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A Confession...
Nov. 20th, 2009 12:21 am
I'm admitting a little secret here.
I honestly have no clue what the problem with Silver Ravenwolf is - I've never read any of her books cover to cover. I mean, I hear about her historical inaccuracies, her condescending tone, her dumbing-down of Wicca, her poor advice - but I'll never really get it. Frankly, because it is Wicca, I don't want to get it, either. I got To Ride a Silver Broomstick after I'd stopped being a card-carrying Wiccan (it was published in 1993), skimmed through it a little, dismissed it as Wicca & gave it to Jody. I ended up giving all three books to Jody. I don't even know what she thought of them. I remember vaguely thinking that using the drawing down the Moon ritual to walk down a street in a bad neighborhood was kind of stupid, but that was about it. It's hard to believe that SRW's only been on the scene since the '90s... but it's hard to believe, at least for me, that 1993 was 16 fucking years ago.
The only reason I'm mentioning her is because someone on one of the pagan forums I visit replied to a post in which I mentioned a feature of lunabar that tells you when the moon is void of course. He said that the whole 'not starting anything new' when the moon is v.o.c. was brought about because of SRW. I'd been hearing that about the moon being v.o.c. since I was 10 & living w/my cousin who had all of Linda Goodman's astrology books, about 10 years before SRW even hit the scene. People sometimes forget that before Wicca became Kind of a Big Deal, many of us who would become Wiccans of one ilk or another were wallowing in the softly filtered rosy-quartz glow of the New Age movement.
Thinking about it now, that may be part of 'Fluff-Bunny Syndrome', at least here in the U.S. (I don't knock 'fluff-bunnies', either, mainly because I really don't give a fuck if someone wants to have a nice day, as long as they don't take it out on me). Many people my age and slightly older had post-hippy parents and went through the New Age. I think it's worse if you lived on the west coast for any length of time in the mid-80s. Now, if you mention Sedona, people will look at you with a noticeable 'Huh?' sign over their heads, but in its heyday, Sedona was the New Age hot-spot. Yes, I have been to Sedona, basked in its (at the time, I don't know how it is now) overpriced rosy-quartz glow of its vortices and power-places, oohed and aahed at the gaudy baubles of entire quartz caves packed onto one necklace or pair of earrings, and didn't feel a thing other than the creaky springs of my hotel mattress stabbing me in sunburned nether regions. I also lived near Lacey, WA when J. Z. Knight/Ramtha had the ashram up there - the woman that's in the memory foam mattress commercials was one of her supporters, I think she was on Dallas at some point. My dad's psycho-bitch-girlfriend-from-Hell was heavily into transchannelers & this thing called 'Ur' - and the spacebrothers... All I see now when I look at JZ Knight videos is classically tailored shoulder pads & the worst 80s hair known to mankind.
But that was what a lot of us Wiccans grew up on. The New Age concepts of Light, Peace and Love. I suppose it's not all bad - if America could put up with a collective bunch of loonies like that, Wiccans and neo-Pagans were fairly low-key in comparison. The New Agers channeled Ascended Masters, the Wiccans channeled Gods & Goddesses from mythology anthologies. The New Agers believed in turning the other cheek, the Wiccans proclaimed, in pseudo-OE, 'An' it harm none!' The Wiccans weren't quite as apocalyptic as the New Agers, and the New Agers weren't quite as sexy as the Wiccans, but a good time could be had by all.
( In health news... )
I honestly have no clue what the problem with Silver Ravenwolf is - I've never read any of her books cover to cover. I mean, I hear about her historical inaccuracies, her condescending tone, her dumbing-down of Wicca, her poor advice - but I'll never really get it. Frankly, because it is Wicca, I don't want to get it, either. I got To Ride a Silver Broomstick after I'd stopped being a card-carrying Wiccan (it was published in 1993), skimmed through it a little, dismissed it as Wicca & gave it to Jody. I ended up giving all three books to Jody. I don't even know what she thought of them. I remember vaguely thinking that using the drawing down the Moon ritual to walk down a street in a bad neighborhood was kind of stupid, but that was about it. It's hard to believe that SRW's only been on the scene since the '90s... but it's hard to believe, at least for me, that 1993 was 16 fucking years ago.
The only reason I'm mentioning her is because someone on one of the pagan forums I visit replied to a post in which I mentioned a feature of lunabar that tells you when the moon is void of course. He said that the whole 'not starting anything new' when the moon is v.o.c. was brought about because of SRW. I'd been hearing that about the moon being v.o.c. since I was 10 & living w/my cousin who had all of Linda Goodman's astrology books, about 10 years before SRW even hit the scene. People sometimes forget that before Wicca became Kind of a Big Deal, many of us who would become Wiccans of one ilk or another were wallowing in the softly filtered rosy-quartz glow of the New Age movement.
Thinking about it now, that may be part of 'Fluff-Bunny Syndrome', at least here in the U.S. (I don't knock 'fluff-bunnies', either, mainly because I really don't give a fuck if someone wants to have a nice day, as long as they don't take it out on me). Many people my age and slightly older had post-hippy parents and went through the New Age. I think it's worse if you lived on the west coast for any length of time in the mid-80s. Now, if you mention Sedona, people will look at you with a noticeable 'Huh?' sign over their heads, but in its heyday, Sedona was the New Age hot-spot. Yes, I have been to Sedona, basked in its (at the time, I don't know how it is now) overpriced rosy-quartz glow of its vortices and power-places, oohed and aahed at the gaudy baubles of entire quartz caves packed onto one necklace or pair of earrings, and didn't feel a thing other than the creaky springs of my hotel mattress stabbing me in sunburned nether regions. I also lived near Lacey, WA when J. Z. Knight/Ramtha had the ashram up there - the woman that's in the memory foam mattress commercials was one of her supporters, I think she was on Dallas at some point. My dad's psycho-bitch-girlfriend-from-Hell was heavily into transchannelers & this thing called 'Ur' - and the spacebrothers... All I see now when I look at JZ Knight videos is classically tailored shoulder pads & the worst 80s hair known to mankind.
But that was what a lot of us Wiccans grew up on. The New Age concepts of Light, Peace and Love. I suppose it's not all bad - if America could put up with a collective bunch of loonies like that, Wiccans and neo-Pagans were fairly low-key in comparison. The New Agers channeled Ascended Masters, the Wiccans channeled Gods & Goddesses from mythology anthologies. The New Agers believed in turning the other cheek, the Wiccans proclaimed, in pseudo-OE, 'An' it harm none!' The Wiccans weren't quite as apocalyptic as the New Agers, and the New Agers weren't quite as sexy as the Wiccans, but a good time could be had by all.
( In health news... )
