Why Are Witches Stereotypically Portrayed as Ugly Green-Skinned Things?

In honor of Halloween, I thought I would show my readers this vlog post from a Witch historian on why witches are so ubiquitously portrayed as green skinned:

After all, we all know all witches look like this!

Religion and Spirituality

We are having a discussion (that I'd love for you all to chime in on) at the Witch Mom Forums on religion and spirituality and which people identify with and why.
I find that many people are uncomfortable with the word "religion" because some religion or other at one time in their lives preached harmful or hateful things. I know so many ex Catholics, Mormons, and Evangelical Christians it isn't even noteworthy anymore when someone "comes out" as a former (insert religion-preaching-hate here). The concept religion is so closely tied with what people (however misguided) do in its name that sometimes people reject anything resembling the term altogether.

But to me, that is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Religion is not inherently hateful. In fact, it's only when religion has been corrupted by a twisted human ego that it fails and takes on a hateful form. The word religion (from the Latin re (meaning again) and ligio (to tie or fasten)) means, quite literally, "to re-tie". Re-tie to what? It means to strengthen our connection to each other and the Divine.

Simply put, a theology that preaches disconnection from others, regardless of the reason, is not a real religion- it is simply hate speech wrapped up in a corrupt theology. You heard me. Yes, I said that. I am calling recent statements by the pope and Mormon deacons unreligious.

Religion, at its core, is an idea of wholeness- from creation to destruction and everything in between. It encompasses all of humanity and indeed all of creation. A church that does not embrace all living things as equals, one that sees some people as more inherently virtuous than others is not a religious institution. When done properly, religion cannot be used as an instrument of hate. When it is, calling it religion is a misnomer.

That is why I have no issue with revoking the non-profit status of any church that opposed and got involved in the fight for gay marriage, for example. They are not a religious institution, obviously- so why get the tax benefits of one?

So what is spirituality, then? It is a recognition of Spirit (what I call God Herself), within yourself and others. It can be done without formality and theology. Many people who have been harmed by religion take refuge in spirituality.

But one of the things that I see happening here is that because there is not structure (and all living things need structure- just ask a biologist!), there are plenty of gurus and merchants stepping in to fill that void. Spirituality cannot be bought or sold, regardless of what a workshop facilitator, new age crystal peddler, or a self-help/spiritual author tells you (as they urge you to buy their book).



Here is a proper use of religion:





and also this:


Please join us on the Witch Mom Forums for this and many other fascinating discussions!

Watching My Son Grow: 9 Months

Making the decision to have a child - It's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. - Elizabeth Stone 

Rowan is reaching so many milestones lately that I can hardly keep up. Crawling, standing unassisted, fine motor skills, eating anything and everything solid we give him (and loving almost all of it!), and connecting to animals and children in a real and meaningful way.

I am happy to say that he is a connected human being. He demands eye contact with all he meets- it is important for him to connect with us, rather than passively observe the world. This has been my number one goal as a parent- making sure he feels a connection to all living things and knows that he is a part of a greater whole. He has regular kid, dog, and bird friends that make his face light up and that crazy velociraptor squeal come out. He is enthusiastic about making connections with not just mommy and daddy, but all he encounters. He has not gone through a "stranger danger" phase (as some of his friends have) yet, and I hope that he will not, because he is exposed to so many loving people in his daily life beyond that artificial "nuclear family" model we, as a culture, have grown so used to.

I am also happy to report that a consequence of his connection is empathy. The other day, we decided to trim our parrots' nails- something they don't particularly enjoy, but is necessary (and we are gentle). But Rah Rah, our foster Amazon, has this wheezy panicked noise she makes when we hold her in the proper position (neck and head restrained, on her back, feet up)- as if we are terrible predators who are going to eat her. Rowan reacted very strongly and suddenly- his little face contorted into a grimace and he started to wail as he watched her distress. We promptly put her down and he then smiled. "It's okay, little Boop. We love Rah Rah." I assured him (I then waited until his nap to trim her nails!).

