I’ve been a bit crazy busy lately, all with good stuff, but I haven’t been writing much here.

I’ve written elsewhere, though, including a piece on the Commodification of spiritual goods and services at The Wild Hunt. 

Gods&Radicals has been taking up a lot of (exciting) time.  Have you seen it yet?  The coolest people ever are writing there.

Also, the line-up for Many Gods West is about to be announced.  I’m stupidly excited.

I’ve been doing a lot of research on the early anti-Capitalist movements and their intersections with Paganism, and I’m beginning to think that they were less ‘intersections’ and more simultaneous outgrowths of the same urge.  Particularly of interest here are the many ‘sovereignty Queens’ invoked in anti-enclosure movements in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and England.  I’ll have more on this later, but, yeah.  We’ve buried too much of our history by ignoring the gods and spirits of place.

Speaking of this, I’ll be working with several others to create rituals for ignored land- and crossroad- spirits in Seattle.  This excites the fuck out of me.  More on that later, too.

Also, the draft for the Pagan Statement on the Environment is out.  You may have known I was originally involved in it but withdrew voluntarily after an unfortunate statement was made by one of the other people involved regarding avoiding me “like the plague.”  I’ve no ill will towards the group, it just made no sense to continue on in the atmosphere lingering after such a statement.

That being said, I can’t support the statement yet.

There’s no mention of Capitalism’s effects on the environment.  At all.  Instead, the language urges ‘sustainability,’ which is precisely the language of what’s been called the ‘greenwashing’ of Capitalism.

Thing is–it’s open to public comment until April 21st.  I’ve added my concern about the omission of Capitalism from its language, as have others.  They could use some more comment, and I’d urge ye’ to do so.

A secondary matter within the statement concerns me, too–the mention of population control without any counterbalancing statement regarding the distribution of resources favoring whites in the world.  We should be urging that women always have the first and only say in how many children they bear (if any!); but population control has become a code for racialism for quite some time.

Consider the ‘welfare queen,‘ that ridiculous myth from the 80’s where a Black woman buys a car through having more children than she can afford and getting the government to subsidize her procreative activities.  Blaming poor women’s reproductive activities, especially those of poor Black women, for their economic problems is a favorite game of pro-Capitalist political movements.  Any Pagan Environmental Statement must beware of this language, but the statement doesn’t seem to address this at all.

Without addressing either of these matters, I won’t be signing it, and if it remains in its current form, I’ll be strongly urging people not to sign it.

But, like I said, it’s open for comment.  I suggest reading it and telling ’em what you think!

 

Be well!