I am angry, and I am angry for a very good reason, so I am sick of people telling me to “calm down”.
Brexit is already hurting the UK, and the sickening anti-immigration policies of this government will hurt the economy, and are hurting real people.
Month: February 2017
Nostalgie de la boue
Do Paganism and fascism share any DNA? There are far-right people, alt-right people, racists, and fascists to be found among Pagans, Heathens, and occultists, but is there anything in Pagan thought that predisposes Pagans to fascism?
Petition: Let Our Content Go
John Halstead has started a Change.org petition to Patheos to get our content removed from their site:
Help Pagan writers get back control of their intellectual property from Patheos.com
Snowflakes (Poem by Linda)
Snowflakes – a bedtime rhyme
(for Yvonne, especially)
by Linda Haggerstone, 2017
Rethinking Sacred Prostitution
Sex workers, like all other workers, ought to be able to work regular hours, have a pension, get time off when they are ill, be safe and healthy at work, and not be exploited. When they want to change careers and do something else, the fact that they have been a sex worker should not be stigmatised, as this will prevent them from choosing a different career.
14 characteristics of fascism
There has been a lot of talk of fascism, the alt-right, the New Right, the same old right, the far right, recently. This is because of thirty years of austerity imposed by neoliberal economics, a surge of populism (Trumpism, Brexiteers, isolationism, Holocaust denial, and related movements), the economic slump which has been going on since 2008, and the perennial human urge to blame the Other for your problems.
Recommended Reading For The Resistance
Many people are expressing shock and dismay that a fascist government has taken over the USA, and at the rising tide of xenophobia in Broken Brexit Britain. However, if you are at all familiar with the rise of the Third Reich and the operation of oppressive systems such as the British Empire, the signs have been writ large for some time. If you need a crash course in recognising the oppressive atmosphere for what it is, then here’s a crash course. Why have I chosen mostly novels? Because novels try to describe how it feel to be in the situation, and to provoke empathy. And empathy for the persecuted is what we need more of right now.
Reclaiming the Snowflake
There’s been a lot of talk about snowflakes recently. When the term was first coined, a “special snowflake” meant someone who claimed that everything was triggering them, even though they did not have post-traumatic stress disorder, were not a rape survivor, nor a survivor of some other significant trauma.
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
February is LGBT History Month in the UK, and there are events exploring queer history up and down the country. Oxford Brookes University has an excellent programme of events, and the other day I went to the first event of LGBTHM 2017, the launch of an exhibition of Claude Cahun’s photographs, which included a film about Claude Cahun by Lizzie Thynne.
Triple Goddesses
Most people, when “the Triple Goddess” is mentioned, probably think of the Maiden, Mother, Crone archetype. However, this archetype can be very limiting, and there are many other triple goddesses who are worth exploring: goddesses of the land and sovereignty, goddesses with many skills and roles, goddesses who are women in their own right, not merely roles in relation to a man.
Dowsing for Divinity 