Autumn Equinox Self Care and Healing

This entry is a personal entry about what I did for Mabon/autumn equinox.

The autumn equinox (or Mabon as the case may be) came and went and I almost missed it... it's one of those holidays that I'm aware a lot of Pagans tend to forget about because it's not near a more popular Christian holiday, and I'm no exception.  Now, I don't believe it's necessary to celebrate the eight Wiccan Sabbats, and when I started again after fighting off all-things-Wicca for years it was mostly because of the camaraderie I experienced doing so with other Pagans, but in recent years I've made an effort to at least acknowledge them, not because I think they're particularly special, but because they're based on seasons and astronomical observances and help me reconnect to the Earth's cycles in ways I have often found it difficult to.

I didn't do an official ritual this year.  Instead I made Mabon a self-care day... a real one, not a "buy $10 bath bomb and drink wine" one (not that wine and bath bombs don't have their place). One of those kick-in-the-ass kinds of self care days where you actually, you know, take care of yourself.

I've been under a lot of stress lately because I would really like to plan my top surgery, but my insurance is seriously drag-assing it and hasn't gotten back to me regarding whether or not I have given them enough information to do so.  So I'm in this limbo period, desperately wanting this done before the end of the year but unsure if I'll be able to, unsure about my benefits, and just overall unsure.  Because of this I have been neglecting to do really quite basic things and have opted to largely just sleep instead.

On Mabon I took the opportunity to raise a lot of energy which I used to do all the things I have been letting run amok... I did my yardwork, I cleaned and organized my kitchen, I cleaned and organized my bathroom (which probably hasn't been fully cleaned since at least last Mabon), and I started to organize the living room.

I also took the opportunity to make some natural medicines, including a few tinctures, some burning herbs, and a bunch of flower essences with flowers I have in my yard.  I just went out back and anything that was flowering that I suspected would not fruit in time for the winter (or that had a lot of flowers) I made an essence with... this included tomato flowers, toadflax flowers, cayenne pepper flowers, mint flowers, and pansies.  I'm kind of liking these so I'll probably find more flowers to make essences out of.

I also went hunting and foraging, something I've been planning on doing more often (because it's so much better for you and more ethical than CAFO meat and industrial agriculture).  Mabon around here is about the time hunting seasons start picking up here.

Anyway, that's about it for my Mabon update.
Happy trails,
-- Setkheni

Yes, That Witch Kit From Sephora Is Garbage, But Not For The Reasons You Think

Pinrose Starter Witch Kit from Sephora

This post talks about the Sephora/Pinrose Witch Kit controversy with a note on appropriation and more on consumerist garbage.

Recently news broke in our community that the makeup giant Sephora will be selling "Starter Witch Kits" in October, including a bunch of "Witchy" scents (this is basically the bulk of the product; it's a perfume set that happens to have some other junk in it), a Tarot deck, a bundle of white sage, and a rose quartz.

There are a lot of opinions swirling around regarding this Witch Kit.  I've taken a lot of them in quite well (particularly those from Indigenous folks talking about the problems with selling white sage in any sort of Witchcraft context), but a lot of the commentary from Witches--both in the United States and abroad--sort of skips over the issue, perpetuating bad habits that we have in this community.

1.  First, on the white sage thing.

I am not going to go on about the sage bundle included in this, not because it isn't important, but because Indigenous people have already talked about it and you should be listening to them.  Flippantly swishing around a bundle of sacred medicine you don't understand is not Witchcraft (even though a lot of Witches do it, it is problematic).

A good run-down of why selling a sage bundle in this context is terrible can actually be gleaned from the Smudging entry of Wikipedia, particularly the Controversy section.  There is a lot wrong with Neopagan use of white sage, and it absolutely shouldn't be in any kit.


Interestingly, but not surprisingly, most of the critiques from Witches ourselves don't center around us appropriating other cultures... and that's what I want to talk about the most here.  There's a lot to unpack in our response.

2.  A lot of people are accusing Sephora of "appropriating Witchcraft," but I don't believe such a thing really exists.

Here's the hard truth of modern Witchcraft, especially modern American Witchcraft:  We are constant drive-by appropriators of other faiths.  We appropriate so much that we can scarcely remember what was appropriated and what wasn't.  Wicca, in particular, was cobbled together from a mixture of multicultural religious practices and bad history, and more and more has gotten absorbed into it as time goes by.  As an American Witch, it's taken years to realize that the knowledge I learned as just "generic Witchcraft" gained inspiration from (and often quite frankly stole) huge portions of its knowledge bank from Hinduism, Hoodoo, Vodoun, Indigenous faiths, Buddhism, and loads of other traditional and marginalized religions, while simultaneously distancing ourselves from parts of those faiths that we found objectionable (we love insisting that cursing is bad while stealing from curse-heavy practices, that animal sacrifice is bad while eating CAFO meat and stealing from Santeria, etc.).

And this reconfiguring of beliefs, deities, and practices is very deep in a lot of strains of Witchcraft.  If you're a Wiccan who believes that all Goddesses are actually your One Goddess?  That's taking a myriad of knowledge from other faiths and saying "This is now mine, and not only is this mine, I'm changing it to meet my expectations."

Because we do this so rampantly, I always find it kind of absurd when we turn around and suggest other people are somehow appropriating our ways when they draw inspiration (shallow though it may be) from us, like somebody stealing stolen goods from a thief who then complains that he was stolen from.

If you're going to be the kind of religion that absorbs things for the aesthetic, it's worthless to complain that other people try to absorb you.

The same, by the way, goes for Halloween stuff.  It baffles me how many Wiccans try to talk about Halloween cultural artifacts (the Witch aesthetic, especially) as being stereotypes of us or appropriating us.  If anything it was the other way around.  These things existed independently of spiritual Witchcraft.

3.  Is this oppressing us?  Meh.

When I think of the marginalization of Witches, I think about things like the fact that my co-workers can talk on and on about the Christian retreats and missions they've been on but I feel compelled to call my weeklong Pagan retreat "a camping trip" or "a music festival."  I think about parents in custody battles who have to go join churches and pretend to be good Christians to keep the kids because their ex-spouses suddenly decided they hated Paganism when they got divorced and keep bringing it up at the proceedings.  I'm thinking about the constant barrage of Christian symbols on government property that affects all non-Christians.

People keep bringing up things like "Well, what if they made a Christian kit?"  This is absurd, because there are loads of things like that already.  Christians want people to be Christian so bad they'll market the hell out of their shit.  Right down the hall from our Sephora is a shop that sells loads of Buddha kits (mini resin statues of Buddha with little booklets of shallow Buddhist thought), you can get sets of supplies for Muslim prayer, and you can get dozens and dozens of different kits for Witches.

You can also find shoddy Native American beliefs kits in our stores.

So it's not that we are being somehow uniquely oppressed by some ridiculous perfume kit.  This is a problem among all religions that has to do with commodification for the spiritually lost.

4.  Commodifying our faith is bad... but we already do it to ourselves.

Right now there's a rush among Witches to give alternatives to the Sephora kit.  I'm not going to judge people who get a kit for the accessibility (a kit that has basic ritual tools and candles is not the worst thing ever), but most of the tools of Witchcraft can be made or purchased at a thrift store or rummage sale fairly easily.

If you think it's hard to get Witchcraft tools, it's because you believe (either through your own decision or more likely because other people have trained you into thinking such) that you need stuff Made For Witches.  You think you need the pentacle-emblazoned cauldron, the triple-moon-carved chalice, the official black-handled athame, and so forth.

I started Witchcraft back in the late nineties and most of my tools were from my basement.  Some I made in art class.  These lasted me for years because they weren't made to be superficially pretty for a bunch of flaky Witches.  Later when I started buying Witch tools from Witch stores?  A lot of these wound up being fragile garbage, because they were made to look ornate and be pretty decorations, not useful Witchcraft tools.

