🐱 Interesting clickbait, op-eds, fluff pieces and other smaller stories
- Thread starter CatParty
- Start date
CatParty
- Joined
- May 27, 2019
"Also, yes ladies that does include your axe wound...
...and no ladies peanut butter is not an antibiotic!"
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2019
Women who live near green space less likely to be obese
Study found association between overweight women and lack of access to green spaces
Study found association between overweight women and lack of access to green spaces
Loading…
archive.is
Idonttrustlikethat
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Blue spaces are better.
- Joined
- May 3, 2019
Ex-Welsh secretary cleared over rape trial row
Alun Cairns did not breach ministerial code of conduct over former aide who "sabotaged" rape trial.
www.bbc.com
A former Welsh secretary has been cleared of breaking the ministerial code over claims he knew about a former aide's role in a collapsed rape trial.
An inquiry found it "unlikely" Alun Cairns had not been told something about Ross England's role as a witness.
But Mr Cairns insisted he did not know the details of the case, and an advisor concluded there was no evidence to contradict that position.
The MP resigned from the cabinet ahead of the general election.
The position of Welsh secretary remained vacant during the campaign, in which Mr Cairns successfully defended his Vale of Glamorgan seat.
However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson named Simon Hart as the new Welsh secretary following the Conservative victory.
In his resignation letter to the prime minister in November, Mr Cairns said: "I will co-operate in full with the investigation under the ministerial code which will now take place and I am confident I will be cleared of any breach or wrong-doing."
In April 2018, at the rape trial of James Hackett, the defendant's friend Ross England told Cardiff Crown Court he had a casual sexual relationship with the complainant - which she denied - despite the judge making it clear that evidence of the sexual history of the victim was inadmissible.
Ross England gave a speech at the Welsh Conservatives' conference in 2016
Judge Stephen John Hopkins QC said to him: "Why did you say that? Are you completely stupid?
"You have managed single-handed, and I have no doubt it was deliberate on your part, to sabotage this trial… get out of my court."
Hackett was subsequently convicted of rape at a retrial.
Mr England was chosen in December 2018 as the Vale of Glamorgan candidate for the 2021 Welsh assembly election.
At the time of his selection, Mr Cairns endorsed Mr England as a "friend and colleague" with whom "it will be a pleasure to campaign".
BBC Wales discovered an email sent on 2 August 2018 to Mr Cairns by Geraint Evans, his special adviser. It was also copied to Richard Minshull - the director of the Welsh Conservatives - and another member of staff.
It said: "I have spoken to Ross and he is confident no action will be taken by the court."
In October, when the story came to light, Welsh Conservative party chairman Lord Davies of Gower said he could "categorically state" he and Mr Cairns were "completely unaware of the details of the collapse of this trial until they became public".
Mr England was suspended as a candidate and as an employee after details of the court case emerged, with the party saying a full investigation would be conducted.
Alun Cairns endorsed Ross England as a "friend and colleague" after his selection as a Welsh assembly candidate
The rape victim previously said Mr England's selection "shows how little respect they have for me" and she called for Mr Cairns to quit.
A UK Government Cabinet Office investigation was launched following Mr Cairns' resignation from Boris Johnson's cabinet in November.
Sir Alex Allan, the prime minister's independent adviser on ministerial standards, has concluded that the evidence does not uphold the allegations against Mr Cairns.
In his report, Sir Alex said: "The issue for the Ministerial Code is whether Mr Cairns' statement that he 'had no knowledge of the role of Ross England' in the collapse of the trial was true, and hence whether or not Mr Cairns breached the requirement to observe the principle that 'Holders of public office should be truthful'."
He found that Mr Cairns knew about the collapse of the trial, but that staff and advisers all stated they had not informed the MP about Mr England's direct role.
"On that basis, I do not find that the evidence upholds the allegations of a breach of the Ministerial Code," he added.
The rape victim told BBC Wales that she was "disappointed but not surprised" by the investigation's conclusion.
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2017
The Wing has always been pro-troon and horrifying. The way they fetishisize womanhood, you'd think Yaniv and Stefonknee were founding members.
Single-sex "spaces" without a legitimate purpose which necessitates protecting members from the opposite sex are garbage. Onepercenter clubs are quadruple garbage.
