Bullhorn Bullshit

 Summer is winding down here at "The Gods Are Bored," and that means there are two events upcoming ... and we always go to both.

The first is Philadelphia Pagan Pride Day. It's held on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend. The second is Labor Day itself, which includes a parade of unions along Philadelphia's waterfront.

Only one of these events draws protesters. I'll bet you can guess which one.

I can't remember if there was a Philadelphia Pagan Pride Day last September. I wouldn't have gone, because Covid was still an issue in our household. However, I did go in 2019, and readers, it wasn't all tree-huggy.

PPPD attracts the attention of the Christian fringe, and they come bearing bullhorns and banners proclaiming that all Pagans are going to Hell. Since they don't have a permit to protest at our event, they are supposed to stay on the fringe. But lately the Philly cops have been -- hmm, how should I put it? -- a tad lax. It's possible that these disruptors may lurch right into the event area with their noxious nastiness.

Honestly these protesters haven't bothered me personally in the past. But I know that their presence is very very triggering to some people in the Pagan community. Paganism has attracted many practitioners who have escaped the abuses of the radical evangelical Christian churches. Being accosted and harassed at a Pride event causes a lot of angst. For that reason, I deeply resent the intrusion of these moron zealots.

The event organizers at PPPD have been very adept at minimizing the Christian presence. Volunteers form a kind of human wall around the noise so that it doesn't drown out the programs and the rituals. And eventually the bullhorns must get heavy, because the protesters usually leave after about an hour.

Who is to say, though, in these emboldened times?

Now I know that West Philly is chock-a-block with anti-fascists who are able to rout any incursion by Proud Boys or other such rabble. But that's politics. This is religion, that other thorny subject. Doubtful that antifa will lend us a hand on this one.

According to trustworthy sources, Christian protesters have become more aggressive at Pagan events this year. I sure hope this isn't the case in Philly. All we want to do is see each other, donate a few cans of food and some pet supplies, buy trinkets from the vendors, and have a workshop or a ritual, or both. Why is that anyone else's business? We don't go to their stupid storefront churches and shout that they're headed to Hades! (Ahem, though it could be true.)

What should I, Anne Johnson, do if these nitwits crash our Pride Day? Don't suggest glitter bombs, because it's a city park with big old trees. Otherwise I am open to suggestions.

Interview with a Bored God: Loki

 Oh, how we at "The Gods Are Bored" have strayed from our central theme: giving downsized deities a public platform! It's what put us on the map, so to speak, and has been a favorite pastime since 2005. Yep, that long.

And mostly this has been an uplifting and fun ride. (Ares is the exception, He speaks in all caps and sets the furniture on fire.)

Today I heard a lot of ruckus outside, and I do love me a good ruckus. Investigating, I found Loki on my front lawn, juggling squirrels. Even though the squirrels were having the time of their lives, I sensed that Loki had something to tell me, so I have invited Him inside. (I'm glad the house is a mess. He loathes a neat house.)

Please give a warm, wonderful "Gods Are Bored" welcome to Loki!

Anne: All hail, aww Hell, oh well, howdy, Loki! Sup, cuz?

Loki: More than the usual chaos, Annie.

Anne: You mean extra chaos? Please tell me it's the kind that leaves everyone out of breath laughing and maybe only a few new stains on the upholstery.

Loki (looking around): What could have possessed you to buy a white couch?

Anne: Would you believe it's my second white couch? I know I shouldn't, but I take pride in how little I've learned. Here's a piece of blueberry pie for you, and that wide, wide expanse of white couch ...

Loki: Hey Anne! Watch this!

[Insert laughing emoji]

Anne: At least pick up the big chunks, willya?

Loki: Sure! Because I see you also repainted the walls -- blushy white!

Anne: This is the silliest of questions, seeing as it's You, but is there a reason for Your visit? Other than giving the squirrels a joyride, I mean.

Loki: I am going to ask you to amplify a message for Me.

Anne: Only too glad to oblige, Tricky Sir.

Loki: The message has been reported seriously and factually here. It came through a Seeress.

Anne: For real, for real? I saw a possession ritual once, and it scared me snotless! I'll bet you put that poor Seeress through her paces. But listen. I know that many blog readers don't want to follow a link from one page to another, so can you tell me the message without possessing me? Or could you at least wait to possess me until the weekend, when I'm going to a LARP and there will be water mods?

Loki: Snap, I love water mods! I'm in!

Anne: But the message ...

Loki: Okay. Part one: Dig up the joy! Look at you and everyone around you. Misery, misery everywhere! You know, misery and joy are both contagious, like viruses. Spread the one, get vaxxed for the other.

Anne: But there's so much to be ...

Loki: You want to sprain an ankle before you get to the water mods? What did I just say?

Anne: Spread joy. Okay, I'll try!

Loki: DO I HAVE TO GO ALL YODA ON YOU, WOMAN? Do or do not, there is no try!

Anne: Got it. Another piece of pie?

Loki: Do you have that white quilt on the bed upstairs?

Anne: White is my failing. Is there more to the message?

Loki: Yep. You know all those plans you have to deck your classroom with witchy stuff and witchy books? Revise and edit those plans. It's not a safe time to be a Pagan in America.

Anne: Dang! You are the last one I ever thought I would hear say this. Go on the down low? A Norse God telling me to go on the down low? Knock me over with a feather!

Loki: Done! Shame to ruin such a nice pillow. But if I can be serious for half a minute, you heard Me right. You are more valuable alive than you are as a martyr. And there are a lot of Christian wingnuts out there with guns, looking to create martyrs.

Anne: I've always had a sneaking suspicion that martyrdom is overrated.