And this is largely what you'll get if you buy kits and tools from any of our dedicated stores or vendor tents.  I've been to a lot of events and have really felt the pressure people lay on you to buy from the tents.  "Buy from the tents!  They make all this possible!"  But where are the tents getting their goods?  Sure, you get the artisans who are selling things they've made themselves (and this is no comment on them), but how many of them are just buying the same mass-produced, ethically dubious garbage you can get on Amazon while adding an exorbitant festival price on them?  Is buying something at a festival at an 80% markup (something that was reported to me at least twice at Pagan Spirit Gathering when vendors forgot to take the original tags off their goods) really much more ethical than this kit is?

5.  If any more of you bring up the Burning Times I'm going to goddamn scream.

We already got through the part where I talk about how people appropriating from us is kind of a silly thing to believe, but I'm going to talk about something now that's just super unnerving:  There's this resurgence of bad history I thought we got over ten years ago.

"Don't steal our culture!  People were burned for doing this!"

The vast majority of people killed during the Witch Trials were Christians.  They were targeted for entirely non-religious purposes using religious rhetoric.  We have known that the Witch Cult theory has been garbage for many years now, and yet every once in a while it resurfaces in order to either try legitimizing our practice (we don't need ancient history to be legitimate!) or, more often, to justify our horrendous oppression complex.

The things that we have done to us, the ways that Christians are given preference here, are already bad enough without trying to connect ourselves in some unbroken line to an even that had nothing to do with us.  Much less in reference to some shitty kit people are going to forget about in a year.

On My Lughnasadh Ritual, Rededication to Grain, and Pagan Pride Day

This post is an update regarding my Lughnasadh/Lammas/August 1st ritual and what I did for it, what I did during Pagan Pride Day and some of the resulting bullshit (and cool crystals), and de-paleoizing my Pagan practice.  The section on Lughnasadh talks about binge eating disorder at length.

Lughnasadh

This year I've been doing pretty good at actually acknowledging all the Sabbats (which I went through a long period not doing), although I have been shit at remembering Esbats exist.  This year's personal ritual I used to try encouraging me to better live the way I want to... I have been binge-eating a lot, and have been trying to reorient myself to a different way of eating.

My binge eating has always been bad but it got worse when I was a vegetarian, so when I left vegetarianism I went the opposite direction and went paleo instead.  This was a great idea at the time because it helped me understand my place in nature again, but it also required wrapping my Pagan practice around a dietary philosophy that doesn't quite fit it... a lot of Pagan observances are grain-based.  In the last few years I've changed to more of a rewilding/ancestral viewpoint which isn't so strict on grain as a thing and is more focused on things like what kind of grain I eat and how I prepare it.  Since Lughnasadh is a big grain holiday I took it as an opportunity to break out the ancient wheat varietals and homemade hard cider and did a ritual around that.  I also started a levain (sourdough starter) so I can start making real bread again.  I'm going to focus on making really traditional breads (think stuff like the Natufian breads they keep finding that result in all those insufferable "haha bread is paleo" articles, traditional flatbreads, heavily fermented sourdoughs) and focus on making them for Pagan observances moreso than an everyday thing.  I'd like to look into stuff like ancient Egyptian beer, too.  If I really like it, I may grow some more ancient grains than just maize, although it may be too difficult to be worth it.

The climax of the ritual actually involved sacrificially burning a processed snack cake, which I had been binging on for a while at that point.  This part of the ritual... it didn't backfire, but it wound up too specific: I've still been eating pretty poorly, but looking at my one remaining snack cake I kind of want to gag.  Ah well, it's a start I guess.

Pagan Pride Day

So I found out recently that I don't need to hoard vacation to make up for the elimination period week for my short term disability coming up.  It was like two days away from Pagan Pride Day so I threw a request out there to see if anybody could cover for me, and luckily somebody did, so I got to go for a big portion of it.

Pagan Pride Day is generally something made for non-Pagans to learn about Pagans... which is honestly kind of crap.  Pagan Pride should be for Pagans.  When Gay Pride events try to pull that straight-centered shit I complain about it, but since our own Pagan Pride events have wound up attracting basically zero non-Pagans anyway I never had a need to.  Anyway, ours broke from the idea entirely starting I think last year and just said, nope, this is for us.

They made it a music festival full of vendors and with workshops.  I went to a workshop on chakras that I'm mulling a bit and got a few rocks I didn't have before as I do a lot of personal crystal healing.

I did find out from a friend there that her husband's workshop was actually crashed by a group of Christians handing out leaflets.  It was a Laughter Yoga workshop and they were in the last portions where they're just sitting their laughing their asses off, the Christians rudely barged into the workshop space to hand out their bullshit, and it made the participants laugh even louder so in essence I guess it all worked out:  The Christians left feeling like they'd done good, the participants got a punch to their laughter yoga workout.

Why I Left Kemetic Orthodoxy

This post explains why I left Kemetic Orthodoxy, the House of Netjer, and any affiliated programs.  This is a rewrite of a blog post I wrote on Reclaiming Warlock; it's mostly the same but with some additional information and some rebuttals to things that were written in the original version.

This is by no means a topical essay, but it's something people continue to ask me who know that at one point I used to be Kemetic Orthodox Shemsu*.  The main reason I feel people need to know why I made this cut is because people seem to chronically assume that I left because the House of Netjer is "a cult," and have even been asked to speak on behalf of people who have left cults.  This upsets me because it mischaracterizes why I left and how I feel about the church.

If we're using the common definition of a "cult" as a dangerous, extremist, separatist, fringe religion which keeps a stranglehold on its members' lives... no, the House of Netjer is not a cult.  Not even close.  I never felt under any pressure to become a Shemsu (and was a rather belligerent Remetj** for most of my time there).  And when I left Shemsuhood... there was very little fuss.  Nobody tried to stop me.  There was no guilt trip.  A few friends of mine were sad about it, but we didn't stop being friends.  The House of Netjer is not raking in cash from its members, despite charging for some services (these services are expensive to do, and so charging money for them is not unreasonable).  It's not telling its members that they're these uniquely special people who need to cut themselves off from friends and family.  In fact, I would argue that the House has resources that anybody even remotely interested in Kemetic religion will find useful; I still recommend Tamara Siuda's "The Ancient Egyptian Prayerbook" to anyone interested in ancient Egyptian religion and I still recommend the church's beginner's class.  I would not do this if I thought I was risking people getting sucked into a cult.

I'm not going to go into why others consider the religion cultlike.  They all have their own experiences and reasons.  I do not agree with them and so any way I represent them will be slanted, so if you want those opinions you would best seek them from their own sources.

But yes, I did leave.  And it wasn't a painless loss, either, like I found something I happened to like better.  I was really into being Kemetic Orthodox.  My Rite of Parent Divination ritual was one of the most profound things I've ever been through, as was my Shemsu naming (which is why I continue to use that name even after the falling-out I had).  Friends who were around me at the time I abruptly cut off ties could tell you just how abrupt it was; literally the day before this happened I was telling people how much I loved being a Shemsu and how awesome Kemetic Orthodoxy was for me and how I was interested in looking into the priesthood if I happened to have been accepted into it, or at least Shemsu-Ankh.  The next day I wasn't Kemetic Orthodox at all.

The reason was simple:  I am extremely bitter about the re-organization letter of 2011.  What happened was that Tamara Siuda, who is the leader and founder of the church, was displeased with the direction it was heading with regard to certain members.  Some of these were quite reasonable; for example she cited having had people go through the obligatory class and then put things like that Apep (who in Kemetic belief is a 100% evil being) is "misunderstood" and that they believe he will show up in their Ritual Parent Divination.  Some of the other stuff, though, I don't believe was called for and they seriously damaged the esteem I held for the House of Netjer.  The two that really stuck out to me were these:

• People were maintaining or taking on clergy positions in other faiths.
• People were questioning things based on belief in things like therianthropy, otherkin, and multiple personalities.

On the latter, this was what initially stunned me.  It's not that any of these things necessarily affect me personally.  I didn't identify with therianthropy at the time, I don't have multiple personalities, and so forth.  There was no personal conflict there.  I just have a huge aversion to talking about harmless and risk-aware identities and activities as if they're somehow decaying the fabric of your religious community.  And that's what I felt was going on.

