Happy Zombie Jesus Day
I had forgotten it was Easter last week until my spouse told me they were off work Sunday for the holiday. So, I knew I had to write something about the stupid thing because Christianity still has a stronghold in the United States. Even though nearly one third claim they don’t belong to a religion.
Zombie Jesus Day
I was debating whether to call up my siblings and wish them a happy Zombie Jesus Day, but I figured it wouldn’t go over that well. And one of my siblings still hasn’t sent my Yule…er, Christmas…presents yet from last year. So, I spent the day working and my spouse hunted bear, which was all okay, because neither of us care about such silly things as Easter.
Eostre Posts
I’ve written about Easter and Eostre over the years, so you’re welcome to read the following pieces:
Eostre and Spring: Is Easter a Christian Holiday?
Four Ways to Make Easter Not Suck
How Heathens Can Celebrate Easter with Christians
Eostre: Was Easter Appropriated?
5 Great Things Heathens Can Do to Celebrate Eostre Anytime (And while under Quarantine)
Hail the Goddesses and Gods of Spring
They’re fun pieces, and you’re sure to find something to celebrate the Month of Eostre/Ostera in it. Sure, the Christians have one Sunday in March or April*, we’ve got an entire month! (April is the Month of Eostre.)
Did you forget it was Easter on Sunday, too? If there’s good news, Easter candy will be half off on Monday! Woo Hoo!
—
*Unless you want to call Holy Week theirs too, but it’s full of depressing images.
—
Did you know you can become my patron for as little as $5 a month? This entitles you to content not posted anywhere else. Plus you get to see posts like this three days before the public! Without patrons, I’d be having a very hard time keeping this blog going. Become a patron today!Become a Patron!
Part of being a heathen is understanding that while our gods are indeed our gods, there are gods of other pantheons that are similar to ours, such as in Rodnovery or Slavic Heathenism. Sometimes called Slavic Native Faith or Slavic Neopaganism, I considered writing about it after the war in Ukraine started.
I knew I had to write about the Slavic gods when I came across an article by another pagan who wondered if we should consider praying to them for peace in Ukraine.This is an interesting idea, but one I am ambivalent about. Not because I think it’s cultural appropriation, but more because of the lack of familiarity. I believe that establishing a relationship with a god or gods is important. Like us, gods seem to prefer to work with the people they know, rather than total strangers.
Slavic Heathenism is a rich religion and one I believe all Heathens should study, simply because it has some amazing folktales and beliefs. As far as I can tell, the Ukrainians and Russians worshiped the same gods, although with the Vikings invading and trading in what is now modern day Ukraine, I suspected our Northern gods were also worshiped by those in the area. Case and point, Perun is very similar to Thor, which makes me think that Perun took on attributes of the Thunderer when he became the head of the pantheon. 
Rodnovery, like Heathenism and Asatru, has similar problems with white supremacists and other trash that we have to deal with. I guess that’s common in any religion that comes from Europe. It’s also a religion that is considered more conservative when it comes to male and female roles, and also about who may be able to join their religion. Although I don’t have problems with people being proud of their nationality and ethnicity, there are groups within Slavic Heathenism who espouse ethnic purity, ethnic separatism, patriarchy, and traditional families. Certainly not all Slavic Heathens believe this, which is why there are different groups within Rodnovery.
I hate 
First, I lived through the seventies. And yeah, I remember the permanent daylight savings time during the “gas crisis.” The thought, of course, was by giving more hours of daylight at night, people wouldn’t need to run their electricity as much. Hah! No one took into account air conditioning and other energy usage. Sure, you have more light when you’re home, but in the summer, that means you need more cooling, and in winter, you want to stay in a cozy house. So, all that energy you “save,” really gets burned up.
Second, I live in the North. That means that the sky is light up to 11 pm as we approach the summer solstice. In fall and winter, that just extended hunting into the late evenings. Which sucks, especially if my spouse has to go into work the next day. Extra light in the evenings in wintertime is annoying at best.
