We have a community infested with theft and dishonesty

So yesterday, a friend sent me a link that someone had posted on a particular reddit page. It had hundreds of PDFS in a google doc, pretty much every significant work, either from practitioners or academics, relevant to Heathenry in the last thirty or forty years. Some of the PDFs were of books out of print and where the copyright was expired. They are common domain so that is fine, but dozens were of contemporary books where the copyright is held by the authors and/or publishers. This is theft.

Of course, I reported this to my publisher who will be taking the necessary action to have this file removed and possibly to take legal action against the owner of the document collection, but it boggles that we have a generation or more of our community, the bulk of whom seem to think that this type of thing is ok. Theft is never ok. I don’t believe I have to say this but let me reiterate: theft is morally reprehensible and wrong. You’re not entitled to someone else’s hard work. You don’t get to “redistribute” the wages of someone else’s intellectual property. If you can’t afford a book, go to the library. Do an inter-library loan if your library doesn’t have the book in question. Save up and buy it. Maybe contact the author — I don’t keep many copies of my books around but every once in awhile I’ll send one to someone if they ask decently (and if I have it). Check your local used book stores, eBay, etc. I really don’t care (especially since personally, I provide a good deal of material here on my blog for free). What you don’t do is steal. Many of the authors on that list I mentioned above, I know personally and I know that many of them depend on the pittance they receive from book sales (and let me tell you, it’s not much) to support themselves, to put food on their tables, to care for their families. Many of us are also sick and tired of giving to a community that treats us like shit. (And let me tell you, I’m more than a little amused, in an ironic and fairly sarcastic way, that the person posting this collection is one of those who will slander my name in public, writing about what a horrible person I am because I’m not a communist, but has at least two of my books on their reading list. My response: “Bitchko, you’re pretty pathetic”).

I see blogs where people encourage others to steal the intellectual property of their elders, their teachers, their colleagues, their specialists. It’s reprehensible. I often see a lot of talk on FB and other fora where the question comes up “why don’t we have temples?” Weeeellllll, you gonna pay your clergy? your administrative staff? your cleaning staff? oh no, the answer inevitably follows. We don’t want to do that. Well then, no temples. If you don’t respect the people doing the work, you don’t deserve the benefits from that work. There’s a Swiss saying: “Wer den Pfennig nicht ehrt, ist des Talers nicht wert.” (He who doesn’t respect the penny doesn’t deserve the dollar). The same thing applies in spiritual work. I understand people want the knowledge contained in these books. That is laudable. What isn’t laudable or acceptable is to steal it.

Now, I have a damned fine lawyer who handles my copyright issues and my publisher also has a whole department apparently devoted to handling these issues but that’s not always the case with some of our authors. We should be protecting them, nourishing them, encouraging them and our artists and musicians and other creative folk too, because our communities benefit from their work, because that work is sacred work, because it’s the right thing to do. If theft becomes the norm, then the result is going to be incredible information that is kept under strict lock and key, shared only within one’s initiatory tradition. I already do this with a good deal of the material that I receive.

Maybe we should all focus on writing about ethics, morality, virtues and how not to be a complete and utter worthless asshole. Seems like that’s what our communities really need right now and that’s a shame.

Shame on WildHunt, yet again.

​Siegfried is at it again: slinging mud, trashing Heathenry, and trying to rub himself all up against Hinduism so he can create some new heathen-hindu theosophy. Ok, Siegfried Blavatsky. Ok. Why is he doing this? because he can’t find a way to make his own faith matter. and Wild hunt lets him do hit piece after hit piece on Heathenry. Siegfried does this though because I truly believe he hates Heathenry. He doesn’t comprehend Heathen theology (I don’t think He realizes that there IS theology in Heathenry and as a theologian I can assure you, there’s enough in the sources to tease out a very rich and complex theology)​ doesn’t know Heathen history or…history in general… and ​I​ really don’t think ​h​e cares about our Gods. He’s an egotistical bastard with a degree in double bass. I’m sure it just kills him that ​Wild ​Hunt can’t go on his academic cv as a publishing credit.

​Here’s an excellent article analyzing his most recent Wild Hunt contribution. 

Jane Austen in the News — Jane Austen’s World

What the hell is going on in our universities? When I teach, I will offer trigger warnings when we discuss sexual abuse/child molestation, gang rape, and genocide. Any thing else, man the fuck up. If you’re too much of a wilting flower to handle discussions of classic literature and history, maybe you don’t belong in university but should seek out therapy instead .