What Siuda wrote was essentially that she was not going to accommodate things like multiple personalities in order to give people more than one divination and one Shemsu name.  She believes people have only one soul (well, one of each kind of soul), that it's a human soul, and that's that.  The reason it was angering wasn't because she doesn't believe in therianthropy or multiple souls; it's that aside from some discussions on the forums, it appeared this was not an issue for most of the involved people.  This was extremely hurtful to members of those communities who had no issue with only being given one RPD or with simply respectfully disagreeing with Siuda on the nature of souls, and disagreement with her had never until that point seemed to be an issue to me.  After all, Kemetics are not the kind of people who believe you're going to go to hell--or a Kemetic equivalent--simply for having different beliefs.

Therians, otherkin, and multiple systems are also highly ridiculed people, and the idea that my religious leader would take the time to explicitly contribute to this problem did not sit well with me regardless of any spiritual or secular opinions I might have about them.

After this initial thought process, I went to bed.  When I woke up, I re-read the email and focused on the idea of people maintaining non-Kemetic Orthodox clergy positions.  This might seem reasonable at first... the whole idea of being a Shemsu is to put the Gods of your RPD first, in a Kemetic Orthodox manner, and if you're also a High Priest in a Wiccan coven there could be a conflict of interest, so sure, it's reasonable to expect people to analyze where those loyalties lie and whether Shemsuhood is for them.  The real question was "Is it possible for you to both hold your Gods above all others and maintain a faith community that is outside of that?"  I believe this is a reasonable question.

The problem is that Siuda herself is both the Nisut of the Kemetic Orthodox faith and a mambo asogwe in Haitian Vodou.  When I remembered that, I made the decision to leave almost immediately.  I like Tamara Siuda as a person, but there is only a certain amount of hypocrisy I can handle in my faith leaders, and telling your followers that being a Shemsu and clergy in another faith is unacceptable when you are the highest level of clergy in two faiths is dripping with hypocrisy.  Insisting everybody except you is unable to do multiple faiths justice while you yourself are playing the role of notable religious leader, author, presenter, and researcher for two of them is just not acceptable to me.

After I realized I wasn't going to be able to reconcile that, I also could no longer reconcile things that had bugged me but not enough to make me not want to stay, things like the invention of a rite specifically designed to take your own agency out of something as personal as what Gods you worship (even if I do stand behind my own results), colonizer attitudes (declaring a white woman from the United States the "King of Upper and Lower Egypt" is a colonizer attitude), and some serious concerns I have regarding cultural appropriation.

You can have a deeply problematic ideology (and whine about some statistically insignificant fringe group like otherkin) and still not be a cult leader.  So no, I don't view Kemetic Orthodoxy as a cult.  I don't even think it's a bad project, for those who can put up with the more eyeroll-worthy aspects of it.  It's just not something I involve myself with anymore.



* Shemsu are full members of the Kemetic Orthodox faith.  These are people who pledge to serve their Parent Gods (as divined by the leader of Kemetic Orthodoxy using cowrie shells) in a Kemetic Orthodox manner first and foremost.
** Remetj are sort of "outer court" members of the Kemetic Orthodox faith.  These are people who may or may not have had a divination to figure out their Parent Gods, but are not actually obligated to recognize them, worship them, or place them before other Gods.

Your Partner's Fidelity Is Not My Responsibility

This essay talks about consent and relationship pressure in Pagan communities--particularly at Pagan festivals--and how some folks have unfairly turned this into critiques of polyamorous folks' behavior.

It's not our fault if your partner wants us.

Consent in Pagan communities is a big issue that is talked about a lot but is not getting better fast enough.  I've talked elsewhere in the past about how I have anxiety about the idea of wearing a kilt to a Pagan gathering because there is a big problem with people sexually harassing men in kilts, but I have been seeing a big focus on consent this year.  I, personally, had far fewer consent-related incidents than normal, although my girlfriend reported much of the same, with people touching her in inappropriate ways during a quite touchy-feely main ritual.

I have a lot to say about that so it'll take a while for me to commit it to words, but I want to talk about something that consistently comes up as an aside we talk about consent.  Pagans start talking about consent and sexual harassment and sexual pressure and inevitably somebody will crawl out of the woodwork to say something like...

"And please remember that we're not all polyamorous!"

I see it a lot, as if it is an integral thing to bring up whenever we talk about consent.  But if you're in this category, if you think it's important to bring this into a discussion on consent, I'd like to push back on that with a counterpoint:  Your partner's fidelity is not my responsibility.

Let me explain, because I think there are a couple of issues at play here--two main ones I'll talk about, anyway--that unfairly privilege monogamy in many respects and actually do real harm to polyamorous folks.

You're implying that polyamorous people are more likely to ignore consent and that we deserve violations of consent that are committed against us.

If you're in a situation where somebody is pressuring you to have sex or enter a relationship with them, that's a consent issue regardless of who is doing it or why.  If somebody is trying to get you to have sex with them while using arguments about how all Pagans should be polyamorous and that polyamory is better than monogamy and using some philosophical garbage on you... that's a consent violation that actually has nothing to do with polyamory.  Sexual pressure is rampant throughout society, so there are people like this within polyamory too, and their target being monogamous has nothing to do with whether or not their actions are bad.

In fact, they're probably playing some other game with other polyamorous folks.  My girlfriend and I are polyamorous ourselves and have still had to deal with unwanted sexual advances and other consent violations.  Which brings me to the first really harmful thing:  When you boil down consent violations such as these as an issue of polyamorous folks "forgetting" that not everybody is polyamorous, you do three things:

• You make polyamory into the problem rather than consent violation.
• You imply there is an explicit problem with polyamorous people as polyamorous people violating monogamous people's consent.
• You imply that if the people being targeted were polyamorous, it wouldn't be as bad.

No, this is something that affects all of us, including a lot of polyamorous folks who have had to deal with the same bullshit kilt checks, handsiness, and relationship guilt as everyone else only to have people imply that we should expect it when we advertise that we sleep with multiple people.

I'm Not Responsible For Your Partner's Fidelity

Here's the thing, though.  I know that most of you don't mean it that way.  Most of you are not trying to imply that at all.  But what you are trying to imply is something that is also super insulting to polyamorous people, which is the idea that we are trying to steal your partners and spouses and that we need to respect that monogamous relationships in the Pagan community exist and do our part to preserve them.  How do I know this?  Because when it's accompanied by a story, it always boils down to this:  Somebody hit on my spouse, and it made me uncomfortable.  My spouse cheated on me and somehow it's your fault.

This, my friends, is absolute dogshit that places responsibility for your relationship dynamic on people who have no way of knowing what that dynamic is without trusting the person we are interested in.  Polyamorous folks, Pagan or not, are used to being in an environment where the vast majority of people are either monogamous, trying to be monogamous, or ultimately looking for a monogamous relationship.  The fact that many more Pagans are polyamorous than non-Pagans means we might be more open about it and more empowered to ask others we wouldn't normally ask outside of those communities.  But it's not our responsibility to keep the preservation of your monogamy at the forefront of our minds.  It really isn't.

Monogamy is a contract (formal or informal) between you and your partner.  I didn't agree to it, you did!  And if I make an advance on your partner, and your partner accepts it, they are the one who broke that contract, not me.  Anything outside of that--if I've taken advantage of them in an altered state, if I've pressured them, if I've laid guilt on them, if I've done worse--is a serious consent violation that needs to be addressed, but it has nothing to do with them being monogamous or me "forgetting" that not everybody is polyamorous.  Like I said above, this implies that polyamory is the problem, which it isn't.  You have the right to reject any advance somebody makes, for whatever reason you want, including no reason at all.

I'm not comfortable dating people who are in monogamous relationships, and I have my own list of personal red flags for weeding out people who intend to cheat on their relationships.  It's a can of worms I hope never to open.  But ultimately, it isn't a polyamorous person's responsibility to root that out.  What am I supposed to do, ask your spouse's permission to date you?  Scour the internet for instances where you talked about being monogamous?  There is no way to do any of this without being a creep or violating my own boundaries (asking a partner's permission to date somebody is a huge dealbreaker for me).

So yes, talk about consent violation in Pagan communities.  It's a subject we need to talk about more and we need to actually take it seriously.  But it's not a polyamorous problem, it's a problem deep throughout society, and by bringing polyamory into this argument you are not helping shit.

