a little more time to mourn when I need it). And then I look to the future again with a fresh perspective:  Yes, things really are going to shit.  No, we really can't reverse it.  So what can we do about that realistically?

We can prepare.  We can develop good habits.  We can study and build viable, Earth-friendly replacements to the institutions that are going to crash.  And yes, we can do many of the same things we thought were going to save the planet, while understanding those actions through a different, less-greenwashed lens.

On Empaths and being Bad At Empathy

Topics talked about in this post include empathy in both a mundane and psychic sense and consent regarding touching, including some discussion on racism and other oppressions.  One of the folks talked about uses pronoun "it" and if you aren't used to hearing people referred to with that pronoun some of this piece will read weird.

I went through this period when I was just starting to get into the in-person Pagan community (at age 19 or 20 or so) when I had just this major craving for validation.  And believe me, I'd never say I don't still crave validation (I've been practicing Witchcraft a long time for Goddex sake!) but at that point in my life I was really invested in magickal and psychic validation... I wanted personal proof that I was as spiritually badass as I wanted to think I was.  The perfect place to get this validation was the very first Pagan ritual I attended, which was frequented by a lot of local Pagans and Witches ranging from the fluffiest of fluff to the most obnoxious Reconstructionist, and although the presentation beforehand was super bullshit and involved somebody dressed as Glinda the Good Witch in it, it was overall a great experience that introduced me to such wonders as the Spiral Dance, which continues to be one of my favorite group Pagan activities.

At some point, hanging out alone like the introvert I was, an older Witch approached me, smiling widely.

"You have... the gift," she said as she looked into my eyes.

I had no idea what the fuck she was talking about.  "What gift?" I asked.

"The gift," she replied.  She then looked at me in a way which felt like she was looking directly into my soul, held my shoulders, and said "Whenever you feel like crying, just wiggle your toes."

It soon struck me, or at least I think it did:  She was saying I was an empath, or somebody who can feel the emotions of other people.  It was something I suspected, and a mere couple weeks earlier I had a weird experience where somebody in front of me was talking on his cell phone and I just felt this intense, crushing dread and despair even though I had not heard what he was talking about.  He hung up the phone and told the person he was talking to that a close relative had died, after which I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to cry a bit.

I didn't really talk about this to people.  Folks who aren't Pagan or into this sort of shit are really not receptive to it and are quick to ridicule or try and find mundane reasons for them, and I had major performance anxiety when it came to folks who would believe these things.  But privately I really owned it.  And I would own it for years, and even went to a Pagan empath support group once where I found that my experiences were pretty much the same as every other person who showed up.

A lot of things have changed since then that made me question this identification.  "High level of empathy?" Absolutely.  But as far as promoting myself as having some sort of innate, beautiful spiritual skill?  Meh.  Unclear.  I use a lot of resources directed toward psychic empaths because they are useful for coping with my feelings, and in a discussion with a particularly accepting individual, sure, I might generically call myself an empath.

But I'm not invested in it anymore, and to make matters worse, there are a lot of quite problematic aspects to the empath life that I think everybody who owns that term needs to understand and unpack if they're going to continue describing themselves in that way.

It all started with a list of so-called "traits of empaths."

It was a checklist that was supposed to help you figure out if you were an empath or not if you were on the fence.  And something stuck out that made me call the way we talk about empathy into immediate question:  There was a big focus on empaths' emotional responses to fictional characters, particularly an aversion to violence on TV and in movies.

This made me really uncomfortable, because so many of these resources seemed dedicated to convincing people they were supernaturally empathetic based on something that really isn't feeling what somebody else is feeling at all.  Fictional characters are just that... fictional... and unless you're going to go all out on weird things like alternate universes created by the pen of the writer, this to me strikes me as nothing more than just plain old mundane empathy, something we learn and develop that's based on mundane observations we make about others, like facial expression and tone of voice, including those we might not comprehend on a surface level.

Here's the kicker, though:  Since fictional characters are created to amplify those cues we all learn, because they're designed to be highly identifiable characters, and because we're likely to get a more "in their head" perspective, it's actually easier for most of us to empathize with them than it is folks who are right next to us.

