|
|
|
Thursday, December 20, 2001
18:36 
I've been wondering why people don't like us, why they treat us with suspicion, why they find us threatening.
One can't pretend to be Family. One can't look at what we do and say "Hmmm. I fancy that," then tell people that one is just that. One can use the same techniques that we do; they are, after all, nothing special. One can even use the same terminology, refer to the same things, and perhaps even affect some mannerisms. However, one can't take a course and then say that one is Family. It's not possible to learn to be Family from books or from a teacher. There is no way to undertake a course of learning and at the end of it, no matter how much study or effort one makes, say that now one is Family.
Witchcraft, druidy, heathenism and all the various so-called pagan paths are things that can be learned. They aren't threatening because one can say "If I were so inclined, I could do that."
I think people find us threatening because they can't do what we do and be what we are.
This is silly. This is like finding someone threatening because he is French, or black, or white, or naturally blonde. Is it because, for a lot of us, being Family is enough? The Family members with whom I work and interact regularly don't describe themselves as anything else. Many of them have studied various pagan paths, have learned how to be a witch, or a druid, or a shamanic-type practitioner. I don't know many that would use these to describe what they are over and above being Family. Perhaps if we were to go around saying things like "I am a neo-shaman whose totem is...." we wouldn't get so many people calling us some sort of evil cult. On the other hand we might piss off the Native Americans - oh no. We do that anyway. Apparently you can't talk about Raven as part of your Family because that is an exclusively Native American thing and if you do then you are a perpetrator of cultural misappropriation. They obviously don't think that ravens exist anywhere else.
Anyway, I'm not a shaman. Plenty of people use that word to describe me, not one of them is Family and not one of them understands what it is to be Family, although some of them are aware that this term is cultural misappropriation. I could only use that term accurately if I were part of the Siberian Tungusk tribe. I'm not a witch, although some of the techniques of witchcraft can be useful. I'm not a druid. I'm certainly not a member of OBOD. I'm not even a member of the Pagan Federation any more, although I did give a talk at their anniversary conference this year. I'm a Raven brat, and that's about all there is to it. Even the other stuff that has been becoming stronger recently - the relationship with Oðin, Wapaq and everything else that has come from my visit to see Vahiyinin's Wapaq - all that is at least partially because I am one of Raven's daughters. It wouldn't have been like this if I were not.
I do wish people didn't find us threatening or suspicious. It seems so very silly. Either we know what we're talking about or we don't - if we don't, then surely they can ignore us and leave it at that. If we do, then we're not actively threatening anyone, we're not on a course set for world domination (not yet, anyway), and we haven't declared some sort of holy war (as if!) on some sub-section of humanity. We're not even reticent with our views and opinions, so how bad can we be?
I'm really enjoying my new bike, incidentally. I even got a Christmas card from Orbit, which was nice of them. Now I just have to train myself to go up hills. Not the little lumps that are part of general topography, but the nasty, vicious, very up and down things that live out the back of our village and which have chevrons all over them on the OS maps.
|
|