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Pagan News Network: So, Boss Warlock, you've decided to join the already-crowded field of Republican contenders for President in 2024?

Boss Warlock: Hey, everyone else is running. I figure, why not me too?

PNN: But you're not a Republican.

BW: No, but the Warlock Campaign has a secret weapon. Haven't you ever heard of a selective-seeing spell? Trust me, the Republicans won't even notice.

Of course, we are talking belt and suspenders here. Republicans aren't exactly noted for being perceptive, you know.

PNN: Boss Warlock, you've never held public office before. You're a writer, a blogger, and an advice columnist. To be quite frank, you have zero qualifications for the job. How does that work?

BW: You're asking me this question post-Tr*mp? Seriously?

PNN: Point taken. Alright, recalibrating. Umm: what qualifies you to be President of the United States?

BW: Remember, Deer Stands Up, we're not talking about being President, but about running for President. Those are two different skill-sets entirely. But as to that:

1. I may not be particularly beautiful, but for a man of my age I've got a great body—if you like 'em lean—and a cute little butt. Americans always go for looks over substance.

2. I figure, if you can run a ritual, you can probably run a country.

3. Best of all, I'm really charismatic. As we all know, when it comes to politics, Americans will choose charisma over competence any day of the lunar month.

PNN: Considering the importance of the Evangelical vote, isn't your open paganism a liability?

BW: No, no, we've got that all figured out. The Boss Warlock for President Campaign plans to target Evangelicals specifically.

PNN: How?

BW: Well, they're all going to assume that I'm the Antichrist, right? By the way, did you know that that's Witherchrist in Witch? You know: wither as in withershins.

PNN: That's right, you're a word guy.

BW: Yep. Hey, digressions are inherent in polytheism.

PNN: But back to the Evangelical vote.

Angered by Garland Death, NYC Homosexuals Riot.

That was how I first heard about the Stonewall Uprising.

The long, hot summer of 1969. Judy Garland was dead.

In conservative suburban Steeltown, USA, a skinny, tow-headed stripling, who knows that he's different from other people and is trying to figure out why, hears the word “homosexuals” on the radio news.

His ears immediately prick up.

Angered by Garland Death, NYC Homosexuals Riot.

Nothing about centuries of deadly, Biblically-sanctioned oppression.

Nothing about decades of unjust, targeted police harassment.

Judy Garland, a known homosexual icon (Why?), was dead. Therefore, the homosexuals were rioting.

Takeaway #1: Nothing that these people do makes any sense. Therefore,

Takeaway #2: These people are not to be taken seriously.

Believe me, trivialization is nothing new to gay men. We've seen it for years. We see it still today.

When we and our experience are reduced to a single letter in an ugly, ever-expanding, and increasingly-unwieldy non-acronym, what is that but trivialization?

When we and our experience become just one stripe in an ever-increasing, ever-more-meaningless, ever more ugly “rainbow” flag, what is that but trivialization?

54 years have passed since that Summer of Stonewall. Much has changed. Much hasn't.

I've long admired Svetlana Butyrin (1934-2010), Lady of Feraferia: ace ritualist, pioneer visionary, who could treasure the most minute detail without losing sight of the overarching trajectory, and never feared to follow an idea to its logical conclusion.

The Colors of the Year

For instance: If Samhain has black and orange, and Yule red and green, she asked, what about the other holidays?

Here's her list.

Samhain: black and orange

Yule: red and green

Imbolc: electric blue and purple

Ostara: pink and blue

Beltane: hot pink and turquoise

Midsummer: chartreuse and gold

Lunasa: yellow and beige

Harvest Home: light orange and light brown

Agree or not, one has to admire the sheer daring of such an endeavor.

(Incidentally, lest you think this mere Martha Stewartry, let me hasten to add that we see here a deep, and deeply sophisticated, Goddess-God theologizing. Pagans see theology everywhere, color included.)

The Ostara Horror

'Do Love Thee'

The Prydn have no word for “I”.

The Prydn are novelist Parke Godwin's answer to Margaret Murray's question: What if those that we have come to call “Faerie”, the Old People of the Hills, were actually the aboriginals of the Land? What would, what could, such a culture look like from within?

Godwin's Arthurian novel Firelord (1980), its prequel The Last Rainbow (1985), and associated short stories—"Finnegan's Hearth" (1977) and "Uallanach" (1988)—are well worth the reading; not so much for their Arthurian content—Rosemary Sutcliff does it all better, at greater depth, and much more true-to-period in Sword at Sunset—but for the entry that it offers into the fhains and crannogs of the Prydn.