Does a high level of emotion when consuming fiction mean you're not an empath because you're creating emotions that aren't necessarily concretely there?  Of course not.  I believe you can have a high level of mundane empathy alongside a high level of spiritual empathy.  But it's not necessarily a sign that you are an empath... and in lots of cases fiction empathy actually contributes to the following other problems with spiritual empathy.

A lot of self-described empaths are very, very bad at empathy.

One of the folks I see most often who describes itself as an empath is... a touchy-feely person.  Walking through a park on Pagan Pride Day I was suddenly graced by an arm reached right across my shoulders, immediately raising my hackles in grating discomfort.  I do not like being touched by strangers, particularly without permission, and was trying desperately to hint to it that I was very uncomfortable.  And yet... it persisted, for quite a long time.

Too often when we think we are empathizing with people, that we can feel what they're feeling, what we're really feeling is how we would feel in their situation.  My Pagan acquaintance couldn't register that I was uncomfortable, because it wouldn't have been uncomfortable in my situation.

I hear stories of this all the time from people who wind up with empaths popping their personal bubbles and not registering at all when they're making people uncomfortable.

And some of the wrongest empathy?  It's even worse than just not registering that some rando is uncomfortable...

Empathy is often selective, including along lines of oppression.

Not sensing that somebody is internally screaming for you to stop touching him, well, that sucks, but in my example case there really isn't a power over relationship.  What about when there is?

It's a mess.

I was reading some Twitter threads on shitty white people behavior.  This talked about a phenomenon that the authors referred to as white sociopathy... essentially, as white people we learn to empathize with people of color and especially black people less than we do other white people.

Part of this is actually the same issue I described above... we believe that we are empathizing with people when we feel emotions we would feel in their situation, regardless of whether or not they actually feel the same way.  As a white person I have no idea what it feels like to experience racism.  I can try imagining what it feels like, but the accuracy of those feelings is dubious at best.  So when I witness or am around somebody experiencing a racist attack, or viewing programming about racism, I certainly feel sympathy, but my frame of reference is just too different (and too privileged) to really feel empathy.

The same person who could not understand my dislike of its touching me without my consent?  It also went to an anti-racism workshop and entirely goddamn missed the point.  Like, career level missed the point along with everyone else (among whom I know there were other self-described empaths).  These were people who could not get beyond their own whiteness to even sympathize with the issues being talked about let alone express some sort of superpower-level empathy like they truly think they have.

This is a huge problem that goes beyond just believing in something that might not be literally true (something I'm totally cool with).  If you're convinced you have high psychic empathy, but are chronically bad at empathizing with marginalized people, you're the type of person who could be easy to manipulate into thinking things aren't as bad as they really are.

I think about the medical profession... doctors in particular are likely to prescribe fewer pain medications to black people (especially black women) because they believe they feel less pain than white people.  Male doctors are likely to believe that women are exaggerating pain, especially menstrual pain.  And while these aren't necessarily self-described psychic empaths, we are just as susceptible to our own biases as anyone else is.

So, you believe you're an empath anyway.  What now?

I'm not saying that you're not an empath.  I think that plenty of the stuff above can be explained in ways that don't discount the whole concept, and I'm not even saying that if you have problematic empathy you are a "fake" empath.  Like I said above, I have huge questions about psychic empathy, but I do use the concept where it suits me, because there is a lot of good coping information there.

It's really important to realize, though, that a lot of the cultural baggage surrounding psychic empathy can still manipulate us and quite frankly make us into really obnoxious people.  So if you want to keep within the psychic empathy framework without being obnoxious, I have a few suggestions.

First, always troubleshoot your own perceptions before concluding that somebody is "fake" or lying to you about their feelings.  Remember that you have emotions, too, and if they're charged up enough they will override anything you're feeling from someone else.  A few years ago my grandma had a stroke, and everybody who was around me when I heard the news immediately felt it as if their own grandmothers had had stroke and became overwhelmed by "empathetic" feelings.  But my grandma is actually a bigoted and abusive human being who I don't care for at all, and I felt very little emotion about it.  I wasn't lying about how unremarkable I felt about the whole situation, but somebody who is picturing their own grandmother having a stroke could easily cross those wires and assume my emotions had to be in the same ballpark.