This below, is a very well done article, that starts by noting a college that gives trigger warnings for JANE AUSTEN. Seriously. — GK

Inquiring Readers,  Several news items about Jane Austen have piqued my interest! My friend Deborah Barnum, who oversees the excellent Jane Austen in Vermont blog, referred me to an article written in February by Catherine Bennet entitled Who’s going to be triggered by Northanger Abbey? It’s hardly Game of Thrones.  Greenwich University’s Trigger Warnings Towards […]

Jane Austen in the News — Jane Austen’s World

Never, Ever Disavow Them

Today, I was listening to YouTube videos while I did the dishes, just letting them auto-play one after another. I wasn’t really paying much attention, mostly just using them as background noise while I worked when I heard a woman talking about her experience teaching a summer program (I think it was a summer program. I wasn’t paying close attention at first). I went from zero to sixty in utter rage when I heard her say that, during orientation, her co-workers had made all the white teachers stand up and disavow their ancestors. This is all in the name of racial awareness and equity. I couldn’t believe that any thinking person would actually DO this, no matter what pressures that person might face from those around them. I was beyond horrified and then disgusted and then really, really angry. When someone tells you to disavow your ancestors, stand up straight and tell them to go fuck themselves. Then pray or purify because whatever asshole suggested this, is attempting to get you to engage in something evil. 

Let me be perfectly clear.  I don’t care if you are white, black, brown, or any other color, race, or ethnicity, never, EVER, EVER spit in the face of your ancestors like that. There is no living person, no ideology, no political position important enough to do that to your spiritual house. Asking someone to do that is flat out evil. I don’t care if the person doing the asking says it’s for racial justice, gender equality or any other reason. It is reprehensible. Such actions are not symbolic. They are disgusting, and they resonate deeply into one’s soul, wyrd, and spiritual health. 

I will stand with my ancestors. I will honor them now, today, tomorrow, and always. I will tell their stories. I will pour out offerings to them and I will teach others to do the same. I hope that others have the courage to spit not on their ancestors but in the face of anyone asking them to do something so vile as to publicly stand up in disrespect for their dead. Good, bad, beautiful, or ugly, we are here because of our ancestors. We stand on their shoulders. They are our greatest strength and protection. The least we can do is show them a bit of respect. 

I’ll close with something I wrote in my book Honoring the Ancestors: 

“None of us walk alone. Wherever we go, we go with a retinue of our ancestors at our back. When I bow before my altar, my entire lineage all the way back to the beginning bows with me. To connect rightly and properly with one’s dead, to engage them well and consistently is to know that when you act, ten thousand hands and hearts, minds and wills act in tandem with you. That is the power of ancestor veneration. 

Something that just hit me now, retelling this: when you honor your dead with awareness and commitment, you’re helping your ancestors honor their ancestors too, you’re taking part in a spiritual cycle going back to the beginning of human evolution and probably farther (we don’t know anything about the spiritual life of non-human beings on this earth). That’s something terribly profound.” (p.37)

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Timeo Danaos et Dona Ferentes

There are evil spirits that move so subtly we can barely sense their influence until it’s too late. Things and places hold the resonance of tragedy and pain that occurred in their orbit. Hungry ghosts – sad, miserable jealous people who have never accepted healing from their ancestors, occasionally refuse to let go of what was once their property or wish the living ill. Any and all of these can cause problems for those of us who like antiquing, flea-marketing, or even who might receive unexpected gifts from friends, frenemies, and/or colleagues. I was warned about this first by a Lukumi elder who has since passed (may you ever be hailed, Stuart), but it was something I had already experienced and figured out on my own. Cursed/haunted objects are a thing. None of this needs to stop one from enjoying antiquing or from accepting a gift out of the blue, but care has to be taken. Nine times out of ten, these things, if they come with something polluted, can be cleansed away. The tenth time might involve salt, exorcism, and a bonfire, but that is not usually the norm. 

I was thinking about this recently because a friend sent me an unexpected gift for my shrine. It was fine, but I have a protocol that I follow with any incoming package that isn’t purchased new, so I was explaining this to my current assistant, and I realized that I’d never written about it here. I don’t like writing about magical practice on my blog. I prefer to focus on religious things, but I’m finding that young magicians coming up now aren’t getting proper training. One of my former students says that the biggest complaint she gets about her own work is that she’s old fashioned – because she teaches grounding, centering, shielding, cleansing, and training the will as matters of course. I was blown away but what I’ve seen with the last couple of rounds of students confirms what a lot of us have suspected: basic training and common sense is seriously lacking in far too many of today’s magical circles, lodges, etc. Hence, these posts. 

