wiccan bling bling

Wiccan Bling Bling

My first essay of last year alluded to this, and my first essay of this year will deal with this individual topic specifically: Wiccan bling bling. I am sick and fucking tired of seeing people plaster themselves with platter-sized pentacles and dressing like fucking mallgoths and picking out mediocre names like Lord Lupine or Greyhawk that sound like they came out of a fucking D&D manual. The blingin' has to stop, because we ain't got no hood ta reprezent, foo. I understand the need for identification, but this has got to go.

There are people out there who like to dress extravagantly just because they like to. I don't have a problem with them. There are people out there who prefer a two-inch pentacle because they themselves have huge bodies, and a rinky-dink 1" medallion doesn't look proportionate. I don't have a problem with them either. What I have a problem with is people with average to scrawny body style, trying to look like the besom-mancer from Fantasia or the little sluts from the Craft.

A pointy hat. Pointy hats serve no purpose magically (unless you're one of the Coneheads or you're really desperate for a place to store your cone incense, in which case I urge you to buy a chest of drawers), they look fucking stupid, and they only serve to reinforce the stereotype that witches follow the same lame-ass yearning to fit the mould as wannabe djinns do by emulating the show I Dream of Jeannie. Lose the fucking hat. If it has moons on it, and you wear it in ritual, you are triply disgraced, and thereby deserve to reincarnate as a box of "Chicken in a Biskit" to be eaten by some size-24 wholesome Christian housewife in Missouri watching a Chiefs game on her cable-unready colour TV that's the size of a Toyota Sequoia and her truck-driving, malodorous husband with back hair and a yearning for Yuengling lager.
A broadsword. Look. Swords kick ass, yes. Swords make you feel powerful, yes. But good fucking gods, what do you need a four-foot blade of steel for? This isn't Braveheart, and unless you're twelve feet tall you don't need an athamé taller than most midgets. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. If you bring a broadsword to ritual, especially a public ritual, you're a pretentious noob with a chip on your shoulder, and there's nothing more annoying to serious partakers of any social gathering, including the public working of magic, than a complete newbie who thinks they know everything better than you do.
The wrong idols. I have idols, but only of the gods I particularly worship. I wouldn't acquire a statue of Cybele because frankly, Cybele doesn't interest me in the least and I want nothing to do with her. I would never dishonor a god I don't worship by erecting a statue of 'em in my home. If you invite me to your house, make sure your accessory gods are taken down OFF the mantle; I don't particularly want a pissed off rendition of Isis glaring down at me because you have poor Aset up there basically as a showpiece and not as the goddess she truly is. Have some fucking respect for gods, even the ones you don't worship, because someone else does, damnit.
"Theban runes." Lose the "Theban runes"; it's not a good alphabet anyway. It's just a way to write a bunch of scribbles and look mysterious. It's not even an efficient alphabet: it's a bunch of ornate squiggly lines that supposedly look esoteric. It may actually be based upon glyphs used in Thebes, I don't know, but with my experience as a guide here (I invent languages, remember?), I feel that as an alphabet, the "Theban runes" are cumbersome to write hastily, are difficult to differentiate from one another (especially if the writer scratched them down in haste!), and when you consider that U, V, and W are supposedly the same letter, it makes phrases like "Wu Tang Clan ain't nuthin' to fuck wit" really ridiculous looking. Then again, if you're givin' props to rappers from da hoodz in THEBAN, you have another thing coming.
Polyester Voodoo dolls. Look, jackass. You're white. You're a member of a former British colony (or worse, you're from the UK yourself). The closest spiritual experience you've come to experiencing true Carribean culture is a Miss Cleo advert or that song that goes "Pass the dutchie pon the left hand side". Go watch "Serpent and the Rainbow" at 3:00 in the morning on a waning moon, and then go back to worshipping Gardner in timid desperation, folks. The "little Voodoo kit" ain't gonna do SHIT for you because you're just trying to be all hocus-pocus-woogy-woogy instead of finding magical practices that ride similar to your own cultural and geographical identity.
A bookcase of nothing but Llewellyn books. Yes, they're the largest publisher of metaphysical books. Wal*Mart is also the largest retail distributor. If all of your toiletries are "Equate" off-brand, you're a cheapass. Now, this isn't the problem; after all, I'm a cheapass. But I don't go around displaying my collection of off-brand toiletries and calling myself the freshest-smelling, classiest person in town. Llewellyn is the largest publisher for two reasons: Silver Ravenwolf and Scott Cunningham. Between them, a freshly spun cotton pillow looks like a sack of marbles. My advice is to get off the fluff post haste, but if you do choose to remain a fluffball, at least have the common decency and respect to admit that you're a wannabe and not a serious magical practitioner because you can't do a goddamn thing that isn't printed in some Llewellyn book. Or shit, even worse...