If they're journos, researchers, competitors, trolls, etc who intend to profit from admission and damage The Wing, yes. If they actually want to "work, connect and thrive" with these genital fluid painters, they're no better.
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2014
‘Merry Christmas’ Appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hashtags Hate List
"When the SPLC confuses a cheerful 'Merry Christmas' with an obscenity-laced rant threatening harm to a group of people, it loses all credibility," Mat Staver, chairman of Liberty Counsel, charged.
www1.cbn.com
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2019
Oy Vey!
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas
Link:
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk
Archive:
archive.ph
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas
Link:
HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media
www.huffingtonpost.co.uk
Archive:
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas | HuffPost UK
archived 22 Dec 2019 04:28:36 UTC
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2013
No real jews care about christmas, this is retarded.Oy Vey!
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas
Link:
HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media
Archive:
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas | HuffPost UK
archived 22 Dec 2019 04:28:36 UTC
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2019
>Though Hanukkah holds little weight in comparison to other Jewish holidays about near-death experiences and military victories, leaning toward Christmas feels like pushing away from Judaism. Rabbi Joshua E. Plaut wrote for My Jewish Learning that celebrating Hanukkah as an alternative to Christmas was how second and third generation Jews in the 20th century would assert their Nationality, that the holiday was important in that it stood in opposition to Christmas. The Jewish fascination with Hanukkah was born out of a desire to be seen as not Christian and to create a fun alternative for Jewish kids during the time of year when hundreds of millions of our neighbours revel in a different kind of joy.
>“Ironically, by elevating Hanukkah as a Jewish alternative to Christmas, [assimilated] Jews had invented their own holiday tradition through a Christmas mirror,” Rabbi Plaut wrote. In a desire to feel more like ourselves, we’ve constructed a holiday that is a sociocultural response to what we are not. My question during this time of year is: how do I know my Jewish identity and practice my religion without being adjoined to what I am not?
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2013
These people don't realize Jews have their own holiday, do they?Oy Vey!
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas
Link:
HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media
Archive:
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas | HuffPost UK
archived 22 Dec 2019 04:28:36 UTC
- Joined
- May 2, 2017
Oy Vey!
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas
Link:
HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media
Archive:
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas | HuffPost UK
archived 22 Dec 2019 04:28:36 UTC
We are selling you all your Christmas tchotchkes. We RULE Christmas.
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2019
Oy Vey!
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas
Link:
HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media
Archive:
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas | HuffPost UK
archived 22 Dec 2019 04:28:36 UTC
Ask a rando Jewish person how they feel about Christmas and 99% of them will just shrug. It'll be the same as asking a Christian how they feel about Kwanzaa: *shrug* "I don't care".
No idea who this article was written for.
- Joined
- Apr 12, 2016
Meet the Modern-Day Pagans Who Celebrate the Ancient Gods
Deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, a community of Druids is reviving Celtic rites. They might seem hokey or outlandish, but maybe, just maybe, they’re the ones who have it all figured out.
Photos by Katharine Kimball.
The priest raises his arms, palms upturned. “Lord Taranis, hear our prayer!” he bellows, voice bouncing off the stone pillars and into the darkening fields beyond. The fire’s crackle fills the stone circle. We stare through the flames, past the boundary of our sacred space, to the patina of white looming over the white sky – Mount Adams, close and huge.
It is high summer, and we are at White Mountain Druid Sanctuary in southern Washington State. Under the immensity of the mountain, a couple of ramshackle barns stick up from the hayfields. Our priest, a straight-backed, snow-haired man, is delivering a homily on the attributes of the thunder god. Taranis, a powerful thunderbolt-tossing deity, is being honored at today’s solstice celebration because of his association with light, weather and sky.
Arms raised, the priest pauses. We lean forward, breathless. The fire cracks again. The teenage girls on the edge of the circle, who might be high on mushrooms, giggle quietly to themselves. Finally the priest grins and lowers his arms.
“Well, I forgot that part, darn it.” With a shrug, he reaches into his white robes and pulls out a small piece of paper. His voice is wry, sing-songy, full of mirth. “I should have practiced more!”
Everyone laughs as the priest consults his paper. “Sorry, I’ve got it now,” he says, resuming the formal diction – few contractions, quick and clear consonant sounds – that he uses for his rituals. Throwing his arms into the air, he intones, “Lord Taranis…” and completes the rest of the homily uninterrupted.