His multi-religious education goes well, too:
He's been to one of the largest pagan conferences in the world (and will be going again in February), Feri rituals big and small, small children's (non-denominational) pagan sabbats, a Sufi Zikr, Radical Faerie gatherings, and recently we celebrated shabbat with Jewish friends in their home (after they blessed the wine and challah, we shared with them how we say, "May you never thirst" and "May you never hunger" as we pass the sacrament around to share. It was nice.)

So Many Pagan Parents!

The Pagan Census reports that 41.3% of all pagans answering the Census have children, and only .02% did not respond to the question on whether they had kids- so this is a fairly accurate number. There are so many of us!

It's about time we started organizing ourselves and demanding accomodation from our communities, too.

Going to a gathering or conference? Where's the childcare, damn it?

While I am taking initiative and running an independent co-op model childcare at an annual gathering that I regularly attend, it is only because I have been forced to do it myself. The organizers have failed to meet the needs of the community, and in order for my family to participate, I've needed to fill in the gap myself. It should not have to be this way.

We need to start building infrastructure that supports us- co-op childcare, group homeschooling communities, spiral scouts groups, playdates, and so much more. A place to start are the new Witch Mom forums. Join, introduce yourself, and start the discussion about parent inclusion in the pagan community!

Raising a Human in a Gendered World

 The way the world that I live in sees and does gender really annoys me sometimes. Boys and girls, men and women all are affected adversely by the world that we have created, and now that I am a parent, I am working even more actively to create a little space that is a "gender agenda free zone" for my son.

Rowan is a very pretty boy (Look out! Those long eyelashes help him flirt mercilessly!) and has worn an amber necklace since birth. (Jewelry is evidentally a feminine thing in the US, although I doubt you could get all cultures to agree to that!) Further, his father and I do not believe that colors and patterns have gender- so he wears all colors (including- gasp! pink and purple) and has some floral and butterfly patterned clothes. His stroller is hot pink with orange flowers. To this I say, big freaking deal.

Half the time when someone calls him "a beautiful girl" or "a little princess" I don't bother correcting people. After all, what does it matter- this is their issue, not mine and not my son's.

But other times, I do gently slip it in that he is a boy. Depending on where I am I get varying interesting responses. If I am here, in the Bay Area, I get anything from a non-chalant "Oh." to a tripping-over-themselves "Sorry!". No one here dwells on it too much- we all pretend to be far too progressive on gender and sexuality issues here to obsess too much. If I am somewhere else where heterosexist, heteronormative gender norms are more rigidly enforced, sometimes people give me incredulous looks or even venemous ones. They chastize me for "effeminizing" my son. They equate what I am doing (raising a kid to be free, for as long as possible, of the ridiculous way our culture deals with gender) with child abuse.

I want Rowan to be fully human, not just pigeon-holed into what our culture thinks a man or a woman (or a boy or a girl) should be. To quote Julia Serano,

...we were duped into believing
that male and female are opposites
when we’re not
we are practically identical
99.9 percent the same on a genetic level
we’ve just been trained to exaggerate
that fraction of difference
into a chasm
into two mutually exclusive classes

and gender is not about biological sex
when you first saw me
you didn’t see my chromosomes
or reproductive abilities
instead you read my class as female
because gender is first and foremost
a class system
and it is held together by the myth
that it arises from
our organs
our instincts
but for every gender generalization you can make
i can find a thousand exceptions
and natural laws
are not suppose to have exceptions
if gender was natural
little boys
wouldn’t have to be told not to cry
little girls
wouldn’t have to be taught
that certain ways of sitting aren’t ladylike
if gender was natural
it wouldn’t need to be so highly regulated...

I, for one, am sick of the polarity/binary model of gender and refuse to indoctrinate my son into it. (Yes, I know that I cannot help him once he gets older- he will run into people that enforce gender agendas and he may even experience shame.) But I will hold out for as long as I can and hope that he is as strong as this awesome tween: