Pagan Tropers Unite!

It's like how the psycho vietnam vet was a popular trope for lazy writers.

Charmed was bad for pagans because the sisters were so self centered and had to become Mary Sues in order to be "heroes".

Not to mention "whitelighter" being a proto-Edward.

Sharysa, I'm trying to do the same thing. There are few pagan characters in science fiction. If we're there, it's fluffies or we're gonna summon great [Cthulhu. Or just background characters, like minorites in 80's sci-fi see: Black Dude Dies First. Or we're "quait" because blah blah Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions.

So I wanted a logical, Robot Girl who comes into pagan faith all on her own. She chooses to worship the old Gods.

edited 18th Mar '15 10:05:28 PM by TairaMai

I just wrote this massive (for me) semi-essay on Tumblr about my spiritual system. It was so awesome to get all those ideas out on a page. I feel like I can focus on other aspects of the system now that those chunks of information are "preserved" outside of my mind.

Can we get a link?

I've been experimenting with natural egg dyes for the Equinox. Typically this involves adding plant material to boiling water, simmering for at least 15 minutes, and then adding some vinegar. Here are my results so far:

• Pickled beet juice. Terrible results. You dip the egg and it looks great, very pink, but the color just runs off. Next time maybe try simmering down a larger quantity to concentrate it and then adding a little more vinegar.
• Turmeric. Not bad, but needs to be strained before use. Gives a mustardy-yellow shade.
• Paprika. Came out kind of...very light taupe? The instructions said it would be red-orange. Might need fresher paprika.
• Brown onion skin. This is the stuff! It makes a very smooth, light rust dye, almost like naturally brown eggs. Red onion skin supposedly comes out green and I really want to try it now.
• Red cabbage. The dye looks pinky-purple but dries pale blue. This is another case where I probably should have simmered it down.

Minor dilemma: I love the texture of fairy ribbon for the amethyst necklace Persephone's having me make, but 1) it only comes in lengths of about 40 inches, so I'm not sure if that's enough for a braid, and 2) it's made of silk, so it's about 5$ a strand. Maybe if I keep the braid loose, it won't shrink too much.

If you're not into Left Hand spirituality, it'll only piss you off. I'm not a "pure" Ifa practitioner but more of an eclectic, and my system is somewhere between African paganism and American satanism.

edited 18th Mar '15 11:09:50 AM by nekomoon14

Dunno how well it'd work for eggshells, but I once made an earthy araucana-egg blue dye by crushing fresh dark red hibiscus with extra-strong black tea (for tannins). If you have any American dogwoods you can get a range of blue-green colors from the fruits, seeds and bark. If you're lucky to find some where you live, dry jewelweed blossoms and leaves to a lesser extent can yield a peachy-orange-brown stain.

If you're sure to not eat them and poison yourself, some wonderful greens and blues can be had from copper sulfate and oxide minerals if they happen to occur in the area you live.

edited 18th Mar '15 10:47:21 AM by carbon-mantis

I live in the second-largest city (by population) in the United States.

What I'm saying is, I am basically limited to dye sources that can be found in a suburban supermarket.

Ah, that makes acquiring certain items a bit more difficult I'd imagine. You may have some luck acquiring some exotic ingredients/roots/spices if there's an apothecary-style herbal/holistics store around though. Little respect as I have for their usual practices, they still sometimes serve as an excellent source for more oddball spices and teas. Speaking of which, if you could find some more pure hibiscus blossom tea it may provide some nice red-peach hues. I have no idea how it might do for eggs but it makes a nice stain for cloth and canvas. Some dark colored fruits/roots in supermarkets also make pretty good cloth dyes, like beetroot, various berries, and purple yams.

In any case, do tell how things turn out.

I tried one more today, a dye made from mashed, frozen-then-thawed blueberries. The color operated much like the red cabbage—the raw dye looks red-purple, but it dries blue. And this time I made it thicker, for a darker color.

Update: After sitting in the fridge all night, the blueberry-dyed eggs came out looking akin to stonewashed jeans. I like!

edited 21st Mar '15 11:31:04 AM by Karalora

Apparently there's a difference between animism and animatism.

Also syncretic and syncretistic.

While my mind isn't up to wrangling the nuances of the words themselves, the articles that got me thinking about it today are, I think, actually pretty neat. Here and here.

edited 21st Mar '15 12:37:18 AM by Faemon

About to take the dog for a walk, but what's animatism compared to animism?

Via The Other Wiki and my college degree:

• animism: "the attribution of a soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena the belief in a supernatural power that organizes and animates the material universe"

• animatism: "a belief in a generalized, impersonal power over which people have some measure of control"

One is inside a being, the other animates a being.

An ex-gf of mine did compare me to Plankton because I actually did say "I went to college!" when we were fighting over something.

edited 22nd Mar '15 12:08:16 AM by TairaMai

So animism believes that everything has a soul already, but animatism believes that you can give things a soul if they don't already have one?

Shit, one of my fantasy cultures believes in animatism! :D

Also, I had to use Thor's "throw Loki out of my headspace" offer last night. Apparently he was surprised it took this long to start up.

edited 22nd Mar '15 9:26:20 AM by Sharysa

Animatism is like the Polynesian concept of mana, then.

edited 22nd Mar '15 11:19:39 AM by nekomoon14

Hooray, my brain can handle words today. Thank you Taira Mai for clarifying animism versus animisticism.

According to one of the articles I linked, the writer was suggesting that...

Eclecticism might be closer to syncretisticism in that (to my mind) eclecticism has picked but not necessarily mixed yet. Syncretisticism has picked (for the given value of picked) and mixed but not necessarily gelled yet. To be syncretic is to have totally gelled all these different influences.