Loki: Yep. So dial back the righteous protest over your Supreme Court's religious rulings. Because this is the remainder of my message: Time will catch up with these fools. All of them. Yes, you can expect some rough sledding. It's dangerous right now. We deities are feeling it as well. But when the smoke clears, some people will walk away like Mad Max, bruised but unbeaten. And those people will rebuild.

Anne: But Mad Max didn't rebuild, he just tramped off into the Outback...

Loki: Let's see what happens if I hold this feather pillow up to the fan ...

Anne: NO! NO! I GOT YOU, BRO! I hear you! Only to glad to amplify the message!

Loki: Thanks. And again, for more details, your fans can go here. Now. About those water mods...

Anne: You'll need a swimsuit that's at least passably in-game.

Loki: Everything I own slips nimbly into a LARP.

Anne: I daresay. Anyway, I'm going to the game on Saturday. Meet me here at 9:00, and please don't do that thing with the bugs and the windshield like you did last time.

Loki: Don't worry, Annie. Last time we didn't have anywhere important to go.

Image: Thalia Took

The High Cost of Halloween

No one would ask a public school teacher to work on Christmas. It's a holiday.

Except if you're a Pagan, the holiday is December 21, and we're always still in school on that day.

For me, it gets worse.

As a Pagan, I need to take off work on Samhain.

Now, if I was a Pagan student, I would get the day off with no penalties. Teachers don't get that opportunity. If I want to celebrate the most important holy day on my yearly calendar, I have to lose either a sick day or a personal day.

So, what's the big deal about calling out sick on Halloween? Well, I did a little bit of math. For my first eight years of teaching, I am in a pool where I will be compensated $70 per day for unused sick or personal days. I have taken off Samhain (either one or two days, or one-and-a-half days) every year since I started teaching. Eight years, $70 per year ... That's $560. Throw in Imbolc, which I also take off every year, and the pot jumps to $1120.

Where's that war on Christianity that the moron Sessions is crowing about?

This looks to me like discrimination. Trust me, I'm watching our political events very closely, because I am ready to sue for that entire $1120 if the Christians push too hard on, say, something ridiculous like prayer in school.

Just for the record, I would be very willing and able to come to school on Christmas and teach a full day.

Witches to Evangelists: Not Now, Not Ever!

Philadelphia's Pagan Pride Day is always held on the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. This year was the first in about five that I haven't attended. The last two years I did a drum circle there. This year it was rainy, but mostly I was just tuckered out from paint crew and teacher meetings. I stayed home.

Occasionally the event draws the ire of Christian evangelicals who, in small numbers, come to protest. Since they don't have a permit to use the park, they are always quickly escorted to the perimeter.

This year was no different, except that the protesters were louder (they had a bullhorn) -- and they videotaped the fracas and loaded it up on YouTube, after carefully disabling commentary.

If you want to watch the blighted thing, here it is. It's about 10 minutes long, and it's sad.

I started to watch it and stopped about two-thirds of the way through. What struck me about it was what the pastor said through his bullhorn; namely, "You witches haven't taken over America yet!"

Yet. Yet?

I'll be the first to tell you that I am participating in a Magical Battle for America, which is, yes, a concentrated astral Work. But the aim is not to "take over America." The aim is to protect and defend the America we hold dear:

*freedom of or from religion
*equality of gender, race, sexual orientation, region, and age
*a fair and balanced judicial system
*equitable tax rates based on income
and last, but not least, for me
*the right to organize peacefully and bargain collectively.

I'm not crusading for one nation under Anansi. I want Anansi to be welcome in the mix!

It's a tired old trope to suggest that your religion is the only true religion, and that anyone who doesn't practice it is worshiping a demon and going to Hell. Truth is, the demons belong to the Christians. Satan is not part of my practice!

So, open letter to you poor, scared Christians out there who fear the nation is about to be taken over by witches, who will quickly and thoroughly re-write the Constitution, institute rituals in the schools, and issue every kid a wand:

Nope. Not interested. Not on the agenda. The Philadelphia metropolitan area has more than six million people living in it. We're lucky if we get 300 folks out to Pagan Pride. Does this sound like a vast stampede for social upheaval?

It especially saddens me to see little kids get dragged along to these protests. What a way to spend a Saturday afternoon! They should be picking apples or riding ponies or watching Dora the Explorer! Teaching children to fear and hate is not productive. It's not Christian, either.

So, yeah, the "prayer warriors" are on their knees for Donald Trump, and some (by no means all) Pagans are in their circles to block him. That's just democracy at work! I don't look at it as a war, I see it as a battle. A battle for what is, not what hasn't happened yet.

Get a grip on something besides a bullhorn, y'all. We just want to drum and hold raffles.

Keeping the Hallowed in Halloween: It's All about the Devil

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," Samhain 2014 Edition! We're having a little book club talk about a helpful paperback entitled Halloween: What's a Christian To Do? by Steve Russo.

It's always difficult for evangelists to be honest and sincere in their condemnation of Wicca. If they're honest (and they usually are), the only thing they can find to criticize in Wicca is the fact that it promotes other deities over the Christian god. And once you've said, "God is jealous," you've shot your wad on Wicca. It's just not an evil force.

The devil is different.

Our author Mr. Russo quite rightly points out that on Halloween, people dress up like the devil. They decorate their houses with devils. And some people do indeed actively worship the devil on Halloween (and at other times as well).

We've seen these folks at Pagan Pride Days, albeit fewer and fewer as the years progress.

When you've got a pantheon that features an alluring bad boy like Lucifer, you're going to see him get followers. Some people are truly attracted to evil. Evangelists like to lump these people in with Pagans, but Satanists are not Pagans. They are a sect of Christians.