Now, I love antiquing. I also have quite a few people who would happily try to harm me given half a chance. That might be the case even were I not an active theologian. In esoteric circles we tend to be a contentious bunch, and while I firmly believe that study of any esoteric art should require intelligence, temperance, psychological stability, and emotional maturity, that’s all too often seldom the case in reality. You’re going to get bitter or crazy people trying to throw shit at you at some point in your career. Usually, they don’t have the capacity to magic themselves out of a paper bag, but sometimes bottom feeding evil spirits can take what they throw, ride it, and enhance it to something more damaging. It pays to be prepared. 

Here’s what I do when I buy something at an antique store or flea market (and firstly, I take a good *look* with the psi senses at the item, and possibly even reach out to my ancestors to make sure it’s ok to bring home. I’ve been known to divine right in a shop). It then sits on the porch surrounded by salt until I have a chance to divine on it, exorcise it with salt/aspersing, and bless and cleanse it. Sometimes, if it’s just energetically dusty, I can blow an ansuz into it and cleanse it that way. None of this takes long but sometimes I don’t have the time to do it right when I get home, hence it sits outside until I do. Additionally, I’ll often wear gloves when I shop at such places. Silk insulates from negative or polluted energies, and I always carry a set in my bag. I also carry a small vial of salt, and often a small bottle of FL water in case I need to cleanse myself while out and about. Recently I was gifted with a pair of wool gloves from this site. The gloves have “Thor Bless” on them in runes and damned if they don’t work just as well as any silk that I’ve ever used. They’re also really comfortable so I highly recommend. 

I will note that if you have regular protections on your home and ongoing wards, and your devotional practice is consistent, you’ll have some protection if something slips through. So, awhile back, someone sent me a heavily embroidered shrine cloth and a little statue. It was lovely and, having known this person for awhile – though not considering him a close friend—I broke my rules and just opened the package. Immediately I was repulsed. I am gift oriented partly by nature and partly by religion. Gifting has a particular valence in Heathenry, and gifting is my love language – both giving and receiving—so for me to have a negative reaction to a present is almost unheard of (even if I don’t like the item, I usually appreciate the thought). This was different. I was actively repulsed and shoved the box into a corner of my living room to deal with later. I foolishly gave it no further thought that day. 

The next day the problems started. A piece of scar tissue snapped in my ankle (kept me on a cane for days, extremely painful), a knife flew at me from my knife rack. I hadn’t touched it. Three or four cups and bowls flew from my hands or one time at my head and broke. I divined to see if I’d been hit by malocchio. Divination consistently said no. Everyone had pain and inflammation in the house out of the blue so much so there was one visit to the doctor to rule out medical issues. We divined when the doc said everything was fine and divination said it was partly physical – likely due to old injuries and damp weather–but partly something else. Ok. I do most of my main house div. on Sunday, so I had planned to ask about this at the end of the week. About the same time, our water heater, dryer, and a few smaller appliances all broke at the same time. Then the aggravation in relationships started. It was like something was whispering and twisting every interaction out of true, ensuring that we would misunderstand each other. It is difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced this kind of oppression but it’s a primary technique of a certain class of evil spirits and theologians have written about it since ancient times. We were experiencing the effect of the presence of an evil spirit of disruption. I realized what it was because I saw it ever so slightly. I had a discussion with my husband about it and he concurred—I always check and double check because it’s easy to get paranoid.

 That night, I skipped my protections and spent the night attacked in dreams. The next day, I fought it all day, sick and in pain. Eventually, my then-assistant asked a question –unrelated on the surface to this mess but perfectly timed—and divination opened up exactly what it was. The friend who sent me the altar items had received them from someone unclean, someone who dabbled in things not aligned with the Gods, someone who sought and seeks out people (especially women, I might add) who are devout and growing in spiritual power so he can derail and crush them, someone who had a deep jealousy and hatred for anyone solid in the Work. I’ve had my run-ins with this person more than once. I used to consider him a friend, until I learned how he butchers tradition, makes things up to cause harm and inflate his own ego, attacks and poisons the devout, and is ridden by addiction. He’s been known to plant really nasty shit in people’s homes, and to attack magically both men and women whom he perceives as rivals. 