We Need To Talk About The "G" Word

This essay talks about the prevalence of a common slur for Romani people used self-referentially in the Pagan community; it names the slur one time for clarity before obscuring it. There is also a photograph in which it is not obscured, and it is not censored in a quote from a Romani person.  A note that actual Romani people are empowered to use this term for themselves, although I would argue if they use it in the same way this essay describes it is still harmful.

"G-- World Cuisine," also called "Phils Grille"

I would be a full-on adult before I ever learned that the word "gypsy" was a slur.  As non-Romani people, when we think of a "g--," we are hands-down thinking about a set of impressions or lifestyle habits rather than a seriously persecuted ethnic group.  We may use it to refer to a free wanderer, a nomad, an eccentric, perhaps New Agey person.  In short, we use it to refer to an aesthetic.  Since this is an aesthetic that a lot of Pagans (and several other groups I'm in) romanticize, you get scores of us using this term self-referentially.

This shows up at pretty much every Pagan gathering I go to.  At Pagan Spirit Gathering there has been a food vendor with the word in its title, run by a woman who calls herself the word, selling foods named things like "g-- rice.".  I've seen many a Pagan merchant use the term in their business title or in the names of their products, I hear it added to songs (especially by traveling musicians), and when I was still a teeny-bop trying to learn Witchcraft in my tweens, looking up things like "g-- magic" was one of the more reliable ways to find material to appropriate.  And who knows how many people use it as a nickname for themselves?

This is also common in the queer communities I navigate.  I've heard songs described as "queer anthems" that have the word in it.  I've even literally had to deal with the massively-ridiculous trans people whose "preferred name" includes the word "G--," creating a fucked-up position in which I need to choose between using a slur and using a non-preferred name for a trans person.

And... we need to stop.  Preferably yesterday.  Because that word does not actually mean what we mean it as.  The Romani people aren't as a whole living the romantic lifestyle we envision.

The nomadic lifestyle we associate with the Romani isn't usually out of choice, but because they are constantly fleeing persecution and so many places will not accept a Romani settlement.  They experience a very high unemployment rate and extreme financial distress, contributing to the need for begging and in fact a lot of the mystical stuff we associate with them, like fortune telling (which is generally done for money for non-Romani people).  And the Romani people are severely dehumanized; this didn't hit home to me until ten years ago when news broke that a couple of dead Romani children drowned in Italy and people not only left them on the beach for an hour, but behaved with complete indifference, continuing to play and sunbathe like nothing had happened.  And that's not to talk of the extreme historical persecution; the Romani were some of the first targeted by the Nazis in World War II, who eradicated half of their population, and put them in concentration camps marked with a black or brown inverted triangle.

This is not something those of us who are not Romani people own.  We do not use "g--" to mean somebody who is forced into a migratory lifestyle to flee persecution, we use it to refer to a romantic hippie lifestyle that isn't anything like what the Romani actually experience.  That's not just appropriative, it's antagonistic.  It takes centuries of oppression and turns it into a hip thing for white people.

While doing some research for this essay I came across a quote that really gets to the heart of this issue.  It is from this article on Romani cuisine and is talking about a soup that a non-Romani restaurant serves, named "G-- Soup:"

It’s frustrating for me to read that the people who concocted this version of our staple, and “daydreamed of life as a gypsy [sic],” don’t realize that “Gypsy life” is not just a bohemian version of their white privilege, and that portraying and appropriating our culture and the very word “Gypsy” as such seriously diminishes the seriousness of the current Romani human rights crisis.

Which really describes it much better than I ever could.  As Pagans we talk about appropriation quite a bit these days, for better or worse, but somehow the rampant use of this terminology always seems to escape those discussions, and we just let people go on with their days after referring to themselves as Lady G-- Moon Princess or whatever.

So if you use this term self-referentially, please, unless you yourself are Romani, stop using this term.  Don't cherry-pick the few Romani folks who are OK with you using it.  And learn about what is actually happening to the Romani people before idolizing a lifestyle that really doesn't describe them.

Happy Trails,
-- Setkheni

Issues of Gendered Ritual

This post talks about issues in the Pagan community specifically relevant to transgender people, nonbinary folks, and people who are either extremely into or extremely not into single-gender rituals.

As a trans guy, I'm really into men's mysteries, especially in groups.  Being accepted into a spiritual context built for men, especially when I'm out and proud about it, is extremely validating for me, even though I support and acknowledge the need for non-gendered and non-binary alternatives for folks who need them.

Last year at Pagan Spirit Gathering was the first All Gender Ritual, an alternative to the Men's Ritual and Women's Ritual that are mainstays of the event.  I considered going until I learned they were all at the same time, then after a few minutes of consideration (Do I show up to support it and hang out with my dearly beloved trans community?) I went to the Men's Ritual like I always do... because for me, entry into men's space is not just nice, it's integral to my well-being.  I want gender neutral alternatives to everything, and there are plenty of men's and women's spaces that should be abolished, but in those cases where abolition isn't necessary, I want access as a man.

This is a common attitude among fully-male or fully-female identifying transgender people such as myself.  One of the first trans women I ever met, when I excitedly told her that they were adding some gender-neutral restrooms on campus, scoffed "Good, that way people who are uncomfortable with me in the women's room have somewhere to go."

This was my introduction to the competing needs between different trans people.  See, when I had this excitement it was long before I got hormones and long before I was able to advocate for my own access to men's spaces.  Gender neutral amenities were extremely important to me.  I was fully-male then, too, but would not have been able to emotionally handle demanding access to a men's bathroom or men's dorm.  So I used gender neutral restrooms, I stayed on a scattered co-ed dorm, and that was what I needed at that time.

Right now in my own Pagan communities (Pagan Spirit Gathering folks, Fox Valley folks) there are a lot of attempts at creating these alternatives, attempts that I've been monitoring very closely and helping with when I can.  It may seem contradictory at times, though... I support gender neutral alternatives because a lot of people need them, including:

• Nonbinary people who don't identify enough with maleness or femaleness to want a men's or women's space.
• Cisgender people who find single-gender spaces to be alienating or unnecessary.
• Cisgender people who are traveling with folks of different genders and don't want to go alone to a ritual full of strangers.
• Trans men and trans women who are not comfortable yet occupying men's or women's spaces respectively, or who hold opinions similar to those of cis people of the former categories.

...but I almost never actually use these spaces, because I am not in any of these categories.  So while I give support, I also involve myself in planning to defend people like me... trans men and trans women who need men's and women's spaces.

As far as PSG in particular, it was not long ago at all that trans women were explicitly barred from a Women's Ritual.  This led to them making and enforcing an extremely good policy which affirmed that all involvement in these rituals must be based on identity and not assigned sex.  But we also need to understand and validate that there are cis people who are looking for opportunities to push or shame us out of those spaces, and gender neutral alternatives give them that opportunity to say "you don't need these spaces, you have 'your own.'"

This does not mean that these spaces should not be created.  They absolutely should be.  They are incredibly useful to many people.  But they must always make it clear that their existence does not have any bearing on whether or not a trans man is empowered to enter men's space, and more importantly (due to the recent history of excluding trans women from women's space but not trans men from men's space), that trans women are explicitly empowered to enter women's space.

This isn't an either-or thing.  You can have genderless spaces for people who aren't all about grunting in a circle or moonpie Goddess energy and also have trans people in those spaces.  In fact, it's desperately important that both these things be true!

Back from PSG Initial Recap

Casual Shrine Remainder of Deer Camp

This post is the initial "hello, I'm back!" recap of Pagan Spirit Gathering 2018 at Tall Tree Lake.  It talks about the general camping stuff and an overview of programming I enjoyed there.

I got back from Pagan Spirit Gathering last night and am spending the day sort of processing the experience and resting.

First things first... I had strong intentions of going through the Men's Rite of Passage, but that didn't happen this year due to a strong scheduling conflict.  I'd been on the fence for the few days prior about whether I wanted to do it this year or next year so I just took it as a sign that it was meant to be next year, but there are now some other factors at play that might prevent me from wanting to go through it in the future... not at PSG, anyway.  Some of these reasons I am not comfortable talking about, but ultimately I think I might be best suited to getting my masculine mysteries stuff through different means.