When you think you're being empathetic toward somebody marginalized under you, take extra consideration, and don't say ridiculous things white people say like "I know exactly how you feel," even if you think you do know exactly how they feel.

I also want you to interrogate the entire idea of "fake" people.  We use this term to refer to people who behave in a way that isn't really "them" in order to curry favor, to look cool or interesting, or to avoid drama... and it describes pretty much absolutely everyone.  The way I behave at work is different from how I behave around my close friends, which is also different from how I behave around my lovers.  That's not "fake," it's just context.  When we call people "fake," there's a good chance what we mean is that they are behaving in a way that we personally do not like.  As a trans person, I can guarantee a lot of my relatives thought my transition was just attention-seeking fakery.  Men regularly accuse women who wear makeup of being fake (and don't get me started on the idea of "fake geek girls!").  People accuse bisexuals of being "fake."  So when we talk about the so-called aversion of empaths to "fake people," we're meddling in a concept that is in and of itself... well, fake.  Meaningless.  And often oppressive.

If you're going to live the empath life, I'd also suggest you find ways to disconnect.  I was in a lovely group ritual for empaths in which we narrowed and sometimes cut cables of psychic connection between ourselves and people we are too invested in (abusers, exes, politicians, etc.), because dwelling too much on other people's feelings is not good for us.  You can use the wiggle-your-toes trick that elderly Witch I started this essay with gave me, or learn spiritual warding techniques (a really simple one is to cross your fingers when you feel overwhelmed), or make jewelry of iron or hematite to help block it out.

Equinox Preparations 2018

This post talks about preparations and ponderings regarding the Vernal Equinox, also known as Ostara, Eostre, or the Spring Equinox.

It is a couple of weeks until the Spring Equinox, often known to Pagans as "Ostara," and so I'm starting to think up things to do during the celebration.

I'm not a big formal ritual person (even as a solitary) so I tend to celebrate Sabbats and other holidays by making a shared celebration meal with my Pagan and non-Pagan friends alike and then doing activities relevant to the season.

For the Equinox I tend to just start my gardening for the year by blessing seeds.  I already have a nice wad of seed packets from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds that I'll be blessing, and I might pre-plant some if I can secure a good south-facing spot to start seeds in the house.

I might make fortune eggs, an idea I got from The Path of the Green Man: Gay Men, Wicca, and Living a Magical Life.  I blew out some eggs so I just have the shells that are drying right now.  I can slip some sort of fortune or power word in each one, patch them up, paint them pretty, and then distribute them to people who want them.  They can choose to either keep them intact and meditate on them or break them (ideally on Beltane) to see the word inside.  I'd also like to decorate some just to be pretty, of course.

As far as my ritual feast, I will do that the Sunday after the Equinox because my girlfriend is going to be visiting.  I'll make a big lamb roast, egg-related dishes (deviled eggs, especially), and some other fun and delicious stuff.

When I do this stuff I'll of course probably photograph it for updates or post-Equinox rundowns.

Avoiding the Apologism of the Abuser Goddex

This essay is about the normalization of abuse among deities within their mythology and the way modern Pagans talk about our interactions with them, including some references to sexual violence.
 

Leda and The Swan (Zeus)

There are some Goddexes out there that I don't fuck with.  I cannot read their mythology without solidly wanting to vomit all over the place.  This might seem ironic to people who know me, because my own God has... well, a reputation.  My God started off as a God of storms, the desert, and other forms of creative destruction and barrenness.  He started being associated with gratuitous violence about when he began being associated with foreigners and political enemies, and that smear campaign was so successful that he still is usually defined as the "God of Evil" in textbooks today.

I have never viewed him that way.  Instead, I view him as a God who does destructive things that are also necessary to new creation... he who burns down the forest when it stagnates so it can grow new life, he who crumbles political regimes, he who leaves deserts barren but also takes care of the oasis.  When his more abusive aspects only seem to appear when his followers are unpopular?  I am going to take those stories with a pinch of salt.  And when they're later translated by prudish Victorian era folks who cannot tell the difference between consensual sex and rape?  I take the way they translate things with a whole spoon of salt.