To get to the Sanctuary in the foothills of Mount Adams, I rattled down a gravel road and parked beneath some prayer flags tacked to a barn. A sign on the building read “DRUIDS HERE.” There is a large wooden lodge with bed-and-breakfast facilities, meditation huts, and a stone circle straight out of Stonehenge, where, upon my arrival, about fifty people were pouring whiskey into deep wells and speaking Gaelic. They were blowing horns and beating drums and generally having a hell of a good time.
Ember Miller, Chief Druid and Oracle, holds a wooden devotional plaque depicting Hermes. “He is patron god of travelers, commerce, writing, athletes, messages, and he’s a bit of a trickster,” says Miller. “Some folks like to see him akin to modern-day Han Solo or Captain Malcolm Reynolds.”
As this is my first Druid ritual, I have no idea how much of this to take seriously. It’s hard to tell how much the participants themselves take seriously; there’s a lot of laughter and self-deprecation. But when Kirk Thomas, the Arch-Druid of Ár nDraíocht Féin, asks the gates of the spirit world to open, creating a thin, traversable bridge across the red-gold evening breeze, we all grow tense.
I don’t know who Taranis is, let alone believe that he’s going to visit our circle, but I strain, listening for signs. Birds wheel in the sky. Somewhere on the other side of the property, a bell trickles into the wind.
“The gates are open,” Thomas says finally, and we begin.
***
Loosely overseen by a central office – set in a back room in Thomas’ old house in Santa Fe, New Mexico – Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) is a polytheistic neo-pagan religion that draws its inspiration from ancient Indo-European traditions. It’s organized into local groups, called groves, and was founded in 1983 by a charismatic man named Isaac Bonewits, who, after completing a self-study program at UC Berkeley, earned a bachelor’s degree in – yes, really – Magic and Thaumaturgy. Bonewits had dabbled in Satanism and witchcraft before founding Ár nDraíocht Féin, which in Gaelic means “our own fellowship” or “our own magic.”
Although nearly seventy groves worldwide are affiliated with ADF, each organizes its own tailored rituals. At annual pan-pagan festivals, camping trips, and ADF training workshops, as well as over the internet, ADF’s 1,500 members exchange ideas on what rituals should look like. Rather than including official liturgical script, the rituals they perform feature a netting of ideas and ideals, created and debated by poets, Roman legionnaires, mystics, nature lovers, proto-European language nerds, and all kinds of wanderers in search of a connection.
***
Long before he became a neo-pagan reverend, when Kirk Thomas was seven years old and visiting his aunt in Utah, he was left mostly to his own devices. During the day he wandered the acres behind her house, picking through the scrub brush, the rocky terrain, the bristling white fir. One day while he was out, the hair on the back of his neck began to stand up. Something was watching; he was sure of it.
He dashed back to the house and rummaged through the fridge, emerging with a bunch of grapes. The boy cautiously returned to the place where he had felt the presence and laid the grapes on the rock. He knew what was being asked of him. The next day, the grapes were gone, and so was the feeling of being watched. The boy thought, an animal took them. But some part of him wondered.
Jonathan Levy, right, and Arin H. recite a passage to ward off any spirits that might seek to challenge or question their practices before participants cleanse themselves at the start of the Fortuna ritual. Fortuna is the Roman goddess of fortune and could bring good or bad luck.
As a kid, Thomas read all about the Old Kingdom dynasties of ancient Egypt; the names of pharaohs like Akhenaten and Nefertiti rolled off his tongue. In middle school he got into supernatural stuff, reading Diary of a Witch – Sybil Leek’s popular 1969 memoir of growing up pagan, which inspired a generation of witches – and drawing pentacles on the garage floor. He studied theater in London and became a hot air balloonist, taking to the skies over the English countryside.
Later, around the year 2000, he read The Mists of Avalon, an Arthurian fantasy epic that he calls a “gateway drug” to Druidry. “What it did was remind me of how I had felt as a teenager, with all that wonder and magic and joy,” he says. He began to look for other neo-pagans online, in chat rooms and early internet sites. When he discovered ADF, he thought it wasn’t “quite as wacky” as other neo-pagan belief structures, and was more scholarly and organized than Wiccan covens.