When I was getting up to get rid of the box, I heard the whisper, “Give it to X.” My guess is that my friend had the same thing happen and so was moved to send it to me. If one isn’t used to the whispers, it’s painfully easy to be influenced by spirits. They take on the sound of our own inner voices and if one doesn’t know the texture of one’s own mind, how can one tell the difference? I immediately took everything outside, my assistant doused it with blessed salt, we prayed and warded the space, the threshold, the door, cleansed the house, called on the Holy Powers and restored order. *Immediately* we all felt better. Later I burned the items. It was a huge lesson in maintaining protocols even when I think I don’t need to (perhaps especially then), and knowing my inner landscape so that I know precisely what is my own thought versus that of something malignant trying to influence me. Evil spirits try this all the time. It’s why cleansing, warding, meditation, and prayer is so important. It keeps one balanced and properly ordered. 

Afterwards, it turned out my assistant had been having the thing whisper to her for days, and it had been trying to damage her relationship to one of her Gods. ALL of us had an aversion to the package, and none of us had wanted to touch it where it lay shoved into a corner. But because it came from a friend (who was appalled when I told him about what had happened, and who immediately got rid of everything the third party involved had given him) I’d neglected this. Have your cleansing protocols (and yes, I apply them to etsy and ebay packages too), and never, ever break them. 

So, cleanse the things you receive or buy. Don’t take gifts from frenemies. If you find out someone is gross, get rid of everything they’ve given you and by which they might work nasty magic on you. Know the origin of secondhand gifts. Cleanse, cleanse, and cleanse. Also, keep up prayer and devotion because in the end these are more important than any of this and also our best guard and protection.

Here’s your PSA for the day. 

Burn this. Clean it with fire. lol.

The Mother of All Virtues and the First Brick in Community Building

I’ve been reading C.S. Lewis again and Lewis, in his novel The Screwtape Letters wrote that “Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ” Contextually, he was specifically discussing what we might call more specifically moral courage. I’ve always thought that courage was crucial to becoming a proper and worthy adult but over the past few years, I’ve come to agree 110% with Lewis. I think it is beyond fundamental. I would go so far as to call it the mater virtutium, the mother of all virtues. It’s in sadly short supply today. Maybe it always was. 

Virtue (1) doesn’t just happen. We’re not born knowing what it is or how to live virtuously. We have to take the time to cultivate that which we wish to become. This takes work and may involve failure as we learn how to make correct choices, as we learn to do that which makes us better people, and most importantly, makes us better polytheists. Everything we do, everything we choose in our world, most especially our behavior, should make us better servants of our Gods. That is, after all, why we are here. Yet, where do we learn virtue? 

Ideally, we would be learning these things from our mothers’ laps, our fathers’ tutelage. The values and virtues of a functional community, of people of worth and honor, would be reinforced in our educational system, and we would be able to seek out philosophical schools as adults to help us continue learning how to best live. None of that exists today, or rather the first may exist in small pockets, the second is completely lacking, and the third is as non-existent in our communities as to warrant little to no mention. Instead of these things we are given social media and media in general that is hostile to anything approximating good, devout living, and largely absent of virtue — unless mutilating children is now suddenly virtuous. The proof, as the old saying goes, is in the pudding and look at our communities. So, what do we do? 

More than anything else, I think this is one of the major issues infecting our communities, and keeping us from building communities that will last. You cannot work with someone lacking in virtue, specifically the virtue of moral courage. It does not matter if someone claims to be an ally or a friend. If he or she is unwilling to stand with you in public, to speak in your defense, to eschew collaboration with those who public attack not only you but healthy devotion and polytheism in general, and to stand fast in the face of the opprobrium of others, then that person is a coward. You cannot reform, train, or transform a coward. They will destroy everything they touch. 

That is what lack of virtue does: it destroys goodness. It pulls it down to the lowest common denominator. It spits on devotion and instead inserts the shallowest of platitudes where true courage ought to stand. We have a generation of people who have been taught by public discourse that emotion equals rational discourse, that political partisanship equals devotion, that prayer is useless, that when someone calls you a bad word you should allow that to overwhelm your true identity and slink away in shame, and that words are dangerous. Well, maybe on that last point they’re right: words are dangerous. They allow one to recognize cowardice and lack of virtue and call it what it is without euphemism. 