But I have limits, such as when it's not just the enemies of a Goddex, but zir literal followers all throughout history telling stories of them in which they are serial rapists or some other horrible thing.  I assume there are followers of these Goddexes who also come up with reasons why their deities aren't actually like this and are merely misinterpreted, but for me, there's a limit to how much salt I can take.

I tell you about that to tell you about this:  We have some bad habits in the Pagan community regarding how we talk about the Goddexes and what assumptions about them we normalize.  One of the biggest examples I have is called the Cosmic Two-by-Four, a common term when I was in an organized polytheistic religion.

The Cosmic Two-by-Four is a concept in which a Goddex communicates with a worshiper through some physically painful or traumatic event.  Many of my friends described it as feeling as if you were just literally hit by a wooden board in the back of the head, or being shoved, or experiencing a pang of pain when doing something you know your Goddex doesn't approve of, especially something that is self-destructive.

And we laughed about these events, like it's just a given that if you worship a particular Goddex ze is going to at some point physically abuse you so you'd better just get used to the idea now.

As an aside, I want to make something abundantly clear:  If you are really into relating to your Goddexes this way?  That's fine, as long as you understand that it is a personal preference (as someone in a D/s relationship, I certainly can't talk about anything physical as inherently abusive!).  But the idea that you are going to be dragged into the worship of a Goddex kicking and screaming who is then going to threaten harm or pain if you do something ze doesn't like or try to stop worshiping zir... that's not some sort of divine D/s relationship... it's hands-down an abusive relationship.  You have every right to ask for them to communicate with you in a different way (perhaps by starting a divination practice) or to break off that relationship.

"But Setkheni," you may be asking, "If this is abusive, why do they communicate with us like this in the first place?"

Here's where I drift into some hardcore Unverified Personal Gnosis... or Charged Personal Opinions about the Goddexes.  Long ago--again, when I was in an organized polytheistic religion--I read a discussion on our forums about trying to reconstruct ancient religions.  Wouldn't the Goddexes understand us better in our prayers if we started speaking them in ancient Kemetic?  The predominating answer was this:  The Goddexes don't actually speak ancient... anything.  What they speak is "people language," meaning they communicate in ways that people understand.

Since so many human cultures have been steeped in patriarchal corporal punishment (parents physically punishing children, husbands physically punishing wives) and we read our Goddexes as analogues to these relationships, it makes sense that we would expect them to treat us similarly.  So... they do.  They are attempting to speak people language.  This is also one reason why you see Christians who have entirely different readings of Yahweh... somebody raised in a strict disciplinarian household is more likely to see Yahweh as a vengeful disciplinarian than somebody raised in a less strict, freer household who might see Yahweh as a more fluffy cuddly God and be genuinely confused as to why anyone would see him any other way.

This is all exacerbated by Pagans and/or polytheists who drill these Cosmic Two-by-Four ideas into us, leading newer members to expect this sort of relationship with the Goddexes.  Then the cycle continues.

"So... what about the mythology?"  Like I said earlier, I don't generally work with Goddexes who have deeply oppressive mythology, but there are certainly stories of my Goddexes that are uncomfortable or occasionally quite terrible.  But just as Setekh was demonized through mythology due to human conflicts, the mythologies of other Goddexes are written and framed through human understanding and biases, so you're entirely within your right to reconsider whether the character of the Goddexes is quite as nasty as the ancients seem to have written them or if they added their own flair to the story.

Some things to consider include:

• Cultures that place a high value on biological paternity often have shitty views about women and queer people, and that shows through how their Goddexes behave.  A society that believes sexual violence and war are inherent to strong masculinity might associate their strong masculine Gods with sexual violence and war and write accordingly.
• Translation problems abound in the myths we have available to us.  A prominent piece of ancient Egyptian mythology, for instance, is almost always translated as an admonition against homosexuality when properly translated it's more accurately described as an admonition against pederasty.
• Some of the more terrible things Goddexes have done are attributed to different Goddexes depending on who is popular or unpopular at the time.  Xenophobia and misogyny often have a huge impact on who is attributed what traits.
• Mythology is like a big long game of Telephone in which everyone wants to get their ax ground!  Is your Goddex's mythology significantly different at different periods of time?  Most are.  In my own case, I always favor very early renditions of my Goddexes (because they were developed before a lot of oppressive institutions and conflicts that colored their later mythologies).