Ember Miller, Chief Druid and Oracle, portrayed Fortuna during the Fortuna Ritual.
He attended his first ADF ritual at a public park in Tucson, Arizona, during an electrical storm. A few people gathered at a concrete pavilion, stood in a circle and read a ritual one of them had pulled off the web. Lighting was flashing in the desert sky. “The thunder god was pretty obviously saying ‘hello’ to me,” he says.
But he felt the ritual was amateurish. He wanted to rewrite it and, lucky for him, he’d found a religion that embraced rewriting, remaking, revising. He had become a Druid.
***
More and more in America, religion is something people choose (or don’t), rather than inherit. According to a 2015 study by the Pew Research Center, “As the Millennial generation enters adulthood, its members display much lower levels of religious affiliation, including less connection with Christian churches, than older generations.” However, the report also finds that many millennials remain spiritual in a broad sense, expressing “wonder at the universe” and an overall feeling of “gratitude” and “well-being.” About 1.5% of the American population identifies as “other faiths,” including “Unitarians, those who identify with Native American religions, Pagans, Wiccans, New Agers, deists, Scientologists, pantheists, polytheists, Satanists and Druids, to name just a few.” Druids will appreciate being listed separately from Wiccans (self-described “benevolent witches”), but both fall under the umbrella of neo-paganism. Almost half of New Agers – a larger category that includes shamans, goddess-worshippers, and possibly your mom’s psychic – are of the millennial generation.
Reverend Kirk Thomas. Photo by Caitlin Dwyer.
Many druid practitioners are reacting to a childhood religion they found inadequate or oppressive. They speak of their practice as inclusive and pluralistic, but also self-define as rejects, misfits and seekers, drawing a protective boundary around their own otherness. In one sense, Druidry is very old school – traditional and nostalgic for a way of relating to nature that most modern humans have lost. However, it is also willfully new. Druid rituals enact something not handed down or inherited, but deliberately created. “There just isn’t enough preserved out there to actually recreate Irish paganism,” Thomas explains. “One can do a nice superficial gloss, but we have no idea what any rituals actually looked like.”
Perhaps that sense of freshness and invention is why, after accidentally stumbling into the solstice celebration, I began to see them as a perfect example of America’s tangled, 21st-century relationship with faith.
***
I am holding a Dixie cup of wine. The woman who passed it to me called it “The Water of Life,” and she has lots of them on a tray, walking around our circle and handing them out to the motley group – girls with braided hair and brightly-colored leggings, women in long skirts and hand-knit sweaters, men with handmade leather fanny packs and KEEN sandals. The sun has set, and the sky is a blur of hazy bluish-black behind Mount Adams. Just outside the stone circle, there’s a cob shelter, on which is painted on one side with a triptych of ancient myths – deities Taranis and the Morrigan, the Celtic goddess of death, first engaged in a devastating war, and then having sort of graphic make-up sex. The woman smiles and moves on, and I hold the cup but do not raise it to my lips.
A Druid ritual can take place anywhere, although outdoors is preferable, because a hearth must burn at the center of the assembly. Stoking the fire is Reverend Thomas, who earlier shook our hands and asked us all to write an intention on a small piece of paper. We stuffed them into a straw man made of twigs and later burned him in the fire.
“We are fire priests if nothing else,” Thomas says. “The fire transmutes and transforms. It turns something into something else. It does it quickly.” Also present are a well or water – “the epitome of the powers of the earth and the underworld,” as Thomas explains – and a tree or pillar – “the pipeline of communication that allows you to communicate between this world and other worlds.”
After an opening potluck, with plenty of mac salad and mead and smiling folks who wore runes around their necks, we walked the gravel path to the stone circle. We asked for blessings; we burned our straw man. Now we are supposed to toast and drink the Water of Life.
Spiral, left, waits in line to cleanse before entering the sacred space created for the Fortuna ritual. Participants put their hands in a bowl of water, and gently hold their hands over their heads, heart and legs to purify them from the outside world.
It hits me that I am standing with a bunch of people I don’t know in the middle of a dark and remote farm being asked to drink unmarked liquid by a dude in a long white robe. The Water of Life shakes between my fingers.