That said, the devil does get trotted out on Halloween. Mr. Russo thinks this is a sure sign that Halloween is a gateway drug to the dark side of The Force. Or some such. Basically, our intrepid author thinks that little kids who don devil costumes are likely to become consumed by the "occult" and wind up slaughtering kittens in pentagrams on the fast track to Hell.

This is a pretty big reach, if you ask me. It's like saying that everyone who is interested in the Titanic is going to wind up trying to sink a big ship in iceberg territory.

When my daughter The Heir was five, she began talking about Halloween in August. She wanted to dress up like a red devil, with horns and a red cape. Once she made that decision, she talked of nothing else for two months. When the kindergarten teacher asked Heir how many sticks in all if she put two sticks with three sticks, Heir replied, "I'm going to be a red devil on Halloween." (Heir promptly got sent to "Developmental Kindergarten," basically a class for kids who think Halloween is more compelling than math.)

Mr. J's mom was a top-notch seamstress, and she made a devil hat with horns out of red satin. She made a satin cape, lined with flannel for a cold night. And she sent pointy-toed red shoes and a pitchfork. When Heir got the package in the mail, she lit up like Chicago on a Saturday night. Red devil! Her dream come true!

I would never embarrass her by scanning the picture of Heir, standing in the back yard, all done up in her devil gear, grinning from ear to ear. But here she is now:

This photo was taken in Romania. She went there not to study vampires as a stop on the highway to Hell, but rather to spend two weeks in an artists' residency. The installation behind her is her contribution to the little village where the residency was held.

Heir grew out of her red devil costume, and she outgrew Christianity before I did. She has a keen sense of morality and an innate goodness that is really inspiring to see.

But I digress.

When I became a Pagan, I threw away all the devil decorations that I had used until that time. I don't think the devil belongs in Halloween. But that's just me. I believe in self-determination. You like red devils? You go!

What I will say is that an interest in a devil costume worn at Halloween does not pave a road to a life of evil. This is fear-mongering. It may sell books to frightened Christian parents, but it's not something we need to take seriously. If your five-year-old is setting the cat's tail on fire, you should worry. If he wants to be a devil on Halloween, fear not! Maybe he just likes red satin.

Keeping the Hallowed in Halloween: Weak War on Witches

What do you do if you can't beat them or join them? This is the dilemma facing modern Christian fundamentalists when they come face-to-face with Wicca.

I've been building fires with reading a slight little tome called Halloween: What's a Christian To Do? I picked it up at the Friends of the Snobville Library book sale back in September.

The gist of the book is that Halloween can lead your kid down the dark road to doom. Unfortunately it's hard to make a case when presented with the basic tenets of "witches."

Witches are the main topic of Chapter Two: "Witches, Ghosts, and Things That Go Bump in the Night." Hard-hitting evangelist Steve Russo uses the flawless scholarship of Sassy magazine to define, and quote, Wiccans.

"Even though for some people the feminist and environmental aspects of witchcraft are enticing," Russo writes thoughtfully, "the big draw is power." Then he quotes Laurie Cabot, the witch who was interviewed in Sassy: "Witchcraft is a connectedness to everything, so you can center yourself and feel as if you can control some of your environment a little more. I think teenagers today need their own power. They need to feel that they can help shape the future."

So, is teenage empowerment a bad thing? Is it not practiced in Christianity? Did they cancel that show called Hour of Power? I don't recall any witches on that.

It gets better.

If you're anti-Wiccan, which you must be if you're Christian (Russo 29), you basically have to come out against caring for the environment.

This is worth quoting at length, because it basically reminds us that good Christians are indifferent to the planet:

"Another popular avenue for witchcraft today is the environmental movement. There has never been a generation so environmentally conscious as the generation of today. And witches are at the forefront of encouraging us to 'be nice to Mother Earth.' While we certainly need to do our part in being environmentally sensitive, we need to be careful not to get things out of balance.

"As Christians God has called us to be caretakers of the planet [author offers requisite Bible verse]. But the Bible also teaches us to worship the Creator, not the creation. In Exodus 20:3, God says, 'You shall have no other gods before me.' Don't be deceived: While witchcraft may appear to be cool and helping the environment, it goes about it in all the wrong ways."

What are the "right ways?"

"Don't be confused by Laurie Cabot and other witches who sprinkle bits of truth in their concern about the environment, equal treatment of the sexes, and other problems that plague our society. We all need to do our part in making positive changes to society, but we also need to take our direction from the absolute truth of God's word and let Him help us solve the difficult issues of life."

Are you seeing what I'm seeing? Is he saying, "Do as witches do, just give God the credit, because he's God?" I thought so.

This chapter also contains the same tired, old strictures against soothsaying and fortune-telling that always get thrown into Christian tracts about witches. Yes indeed, the Bible is very strict about fortune-telling. You are not supposed to do it.

I've been thinking about the Bible. I've read it. Seems to me, it basically contains four elements:

1. Stories
2. Spiritual guidance
3. Songs
4. Prophecies

How are prophecies different from fortune-telling? Damn if I know. I guess fortune-telling is okay if you're Daniel or the Apostle John. But not okay otherwise. Why the exception to the rule? Shouldn't a rule be ... well ... a rule?

Thus ends another weak attempt to discredit a vibrant religion that seeks to empower people to enact positive social change and sound environmental policies. Just because we want to give credit to the Goddess and not a god who is indifferent at best, and hostile at worst, to the notion that humankind is of the Earth, and not in charge of the Earth, we're going about it "the wrong way."

This book is a trade paperback, which means the paper is better stock. It will recycle nicely.

Say WHAAAAT? Keeping the Hallowed in Halloween

The nights are growing dark and cold. There are evil spirits in the air, everywhere! Quick! Let's sacrifice little Jimmy, kill him and roast him to appease these evil spirits! The more grisly the killing, the more the spirits will be pleased.