A couple things I'd like you to conclude from this essay... first, it's fine to talk about your escapades with your Goddexes, including uncomfortable ones.  But we need to stop unquestionably normalizing abusive behavior by Goddexes, as this is an extension of normalizing abusive behavior in the mundane world and traps us into a cycle of assuming this is the way Goddexes are supposed to treat us.  Second, it's important to realize that mythology changes, and often for reasons that have nothing to do with a Goddex's interests and behavior, so we should look at why a Goddex might be portrayed a certain way before assuming it is accurate.  Finally, translation by early archaeologists and historians really skews the way Goddexes are looked at in a modern sense.

Toward Sustainable Goddex Images

This essay is about transitioning to more environmentally sustainable images of the Divine including making them myself, painting on canvas, using recycled materials, repairing, and rejuvenating statues.

Prototype Resin-Bonded Earth Goddess

One of my long-term goals is to really make my altar sustainable, because I feel (and have written in the past) that Pagans and Earth-based spiritualists aren't actually as environmentally friendly as we wish we were, and I want to do better.  I'm starting to do better with the "consumables" things like candles, offerings, spell ingredients, and so forth) but somewhere I've classically faltered is in images of my Goddexes.

I have a lot of resin.  Resin is an accessible material... it's cheap, and easy to find most Goddexes rendered in it.  It'll also eventually break down into a microplastic, though, so I want to reduce the amount of resin I use and create images that are more personal and sustainable.

Something I'm in the process of doing is decorating my bedroom and altar area with Goddex images painted on canvas; eventually I want to transition to using oil rather than acrylic paint, and I have some nice watercolor work as well.  These are more biodegradable than statuary while also being really personal on account of having made them myself, but statuary makes everything feel so real so I want to be doing that, too.

I was considering casting in resin, because it's accessible and I don't have a kiln, but resin is... well, resin.  But last night I went to get a sundae and forgot to turn down a spoon, so I have this non-recyclable bright blue plastic spoon to contend with, and thought it might look cool to break it up and introduce it into the resin.  That would mean I could find a sacred purpose for things like this as well as reduce the amount of resin I would need to make each statue.  Similarly I could suspend all sorts of stuff, garbage or otherwise, to reduce the amount of resin used (I could also make bonded marble statues, which are just powdered rock in resin).  But over the night I realized I absolutely love the idea of making recycled Pagan statuary; I could get materials by walking around the park and picking up trash (maybe even make some statement pieces using the trash I find at Pagan camping events, ahem).  I've decided I definitely want to make variations on Venus figurines (including a commonly used Neopagan "Spiral Goddess" motif that I consider a modern Venus figurine), altar pentacles, and my Patron Goddexes.

When my partner and I go to Pagan Spirit Gathering this year I want to make something really cool for the gift exchange as well as to donate to the raffle/auction and if this all turns out I think it'd be a great option!

One thing I'll need to do is sort of reorient my brain to get out of a "ritual purity" paradigm.  Even though it's using things that will literally just be garbage otherwise, my involvement with Kemetic Orthodoxy sealed it in my head that I need to pay attention to whether or not my altar items are "ritually pure," which resin and plastic really aren't.  The thing is, I cannot personally imagine that any Goddex who cares about the environment (which is most if not all of them) would have a problem with a statue that takes something actively harmful and transforms it into something contained (or, for that matter, would prefer you throw away a "ritually impure" statue in favor of using resources to produce something brand new).  It doesn't make any sense to me, although of course, everyone's mileage may vary.

Finally. I need to work on making sure the statues I have get repaired.  It's not that I don't repair the ones I use regularly (I finally replaced one of my statues after years because it was finally to the point where I didn't think I could repair it; I still have it and will give it another try), but with all these statues I got before I was thinking about these things I want to make very sure that they don't wind up in a landfill for a very long time.  If they're not repairable I can always crush those too and make other statues.

Remembering Why I'm A Witch

Subjects talked about in this essay include science, psychology, self care, and spiritual doubts.  Contains a mention of hunting.