Their mind-set is wholly collective. Their language has no word for “I”, “he”, “she”, or “they”.

A's Pronouns Be:

We  Thee   A

A's a good dog. Really, do love thee.

Everyone's Favorite Subject

In Magick [sic] Without Tears, weird Uncle Al Crowley—the man that put the "icky" in "magickian"—recommends to would-be students of the arcane that, as an exercise in magickal [sic] training, they should pick a common word—he recommends “I”—and eliminate it from their vocabulary.

For each slip, he says, they should gash their forearm deeply until it bleeds.

Well, you can put that knife back in the drawer where it belongs. (That's just Uncle Al being Uncle Al.) Indeed: for a narcissist like Crowley to lay aside the First Person must have been utterly hellish.

Still, one has to wonder. What would the world be like if, for even a brief time, we all voluntarily laid aside Everyone's Favorite Subject?

The Other Epidemic

There's an epidemic raging in America today, and I don't mean covid. This one's just as bad, and (in the end) has probably killed more people than the Red Hag herself.

I mean the epidemic of Othering.

Republicans other Democrats. Democrats other Republicans. Evangelicals other non-Evangelicals. Hets other homos, homos other hets. Leftists other Rightists, Rightists Leftists. etc., etc., ad nauseam and unto ages of ages.

I don't need to tell you how socially corrosive this epidemic of othering has become. Othering destroys. Othering kills.

The Mother's truth: we're all in this together. How, then, do we inoculate ourselves against this mental pandemic?

Well, for one, we start by refusing to make ridiculous generalizations about one another.

In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Comes out as a 'We'

I'm checking in at Paganicon 2023. As an optional add-on to your name tag, you can specify pronoun preference, if you like.

Oh, pronouns. Talk about self-obsession. Talk about privilege. Talk about entitlement. Somehow, I always want to tell people: Here, meet my friend Fatima. She's a sub-Saharan mother whose children are dying of starvation.

Go ahead: tell her about your bloody pronouns.

A Feriferian Idyll

In the heat of the afternoon, Kouros lay in the leafy shade by the side of the forest pool.

Deep into its dark waters he gazed. There he beheld a Youth of shining beauty gazing back at him. Their eyes met.

Filled with wonder, Kouros stretched forth his hand. The Youth took it, and he drew him forth naked from the waters. They stood gazing, one upon another, admiring.

“How beautiful you are,” said Kouros.

“No more beautiful than you,” said the Kouros of the Pool.

“How sculpted your chest, how tender your nipples,” said Kouros.

“How broad your shoulders, how full your lips,” said the Other Kouros, and their lips joined.

Their bodies pressed together, strength to strength.

Through all that long Summer's afternoon, the grove rang with the sounds of their love play: the Dark Twin and the Light.

Listen well, my love, and you can hear them still.

See now those marks on the cheekbones of Artos the Bear, and of Morgana First Wife before him.

Those are the fèin-signs of our people, the Dobunni, them they call Tribe of Witches.

Well now, maybe we aren't, and maybe we are.

In Artos' day, at coming-of-age, or fostering-in, they'd score you. With a new knife they'd score you, twice over each cheekbone, and rub in the blue woad. And that was your knife for life, then, and the signs your people wore.

In our day, of course, we score no more, but do we not still paint the fèin-signs on for big Doings, still with woad; and are they not always there, now, whether you see 'em or no?

Fèin they call “coven” these days, but still it means your own. Your own, and these the signs.

Why two now, you ask, why over the cheekbones, and where's the story?

Oh, it's a brave, braw tale and sure, I'll tell you. Oh, I'll tell you.

To a Boy on His Way

Here's a true word: It's hard to be a man.

Oh, you'll hear the voices, saying: This is what it means to be a man. That is what men are.

Don't believe any of them. They're all wrong.

Here's another true word: There's not just one way to be a man.

When I was your age, I heard those voices, too. Much of what they said wasn't me, and so I thought: Well, then, maybe I'm not a man.

But the voices were wrong, and so was I.

Here's what I had to work so hard, and for so long, to discover: There's not just one way to be a man. In fact, there are lots of different ways. Which way is yours?

You're now on a quest for your own manhood. Always remember, your work is not to be this or to be that, but to discover just what kind of a man you are. What does manhood look like on you?

Keep your eyes open. Who are the men around you that you admire, and want to be like?

They're the ones who can teach you. They're the ones to learn from.

What kind of man will you be? That's what it's up to you to figure out for yourself. You're the only one who can.

As you embark on your quest, let me just pass along a sage bit of drollery that I once heard from a wise elder.