Oh, please.

Welcome to the world of Steve Russo, my friends. Without citing a single source, his book (pictured above) gives the following description of pre-Christian Samhain rites:

"As the power of the sun waned with the onset of winter, people were afraid that life itself, and not just the year, was coming to an end. They imagined that the night was haunted by ghosts and witches, and more particularly by the spirits of the dead who were revisiting their earthly homes. With the supernatural rampant, the night was full of danger and omens. Concerned for their survival, people employed every possible means to fortify the flames of the dying sun and to chase away, or at least pacify, the evil spirits. For this purpose they lit bonfires and sometimes offered gruesome sacrifices."

Well, how the Hell do I know it wasn't that way?

Okay, well, em. Doesn't take a rocket scientist, does it?

Any "holy day" that features gruesome sacrifices and dread of evil would surely be wiped from the face of the calendar the minute some benign missionary wandered onto the scene and said, "Jesus will love you better if you don't sacrifice the virgin."

Even Steve Russo has to begrudgingly admit that early Christian missionaries co-opted Halloween. The Christian religion would never have taken hold in the British Isles if its first converts had said, "Oh, by the way ... That harvest-home festival you have every year? You know, the one at which you welcome your departed granny and give her some food and build her a fire? That's got to go. Jesus didn't do that."

I don't know. I wasn't there. (Neither was Steve Russo.) But I think that Halloween has always been a time of the thinning of the Veil, a time in which to commune with Spirit. The difference is in the absolutes. It makes sense to welcome departed Granny with open arms while doing some charm work against the criminal who killed your dog ... whose spirit is also roaming the night. Basically, Chapter 1 of Halloween: What's a Christian To Do?  falls into that favorite dogmatic rut; namely, optimizing the negative while ignoring the positive.

The above comic, saying this ironically, of course, is a Chick tract that brings visuals to the worldview of Halloween as a savage enterprise steeped in blood and gore. Only trouble is, when you don't half do your homework, you get a half-score, which is an F.

Good and evil exist side-by-side at Samhain, just as they do any other time of the year. Balance is the key. My non-educated guess is that Samhain was a very important day and evening of Thanksgiving, with fires and feasts meant to be shared with the Ancestors.

And whether or not it was that way in pre-Christian Celtic countries, that's the way it is now for modern Pagans. Do not paint this with the brush of demons, Steve Russo. This is the hour when we assess what we've reaped and share it with our friends and our Ancestors.

Oh, and don't you love Chick tracts? Pumpkins are a New World plant. They did not exist in Celtic countries prior to the voyages of Columbus et. al. It's a minor quibble, but if you can't get the small stuff right, why should we trust you with the big ideas?

Let's keep the Hallowed in Halloween, my friends. Can I get an Awen?

Keeping the Hallowed in Halloween, Part 1

Welcome, friends and neighbors, to "The Gods Are Bored!" We're well into our eighth year of sermonizing, so you'd think we would be running out of ideas. But no! Just when a twinge of writer's block sets in, something worthy falls into our laps -- and off we go again, preaching to the choir!

Recently at the Snobville annual book sale, this cute little paperback came into my hands. I always browse the Spirituality aisle, mostly fruitlessly, but this is a find. The purpose of the book, by evangelist Steve Russo, is to raise parental anxiety about our favorite Halloween customs. I pity the Christian kid whose mom buys this tome.

Over the next few weeks, as other bloggers prepare for Samhain with dignity and grace, we at "The Gods Are Bored" will be toasting marshmallows with this paperback puppy, chapter by chapter!

I'm sure you've thought of this, my dear friendly Pagans: We get holidays for Christian observances -- long ones, to boot -- but that's not enough for some Christians. The last card we have on the table is Halloween. No time off for this holy day, but at least our children see our traditions respected within the hallways and classrooms of their schools.

We do not ask for much. A prayer at a town council meeting here, a pentagram Yule display there ... and Halloween.  It is sacred ground.

Steve Russo, meet Anne Johnson. When it comes to separation of church and state, Halloween is your nightmare. It's my holy day. You will not define it with your hogwash. I'm here to preach Samhain in all its sacred glory.

Raise the song of harvest home!

Don't talk to me tonight...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1317490/Druids-official-religion-Stones-Praise-come.html

Read this and let the author know what you think. Then copy your comment to her and paste it in a comment here at "The Gods Are Bored." Then pass this link on to every Pagan friend you have so they can let the author know what they think too.

Go ahead. Vent your spleen. She sure did, and got paid for it too.

Sir, How Dare You Presume?

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" We're not about resurrecting people. We're about resurrecting deities! Whose culture is the "best" culture? Who's got the best gods? Even worse: Who has the only god?

We at "The Gods Are Bored" will today address remarks made by Pope Benedict in a recent encyclical. We lifted this quote from Jason, at The Wild Hunt. He lifted it from the encyclical.

"There are certain religious cultures in the world today that do not oblige men and women to live in communion but rather cut them off from one other in a search for individual well-being, limited to the gratification of psychological desires. Furthermore, a certain proliferation of different religious “paths”, attracting small groups or even single individuals, together with religious syncretism, can give rise to separation and disengagement. One possible negative effect of the process of globalization is the tendency to favour this kind of syncretism by encouraging forms of “religion” that, instead of bringing people together, alienate them from one another and distance them from reality. At the same time, some religious and cultural traditions persist which ossify society in rigid social groupings, in magical beliefs that fail to respect the dignity of the person, and in attitudes of subjugation to occult powers. In these contexts, love and truth have difficulty asserting themselves, and authentic development is impeded. For this reason, while it may be true that development needs the religions and cultures of different peoples, it is equally true that adequate discernment is needed. Religious freedom does not mean religious indifferentism, nor does it imply that all religions are equal.”