General Camping Stuff

As far as the regular camping stuff?  I didn't sunburn as bad this year as I did last year, but I burned really bad last year so that's not saying too much.  At the last minute I ditched my pop up canopy and it was kind of a regrettable decision.  Next year I will make a concerted effort to bring it.  We brought far too much meat and didn't package it well enough, but were able to eat well.  I spent way too much on vendor food, although granted, it was delicious.  Next year I will bring more things to drink, although I was able to manage fresh coffee and lemonade.  We also need better fire pit maintenance, as the location we were in is not great for digging fire pits.  It didn't rain as bad as last year (we forgot the rain fly last year and had to rig one together from tarps and garbage bags) so rain was less of a problem.  We did, however, forget dish soap and trash bags so we wound up using old ice bags and just rinsing the dishes.

Next year I'll be making more effort to reduce the sunburn risk, especially since I hope to have a "fresh" (around six months old) top surgery and really need to keep the scars unburnt.  I'll probably use tape on the scars themselves, try to get an adequate base tan by going outside without a shirt on earlier than the middle of the summer, and wearing lots and lots of sunscreen.  Oh, yes, and my hat helped.  I'll definitely always wear a brimmed hat at PSG in the future now (and it's kind of an identifiable feature for me now!).

Programming Stuff

Me and my partner really had a great time with the workshops we put on for children!  We were thanked pretty profusely by some of the adults because there just isn't enough programming for youth at PSG.  The kids were fantastic, although our activities were a little short so we will be bringing some other Pagan type things (coloring pages) and more supplies (we actually had adequate supplies but some kids would have liked to do the activities longer).  Solstice Sunprints was logistically a little annoying because we had to refresh water (fun fact, we learned the paper we were using stops working when enough of the chemical on it gets in the water) and it was slightly overcast when we tried to do it.  Pentagrams and More went really well and was more of a "learning experience" type thing than I expected as we and some of the parents taught what the symbols I'd put on them meant.  Some of the kids just drew cats on blank ones, but that's also totally valid.  Hail Bast!  But yeah, Nakiiya and I already agreed that we will do two more kids and tweens workshops next year, although we'll probably modify or expand or do different activities.  Ben (the third Deer Camp member, one of my besties) said he might do the same thing and joked he would do a "Cursing for Kids" activity.  Obviously this isn't the environment for that sort of thing but I may in fact do a coloring book with that theme now.

There weren't a lot of workshops that really spoke with me this year.  I went to one basic energy work workshop where I didn't learn a whole hell of a lot, but I did get to practice on a stranger.

I went to the Gender Liberation Check-In almost every day as well as both the "Rainbow" luncheons (the Magenta Luncheon for trans folks and the Lavender Luncheon for LGBT folks).  Met some super cool people including somebody I found on Twitter before PSG who I didn't engage with because I am super shy and got to meet/friend on Facebook.  I also went to their workshop on a possible future Rite of Transition which was... eh.  The thing is, as somebody who isn't really a binary trans person but who is definitely a trans man I want there to be more all-gender and nonbinary programs available, but they always go in a direction that I don't really identify with or that I fear will compromise trans men's and more likely trans women's access to men's and women's spaces respectively; PSG had a major fuck-up in 2012 when the presenter they hosted who put on the Women's Ritual excluded trans women.  Things are a lot better now and they are explicit that things like this must now be inclusive based on identity, but there are some worries among those of us who do get recharged and validated by women's and men's mysteries that the push for more non-gendered and nonbinary alternatives to them could inadvertently push trans men and trans women out of those spaces if it's not dealt with correctly.

I have been working a lot with plants and learning about plant consciousness so I went to a workshop with a presenter who invented equipment to convert electrical impulses from plant leaves to midi.  I went to this workshop out of interest for the subject but also because I've been trying to give myself the permission to believe things people don't want me to believe; most of my friends are Pagans, but there's a strong skeptic vein that I ran with for a while and I really miss my ten-years-ago self who had given himself permission to believe weird things you find in New Age books about singing to water or earthing mats or whatnot.  I was a spiritually happier person back then and I want to go back to it, even if it means believing in mockable things.  That's its own post for the future, though.  Anyway, he hooked this machine up to a big oak tree and then a small plant I couldn't identify, we did energy work with the tree and hugged it and observed the different tones that came from the speaker.  I'd love to have something like that for myself, but he invented the thing so I can't just buy one off Amazon.  Yet.

Dutch Oven Meals

Nakiiya and I went to a Dutch oven cooking workshop that was really cool and granted us a whole free (mostly free, we donated to supplies) meal.  A good Dutch oven set is now on our list for future PSG stuff (as well as my home cooking projects; I like to cook outside when I can as a part of my personal rewilding project).  I went because I wanted to learn to cook with equipment I've never been good at (it turns out I've just been doing it wrong, and I value knowing that).  She just went because she wanted lasagna, which is valid. 

That was all the formal workshops I went to, although I did go to a lot of rituals and stuff in workshop slots.  The Bast Ritual was really emotional for me as somehow I really got to thinking about my cat, Sherlock, who died several years ago but who I had for over fifteen years, including many of my formative years.  The Rainbow Ritual was more contemplative than normal but was very nice, the Fairy Shrine Opening similarly was more low-key than normal.

Nakiiya and I went to a ritual to the Morrigan which was very moving.  It turns out I didn't know much about her (the Morrigan not my girlfriend) and I might genuinely be kind of into her.  We were directed that we needed to offer something from our body to her after the ritual, whether hair, saliva, blood, etc. and they also provided lancets for those of us who wanted to give blood... but no disinfectant, so I got some alcohol swabs from the med tent.  It's not something I've really done before as I tend to work with Egyptian Gods, and most of them really don't appreciate human blood offerings due to ritual purity requirements.

The Men's Ritual was less arts-and-craftsy than last year when we erected a big pyramid of prayer flags we'd decorated.  We received plain cords that most of us wore around our necks after (my profile picture as I write this shows it; I have it around the band of my hat).  I also went to the breakaway after the gender rituals which was really nice.  I met a trans woman who went to the Women's Ritual who I talked to and had a lot of other interesting discussions; Deer Camp's three members each went to a different ritual, with me going to the Men's, Nakiiya going to the Women's, and Ben going to the All Gender ritual.

I don't remember the opening ritual which was kind of hazy at this point (I remember being moved, which I usually am because I'm reminded of how happy I am to be at PSG).  The main ritual was led by Spiral Rhythm and was super ecstatic and wonderful, although there were some accessibility issues (people with mobility issues regularly sit and were kind of crowded out) and consent issues (there was a lot of touching and hugging that we weren't warned about, and my girlfriend got touched in ways that were not appropriate).

Ben was in the Performer's Rite of Passage playing the fiddle and was a big success, too.

Obviously I had a lot more experiences than this, things that will be best served through their own posts, but that's about it for the initial recap.

Happy Trails,
-- Setkheni

Gardening and... Welcome to Deer Camp!

This post talks about plans for Pagan Spirit Gathering as well as things I'm gardening.

So I recruited a couple friends to go to Pagan Spirit Gathering with me, including my girlfriend (who first came last year) and one of my best friends (whose first year is this year).  These are also the two people I took out on their first deer hunting trips, so we named our little camp... Deer Camp!  Which it will remain unless my vegetarian friend comes in further years.

All our stuff is ordered for it other than food, which is all at least planned out.  It should be a super cool setup including our tents, a canopy (which will be decorated with deer stuff and probably house a group shrine), a fire pit, and a grill.  It'll be closer to glamping than I'm normally into while still being more primitive than, say, a camper or a setup with a generator.

I'm looking forward to taking advantage of pretty much everything queer and men's mysteries related because I'm starting to veer more masculine and am actively planning top surgery to masculinize my chest (my consultation is in two days).  I have a lot of kind of dedication/self improvement stuff I want to do, too, but that's a little more personal (at least for now).

