PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

Dear Editor,

This concerning your coverage of Paganicon 2018 (“The Twin Cities—AKA Paganistan—Will Host a World Gathering of Witches”).

In the vocabulary of modern Witches, the word cowan (rhymes with plowin') refers to a non-Witch. It is not necessarily a derogatory term.

Not necessarily.

Cowans are not all alike.

There are Protestant cowans, Shi'ite cowans, Hasidic cowans....

Cowans are not necessarily anti-pagan.

Some cowans actually like pagans.

Cowans don't all look alike.

Next time you're with a group of cowans, take a really close look. You'll be amazed!

Cowanism is not a single religion.

In fact, there are many different forms of cowanism.

Many cowans find the term “neo-cowan” deeply offensive.

What do you say when they wish you 'Merry Christmas'?

Well, it all depends on what you want to communicate.

Thanks, you too.

No thanks.

(Smile, shake head.)

Sorry, not my holiday.

You shouldn't assume that everyone's Christian.

And the broom you rode in on, baby.

Hail Satan.

Brand spanking new.

A curious expression, certainly: what does one have to do with the other?

In fact, it's birth imagery. Birth imagery? you might think.

Ah, but this was birth the cowan way.

Back in the Bad Old Days of the Cowan Era (CE), it was customary to hold newborn babies upside-down by their feet and give them a good, solid swat on the behind. Supposedly, this was to get the newborn to take its first breath.

In fact, of course, most newborns breathe automatically, and for those that don't, there are much less violent methods available.

But for cowans, the gesture held deep meaning. At the very moment of birth, it subjected the newly-born to the life of indignity, violence, and subjugation that most people then could expect to live.

Silly cowans.

Back around solstice I went over to a friend's house to put her air conditioner in the window. She lives on the first floor of a big, solid old place, built back in the 1890s.

The first item on the agenda was to prop open the big, heavy oaken sash. It has a tendency to crash down unexpectedly when unsupported.

Last summer someone tried to break into her house. When she got back home, she found the air conditioner on the floor and the sash slammed shut.

There was blood on the windowsill.

Ouch.

Just before last New Moon I ran into my neighbor.

“Hey, Ramadan coming up,” I said. “Are you looking forward?

She frowned.

“Too much work,” she said.

Ramadan, ugh. It's as bad as Christmas.

Like Christmas, Ramadan is an old pagan holiday dressed up in motho clothing. (In this case, a hijâb.) This year it's almost back to where it started in the first place: the moon of the Summer Solstice. A fast every day, a party every night: sounds pagan to me.

Ramadan is a hot item these days. True, there are lots more Muslims in my neighborhood now than there were a few years back. But it's not just demographic. Since 9/11, Ramadan actually makes national news. (Before that, of course, although a quarter of Earth's population—including millions of Americans—were observing the holiest time of their religious calendar, somehow the American media never found this a newsworthy event.) But in these days of unthinking Leftist Islamophilia, non-Muslims fast “in solidarity.” (A friend's husband calls this “religious tourism.”) The yards of the terminally liberal sprout Blessed Ramadan to Our Muslim Neighbors yard-signs.

Well, kumbaya to you, too.

I don't even remember what finally set me off.

One too many Starvation Army bell-ringers?

One too many Muzak Silent Nights?

One too many smiling faces wishing me something that I don't want?

Whatever it was, by the time that I got to work, I was in a state.