Timezones are a relatively new invention. Before timezones, people set their clocks or told time by the position of the sun. We really didn’t need timezones until the train came along. Why? Because until communication and travel became fast, knowing when a carriage, ship, or letter would arrive didn’t require a precise time. Maybe departures would be on time, but the further you went from your town, the less precise the arrival time would be.
Now, the Brits advocated the Greenwich Meridian as the prime meridian (or timezone starting point) with consensus from the international community, and it was adopted as the prime meridian in 1884 at the International Meridian Conference held in Washington DC. Two factors contributed to the Greenwich Meridian as being the start of the timezones. One, Greenwich Observatory was reputed as an observatory with the most accurate charts. Two, the Brits still had more ships than anyone else at the time, and they kept accurate logs, for the most part. So, everyone let the Brits have Greenwich Mean Time, which all the other timezones follow. In all, there are 24 timezones, which accounts for a full rotation of the Earth.
Okay, for those who don’t put up with my complaining, here’s the TL;DR version. We need to keep a standardized time for travel and commerce. We shouldn’t keep switching between DST and ST because there is no cost savings and actually causes more accidents. And we should stay on Standard Time because it’s closer to the actual circadian rhythms we’ve evolved to expect. What’s more, permanent DST was implemented in the 70s and everyone hated it. Lastly, the world operates on Standard Time, not permanent Daylight Savings Time, which makes the United States the odd one out.
By the time you see this post, it’s likely the whole Ukraine invasion will have resolved itself one way or another. While I am staunchly in Ukraine’s corner, I have a terrible feeling that without the US putting boots on the ground, (or at least providing air support), that Russia will have a huge smoldering hole where the country of Ukraine was. Call me pessimistic, but I’ve been amazed the Ukrainians have held out as long as they have. They are one tough people.
The reason the US hasn’t gotten involved to a level greater than we already have with the Ukraine invasion is because we’re dealing with a madman with his finger on a very large arsenal of nuclear weapons. Putin’s saber rattling has to be taken seriously because we really don’t know how unstable he is.
You probably know that I’m drawing parallels between Hitler and Putin, and Poland and the Ukraine. This isn’t that big of a stretch. Whether they’re Nazis or Vlad’s Russians, the situations are striking similar. Sure, the Nazis were more motivated, but honestly, do you really expect Putin to stop with Ukraine? He sure as shit didn’t with the Crimea.
Nowadays, we live longer lives. Most of the time, those of us in the first world aren’t dealing first hand with the horrors of war. Sure, we sent soldiers to Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and other wars, but since WWII, Western nations have been at relatively, if not uneasy, peace. These wars didn’t affect our countries like they do with an actual invasion. Sure, there have been invasions and wars throughout Europe, mostly due to the Soviet Union and later, Russia, but the death toll and suffering has not been the same since WWII.
Sure, I lived under the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War. Yeah, I remember the whole bullshit “duck and cover” thing, as well as air raid drills. Honestly, I was too young to understand fully the ramifications of the drills; just like I had no idea that those drills wouldn’t have saved my life if we were hit with a nuclear bomb.
I knew Putin was a thug and an asshole, but I hadn’t thought of him as a madman. But I should’ve known with the 
To be quite frank with you, the end game has me scared. The thought of another world war–probably with nukes–should terrify any sane person. But if we fail to stand up to Putin now, we will have a bigger problem in the not-so-distant future.
If you wish to send sunflower seeds to the Russian Embassy 
No sooner had I excoriated Greg Locke and his group of followers 
Looking at the topic, I can see that if I covered the history of witch hunts, that would end up being a post unto itself. (Which I may just do for GP.) Suffice to say, you’ve probably heard of at least the Salem Witch Trials, the Spanish Inquisition, and yes, the whole witch burning thing. Witch hunts still exist 
Let’s first consider this preacher’s accusations. Would a true witch really try to infiltrate a church group such as Global Vision Bible Church? (Greg Locke’s church?) This is the same church that insists people going maskless, not getting vaccinated, and held a book burning. I think that most pagans (including witches) would avoid their church just to avoid that cesspool of Covid-19 carriers. If anything, witches would probably just hex them from afar and be done with it–not sully their brains with such pedantic chatter.