So, the sort of non-denominational Faelatry that I live and breathe is syncretic in the sense that whether I'm dealing with an alien or a ghost or ancestor or one of the yokai or personified deity of a natural phenomenon I'm going to consider it a fae from otherworldly Faery (unless it happens to care about human language and cultural politics enough to specify otherwise, or is trusting enough to divulge that part of its identity just so that I can peg it right, an act which, I think, would be discarding an understandable precaution during liminality.)

But syncretistic in the sense that the presence of the Helrrigan bugs me if I think too much about how that even works, and of course incorporating the Otherfaith with Four Gods and syncretisticisms (the Ophelene is neither the Ophelia nor the Clarene, but is both.)

Speaking of new religions, I'm loving Songs of the Metamythos by C.F. Cooper. Has anyone else read it?

edited 23rd Mar '15 1:17:07 AM by Faemon

Syncretism

Updates on Persephone's amethyst necklace: The fairy-ribbon for my amethyst necklace indeed has a nice texture, and the colors (gray/silver and green) contrast really nicely. It was also a good decision to get gunmetal jump rings instead of silver, because there's something about shiny-dark-gray that she really likes. Maybe because it gives a rock-like feel.

This is somewhat interesting.

I always knew the vague idea of how "pagan = non-Christian" came around, but that's fascinatingly detailed.

Well, Dionysus showed up in this month's drum circle. He triggered Spirit-Me into crying out of catharsis for a full five minutes because I just got done with my college theater's performance run yesterday.

The performances actually went great, so I had no idea why the hell Spirit-Me would be crying as opposed to something happier, or at least sleeping out of tiredness. So Dionysus spent the journey constantly reassuring me that no, Spirit-Me is not secretly upset about anything and catharsis doesn't always make sense.

Then for the last trip into the Otherworld, he met up with me again in a cave-system. It was fine for a minute, and suddenly he let out this horrible, inhuman shriek, ordered/forced me to dance until my legs gave out, and was constantly screaming "DO NOT TOUCH THE FUCKING GROUND UNTIL I SAY SO. FINE, TAKE A BREATHER BUT KEEP MOVING, BITCH."

Time to figure out what the hell Dionysus wants.

what the fuck dionysus is calling me a godwife and the morrigan is okay with it.

this guy shows up drunk in like, half my meditations with him and barely tells me shit when he's sober

none of the meditations indicate a relationship unless my offerings of "hey man, you want some breakfast/dinner" out of politeness and his acceptance of them are some sort of deep and magical thing

THE MORRIGAN IS OKAY WITH IT

which means dionysus is part of her plans for me or at least gels with them

what.

Why?

Dionysus is pretty awesome, but if I had to be a god's wife, why can't it be one without the tendency to show up hammered at midnight? Or at least someone who gives me a warning first?

edited 2nd Apr '15 7:42:04 AM by Sharysa

I hope it's because you're allowed to say no if you don't want to! If The Morrigan is okay with it, She's not the one marrying him. I mean, Deud called you a bitch. At most, I'd Maenad-zone Him, even if that is "hubris", because consent is something I definitely hold a lot more sacred even if the conditions of it such as Mere Mortal Perspective is considered less sacred somehow. Nemesis, Terminus, and even Hymen could have some Opinions about this.

Some people report having similar relationships with their spirits. In these kinds of relationships, the spirits aren't necessarily interested in what we want. We have to remember that most of the beings we claim to worship or revere or "work with" are actually older than the civilizations we think of as their origins. The Morrigan is only an "Irish deity" because she became famous in Ireland, but she was most likely a goddess before that and her ethics and morals aren't going to sync up with our modern ones (at least, not most of the time). Same with Dionysus. So, for your sake, dear sharysa, I hope you have a LOT of wiggle room, because I wouldn't expect Dionysus to make a particularly good husband. Remember Ariadne.

For me at least, Dionysus is Young And Pretty Dionysus, and he's cool to be around most of the time. It's just really weird figuring out how the fuck he went from "lol i'm drunk, need to crash at your place" to "hi, (mortal) wife!" since it's basically having one of my guy friends suddenly go "Hi, Sharysa, we're married!"

I'm not too upset with Dionysus swearing at me because I curse a lot myself. Also, when Dionysus is in Seer Mode like in the drum-circle, he gets really strange. Not quite terrifying, but it's pretty safe to say he's not in complete control of his faculties when he's ordering me to dance till exhaustion.

Also, being Dionysus' "wife" is much closer to being the Bear's "wife" as a shamanistic or priestly title, so he's not literally springing a marriage on me (but if there was no attachment as humans recognize it, he would have just called me a priestess or seer and not had me freak out). YAY, relief. Still don't know exactly why him, because the most he says is that I need a safe person who understands my weird thoughts/moods.

The problem is that Fun-Laid-Back-Dionysus is easy for me to talk to, but Profanity-Hurling-Seer-Dionysus is NOT.

As for the Morrigan being okay with it, it feels weird because normally she's ridiculously possessive/protective of me as my patron. She backhanded Loki for screwing around with me, is very reluctant to let the Bear work with me as my patron-"husband", and refuses to let me talk too much to anyone who isn't the Irish pantheon (or Odin).

Plus I'm suddenly remembering that when Dionysus first showed up and met with the Morrigan, they fucking high-fived each other and I didn't know why. This is probably why.

edited 3rd Apr '15 6:53:07 PM by Sharysa

Good luck with that. Now that I think of it, Ariadne did become a goddess in the end, so who knows...

edited 3rd Apr '15 9:07:12 PM by nekomoon14