So... gardening.  I planted all my seeds, with varying success ( like usual).  My corn and beans are all coming up, the squash was quite variable and so I planted more of it later.  It's unclear but I may have just planted it a bit early.  I also planted more corn and beans to kind of fill things in, and used a fish-and-seaweed based fertilizer on it.

I've been putting off pulling the weeds from my garden because I couldn't tell the difference between them and my new plants for a while.  Today I set down my phone playing music that is made for plants (I got this idea from a BBC documentary I watched called "How Plants Communicate and Think" which talks about the rudimentary yet fascinating "consciousness" of plants), then got on my knees and pulled all the weeds I couldn't use.  I kept some useful weeds there that I don't have readily available elsewhere and didn't slash and burn the whole thing, but there's now a lot more room for the plants I'm cultivating.

A couple of plants got nibbled by the bunnies so I used a mix of blood and essential oil around the perimeter of the garden to keep them away.

Some plants that came back successfully... a lot of tomatoes.  I have a nice self-sustaining tomato operation; the most successful tomatoes in this climate have been naturally reseeding themselves in a patch of dirt we have and growing into robust cherry tomatoes.  I did seed some wild tomatoes but they don't seem to be growing well.

Last year I grew some walking/perennial/tree onions that are doing really well.  They haven't gotten any topsets yet, but have started growing small satellite onions I've been eating.

I also have some plants I'm growing in containers, including sage, tobacco, and lettuce.

Anyway, that's all for now!
-- Setkheni

Connecting Harvest to Planting and More PSG Planning

This blog entry is about planting season, a ritual I did connecting last year's harvest with this year's planting, and general gardening stuff.

My Ritual Connecting Seasons

Planting season has begun... well, for me anyway.  I have a habit of always planting super late, so this year I decided to do the opposite of that and plant way too early instead.  So I've already direct-sown the seeds for those plants that are more cold tolerant... and a couple that may or may not be, but which I have enough seeds from that I can re-plant them if things get frosty again.

I didn't save my seeds last year, so instead of connecting last year's harvest to this year's planting by planting those seeds I did a ritual using the corn stalks I grew last year.  I built a little fire out of them on my garden bed, used it to bless this year's seed packets, and then distributed the ashes to the other three beds.

Oh, there are huge plant sales going on right now, too, so I got another tea plant, one that is much larger and healthier looking than my other tea plants (although I do love my little tea plants!).  I got another, larger coffee plant, too.

Tea Plants in a Windowsill

Pagan Spirit Gathering is coming up really soon so our planning is now full force.  In addition to my girlfriend, one of my best friends is likely going now, so I'm planning out whether or not he will be able to fit in the same vehicle (with a drive that long, it doesn't make sense not to at least try not to take two cars).  I'll probably need to get something to store things on top of the car, but we shouldn't need a whole lot of extra space since we'll all be creating a campsite together and can share a lot of our amenities.  I'm intending to go by my Pagan name this year which is a little hard when so many people already know me as my mundane name, but... my mundane name is a great one, I did choose it after all!

Oh, I also ordered the supplies for my two children's workshops!  They should be here in a couple of days and then I'll get them all prepared for the little ones.  I have great interest in undergoing the Men's Rite of Passage this year and am hoping it doesn't conflict (of course, it's only like three hours, so it could work out anyway).  I might talk more about the Men's Rite of Passage and how that fits into where I am in my transition now later, as it's been on my mind with all the surgery preparations.

Anyway, happy trails,
-- Setkheni

On Ridiculous Spiritual Accommodations

This essay talks about recent events involving religious accommodations in the military and prison.

Recently there were a few cases that were brought to my attention regarding religious accommodations for Pagans.  The first was a Norse Pagan in the military who won the right to wear a beard.  The second is a Wiccan who is trying to get a laundry list of increasingly absurd accommodations in prison.  Long ago I remember a different Pagan requesting a name change in prison, too, and even longer ago there was a Pagan teacher who had a face tattoo he argued was religious.  This discussion pops up every so often in the Pagan community, with a large number of people thinking of cases like these as frivolous, ridiculous, and making us look bad.

On this subject I need to soapbox a bit, starting with the following statement:  You should totally request religious accommodations.  Even if people think they're absurd.  Especially if you are incarcerated.  If you want to make some super off-the-wall claim like Jennifer Ann Jasmaine that your religion requires you to be vegan except Imbolc when you must get ice cream?  Do it.  Want to sport a beard so you can swear oaths on it and because Thor definitely wouldn't be clean shaven?  Go ahead and fight for that.  Want to be like Daniel LaPlante and demand different flavors of cake for each full moon?  By all means, continue.  I may very well think that you are a total dipshit, especially if you're trying to make the claim that these are common beliefs (one article claimed Wiccans call carrot cake "Wolf Ice" based on this ridiculousness), but you should still goddamn get those accommodations.

If you read comment feeds you'll find a lot of pissed off Pagans, people who are convinced that this is going to drag us all down as the non-Pagans of the world learn from these requests.  There are a couple of reasons why I think this is a bad argument:

1. Non-Pagans already believe absurd things about us because we are absurd people.
2. Whether or not you personally consider something necessary to practice is irrelevant.
3. Other religions get accommodations that are objectively no more absurd, but are accepted because the religions themselves are more accepted.
4. Shaking up the prison and military industrial complexes is great.

Non-Pagans Don't Need Fringe People To Believe Inaccurate Things About Us; They Have The Rest Of Us

As somebody who has been a Pagan for over two decades, I've had the awkward experience of talking with people who had really off-the-wall ideas about what we believe, but I've also had the equally (almost more) awkward experience of having to deal with Pagans who try "correcting" "misconceptions" they have about us with even more misconceptions.  Pagan religions are extremely diverse and it's hard to make blanket declarations of what our spiritual needs are because there are so many exceptions to every "rule."

You of course get the cases where people believe that we're Satan worshipers who abuse animals and children a la Jack Chick's D&D comics, but this isn't the usual stereotype of a Pagan.  I know it's hard to believe, but Christians can be well-read, too; in fact, a lot of the misconceptions I've heard about Pagans from Christians were things they learned from Pagans who don't know Pagan history (a therapist I was working with went on about persecution of Wiccans during the Burning Times once).

But if you ignore for a second the more violent, nasty stuff, we're actually just inundated with absurd beliefs that non-Pagans believe we believe because we tell them we believe it.  How many non-Pagans who want to be allies to Pagans believe that we are all Goddess worshipers or that no Witch ever casts curses?  These are all super absurd things that people didn't need fringe bullshit Pagans to tell them because mainstream Pagans did it instead.

It Doesn't Matter If These Requests Match What You Practice Or Not

Back when I was working at a summer camp one year, I argued that a Christian woman who was trying to get me to stop using a talking board (Ouija board) was violating my religious freedoms.  I lived at this workplace, I couldn't just go home and do it!  My argument was successful; I offered to only use my talking board when she wasn't around, and she stopped bothering me about it.

This probably seems absurd to you... but at the time I was really working a lot with this particular type of divination, and divination is really important to a lot of Wiccans and other Pagans.  Many Pagans don't use this tool and more than a few are even adamantly against them... but that's irrelevant, because it was a well-established part of my practice.

There are a lot of practices and beliefs that are not universal to all Pagans but which are in fact really important to individual Pagans.  There are Pagans (particularly Pagan men) who don't cut our hair.  There are Pagans with tattoos and piercings with great spiritual significance.  There are Pagans who change their names legally to their Craft Names.  There are Wiccans who go vegetarian due to hard line interpretations of the Wiccan Rede.  Is there any central authority saying that we need to do these things?  No... but it doesn't matter.  One of the best things about Neopaganism is that we can choose these things for ourselves, and since the vast majority of these accommodations do not harm anybody, why bother complaining about them?

Another story... as a minister I wrote a recommendation for a friend of mine who wanted to move out of the dorm before they had reached the age or attendance that would allow them to move out.  The reason they gave was that they were unable to have certain religious accommodations... candles, incense, and a blade of a particular length.  I would argue that none of these are really necessary to practice Paganism and could offer loads of substitutions, but that's not the point:  This person's Pagan practice necessitates it, so I wrote the letter.