I have little context for this rite. My own religious upbringing was hybrid and scattered. I wasn’t baptized, but I come from a long line of Irish Catholics, who attended schools taught by nuns and have names like John Michael Patrick and Mary Colleen and who drink their guilt from bottles of California chardonnay. From my mother’s side, I got a consciously a-religious Judaism. My grandfather’s first language was Yiddish, but his family eschewed things like temple and bat mitzvah, so when Jewish friends explain holidays to me, I usually just nod along, playing the more familiar role of the Irish girl. I am equally uncomfortable at Shabbat services and Sunday Mass, unsure of what to do with my hands, what to say, when to sing.
My family never offered me real entry into either of my birth religions, so instead, growing up I found faith in literature, storytelling, myth and nature – a budding neo-pagan if there ever was one.
At some level, I wanted to belong to organized religion. During sophomore year of high school, I tried to join a Christian youth group. Several of my friends attended, and they always got older boys from the group to go to school dances with them (I, on the other hand, took a blow-up doll to junior prom). I joined them in the basement of a neighborhood church where they sat on straight-backed chairs and did trust exercises and ate snacks and prayed.
The group leader was a pleasant guy with a fleece vest and a patient smile. He asked me if I believed in God, if I believed Jesus was the Son of God. Although he wasn’t unkind, he was looking for a specific answer to each question, and my answers were like fumbling through a giant keychain, jangling it awkwardly, trying to find the key that unlocked a kind of belonging I desperately wanted. I considered lying – I mean, the boys – and realized that I could perform being a good Christian. I searched for words that I thought would please him, like grace and grateful and community, placatory words that could take the place of certainty. I filled our conversation with placeholders, language itself becoming a kind of tenuous substitute for faith, because the truth was I had never really been drawn to a specific religion, but merely to the idea of religion. I could enter into this group and learn about Jesus and smile and hold hands with boys during prayers, and maybe no one would ever know that I didn’t believe what I was supposed to. But it was pretty clear that I didn’t have the right key, and I felt so ashamed that I never went back.
I look around at the Druid rite, and everyone else has already drained their cups. With a sigh, I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and chug my wine. It’s cheap stuff, and the smell of cedar smoke from the fire mingles with the sweetness on my tongue. I get a brief, heady rush, and then Reverend Thomas begins passing out musical instruments – tambourines and rattles, drums and shakers. People are grinning. We are alive on the base of a mountain, and we are going to dance.
***
“To me, Druidry is an experiential religion,” says Jonathan Levy, one of the founders of the Columbia Grove in Oregon. “Simply talking about it doesn’t do it justice.” Levy has a trimmed beard and a skittish, enthusiastic manner. He was a “hardcore atheist” when he came across some neo-pagan websites at the age of eighteen. He couldn’t have cared less about King Arthur legends, but he did love Roman history: Virgil and triremes and Mars. When he discovered an ADF ritual based on the Roman rite of Hilaria, it delighted him.
Levy realized that Druidry wasn’t asking him to believe; it was asking him to show up and be in community, to make offerings and to light fires. He moved to Oregon and started a meetup called “Druid Drinks,” a monthly gathering at a local pub, where he could chat socially with other curious-and-questioning Druids. Finally convinced, he traded in his atheism for an enthusiastic polytheism. In ADF, he says, “It comes down to doing something together. That part is appealing.”
Levy says many of the Columbia Grove’s members are ex-Catholics and are used to elaborate rituals. However, ADF avoids “churchy” language as much as possible because it “can be a very big turnoff for people … who were angry at their past religious affiliation.”
“It’s that rejection” that defines Druidry, explains Dr. Sarah Pike, a religious scholar at Cal-State Chico. Many Druids have “found a place where they belonged.” Pike adds that, for Druids, creating an identity out of what they’re rejecting is essential: it leads them to “embrace otherness,” and find meaning in being their own tribe.
***
Tall fir trees shade the lot; autumn sunlight drifts down. After almost a year away from the Druids, I have come back to visit them again, this time with Jonathan Levy’s Columbia Grove in Portland, Oregon. This is a celebration of Dionysos, the Greek deity of wine, held in a courtyard outside a Unitarian church. Around me, people drift in a loose, undulating circle on the stone. All of them are masked in foam cutouts and sequins and glitter glue: a chance to slip into a new face, and therefore avoid the madness that close contact with Dionysos can inspire.
