thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2006-11-09 04:47 pm
thessalian) wrote2006-11-09 04:47 pm
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The Worst Witch Visits Amazon.co.uk
I was browsing Amazon's pagan section (well, Other Religions / Earth-based Religions, actually). At first it was just to try to find the title of a book I own but don't want to have to dig around for, but then some interesting stuff caught my eye and I decided to add to my wish list while I was about it. Anyway, I hit "The Witch's Bible" by Janet and Stewart Farrar - do I know these people in a "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" kind of way? I suspect I do, but I am teh suxxors at names. Anyway, I was reading through the reviews and found the following comment:
I've been practising wicca for over a year now and had had my eye on this book for a while. Though when i got it all i can say is i was very disappointed! The content was what i didn't need because it was making the craft sound very serious. Plus me being a teenager the pictures in the book weren't for a person of my age! I knew clearly enough why the people in the pictures were that way but they should have some kind of warning to the content. I hardly think pictures of people skyclad (naked) should be put with no warning in a book.
If your a teenager and are looking at this book i suggest you wait a while until you are ready to set up a coven e.t.c because it is also very coven orientated.
The coven-oriented bit ... fair enough. I don't have a coven myself - not that I'm not interested in that, but I've no idea who (or rather, how) to ask and am happy enough in my solitary faith and practice for the time being in any case. One of these days I'm going to do an entry on exactly what the hell it is I believe and do just to get it straight in my own head, but I suppose the best way of putting it touches on the old White Wolf - 'polytheistic Chorister', or 'pantheistic polytheistic pagan with a touch of the Gnostic' for those of you not au fait with Mage - the belief in and worship in the One by acknowledgement and worship of (not to mention magics involving) the Many. Anyway, so the coven thing is fine. It's the rest of it that makes me lose all grip on the English language for a few minutes as I sit and either laugh or grind my teeth and make incomprehensible noises of rage.
So "it was making the craft sound very serious", was it? I fear and loathe in equal measure the people who read this stuff and say, "Oh, I don't like this, it's too serious". I mean, shit, I may not be a Wiccan per se (or an anything in particular, for that matter) but what I do, I take seriously. Oh, yes, I take some joy in it, because there's as little point to not taking joy in your faith and practice as there is in not taking it seriously. But I take it seriously all the same, because if I don't ... well, isn't that just dicking around with something that you don't understand and can't be bothered to learn about? Shit, that'd be like fart-arsing about with a grenade launcher with only a basic knowledge of firearms and not bothering to read the manual because "it was making armed assault sound very serious".
The worst part of this is that the reviewer claims to have been practicing Wicca for over a year. If she thinks that The Witch's Bible is too serious, I have the strong suspicion that she is practicing pretty much entirely out of stuff like Ravenwolf, Teen Witch and, lords bless and keep us, The Charmed Book of Love Spells. (Oddly enough, I had my character make a joke about this the last time I played in CbN; little did I know...) This is the kind of person that I want to shake and say, "Look, I may not be a Wiccan myself, but even I know that what you are supposedly practicing is not Wicca as Wicca is meant to be. What this makes you is a fluffy, part of the reason why pagans are almost never taken seriously, and generally making a mockery of someone's faith. It's idiotic, it's rude, and what you are doing is dangerous. Now fuck off and get some respect for the craft, you little twit." Or something to that effect, anyway.
I suppose it just depresses me whenever people twist a valid faith to suit their own ends and then get so loud about it that their twisted views become the public consensus view. Christians become 'Bible-thumping fundamentalist fascists' to a man. Muslims become 'fanatical terrorists-in-training'. And pagans become either 'Satan-worshipping freaks' or 'tree-hugging crystal-waving attention whores' ... or a combination thereof. I just wish the people who do this would just shut up for a moment, or at least that the people who actually have a sensible clue about their respective faiths would speak out a little louder. I know, that's not what reasonable people do - reasonable people don't feel a need to advertise their faith in this kind of way because they're comfortable with their faith and don't need to yell about it to get justification from the masses - but if it's a choice between that and being lumped in with, in my case, emo kids, fluffies and otherkin, I'm fully prepared to shout it from the rooftops:
I AM A PAGAN AND I ACTUALLY HAVE A CLUE!