Other Religions Have The Same Absurdity And Inconsistency, The Religions Themselves Are Just Taken More Seriously

For every accommodation that people say is absurd for Pagans, I it would be easy to find a similar one in a religion that is taken more seriously that is also not universally requested by folks within those religions.

• "Pagans aren't required to change their names!"  Neither are Christians, but many of them (converts especially) do it if they have a name that comes off as non-Christian to them.  Changing your name to an Arabic one is a commonly accepted practice in Islam, and yet you probably know of lots of Muslim celebrities who are not known publicly by Arabic names.
• "Pagans don't have dietary restrictions!"  This is usually applied to vegetarianism, which is valid praxis chosen for a variety of reasons including animal welfare, animal rights, and environmental concerns.  Many people strictly interpret the Wiccan Rede to require vegetarianism (whether they go vegetarian because they're Wiccan or interpret it that way because they're already vegetarian doesn't matter).  It also doesn't matter that most of us do not have that requirement... deceptively few Jewish people keep kosher, either, and yet nobody short of an open anti-Semite would proclaim that a Jew shouldn't have that accommodation.
• "There is no requirement to wear amulets!"  When I was in high school they had to create a whole set of standards and accommodations because Catholics wanted to wear St. Christopher medals when playing sports.  There's no rule in Catholicism saying that you have to wear medals at all.
• "There is no requirement for tattoos/long hair/beards!"  I don't understand the tattoo cases because religious tattoos are extremely common among Pagans; it doesn't have to be literally required of everyone to be accommodated.  Grooming standards are also not universal in more mainstream religions that have them... not all Christian women keep their hair long, but to some it is an important part of their religion, not all Muslim women wear hijab, not all Muslim men keep beards, even Sikhs--who are well known to never cut or shave their hair--often make exceptions for women who have facial hair.

And looked at objectively?  All of these are pretty absurd.  If other faiths are allowed to ask for absurd accommodations there's no reason we shouldn't.

Prisons, The Military, And Pretty Much Everywhere Else Needing To Make Accommodations Are Terrible: Fucking With Them Is Good Praxis

I'm sure this will probably the most controversial point, but it's honestly the first thing I think whenever this subject comes up:  Both these institutions suck, so you should be a pain in the ass to them.

Some of the people who are requesting accommodations in prison have committed serious crimes (murder, sexual assault) but a staggering number of people in prison are there for non-violent crimes, and even those who aren't are subjected to inhumanly cruel conditions.  Somebody who gets to see the sky less than a goddamn battery hen trying to get more outdoor time or trying to finagle a way to eat something that isn't gruel or prison loaf is of no concern to me.  Good.  If anything, more people should do that.

This also applies (although to a much lesser extent) to the military, to schools, and to anywhere else with strict enough requirements on being who you are to make accommodations a thing.  A school won't let you wear a sized pentacle because of some bullshit excuse about it being a "gang symbol?"  Go big or go home:  Get one the size of one of Flavor Flav's clocks and fight for that shit.

--

In conclusion, we have just as much right to be obnoxious and absurd as any other religion, and in a culture of forced conformity sometimes requires it.

Foraging Season is Afoot

This post is about foraging for wild plants with a secondary mentions of gender affirmation surgery, gardening, and hunting and fishing.

My collection of carry-along guides.

First things first, I've decided that I do in fact want to have top surgery and am trying to save money for that, if you get use from this site please consider donating to that fund using the Cash.Me link in the sidebar ($Setkheniitw).  Everything that goes through that link will go right to my top surgery fund.

Anyway, foraging season is just starting now, and I'm really looking forward to it this year because I have what I feel are the trifecta of foraging guides.  I have the Peterson guide to medicinal plants which I used a lot last year when I was focusing more on making plant medicines, and then two Sam Thayer books (The Forager's Harvest and Nature's Garden) which are really zeroed in on where I live (Thayer lives in the same area as me, which is something I can't say for the vast majority of other foraging books I've read).

A while ago I saw a post on a forum from a forager who was frustrated that he could not possibly forage enough food to live on even if he were able to dedicate much more time to it.  The reason people feel this way is because even people like me--who was raised into foraging--get it drilled in our head that edible plants are hard to find, so we overlook the amazing bulk of food out there in favor of trying to find a few delicacies.  Here in Wisconsin, most foragers are looking for morel mushrooms, puffballs, asparagus, fiddleheads, ramps, hickory nuts, and if you're dedicated enough to get a license and equipment, manoomin (wild rice).  And while you can make a lot of great meals with these ingredients, you will have one monotonous diet if you try to live off of just these, and most foragers don't even look for all of them.  Flipping through Thayer's books I see plants I already recognize, some I wondered what they were but never figured it out, and realize that they are abundantly edible.

Yesterday when I acquired The Forager's Harvest I noticed that a plant I'd seen carpeting the woods everywhere is actually ground bean and has an abundance of... well, beans.  Literal beans.  Everywhere.  And I never knew this and therefore never foraged them.  Earlier when I was looking through Nature's Garden I found out the gorgeous berries I pass on the trail I frequent are autumnberries, which are abundantly edible and in fact appropriately edible as they are invasive and eating them prevents their spread.

A friend of mine invited me over to their house soon so we can trade foraging knowledge; the land they live on has ramps, nettles, and garlic mustard they will be helping me identify and I'll be walking with them to see if there are any plants there I can identify for them.  This is super exciting to me because sharing wild plant knowledge is a huge part of my praxis that I don't get to use very often.

I'm planning on making a commitment to eating a large percentage of my food wild this year (it's a part of my personal rewilding project, which is inextricably woven into the type of Paganism I practice which is based on moving toward the most ancient... when I can).  I just got my fishing license and will be fishing to get a lot of my meat, and am considering hunting more animals too.  The problem is that I can't really keep a firearm in my house and so I need to go to my parents' land to get mine whenever I go.  I'm thinking that for each season I do choose to hunt I can dedicate a weekend to it.  Anything I can't get myself, well, my family hunts and is always happy to give me meat.  As usual, of course I'll be deer hunting.  All that said, my wild menu should be quite diverse as long as I can stick with it.

I'll be gardening, too.  I already mentioned in an earlier post I'm doing a Three Sisters garden (I already started it!) as well as walking onions, rhubarb, tomatoes, peppers, carrots, watermelons, and lettuce.  I'll also be growing several herbs and a variety of tobacco.  I would prefer, though, to get more from foraging than gardening.

Happy Trails,
-- Setkheni

Stuff I'm Into: Eco-Death

This is a signal boost of a video from The Order of the Good Death talking about eco-friendly ways of managing death.

Pagan Spirit Gathering 2018 Planning

This entry talks about Pagan Spirit Gathering, a week-long Midsummer festival in southern Illinois, plans for workshops and other stuff, camping plans, masculine spirituality, and other PSG-related stuff.  Contains offhand references to nudity.

My partner and I are pumped for Pagan Spirit Gathering coming up this June.  This will be my fourth PSG and her second, and it's something we both really look forward to.

Workshop proposals closed April 1st; in the PSG forum somebody mentioned they were closing and suggested people create children's and tweens' workshops as there are never enough of them.  My partner and I are both ex-camp-counselors and I have lots of experience with teaching kids random stuff, so I asked her "hey, if I submit a couple children's workshops would you join me?"  I submitted two, which will complete our work shift requirement.  So far it looks like those two workshops are like ⅔ of all the kids' programming at PSG this year, so they definitely weren't lying about there never being enough of them.  If it all goes well (and it probably will) I might do this every year.

In case you got here through Google-fu or something and are a parent of a kid or tween at PSG, the two workshops Nakiiya and I will be putting on are:

• Solstice Sunprints - I found this activity deep in the bowels of the nature center when I worked at Girl Scout Camp many years ago; there was a massive annoying cultural shift going on and so nature activities were being downplayed (there were a lot of shitty scavenger hunts) and... I didn't like that.  So I dug down into the chest of nature activities and found this really old blue paper with instructions.  It turned out it was photosensitive paper that basically catches shadows!  So I'll be ordering like a 40-pack of that and each kid that comes to that workshop will be able to make a sunprint or two.  It doesn't take very long and needs to be at least an hour, so we'll bring other Pagany activities too.
• Pentagrams and More - Basically the first art activity we always did at both the camps I worked at was make a "tree cookie" necklace that's just a slice of pine limb with a hole in it that you wrote your name on.  I'm adapting that to make sacred symbols instead... I'll be bringing a 50-pack of tree cookies with string, maybe half of them I'll burn with sacred symbols (pentacles, ankhs, etc.) and the kids can decorate them or make their own instead.