Garbed in a toga and rust-and-orange fall garlands, Levy welcomes the crowd to autumn equinox. His pale legs are bound in high Roman sandals; his liturgy is broad-stroked and mythological, with syntax that deliberately invokes Christian liturgy: Let us pray with a good fire. Let us offer with a full heart. He and his fellow group leaders read from note cards. At one point they start to sing and realize they are doing different songs. They take a moment to shuffle through their papers, like actors who need to review the scripts.
Kirt W. kneels before Fortuna, as portrayed by Ember Miller. Many participants approach Fortuna, made offerings of flowers, incense or cookies, whisper in her ear, and are given a gold coin and a blessing.
The idea of reciprocity – of giving something in trade – holds particular importance in Druidic rite, according to Reverend Thomas: “Human relations are set up this way, and we in ADF do the same thing with the spirit world. We make offerings and hope for and ask for blessings in return.” So when Levy invites the audience to make offerings, one woman breaks apart a chocolate bar for Isis, an Egyptian goddess, and asks for good health in trade. The chocolate bubbles as it melts in the fire. Another pours out wine for Dionysos, making the flames hiss. A gender-nonconforming member burns a poem written to Thor. A young white man in a purple cape and Phantom-like half-mask invokes Hermes, the Greek messenger god, stalking the inside of our circle. The diverse pantheon doesn’t phase anyone.
After the offerings are burnt, a young woman with dyed red hair tells us to close our eyes and leads us through a visual meditation, into deep woods, into worlds of nymphs, toward Dionysos. Then, tipsy on the presence of the divine, we stand and begin to circulate, holding hands, and dance to a chant: Come on thy Bull’s Foot. I scratch my nose where the mask is slipping down. Hypnotic and repetitive, the chant pounds forward; people wriggle and writhe, close enough to each other that skin brushes skin. Come on thy Panther’s Paw. I feel a rush beneath me, like standing on ice and watching a current flowing and shifting beneath the frozen layer. Although I don’t have much invested in this rite emotionally, I am still doing it, moving my body among other bodies. Come on thy Snake’s Belly. It feels like when you’re upset and people tell you to smile. How just the action of faking it, of smiling through your pain, starts the flow of good hormones in your brain and makes you really feel better. Playing along is one way to access something real and physical. Dionysos come. Theater is not just a show; the act of the thing unlocks the reality of thing itself. I don’t really believe in what I am doing, but it is sort of working just the same.
***
When people come to Druid rites for the first time, they expect to see “us wearing all white, talking in thou and thy,” Jonathan Levy says. “We’re modern people. Our Druidry is modern. Our rituals are modern. Sometimes we dress in stuff just for the fun of it, but it’s not supposed to be the centerpiece. We use modern language; we use very little foreign language. People are not expecting that.”
Dr. Sabina Magliocco, a folklorist at Cal-State Northridge, says that ADF founder Isaac Bonewits “was looking for a tradition that was rooted in history,” but soon realized that resurrecting an ancient religion was impossible. Reverend Michael Dangler, a senior ADF priest in Ohio, agrees. “We have rejected the fantasy of ancient lineages,” he says. “They are just not important from our personal practice perspective. We come out of a skeptical time.”
For the average American, whose understanding of religion is synonymous with faith, Druidry can seem a bit artificial. But Dr. Sarah Pike says that Druids have “a different type of commitment” to their religion. Focusing on ritual action rather than creed can be “a relief” for people who have fled the constraints of orthodoxy, she says. “When belief becomes so important, you have sharper boundaries between insiders and outsiders.”
Still, there is tribalism in Druidry. Many of the practitioners I spoke with had the awkward, sharp, smart humor of the nerdy kids in middle school, which they wielded at me like little pikes, prodding and jabbing to see if I would laugh. Dr. Magliocco says this is partially constructed as a part of pagan identity. “Humor is a way that we mark insiders and outsiders,” she says. “A joke is a spell. Jokes clearly mark the boundaries. We can all laugh because we’re unusual, but we also draw a firm circle of who we are.”
***
Not everyone at the summer solstice ritual is a practicing Druid. The girls who are maybe on mushrooms are clearly not familiar with the rite. When Reverend Thomas hands out drums and rattles and shakers, so that we can all make a joyful noise together, parading around the fire and making music for the gods, one of them accidentally drops her tambourine. It shatters the silence with a flustered, lengthy banging. The girls sputter with silent laughter, their bodies shaking, as Thomas tries unsuccessfully to maintain a straight face.