Most likely, a person in their religious group is having an affair with another church member. And someone noticed another person having new-agey stuff like sage and crystals. Because they’re kind of cool. Sage is more a Native American cultural thing–not a demon thing. It certainly doesn’t have its roots in European witchcraft.
Interestingly enough, Locke claims he got the witches’ names–and one of their addresses–from demons. Uh, isn’t talking to demons something you’re not supposed to do as a Christian? Assuming he talked to them–maybe performing exorcisms or something–why the fuck would you talk with a demon? Demons can lie just like people, so how in the Hel does Locke know they said anything trustworthy? I mean, he’s taking a word of what Christians consider a fallen angel? What. The. Actual. Fuck?
If you consider witch hunts of the past, you’ll notice that it’s a way to gain power over the population. Witch hunts were often aimed at marginalized members of society, such as women, Jews, poor people, slaves, and those who simply couldn’t fight back. Occasionally, you’d see some prominent people such as the Templars be labeled witches, but in the Templars’ cases they had already fallen from grace because they had boatloads of money and the French king wanted to get his grubby hands on it.
If you’ve stuck with me, I want to thank you sincerely. You see, being sick practically all of January left me with little energy. 
It seems that a 
Book burning is, at its heart, suppression of ideas. If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, you know that you can find someplace that espouses just about any idea, both good and bad. Before the Internet there were books. Books that held ideas you might not agree with. That you might find stupid, silly, or even abhorrent. Books that challenged what you believed to be true. And even books that you vehemently disagreed with.
Well, it’s all well and good if you are the guys in charge. But as soon as your king gets dethroned, or if you’re in the minority, you find your own ideas suppressed. And that is the problem with censors and people willing to burn books.
Assuming Greg Locke has a permit and doesn’t burn anything in anyway that violates the law, he is within his rights to do so. That being said, I think it sets a terrible precedence for the United States, which has presumably been the land of freedom (except if you were a slave, Native American, or some other infringed upon minority, but that is an argument for another time.)
If you’ve been keeping tabs on the news, you know the Christian right is calling the United States a “Christian nation.” In fact, many of those in the religious right are installing their own brand of fundamentalist Christians in office. Instead of governing their states or representing all of their constutents (not just the Christian ones), they have shown their colors by governing according to their god’s laws.
What I’ve been talking about should alarm any and all Heathens, because the fundamentalist Christians have already plastered a bull’s eye on us as being “witches.” Don’t believe me? Just ask one of them if they understand the difference between Witches, Wiccans, and Heathens. And even if the Christians do understand, do you really want to have another pagan religion get persecuted?
isn’t just a letter of the Greek alphabet. It’s also what I have.
I presume it’s Omicron because it’s “mild,” although I might argue that “mild” is relative to “in the hospital and intubated.” My spouse could barely get in to see our doctor–forget the county testing and other sites. They’re backed up. The doctor didn’t have enough appointments to see me too, so when the test came back positive, the doctor said I had it as well and treat it the same. Our instructions were explicit: 10 day quaratine and don’t go to the hospital unless you’re damn near dying.
In all fairness, I guessed my spouse had it even before he took the test. I also knew that I was exposed to it via him, so I was screwed. It proved to be Omicron in symptoms, which means I’ve had next to no energy to do much, let alone write.
As a semi-knowledgable herbalist, you’d think I’d grab whatever dried shit I concocted and douse myself with it. Nope. Nope. Nope. I’ve ignored the ancestors’ meds and went straight to Tylenol, Musinex, and whatever else makes sense. My brain fog is real, which means I can’t even ponder what might make me feel better in the herbal realm. Instead, I’ve relied on 21st Century medicine, because that’s how I roll.