As far as other activities to make sure the time requirement is met... I'll collect some coloring pages with Pagan themes.  Play it by ear.  It'll be fun and nostalgic.


Alright here is where all the kid stuff ends.  Not that there are any actual kids reading this, but there is some... adult stuff.

Camping Stuff

The last two years were a super success when it came to camping.  My first year I was way too ambitious but not skilled enough... my food all went bad even though I was only there a couple days and I lived off of vendor food (it was damn good food, though).  I learned from my mistakes the year after and plastic wrapped all my food.  I try not to use a hell of a lot of plastic, but... PSG is my main exception, and only with food.  We plastic wrap and then freeze meats in single-cook portions (so enough for me and Nakiiya) and it keeps from spoiling the whole week as long as we add some ice every day.

I commit to taking at least one lamb dish because she loves lamb, and then the rest I get based on whatever looks good at Costco.  Last year we ate a lot of steaks and nobody complained.  This year I'll probably take at least one larger portion of venison to bring to the feast after The Sacred Hunt.  Unsure how I'm cooking it... maybe add some morels (I'm violently allergic to morels but enjoy excuses to pick them).  The Sacred Hunt is a strenuous ritual so folks who do it deserve something fancy and hunted after.

Most of our camping setup from last year will come back.  I got a new tent because ours is missing a rain fly, Nakiiya is going to provide a mattress.  I have a nice portable fire ring, a charcoal grill Nakiiya got specifically for traveling, and I'll bring lump charcoal and cooking sticks.

I'll be looking into easy breakfast options, although it probably isn't that necessary as we wake up hours before any programs start.

I typically use natural sunscreen and insect repellent... I'm unsure on sunscreen but I'll definitely be using conventional insect repellent this year.  Last year I got bit by one of those Lone Star ticks (the one that gives you a meat allergy) and dear Goddex I do not want that shit.

I do want better options for keeping us cool this year without making or buying some wasteful thing.  It'll probably wind up being hand fans.  We'll see.

Clothing

Clothing and expression is really important at PSG for me because it's a good place for me to experiment without feeling super goofy.  I might get a kilt this year, although I am hesitant because (especially with a particular singer who is going to be there) kilts can garner a lot of attention (and sometimes sexual harassment).

Last year I went topless a lot, which was empowering for me as a non-op trans man with breasts, but I also got super burnt so my number one priority will be preventing that from happening again.  The fluid parts of my gender expression are also swaying way closer to masculine than last year, so the drive to wear nothing but a purple sarong around my waist just isn't there.  I'll probably wear shorts, pants, possibly a kilt, and then a sarong as a cloak to protect from the sun.  I also have this super cool brimmed hat I've been putting enamel pins on that should protect my face.  I will probably put a pronoun pin on the back because I am regularly misgendered from behind at PSG.

I have new minimalist sandals that should protect my feet while keeping me feeling barefoot.

Oh, and I'm definitely bringing pajamas this year.  The nights get really cold.

Programming

There aren't any workshops that scream out to me as "I have to go to this!" this year, which is good because I won't be able to plan around them as much as I would if I didn't have workshops.  Still, there are lots of activities that aren't confined to workshop slots that I'm interested in and/or actively planning for.

1. I'm seriously considering doing the Men's Rite of Passage this year.  The past couple of years I've been really motivated by the men's rituals and masculine spirituality (as a trans man this is really healing stuff) and I think I'll take the plunge and do this more elaborate ritual if I get to it in time (there are only five slots).
2. I'm trying to figure out what I want to make for the Pagan gift exchange.  The first year I did this I forgot about it and used a wand I'd made and didn't use (I just happened to have it along).  Last year I made a woodburnt spoon for Kitchen Witchery.  I love giving really good gifts so I'm really thinking this one through.
3. I plan on going to everything queer and trans I can, with the exception of 101 stuff (unless I have nothing better to do).
4. I don't know if I'll be able to swing it this year with other obligations, but I would love to eventually learn fire spinning.
5. This year it looks like we will be bringing TWO gnomes instead of one to the gnome exchange.  This is a super fun tradition so I'll totally do that!
6. Nakiiya and I will almost certainly go to the skyclad ritual again, and I'll better prepare my explanation for why I am there because I think it's a cool and important thing to hear.

Workshops are being posted; my partner and I are currently figuring out which ones we want to "earmark" as most important to us.  Obviously there will be more to come as we go through it, the sorts of little projects we want to do.  I may write a list of tips and tricks for new attendees to PSG, too.

Plant Spirit Work Projects

This piece talks about the gardening I'll be doing this growing season.

I low-key biffed my Vernal Equinox plans; I didn't do most of the ritual stuff I planned to and didn't photograph the ritual feast my partner and I had (it was, however, very good).  I also ordered some more seeds and decided to put off my blessing ritual until they all got here.  I'll hopefully be doing that tomorrow, weather permitting.

I think what I'll do is put all the seeds in my harvest basket and bless them over the smoke created by the remains of a cornstalk that I grew last year, sort of a connection between this planting and last year's harvest, which I could continue doing year after year.

This year I'll be attempting to grow a lot of plants and because of that I'll be working a lot with plant spirits.  I use a lot of exercises found in Lupa's Plant and Fungus Totems.  My plans are a nice mix of very easy to grow, highly fruitful plants for food and annoyingly complicated plants that are for spiritual, non-food, or luxury purposes.

I am taking what I learned from the past growing season and growing Three Sisters Gardens again.  This worked fantastically last year and I got a lot of food out of it.  It's worth mentioning that I have strong questions regarding whether this is appropriate or appropriative... I had been avoiding going that route and then was told in no uncertain terms that the way we grow corn is disrespectful because it was designed to be grown with beans and squash.

I tried to go with very old varieties for these beds... there will be likely four Three Sisters beds.  All will have the same variety of corn (Hopi Turquoise)  and then vary on the beans and squash.  I'm thinking two of the beds will have Cave Beans (an old dry bean) and the other two will have some sort of fresh green bean.  One of the beds will have watermelon instead of squash (Art Combe's Ancient Watermelon; the history is dubious and it's unclear if this is a true watermelon that is being misrepresented or a North American watermelon look-alike).  One will have Gete Okosomin, one will have a zucchini with a name I'm not remembering right now, and the other will have a small butternut squash variety.  I'll throw in some cucumbers too.

I've allotted a part of the garden to growing broom corn/sorghum so that I can make a fancy ritual besom using the broom making instructions in the latest issue of Mother Earth News.

I cleared out the old tomato stems and leaves from my bed to compost... the area I grow tomatoes in I'm planning on trellising because the tomatoes keep reseeding themselves and coming back every year into a big unwieldy bush.  I have some new tomato varieties, one closer to a wild tomato and the other a larger tomato, that I'll add to the bush patch.  I'll also be planting jalapeno peppers and some other similar plants in that area, and a bunch of carrots which I hear really love growing with tomatoes.

I have cabbage and lettuce seeds but haven't fully worked out where they're going.  I will probably wind up putting them in containers.

Some plants I grew in the past or that came with the house that will come back are Walking Onions (Egyptian Onion), rhubarb, Concord grapes, raspberries, apples, and cherries.

I'm bad at growing herbs from seeds but I'm going to give it another go this year, mostly with sage.

Finally there are some "luxury plants" I'll be trying to grow.  Part of it is because I have a heavy self-sufficiency/prepper mindset, but a lot of it is just... fun I think I mentioned that in my ecological pessimism piece, right?  I'll be growing tobacco and already have tea and coffee growing.  I probably won't this year because I'm already seeded out but someday I may also try growing luffa... to make sponges and stuff.

My roommate also created a new garden bed.  I know they'll be planting garlic but I'm unsure what else they'll be planting there.

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.