Reverend Kirk Thomas performs a summer solstice rite at White Mountain Druid Sanctuary in Trout Lake, Washington. Photo by Caitlin Dwyer.
On the other hand, we are all practicing Druids. We’ve shown up at the ritual, after all, and if being a Druid means making offerings of whiskey and beer, reciting a prayer to honor your ancestors, and drinking mead from a horn, then I, too, am a Druid.
“Get out there and do the stuff; that’s what counts,” Reverend Thomas says. “What you believe is kind of your business.” You step onto the stage, say the lines, block the actions. You do the work. Through recitation, the piece of yourself played that night has a chance, perhaps, to reconnect to something deep and missing within the modern psyche – nature, the changing of seasons, the deepening shadow behind a white mountain. There is a real American optimism buried in this: that if we show up ready to try, something in the universe will respond positively to us. That we can deal with it, negotiate our futures: a bit of chocolate for your blessings, a dram of rye for your luck.
When it doesn’t work, it looks like cheap theater. But when it does, something inside turns like a combination lock until it clicks, and then slides open. After all, there is nothing like watching the world respond to you. If it is a performance of the modern self to dress up in robes and ask your ancestors for blessings as bats snip and chatter in the summer dusk, then it is also deeply satisfying. Pouring good rye down the dark throat of a well, watching it drop fathoms deep: that act has its own, deeply human magic.
Caitlin Dwyer is a writer from Oregon whose work often explores education, boundary-crossing, and belonging. She has studied at University of Hong Kong and Pomona College.
FrickinFrackinFruckin
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2018
Oh Detroit, you never disappoint! https://www.channel3000.com/news/na...onto-detroit-highway-officials-say/1153450282
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2019
HEADLINE NEWS: Prolific Christian man killed; jews hardest hit.Oy Vey!
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas
Link:
HuffPost is now a part of Verizon Media
Archive:
Jews Never Feel More Like Outsiders Than At Christmas | HuffPost UK
archived 22 Dec 2019 04:28:36 UTC
Security Verification | LinkedIn
Loading…
archive.is
Looks like she married a Levy to earn that hyphen. Her facebook:
Loading…
archive.is
She looks pretty happy with her family at Christmas here:
With her history she can probably do nothing else but be the SJW victim?
Maybe she's overcompensating for not being jewish enough? Is the mom Jewish or only her new husband? Is her new Jewish family giving her shit for being a goy? "Look! I hate Christmas! I'd kill Christ in a second! Love me, love me, love me!"
---
Terry Gilliam On Marvel's 'Black Panther': "It's Utter Bullsh**."
In a new interview with IndieWire, director Terry Gilliam explained why he thinks Ryan Coogler's 'Black Panther' is "utter bullsh**."
theplaylist.net
Terry Gilliam is cancelled.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
For the goyim.
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2019
Terry Gilliam On Marvel's 'Black Panther': "It's Utter Bullsh**."
In a new interview with IndieWire, director Terry Gilliam explained why he thinks Ryan Coogler's 'Black Panther' is "utter bullsh**."
Terry Gilliam is cancelled.
So Terry was right about the design of Black Panther then. They writer couldn't even try denying it because Terry was exactly correct. So instead they fake indignation and avoid addressing the issue.
Ugly soyboy
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
I am sick of media narratives that someone stating their opinion is somehow a "gaffe" when whoever said it couldn't give a flying fuck less about the opinion of some dickless soyboy piece of shit offended by it and assuming that if you offended them, you couldn't possibly have just meant whatever you said.
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2019
if you disagree with anything a journalist says then you are literally hitler murdering literally thousands of jews with your literally bare hands
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2017
Prince Philip leaves hospital in time to spend Christmas with the Queen
The Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip has left King Edward VII's Hospital in central London a day before Christmas after spending four nights in the Marylebone hospital
www.mirror.co.uk
The Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip has left King Edward VII's Hospital in central London a day before Christmas after spending four nights in the Marylebone hospital
Prince Philip leaves hospital in time to spend Christmas with the Queen
The Duke of Edinburgh Prince Philip has left King Edward VII's Hospital in central London a day before Christmas after spending four nights in the Marylebone hospital