A bookcase of nothing but meta books, PERIOD. I have two bookcases' worth of books, the bookcases each six feet tall, with twelve shelves between them. My meta books comprise a little more than a tenth of that space. See, unlike some people, I have the ability to be interested in multiple things. My mother is a fundamentalist Christian, who has a bookshelf full of nothing but Christian literature: six copies of the Bible, the entire Left Behind series, a bunch of how-to books for prayer and Bible study, Christian parenting books and half of the Chicken Soup for the Invertebrate Soul series. Similarly, I know people who individually foot Llewellyn's bills for a month. I see little difference between the two, except that Jesus and Cernunnos are different individuals. See, fundamentalism is a sign of narrow-mindedness. And people who absorb themselves into religion completely, REGARDLESS of the actual religion they're immersing themselves in, are bound for a life of ignorance, stupidity and deference of blame. My mother claims to be dead certain I am bound for hell, and little Lord Lupine over there claims to be dead certain Aradia is real. Mom thinks I'm evil because I have an altar to my gods erected in my living room. Little Lord Lupine thinks I'm evil because I've come to the opinion that what most people think is Wicca is really just a load of bullshit. Grow the fuck up, learn to read something that doesn't have the word "Witchcraft" on the cover. Get a hobby. Grow some facial hair. Plant a garden. Get into whittling. Go fishing. Pick up the flute. But PLEASE, get something else in your life besides your religion, because if you let it encompass that much of your life, you're only going to drown in a pile of bullshit, and you're going to be miserable. And no matter which religion you immerse yourself in next, the vicious cycle is going to repeat itself. Religion is meant to SUPPORT your life, not SUPPLANT it.
Having the words "Lord" or Lady" in your name. There is a site on the Internet featuring a list of stupid magical names. Now, mostly it's a way to make fun of someone else (after all, I'm listed there twice), but there are some genuinely stupid magical names there. Granted, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, but I still refer to my betta as Flutter. Names represent the things they identify, and if your name recalls Bambi or Fantasia or a Harry Potter movie, I'm going to laugh at you. There's no reason for you to have the name "Lady Unicorn" or "Lord Lupine" or "Ravens Cry" or "Greyhawk" or "Dark Angel" or "Maiden Besomrider". Those names just suck. So do names like "Dark Master Baalthazar" or "Lord Goth" or "Necromancer Nicolai" or "[insert AD&D monster here]". Those names show that you're so desperate to be feared that you try to emulate scary things in order to try to look scary yourself. Another movie analogy: if I am "the Exorcist", little Lord Goth is "Scary Movie 2". K? Get a real fucking name, or use the one your parents gave you. At least that has some power behind it.
And, saving the best for last: Excessively large pentacles. The one vice of this list I was actually guilty of. My friend Aprel disposed of my 3" pentacle in a most humourous manner, placing it around the neck of a giant stuffed Eeyore. There is no reason to wear pentacles that big unless you're a Jotun. Ever seen 665's "Fat Goths are Funny" series? If you look like one of them, you need to have your face pulverised with a ball-peen hammer. If little 140-pound you insists on wearing a pentacle platter around your neck, you might as well upgrade it to an altar tile. You may as well paint the word "WYCCAN" on your forehead (remember to replace the I with a Y, they thynk yt looks ancyent thys way), wear a green muu muu with 6" purple pentacles on it, drag around that broadsword, and throw on these Bob Marley shackles and chains while you're at it too. At least that way, the mental burdens would be physically represented (quite accurately, I might add). Or even better yet, grow the fuck up, develop some self-identity, find some self-worth, and start acting like yourself. I did, and I turned out just fine.

This rant ended up being longer than I anticipated, and I inadvertently gave out one of the hidden core messages the Obsidian Mirror has been subtly trying to convey: religion is meant to SUPPORT your life, not SUPPLANT it. Fundamentalism is the bane of Wicca, and indeed of any religion altogether. Just as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson destroy Christianity, just like Usama bin Laden and Hammas corrupt Islam, and just like the Nazi Party and the KKK brought shame to white pride, these little Wiclets Gone Wild are in the process of irreparably ruining what could be legitimate neopagan traditions. I only implore that you, dear reader, please not be one of them.

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