(inspired by friends' dating app woes)
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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Well I guess it depends on if they were calling themselves a witch because they're Wiccan, or if it was genuine delusion
It’s all of a kind to me whether someone is into crystals or crucifixes. Honestly, I prefer the crystals folks. They’re less likely to actively and vocally prefer my non-existence. But to be honest, I really don’t see a difference between casting a spell to get a job and praying to jesus to get a job. The more it becomes a major focus of one’s existence, the more problematic it is, but I suspect that both numerically and by percentage, there are fewer fundamentalists on the witchy side.
Just please don't use the crystals as deodorant (unless you have sideburns in the shape of stars)
His NAME is ALEX!
Counterpoint: new age idiots are also some of the most vocal anti-vaxxers.
That’s a fair point, although I do think they ceded first place in the past couple of years. Unvaccinated adults are now three times more likely to be republican than not. They’re not only numerically outnumbering the new agers, they’re anti-vaxxing from the halls of government and via mass media, as opposed to facebook moms in suburban california who also sell essential oils.
I'd also consider myself a humanist. While I'd prefer to not use such condescending language, that's nearly exactly how I look at it. Wicca and Paganism are religions like any other in regards to spiritualism, and can be subject to the same types of fanaticism. Personally, I really like Wiccans and Pagans. I vibe well with their leftist tendencies
Maybe my gauge is calibrated differently, but I wasn’t trying to be condescending. At most, I thought a christian might consider it condescending because their mainstream religion was being compared to a fashionable new age fancy at best.
Christians - some of them - think that the existence of Aquinas means that their religion is intellectual at its core, wh i in their minds renders paganism mere cosplay. I’ve had exactly that argument made to me.
In any case, that was just a benign musing. When I condescend to condescend, it’s ridiculously obvious. Apologies for any offense - it was friendly fire.
Is paganism not just cosplay? There's no continuity of tradition for pagan religions, they just picked it up because it was cool a few decades ago.
The ones I interacted with seemed more to the right in my opinion, but maybe I am too far left already?
They tend towards the left, but that's not always the case for every individual. The ones I know are anti-capitalist, but I'm positive that there are liberal Pagans too
I feel like a lot of people on Lemmy suffer from this issue: they see things as right-wing just because their POV is decidedly left. I know the basic left-right spectrum is too simple, but we do need to recognize politics is relative and that just because you are further one direction than someone else doesn't invalidate the fact that by common standards they are on that sane side of the spectrum.
Well, there are other things too. Like how you are with feminism for example : do you see women as naturally caring and emotional and men as naturally strong and violent and providing? That's hard right for me. And sometimes the pagan things are about some kind of empowerment or attempt at progress that falls flat into conservative or reactionary ideology.
The most difficult though is about liberals. It depends on where you live obviously. But they tend to consider them center, or even left if they are progressive in any way. Yet I will never consider individualism a progressive ideology anymore.
Well, to be fair quantum physics has scientifically proven that to witness something is to change it. So something spooky is going to be part of the human condition. Trying to define the changes that occur when we observe things is a kind of magic. In my humble opinion
So there isn't anything spooky going on there it's just that viewing particles involves bouncing photons which of course impacts the particles you're viewing. Measuring is changing. It's like if in order to measure mass you had to burn a thing (kind of like how we measure calories), in that case measuring it changes it. Nothing spooky, just an inherently destructive measurement process
Is there really a difference?
It's a spectrum, Wicca is somewhere between believing in the healing power of certain plants (certainly true) and full on "I can make spells that can hurt you because I watched The Craft."
I recently went to a "Witchcraft Fair" and there were so many people from every little niche thing. Tarot readers, crystal girls, candle spells and intention prayers, sex magic, literally dozens of different specific ways people did their thing.
Tell me more of this "sex magic" you speak of
Sex is like magic, at least in my experience.
I have never experienced magic.
Is the "healing power of certain plants" about how like yarrow contains a natural antibiotic and you can chew it and put it on a wound if you don't have access to first aid .... Or about how overpriced arnica salve will cure your bad feelings?
Certain plants really do have healing powers, but in my experience every time someone is talking about it they're just trying to sell snake oil.
sure. there are secular witches and they are generally accepted.
you probably can't be a secular Christian
Wiccans are deluded though.
Most reasonable people have decided that everyone gets to have an unsubstantiated belief system that goes into the "Religion" slot and it's not a big deal as long as no one makes it a Big Deal. Reasonable people have decided this because trying to proactively eliminate it is way harder and god-awful than just letting it ride (once again, as long as no one makes it a Big Deal).
This was the best fucking ELI5 of religion I've ever read. Bravo.
Reads like Douglas Adams
I love this explanation because it sounds silly, but it's also exactly how it works.
Too bad the entire thing with religions is that they think it's a Big Deal.
All the religious are.