This is my site, and I am allowed to have an opinion.

My opinion is that all religions are equal.

Anyone who seeks the Divine and all goodness, by any path, through any pantheon of deities, through the Goddess, through a flock of buzzards, through any path, is holy.

Religion can separate and disengage one culture from another. This can be a good thing. It's certainly an ancient tradition, well-documented in such literature as, oh, I dunno ... the Bible?

For my money, Roman Catholicism does all of the following, as enumerated above:
1. Creates sanctioned small groups (monasteries/convents) and individual worship (hermits).
2. Alienates its followers from reality (sensible family planning/ right to die).
3. Ossifies its followers in rigid social groupings ( celibate male priests, monks, nuns/everyone else).
4. Magical beliefs that fail to respect the dignity of the person (ever heard of Catholic guilt?).
5. Attitudes of subjugation to occult powers. (Ahem, define "occult powers," please, because from where I stand, crowds cheering in St. Peter's square to a guy wearing a robe and a crown sure looks like cult behavior to me.)

In short, people who live in papal palaces shouldn't throw stones. Just because Catholicism has been around awhile, and has subjugated (often ruthlessly) many other praise and worship systems, doesn't make it the one and only religion that everyone on earth ought to follow.

I could go on and on. Papal encyclicals are always rich fodder for debate. I'll just conclude with Mr. Johnson's opinion -- he's a lapsed Catholic. He thinks the R.C. church is losing quality tithers to Pagan pathways, and the pope wants them back because he wants their largesse.

That's perhaps a tad too cynical. After all, the Catholic church does much good work in this world. You would think, then, that it might be able to tolerate, or at least ignore, people of other ... EQUAL ... faiths.

Halloween at Public School!

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where Halloween is Holy unto the Bored Gods and Goddesses! All glory, laud, and honor to the holy day that has survived from the Old Time Religions!

Every year around this time, the Christian Wrong starts moaning and groaning about the fact that public schools celebrate Halloween, but they do not celebrate Christmas or Easter or St. Patrick's Day ......... ooops!

Okay, you get the gist. Halloween, is not a holy day to "evil occultists," but rather to good, sweet, law-abiding, tree-hugging Druids and Wiccans, as well as a huge contingent of Hispanic Roman Catholics.

Isn't celebrating this occasion at school a violation of church and state?

Well, it would be if even one school teacher sat down with the class and explained in detail the history and religious meaning of Halloween. But that's not usually (if ever) the order of the day. School Halloween parties consist of kids showing off their wonderful costumes and harried moms handing out cupcakes, popcorn, candy corn, Juicy Juice, potato chips, pretzels ... oh, it goes on and on! Trust me, I've been there.

No one even tells kids who dress up like wicked witches that witches aren't wicked, nor do they wear black pointy hats. Nor does anyone point out to the kids done up like Satan that there's nothing Satanic about Halloween ... wrong pantheon.

All the same, I'll concede to the Christian Wrong that public schools devote an afternoon every year to a Pagan holiday.

My solution to this terrible, monstrous, obscene, unacceptable practice? Simple.

Make October 31 a religious holiday, like December 25.

Wouldn't you love that, Pagans?

Not only would you not have to work on the most holy day of the calendar, you could also expect many, many questions from kids as to why Halloween has suddenly become a day off school! A win-win situation! Think of the parties! The family togetherness! The establishment of traditions, like Halloween brunch!

So I'm with the Christians on this one. Halloween is a religious holiday. Let's accept that, snatch it off the school schedule, and make it what it should be: HOLY. But still fun! Trick or treat!

Sorry You Can't Reach Me, Trinity Evangelical. Leave a Message.

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" A chicken in every pot, a cat in every lap. Life is good!

Jason at The Wild Hunt publishes an excellent web log of Pagan news and philosophy. He's as serious as I am frivolous, so I therefore visit him often just for a reality check.

On May 3, Jason wrote a post about an upcoming evangelical conference being held at Trinity International University. The title of the conference is:

"Trinity Consultation on Post-Christendom Spiritualities: The New Unreached People Groups."

Here's the description, in case you want to make a reservation:

"The conference will be a gathering of practitioners and scholars addressing the decline of Christianity in the West and the concomitant growth of new unreached people groups expressed in religions and spiritualities such as modern Paganism, New Age, and other alternative spiritualities. Plenary sessions and parallel workshops will address the topics of the future of religion in the West, the make up of the alternative religious marketplace and approaches in engaging adherents of alternative spiritualities."

I've had some pejoratives hurled at me now and again, but I don't think I've ever been as insulted as to hear myself styled a member of an "unreached people group."

Well gee. This is the 21st century. "Unreached people group" sounds so user-friendly. Pagans are only "adherents of alternative spiritualities" because they're unreached. If you just reach them, they'll jump on the Jesus train, glad to have been reached, just as some poor miner stuck in a collapse would be glad to be reached. Just as some dear granny stuck in a burning rowhouse would be glad to be reached. Just as you can't wait for your destination to be reached after a long road trip.

EXHIBIT A: UNREACHED

One of our pet peeves here at TGAB is the untiring Christian missionary who ventures to the far corners of the globe to bring the message of Jesus Christ to the "unreached." Where have these missionaries not gone? Who in the Wide, Wide World of Sports has never been reached by the information on Christianity?

With all due respect, Trinity Consultation, I am indeed a member of an alternative spirituality. But I find it hard to consider myself unreached. I was baptized a Christian (by immersion), I spent the first 40 years of my life a Christian, I led my children to Christianity just as my parents had led me. It's not a reach to say I got reached.

