Changing Paths challenge day 21 — family
There are two types of family — the one you were born into, and the one you choose. If your birth family is problematic for some reason, you can create your own.
LGBT
Solidarity with the Sisters
Solidarity with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
Great post from Matt Bernstein on the subject of the LA Dodgers disinviting the Sisters from their Pride event after some Catholics complained.
Continue readingMy old path
Changing Paths challenge day 8 — my old path
There are many familiar cultural aspects of Christianity such as carol services and harvest services that everyone finds charming. But underneath these charms there lies an austere and often excluding faith. One that has harmed LGBT+ people, excluding them from ministry and community, telling them they have no worth; forced Indigenous Peoples into residential industrial schools, and promoted colonialism. One that’s happy to wedge five solid pounds of very expensive bling on the head of an unelected and obscenely wealthy man. And that’s just the established church: then there’s all the fundamentalist and evangelical churches who are even worse.
Bridge of Light
A rainbow of candles, each one representing an aspect of consciousness, kindled in the liminal time between the end of the one year and the beginning of the next. A space for the celebration of queer spirituality, queer lives, and queer joy. That is the celebration known as Bridge of Light.
Continue readingTrans Day of Remembrance 2022
So many brief candles,
So many deaths to mourn,
So many names upon our lips,
Each year a litany of names.
Their unique and perfect beauty
Crafted once by time and circumstance
Snuffed out too soon
Calling out for justice.
Write their names among the stars
Write their names on the wind
Etch the loss into the stones
Until the world changes.
People who menstruate
“People who menstruate” includes cis women, trans men and nonbinary people who menstruate.
It also correctly excludes post-menopausal people, and trans women, neither of whom menstruate.
Continue readingGardnerians speak!
Recently some transphobic people claimed that they are more traditional than Gardnerians who are welcoming and inclusive. Several people have written or spoken to refute their transphobic nonsense and their claims to be more traditional, including me, Mortellus, Jack Chanek, Jason Mankey, Ash the Gardnerian Librarian, and Dylan. I’m going to try to collect all the YouTube videos, Instagram videos and posts, blogposts, and tweets here — so please add a link to yours in the comments if I missed you out.
Continue readingRepost: Weaponizing Polarity: A Critical Response to “Traditional Gardnerians”
Absolutely brilliant post from Dylan, High Priest of the Beacon Hill Coven, Boston MA.
Those who seek initiation into our coven often ask, “How do you decide when to initiate …
Weaponizing Polarity: A Critical Response to “Traditional Gardnerians”
Including trans people
One of the ways that the right and the centre tries to shut down discussion and debate is by dismissing it as “identity politics” and “the bickering of the left”. But what they fail to say is that there wouldn’t be “identity politics” if they were not constantly trying to remove the rights of marginalized people such as trans people and sex workers.
Continue readingThe Gods know their own (and are not transphobic)
Guest post from a Gardnerian Wiccan
If a person I have known and loved before were trans (or intersex or non-binary or something else) I would honour that.
I would initiate them with a Priest or Priestess or all of us together or whatever the fuck worked to generate the dynamic interplay of energy needed.
I would invoke upon them the Goddess or the God and trust that the Gods know their own and would come.
I would kiss them as a sibling and hold them and call them by Priest, Priestess or Priestex or whatever term meant servant of the Gods to them and us.
I would teach them the beautiful and awe inspiring mysteries of the Gods and not shy away from the heterosexual generative story, but I would also explore the mysteries through other stories too and encourage them to write and share their own.
I would introduce them to the wider Gardnerian community and help them make friends and connections there.
I would work to heal them when they needed healing and receive healing from them also when I needed it.
I would work to confront my own discomfort and reconcile it, not seek to remove its source in fear.
I would work to understand where I may have done wrong and try to do better.
The person who wrote this chose to remain anonymous because of the way that transphobes tend to target inclusive people. I have shared it here with their permission.
Dowsing for Divinity 