We won’t have functional communities until people learn to stand with each other, support each other, and prioritize the Gods and Their respective cultus first and foremost. We won’t have functional communities until loyalty and faith are recognized as important things to cultivate; until courage is the watchword of the day, hand in hand with piety and devotion. It’s easy to feign courage when there’s nothing to lose. I want to see what one does when one’s reputation is on the line, when one has the potential to suffer real world loss. That is when you know the measure of a man. 

Moral courage isn’t the only virtue worth cultivating. While their origin may be problematic, for Heathens, the Nine Noble Virtues aren’t a bad place to start, though I’d add a few. Most importantly, I’d ask: what kind of human being do my Gods want me to be? What are the cardinal virtues, the unchanging moral guideposts by which I can become that person? Then slowly start making the hard choices – and it may involve loss of friends, loss of things that one enjoys, change of seemingly innocuous habits –and stand by them. There’s no easy way to do this. One cannot wave a magic wand *poof* and suddenly become a man or woman of virtue. It’s hard work; and it’s work that never ends. 

Failure is going to happen and it’s not the end either. We pick ourselves up. We examine our faults. We make amends. We do better in the future. There’s an old Heathen saying: “We are our deeds.” It’s the deeds I watch. Not the words coming out of someone’s mouth, or inbox. I have a lot of people in my world who say they stand behind my work, who say they support, as I, do the founding of functional polytheistic communities, who even are my friends. Yet I watch as publicly they cultivate those who have dedicated in some cases decades to attacking my work, slandering my name, and attempting to create a community that has no place for devotion and the Gods. Or I watch as some of these people stay silent when I am publicly attacked. You’re not friends. You’re cowards. I see you. I see your true nature. All the rhetoric, philosophy, and pretty words in the world won’t change it. You cannot trust a coward to stand, and you cannot trust them to have any loyalty whatsoever. These are people who would sell their own Gods while pretending to be devout. But you know, if they’re on the right political side of the equation who cares, right? (Yes, I’m being sarcastic). 

I think it’s time for our communities to grow up a little bit, to remember that we are first and foremost religious communities and with our religions – if we want them to last, if we want them to matter – come values and virtues that also must be cultivated and sustained. If that latter process doesn’t start with courage it won’t happen at all. 

Notes:

1. What is virtue? The term comes from the Latin word for “courage” or “valor” (virtus) and Merriam-Webster defines it now as “a particular moral excellence,” a definition with which I agree. These are the qualities that lead to excellence of character, conduct, and personhood.

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WTF USA?

So, it’s a bad day in the US today. 

1. SCOTUS shot down Roe V. Wade so now abortion goes back to the states. In about half the states across the country, women are going to be denied access to abortion. Seems like our Supreme court has no problem defining what a woman is, at least 8 of the 9 of them, and especially when they want to remove rights.  Medical care should not be a political issue. A woman’s access to abortion should not be impinged upon by Christian nutcases. Your religion has no right to reduce any woman to the status of chattel slavery, which, imo, is precisely what forced pregnancy does. Thing is, women let this happen. You want a right, you fight for it. If you’re not willing to fight, well, too fucking bad when you lose it.

Access to Plan B/morning after pill is being cut off by Amazon and other online providers to states that have anti-abortion laws set in motion by this ruling. Therefore, women can’t even order online. I have maybe half a dozen packets (haven’t checked my medical kit in a while – I keep a fairly well stocked med kit at home) that I’m happy to send to any woman in one of these states but maybe what we need to be doing is putting together a USPS underground to get abortifacients to women in need.

2. The Senate passed a bipartisan gun safety bill. I’m against any restrictions to the second amendment whatsoever. Let’s blame guns for everything instead of providing competent health care and mental health care to our citizens. *sarcasm* I’m particularly against “red flag” laws. Who gets to decide what or who is dangerous? I fully believe that the only requirement for anyone 16 and over to purchase and carry a gun, concealed or otherwise, should be a training course and a set number of hours clocked at a range (and not a training course like the one-day workshop the NRA offers, but an actual multi-week course). Without the second amendment, we can kiss the rest of our rights goodbye…which we seem to be doing, and quickly. I expect this stupidity from liberals (just as I expect foolishness on abortion from conservatives) but any conservative who signed this law is a fucking coward who ought to be removed from office. Midterms are coming, motherfuckers. Midterms are coming. 