Then what happened? Other deities proved to have a better reach, at least for me. Do you want to hear about my deities, Trinity Consultation? Why? Could it be that you're trying to figure out how to make my faith more compatible to your One and Only Yahweh business? Don't waste your time. That's how you got Christmas and Easter.

I think there's one possibility we can rule out with the Trinity Consultation. They aren't trying to understand alternative spiritualities as viable alternatives to Christianity. Otherwise they wouldn't call people "unreached."

If you folks at Trinity truly wanted to open a dialogue with the Pagan community, you sure dropped the punt. What's the difference between calling me "unreached" and calling me a sinner? Trust me, I find the former more offensive than the latter, especially considering how "sensitive" it's trying to be.

One final rant to Trinity: Your book of revealed religion specifically warns you not to engage in any dialogue with any other religious group. Now, don't try to tell me that Jesus was more touchy-feely about this sort of thing. Here's your New Testament Chapter and Verse:

"But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed."

(Galatians 1:8)

So Trinity, save yourselves from being cursed! Give up this dialogue stuff before you piss off your deity! He's afraid you might find out that he's got worthy competition on many fronts, and some of that competition doesn't like being told their praise and worship teams are "unreached!"

Unreached. Twelve churches in this town of mine, and I'm unreached. Sorry, I can't get over this one, because even the people I owe money to can reach me if they keep trying.

If you want to reach me, I have an email. See my profile.

Can you believe it? That Cindy Jacobs book on the occult was helpful! I got the Bible quote from one of its chapters!

Perplexed Pagan Parent

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," celestial clearinghouse for peppy pantheons! If you're thinking twice before pulling up those baby trees in the backyard, you may be a Pagan. After all, those saplings have a right to life!

And, bye the bye, Happy Earth Day! I'm celebrating by not pulling up the saplings in my backyard. Small as they are, they're helping to stem global warming.

Now back to our regular programming. I've been reading this book called Deliver Us from Evil: Putting a Stop to Occult Influences Invading Your Home and Community, by Cindy Jacobs. And today I need her personal advice, so please bear with me.

Dear Mrs. Jacobs,

As a practicing Pagan parent, I'm having problems squaring my daughters' behavior with what you consider "occult." Let me explain.

My daughter The Heir (eldest, age 18) loves to listen to weird, experimental music like The Residents and Negativland. She just showed me a Residents CD with song titles "I Hate Heaven" and "In Judas We Trust." She says the entire CD is a condemnation of the Bible. And she loves it. She also took me to the University of Pennsylvania to hear Negativland's program, "Christianity Is Stupid."

That's all well and good. But The Heir doesn't drink, take drugs, or have sex. She doesn't mutilate herself or small animals. In fact she raises under-age kittens for the local animal shelter. She's in the National Honor Society. All of her friends are nice, and so is she. I always know where she is and what she's doing, and it's never criminal activity. In fact, she likes nothing better than combing flea markets for old cookbooks from the 1950s and 1960s. She wants to analyze eating patterns in postwar America as part of her college research.

In your book you said that listening to anti-Christian music leads kids to become Columbine-type murderers. I'm just wondering when my daughter's going to get busy with that. I suppose it doesn't help that she hates guns, and we don't own any.

Now here's my other problem: my daughter The Spare (youngest, age 14). She never fails to participate in our Druid Rituals. She usually takes South, but if the smoke is blowing in that direction she switches to West, and then I take South. Anyway, I know it's early in her teens and all that, but she's showing definite tendencies toward being a peacenik. She just wrote a report on the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and how their detainment and treatment violates the Geneva Convention. And how can I stop her from listening to sappy Broadway music? My computer is loaded with show tunes.

My kids just aren't following the trajectory you spell out in your book as the one and only path any Pagan kid will take. Either you rushed into print without bothering to see if there were any nice Pagan kids out there, or you conveniently overlooked the fact that the vast, vast majority of Pagans are morally upright individuals motivated by respect of self and others, love of justice, and harm to none.

You may want to address this concern in your second edition. Either that, or please tell me how I can turn my sweet daughters into the horrible, hurtful, hateful felons you describe.

Psyche! I wouldn't follow your advice if you were telling me how to get to the corner store.

Sincerely yours,

ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS

Everybody Look What's Goin' Down

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," sweating the small stuff with a big, broad, flexible outlook! Asking major questions, like: Why do I forget to get cat food for Alpha and Beta when I go to the grocery store?





Today's Topic: Pastors Led Astray by Black Magic!





We've been examining a little ol' used book I picked up recently. It's called Deliver Us from Evil, by Cindy Jacobs.





I've gotta tell you, reader: I'm reading this thing, and it's like the past four centuries never happened. The word "Pagan" has at its root a word meaning "backward" or "yokel," but trust me on this. Mrs. Jacobs is so far backward she can't even see the end of the line in the distance.





Here's a direct quote, because it defies paraphrase:





"A friend told me a story of a Satanist whom she led to the Lord. He began to weep after his conversion and confessed that he had planted fetishes with spells in them in the yards of churches. His intent was to cause the pastors to fall into sexual sin."





Here in the text, Mrs. Jacobs describes how these fetishes were made. It offends the delicate sensibilities of "The Gods Are Bored" to quote that part. However, to continue:





"My friend went with him to dig up what he had planted. In each case, the pastor had indeed fallen into sexual sin."





And they call King Arthur a myth!





Don't you wish you had a dollar for every pastor who has "fallen into sexual sin" in the history of the Christian church? Me too.





It's a tough job being a pastor. Just ask one. You've got to dwell on all those temptations you teach people to avoid. And you know your parishioners aren't any better at avoiding them than you are, but you ... you have to set the standard.