Thank you, and have a nice day.
I've been practising wicca for over a year now and had had my eye on this book for a while. Though when i got it all i can say is i was very disappointed! The content was what i didn't need because it was making the craft sound very serious. Plus me being a teenager the pictures in the book weren't for a person of my age! I knew clearly enough why the people in the pictures were that way but they should have some kind of warning to the content. I hardly think pictures of people skyclad (naked) should be put with no warning in a book.
If your a teenager and are looking at this book i suggest you wait a while until you are ready to set up a coven e.t.c because it is also very coven orientated.
The coven-oriented bit ... fair enough. I don't have a coven myself - not that I'm not interested in that, but I've no idea who (or rather, how) to ask and am happy enough in my solitary faith and practice for the time being in any case. One of these days I'm going to do an entry on exactly what the hell it is I believe and do just to get it straight in my own head, but I suppose the best way of putting it touches on the old White Wolf - 'polytheistic Chorister', or 'pantheistic polytheistic pagan with a touch of the Gnostic' for those of you not au fait with Mage - the belief in and worship in the One by acknowledgement and worship of (not to mention magics involving) the Many. Anyway, so the coven thing is fine. It's the rest of it that makes me lose all grip on the English language for a few minutes as I sit and either laugh or grind my teeth and make incomprehensible noises of rage.
So "it was making the craft sound very serious", was it? I fear and loathe in equal measure the people who read this stuff and say, "Oh, I don't like this, it's too serious". I mean, shit, I may not be a Wiccan per se (or an anything in particular, for that matter) but what I do, I take seriously. Oh, yes, I take some joy in it, because there's as little point to not taking joy in your faith and practice as there is in not taking it seriously. But I take it seriously all the same, because if I don't ... well, isn't that just dicking around with something that you don't understand and can't be bothered to learn about? Shit, that'd be like fart-arsing about with a grenade launcher with only a basic knowledge of firearms and not bothering to read the manual because "it was making armed assault sound very serious".
The worst part of this is that the reviewer claims to have been practicing Wicca for over a year. If she thinks that The Witch's Bible is too serious, I have the strong suspicion that she is practicing pretty much entirely out of stuff like Ravenwolf, Teen Witch and, lords bless and keep us, The Charmed Book of Love Spells. (Oddly enough, I had my character make a joke about this the last time I played in CbN; little did I know...) This is the kind of person that I want to shake and say, "Look, I may not be a Wiccan myself, but even I know that what you are supposedly practicing is not Wicca as Wicca is meant to be. What this makes you is a fluffy, part of the reason why pagans are almost never taken seriously, and generally making a mockery of someone's faith. It's idiotic, it's rude, and what you are doing is dangerous. Now fuck off and get some respect for the craft, you little twit." Or something to that effect, anyway.
I suppose it just depresses me whenever people twist a valid faith to suit their own ends and then get so loud about it that their twisted views become the public consensus view. Christians become 'Bible-thumping fundamentalist fascists' to a man. Muslims become 'fanatical terrorists-in-training'. And pagans become either 'Satan-worshipping freaks' or 'tree-hugging crystal-waving attention whores' ... or a combination thereof. I just wish the people who do this would just shut up for a moment, or at least that the people who actually have a sensible clue about their respective faiths would speak out a little louder. I know, that's not what reasonable people do - reasonable people don't feel a need to advertise their faith in this kind of way because they're comfortable with their faith and don't need to yell about it to get justification from the masses - but if it's a choice between that and being lumped in with, in my case, emo kids, fluffies and otherkin, I'm fully prepared to shout it from the rooftops:
I AM A PAGAN AND I ACTUALLY HAVE A CLUE!
Thank you, and have a nice day.