[This is going to come off as a little harsh.\u00a0 Fucking deal with it.]<\/p>\n
Phil Hine recently published a post<\/a> on the topic of how gay-friendly Wicca really is or isn\u2019t.\u00a0 This is a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about.\u00a0 As I have mentioned numerous times, a great deal of my background and much of my source material are Wiccan or Wiccan-influenced, but there parts that I have always had problems with.\u00a0 Admittedly, I had a great deal of trouble articulating some of those issues for many years.\u00a0 I still have trouble articulating them in ways that don\u2019t hurt or alienate my Wiccan friends.\u00a0 I agree with everything Hine says in the post, and recommend that everyone also check out his ongoing series on occult gender paradigms*.<\/p>\n Wicca and many derivative forms of witchcraft are structured around a inescapably gender-essentialist idea of the world which is reflected in its conception of divinity.\u00a0 In my experience, the general rule is that the more Traditional a Wiccan path, the worse an offender it is in this regard.\u00a0 The worst implications of this can be seen in the old books of shadows, which explicitly encourage the eroticization of the power imbalance between student and teacher (Lady Sheba 115) and implicitly forbid homosexuality as an abomination (Ibid. 115-6).\u00a0 And from here we start delving into the issues<\/a> V.V.F. articulates so beautifully.\u00a0 Ecclectic Wicca isn\u2019t always as bad, but \u2026 it\u2019s not generally very much better.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve started and abandoned a post to this effect so many times that I\u2019m surprised to cruise through my archives and find I\u2019ve never actually finished one.<\/p>\n The whole \u201cpolarity\u201d thing has read as fishy to me from the jump, anyway.\u00a0 Sure, if one follows the electromagnetic metaphor (see Hine* again for the problems with this), one needs two \u201cpoles\u201d to create motion.\u00a0 But I have yet to meet the competent magician who can\u2019t create that movement within themselves, alone, or had any trouble moving energy in tandem with any other competent magician.\u00a0 All the serious groups I\u2019ve worked with balanced out magically by element rather than by sex or gender.\u00a0 When gender balance was an issue it was always one of cis-het-dudes assume they\u2019re in charge and\/or don\u2019t listen when ladies talk, awkwardness and\/or trouble ensues<\/em>.\u00a0 (This was a key issue in the breakdown of the proto-coven.)<\/p>\n I\u2019ve only seen a couple books on Wicca for queers, and I\u2019ll be honest and admit that I\u2019ve only sat down and read one\u2014Penczak\u2019s Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe<\/em>\u2014but they seemed to follow the same pattern.\u00a0 Much of what is wrong with Penczak\u2019s book can been seen in the title: it offers queers a supporting role, an opportunity to use our super-special differences to support the community as a whole.\u00a0 He talks a lot about the various queer gods (insomuch as that distinctly postmodern construction can be applied to ancient figures), but when it comes down to brass tacks it\u2019s just another Wicca Double-oh-duh except with a purple cover.\u00a0 The history is a little bit less wonky, which is probably why it\u2019s published by Weiser instead of Llewellyn.<\/p>\n Many of these problems seem to stem from just how radical Wicca isn\u2019t<\/em>.\u00a0 (Most forms of it anyway.\u00a0 Reclaiming seems to have its shit together, but I\u2019ve also never gotten to work with any Reclaiming folks, so that skews my perspective.)\u00a0 Many forms of Wicca simply trade a transcendent sky-father who disapproves of everything for an imminent pair of sky-parents who approve of (almost) everything.\u00a0 The value of \u201cnature\u201d changes, but often not the corrupt nature of humanity\u2014\u201cunnatural\u201d or \u201cdisconnected from nature\u201d instead of \u201cfallen\u201d or \u201csinful\u201d, but whatever.<\/p>\n Ultimately, though, the whys and the wherefores don\u2019t matter for shit.\u00a0 As a queer, I frequently feel excluded from or tangential to the Wiccan mainstream of neo-Paganism \u2026 when I don\u2019t feel outright unwelcome.\u00a0 The ceremonial magic I\u2019ve been studying lately is even worse (I have to call fucking phallocentric bullshit on a lot of that stuff, especially anything coming out of the GD).<\/p>\n The more time I spend in the Underworld, the less comfortable I get with any of the traditions I can find in print.\u00a0 Shit gets weird down there, yo.\u00a0 So weird even I\u2019m not comfortable writing about all of it.<\/p>\n *No links for further Phil Hine because you should just read everything he has to say.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Lady Sheba.\u00a0 The Grimoire of Lady Sheba<\/em>.\u00a0 Centenial Edition.\u00a0 St. Paul, Llewellyn: 2001.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [This is going to come off as a little harsh.\u00a0 Fucking deal with it.] Phil Hine recently published a post on the topic of how gay-friendly Wicca really is or isn\u2019t.\u00a0 This is a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about.\u00a0 As I have mentioned numerous times, a great deal of my background … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-L","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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