The thing about being a Witch for a long time is that often the Incredibly Cool Things that drew you to Witchcraft to begin with start to fade and feel... well, explainable.  Fifteen years ago I could without even really thinking about it come up with just a slew of stories of experiences I'd had that convinced me of the reality of magick, of the Goddexes, of all of this.  "I don't know what I all believe in," I'd tell people, "but I've had enough experiences to know that I'm not an atheist."

I'm still not an atheist, but I understand why people would be a lot better now.  I'm a knowledge seeker, which is highly likely to increase one's skepticism over time, and you learn about things like the Barnum-Forer effect and other ways our brain interprets the world.  I've known plenty an atheist who is such because they have researched the exact things I have.

So... why aren't I?  Because, not to put too fine a point on it... I don't really care if any of it is objectively real, because it has effects that are real insofar as they have a positive effect on me and the world around me.

The past couple nights I've been experimenting with holding a gemstone in each hand as I'm in bed before I fall asleep to see if any combination helps me sleep better or gives me higher quality dreams... ulexite, moqui stones, figural gems, various others collected through the years.  They've given me some really interesting experiences, too.  I remember more dreams when I use them, I fall asleep faster and have a better night overall, and a couple of times I have been able to stave off panic attacks by picking a stone that looks like it would be effective against whatever I'm panicking about.

I'm sure that highly skeptical people have perfectly rational explanations for all of this, but they don't matter, and dwelling too much on finding those explanations (what people in paranormal research often call "debunking") risks making them less effective for me in the future.

And that's just one example of how Witchcraft, Paganism, and other aspects of my spirituality have improved my life.  My relationship with my Goddexes and Spirit Guides helps me work through my problems... even if they're just in my head; the same can be said for Tarot and other divination methods.  Through my community involvement I've found friends that will stick by me, including many who are in the same marginalized groups as I am (some of my best nonbinary, polyamorous, transgender, and queer friends I met through the Pagan community, and common Pagan practice has provided an icebreaker to meet folks in those communities as well!).

Believing in magick is natural to our species and I wouldn't be surprised if it was beneficial to brain development, both ancestral and modern.  Some of the earliest information we have about our ancestors is through creative, likely magickally-thought art.

Witchcraft and Paganism make me a better person.  My relationships with Earth Goddexes and Nature Spirits give me the kick in the ass I need to make real-world improvements to my impact on the planet when I feel otherwise hopeless.  Working with animal spirits encourages me to focus on more ethical treatment of those animals (if you read my essay on The Hunt, you'll see how a particularly violent kill led me to change the firearm and ammunition I was using).  Through a ritual focus on hunting, gardening, foraging, and so forth I am encouraged to make decisions that are kinder to the Earth and the life on Her.  It's not that I wouldn't try to be a better person without Paganism--my start in ecological interest was before I even knew Paganism existed as a living faith--but Pagan belief helps further motivate me (there is a book called Pagan Anarchism that makes the case that animism makes better activists by investing us in the feelings of Nature and concepts others believe to be non-sentient).  In addition, in the Pagan community I have access to folks who need help I am able to give through the lens they need it given to them.

Finally--and this is technically a part of the personal benefits of Witchcraft, but I think it should be noted separately anyway--Witchcraft is fun.  You'd be surprised how many religions gain members just because they're more fun than other religions.  Believing in things just because they're fun to believe probably looks absurd to highly skeptical folks as well as folks who are in stricter religions attempting to be less "fun" (I would argue that these are also fun for voluntary practitioners, even if they don't realize it).  Dancing around naked to drumming is fun.  Chanting over candles is fun.  Feasting during a Sabbat and making seasonal crafts is fun.  Dumping Jesus for fairies and ancient deities your teachers taught you were dead is fun.  And although there are certainly exceptions, the vast majority of the time believing in fun stuff harms nobody.

I'm not walking around with constant crushing doubt about my faith.  I'm not really that afraid of death and I don't really have existential crises (maybe in a couple years when I hit that official "mid-life" mark?).  But for those few times a year when I think to myself "What in the name of Hel am I doing?" I always refer back to this un-numbered list of great reasons to practice Witchcraft, to believe in Pagan things, and to be a magickal person.