And doggone it, along comes some Satanic black magician who plants a fetish in your churchyard. Sure enough, the very next Sunday your eyes fall on the well-turned calf of the cute widowed church lady in the front row. Did she just wink at you? Demons, demons everywhere!





So you succumb, and the devoted wife who only fantasizes about you, and only during sex, finds out. And so do the folks paying the tithes. They aren't happy. They think you should step down and go sell used cars, and if you're not willing to step down, they'll provide a shove.





But what they should provide is a shovel. Go dig up that churchyard, inch by inch, until you find that fetish! Because it's not your fault you sinned, it's the work of some Satanic black magician. Maybe you don't even know the dude. But he's gone and ruined your life with a little bit of mud and some other ingredients too gross to mention.





Makes you wonder how the hell we landed a man on the moon, doesn't it?





At the same time that I'm laughing at Mrs. Jacobs and her Snopes-proof "my-friend-told-me" yarn, I'm also keenly aware that the Christian fringe is brimming to the plimsol line with people who really believe this stuff. And that's scary, because these people get to cast votes that decide the leadership of this country.





You know what's just as scary? The thought that someone would read that passage in Deliver Us from Evil and actually go out and bury a stinky fetish in the local United Methodist churchyard. That person gets a vote too. (Of course he probably writes in Ozzy Osbourne. If he can spell "Ozzy.")







Far be it from "The Gods Are Bored" to choose a religion for you. Even so, there are plenty of bored deities out there who view such vile acts with disdain. If Yahweh counts himself among these, why doesn't he collar those demons and put them to work paving a Black Hole?







In the meantime, as a nice little old Pagan lady who takes care of orphaned kittens and leaves yarn out for the birds to use in their nests, who has tried hard never to harm anyone or stain the furniture, who is endeavoring to raise two daughters to be sensible, moral, moderate, intelligent adults, I most deeply resent being considered as foul as someone who would pee on a mound of dirt and bury it in front of a church!







Cindy Jacobs, the worst bad faerie who ever hid a sock is nicer than your faith's nicest demons. Forget all about Wicca. Clean your own damn house.

For What It's Worth

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we encourage free-thinking! Make up your own mind about things. Don't wait for the dude next door to tell you what to think. Unless he sees termite tubes headed into your foundation. Then maybe you should trust him.

I've been reading a little book called Deliver Us from Evil, by Cindy Jacobs, that I bought at a Christian bookstore while visiting my sister. And I've been giving my opinion about it, which is my opinion, and you are free to agree or disagree as you like. Just don't stain my doggone furniture.

Mrs. Cindy Jacobs takes aim at the occult in a manner most dramatic, and I'll have a lot more to say about her and her book next week. But tonight, duty calls. My daughter The Spare is having six of her friends over. That's seven 13-year-olds in my living room.

I have a small house. And I'm distinctly fearful for my upholstery!

This morning The Spare was tootling around very early, cleaning house for her guests. (Yeah, go figure.) I got up, and I saw her flicking through the channels on the t.v. She went right past Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The aforementioned Buffy is a target of Mrs. Cindy Jacobs's ire. I couldn't remember ever seeing The Spare watching the show.

So I asked: "Do you ever watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"

She answered: "Ew, no."

I said, "Why don't you like it?"

She said: "Well, it's really gory and nasty, and the girl dresses like a slut."

So, Mrs. Jacobs, if you're looking for someone turned into a Pagan by watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, you'll have to look elsewhere.

So sorry. I was trying to be helpful.

There's a Man with a Gun Over There

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," my lieblings! I'm Anne, and this is my friend, Psyduck.

For those of you who are too young (or too old) to recognize this cute lil' quacker, he's a Pokemon. All Pokemon have some sort of unique power. Psyduck's is psychic. He can bend your mind. Or so my daughter The Heir once told me. She played with Pokemon cards back in the day. And it's a long-ago day now. Gosh, a decade almost.

This week here at "The Gods Are Bored," we've been cruising through a book called Deliver Us from Evil, by Cindy Jacobs. The book is all about protecting your innocent youngsters from the evil influence of the occult. We are now on Chapter Three, and the going gets more nauseating all the time.

The chapter is entitled "Child's Play." It concerns itself with two terrible, horrible demonic influences on innocent tots: the aforementioned Pokemon, and that good ol' standby, Harry Potter. With a few potshots at the venerable realm of the ueber-nerd, Dungeons and Dragons.

Deliver Us from Evil was published in 2001, and it just goes to show you how quickly fads rise and fall. My daughter The Heir used to love Pokemon. Today, I'll bet you could turn this house inside out and not find a single Pokemon card. Even one that the faeries might have hidden really, really well.

Did Psyduck drag my daughter into black lipstick, Marilyn Manson concerts, and the ritual slaughter of gerbils? Oops, sorry. No.

Too many lovely trees have been killed and pulped to warn good Christians about Harry Potter. But I'd love to have the forest that's been pulped to produce the Potter books themselves. The final installment, Deathly Hallows, was said to have sold more than 8 million copies in the first 24 hours of its release. Add to that the Nielson-estimated 27.7 million copies of the previous installments, and you've got the Library of Congress, by J.K. Rowling.

Cindy Jacobs warns that reading Harry Potter will make your kid want to be a witch or a wizard. Would that it were true! We'd have so many kids clamoring for Pagan education we wouldn't know how to handle it! Eight million youngsters, all wanting wands simultaneously? Gosh, there goes another forest!

I have not yet had to wax righteously indignant over Mrs. Jacobs's book, but now I've got her firmly affixed to the Annie Blacklist. After excoriating violent video games (can't say I disagree with that), Mrs. Jacobs has this to say about the ... violent video games the U.S. government uses to train soldiers:

"I am not criticizing the military for its legitimate use of video games in training. That is very different from kids being amused through violent and demonic fantasy."

