Of the Pagan Revival and (Wait for It) Foreskin Restoration

My parents had me circumcised as an infant.

It was a decision that they had no right to make—unless someone chooses it for himself, circumcision is always wrong—and I wish that they hadn't made it.

Still—I thought for years—there's no point in anguishing over something that can't be changed.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Several years ago I embarked on the journey of foreskin restoration.

It's a long, slow journey, and it's been easy to get impatient, but it does—trust me—get results.

The new foreskin will never be exactly the same as the one that you were born with. Some structures, once taken away, just can't be replaced.

What one can create, however, is a workable facsimile: something that looks, and functions, much as the original did—or should have.

Turns out, some wrongs actually can be righted.

Long ago, something intimate and precious—as it were, a part of our own bodies—was taken away from us all.

It's been a long, slow journey to get it back. It's been easy to get impatient.

Our new paganisms will never be exactly like the ones that should, by rights, have been our birthright. Some things, once taken away, can never be replaced.

But given time, patience, and hard work, we can create for ourselves a workable facsimile: something that looks, and functions, much as the original did.

Turns out, some wrongs actually can be righted.

Paganicon 2025.

It's dark in the hotel room: my bunkmate is still asleep, and I haven't turned on the light. Stripping for the shower, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

For a brief, fleeting moment, shadowed, I see what I've always known that my body should look like: a wholeness, a bodily integrity, that I hope, someday, to regain.

I'm filled with a sense of coming home.