Indeed, Mrs. Jacobs? Exactly how is it different? You claim that violent video games turn youngsters into serial killers, and then you don't criticize the military for doing the same thing?

The U.S. government has been using video games to create lethal soldiers since the Vietnam War. Is it coincidental, then, that our nation's soldiers often return from battle to become spouse-abusers, drug abusers, homeless and psychotic? Oh, but that's okay. They're soldiers, not serial killers.

You want sin, Mrs. Jacobs? Killing another human being is a sin. Just ask the Quakers and the Mennonites. In other words, ask the real Christians, not the "gosh, why don't my books sell as well as Harry Potter" people like yourself.

More on this moron anon.

FROM ANNE

THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS

Nobody's Right If Everybody's Wrong

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Oh, readers! A dreadful sin has occurred! Two days ago, when I took my daughter The Spare out shopping, I spilled half a bottle of Robitussin on the back seat of my car! Stained upholstery! Where is my scourge?

Actually the car smells really good right now. And that just goes to show you how sin can creep into your life. Smells great one day, goes rank the next. You'd best bet I got out there with the scrub brush and Mr. Clean and went to work on that foul blot! Nor did I rest until the deed was done! Hallelujia!

If you're just joining us, we've begun a "Gods Are Bored" series that is taking a look at a book called Deliver Us from Evil, by Cindy Jacobs. Cindy's a self-styled Christian prophet. You can read up on her by following the links in the previous post.

Cindy covers a lot of ground in the second chapter of her book. She heaps scorn on such renowned bored goddesses as Diana, Hecate, and "Ereschigal." The latter, says Cindy, was called upon by people "when they cast love spells for homosexual partners."

Okay, yes, I went looking for "Ereschigal," figuring she might like to be interviewed sometime. Turns out her name is spelled Ereshkigal, and she's part of the Babylonian pantheon. Goddess of the Underworld, to be specific.

If you are reading this and you're queer, please be advised that we at "The Gods Are Bored" have not been able to fact-check Cindy's assertion about Ereshkigal. But why wait around for confirmation? You need a partner, and Ereshkigal is most certainly bored, so there's a nice tip!

Enough sidetracking. Gotta get to the jist of this chapter. Mrs. Cindy Jacobs defines "magic" as follows:

"a form of communication involving the supernatural world. An attempt is made to affect the course of present and/or future events by means of ritual actions (especially ones that involve the symbolic imitation of what the practitioner wants to happen), and/or by means of formulaic recitations which describe the desired outcome and/or invoke gods, demons, or the spirits believed to be resident in natural substances."

Sounds like a prayer chain to me. Throw in a rosary and a couple of "Hail Marys," and you're bound to cure that cancerous tumor.

You see, this is "Them vs. Us" thinking at its most pathetic. All through the Bible, people pray to God to smite their enemies, many times meeting with gory success. And that's okay, because that's God. But if some nice, tax-paying Pagan lady leaves a couple of ceramic elves by a stream and prays to Mother Nature to protect that stream from a developer who wants to make it a sewage sluice, well ... that's sin.

I wonder where Mrs. Cindy Jacobs stands on upholstery stains. Guess I'll have to keep reading. Her book beats Weight Watchers as an appetite suppressant.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," where we have nothing to fear except Interstate I-81! Talk about the highway to hell. I hate that road!

The human race has often succumbed to bouts of collective paranoia. And when we look back on them from a historical perspective, they always look appalling. And then we turn right around and do it again. Chalk it up to insufficient evolution.

During my stay with my sister, she gently guided me into a Christian used bookstore. Prominently displayed on a special shelf was a trade paperback called Deliver Us from Evil: Putting a Stop to the Occult Influences Invading Your Home and Community, by Cindy Jacobs.

We at "The Gods Are Bored" were keen to add this work to our library, and at $2.50 the price was right. So now that we bought the book, we're gonna take a stroll through it chapter by chapter. And you, readers, should thank me for this, because it frees you from listening to Focus on the Family!

Before we begin deconstructing Deliver Us from Evil, a word about the author. She and her husband have a ministry called Generals International, and she describes herself as a prophet.

We all know what prophets are. They're fortune-tellers who don't get paid. Except, of course, there's a fee for an appearance by Cindy, but I'm sure there's no profiteering in her prophesying.

While I was doing a little birdwatching this morning, I Googled Cindy and found that on March 14 of this year, some of her own called her a "Jezebel." Ouch! That's gotta sting.

Well, Cindy Jacobs, rest easy. We at "The Gods Are Bored" will be very respectful as we peruse your paranoid worldview. "Jezebel" is so harsh, especially when "nutcase" will do every bit as well.

Actually we plan to use your own quotes to sink your sad boat.

From Deliver Us from Evil, p. 25:

"There are only two sources of supernatural power in this world: that which comes from God and His kingdom and that which comes from Satan's kingdom."

Except that Satan wouldn't have a kingdom unless God gave him one, so that narrows it to one source of supernatural power, allowed by its creator to have both positive and negative influences.

For the love of all that is fruit fly! It's not like God is the only deity who allows his alter ego to go around stirring up trouble. But this particular bipolar deity is currently worshipped by more than 1/3 of the entire population of the globe!

If you're reading this, and you're deathly afraid that every breath you suck in could possibly infest you with Satan, take heart! We at "The Gods Are Bored" can introduce you to scads and scads of fine deities who have boxes of Band-Aids that are older than Satan!

We will also try to poke a few holes in Mrs. Jacobs' arguments, so long as it doesn't get boring and the furniture doesn't get ink-stained. I'm a patient woman, so long as no one smears my chintz.