3. Finally, SCOTUS limited the courts’ ability to enforce Miranda. Read the story here. If you have to deal with the police, the ONLY word out of your mouth should be “LAWYER.” https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/politics/supreme-court-miranda-rights/index.html

EDIT 1: And I just read that Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion with the Roe decision stating that SCOTUS should “reconsider” Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” – those are the rulings that allow, respectively, contraception, the legality of same-sex relationships, and same-sex marriage.  This comes as no surprise. I said months ago that if this court went after Roe, the next on the list would be Griswold and then they’d just work their way down. 

On a single positive note, JP Morgan announced that it would pay for its employees to travel to states that allow abortion should the need arise. 

Happy Pride Month @_@

I apparently celebrated by being spat on and called a “D*ke” as I was coming out of the post office today. The guy who yelled it was on a motorcycle and sped away before I could respond. Ironically, I’m probably more conservative than he is. I’m just not an asshole. All of this reminded me of when my mom and I were traveling abroad and were nearly gay bashed because we were walking arm in arm and we both had short hair. That was in France, by the way, so this type of random foolishness and prejudice isn’t just an American thing. In that instance, I scared the guys off, but it could have ended quite differently. 

On a more positive note, Saturday, I was offered a discount on antique ephemera because “I see from your short hair that you are gay.” (I declined the offer because I am not in fact gay and did not want to take a discount meant for someone else. I got a discount anyway because when he asked my profession (theologian), I then correctly answered a theological question he put to me). I would like to note for the record that having really short hair does not make one gay. It is not like an initiatory mark to a special club. My short hair has no impact at all on who shares my bed. I am happily married to a man much hairier than I. lol. He has hair enough for both of us. I keep my hair cropped as a religious discipline to honor the military dead. 

On an ironic note, I mentioned this to a friend of mine, and she is bi and has slept with women (and told me to include this note here lol) and is beautiful with long flowing blond hair and very feminine and she is always pissed that no one thinks she could ever be gay or bi. So, stop judging by hair, people. It’s stupid and makes you look like fools.

This all makes me wonder what my lesbian, gay, and bi friends are going through on a day to day as our country grows more polarized. It was a word today, it could just as easily have been a rock. I’m really sorry for whatever suffering you may be enduring, and I stand in solidarity with you, not just this month but all year long. Be strong, stand together, and don’t let shit like this get you down. 

courtesy of Emory University History dept found here: https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/lgbtflags/history/

New Book: “Loki and Sigyn” by Lea Svendsen

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On the up side, this book gives interesting etymological information on Loki and Sigyn’s respective names. I actually quite enjoyed reading this part. It was informative and pointed me in directions that I hadn’t considered with both Deities. The book is not a bad introduction for a beginner. Also, the  cover is gorgeous and would make a lovely devotional icon in and of itself.

On the downside, the author makes a show of giving a seemingly comprehensive history of Loki and Sigyn in contemporary Heathenry. That would be fine, save that she ignores the work of those like myself, who not only wrote the first extant devotionals to Loki and Sigyn individually, and to Their family as a group, but who frankly, were the ones who, with constant harassment over the issue–including some from at least one person quoted in the book–moved the center in Heathenry so that the idea of honoring these Gods is far less controversial now than it was when we started talking about it two decades ago. 

Also, and far more egregiously, while omitting any reference of the first devotionals ever published to Loki and to Sigyn (my own, published in the period between 2004-2014), the author has no problem quoting bynames for Sigyn that my own mother developed and wrote about, and that I first put into print, specifically “Lady of the Staying Power” (the name, not incidentally, of the first devotional to Sigyn ever written in 2009). It’s poor scholarship and were this an academic text (the author tries so hard to sound academic in parts), it would not have been published by any peer reviewed press due to this lacuna and borderline plagiarism.

My books (this doesn’t count the numerous articles I’ve written over the years) on Loki and Sigyn, all available here: 

“Our Lady of the Staying Power” now in second edition.

“Honoring Sigyn”

“Consuming Flame”

“Feeding the Flame”

“Heart on Fire”

“Hymns and Prayers of a Polytheistic Household” (includes prayers to both Loki and Sigyn)

 “Essays in Modern Heathenry”

For many years I’ve largely been silent when people have done things like writing me out of my own religious history, plagiarizing my work, harassment, bullying, slander, and lies. No more. Every time it comes to my door, I’m going to be calling it out. When I came into Heathenry in the early nineties, a devotee of Odin and Loki, one could not mention Loki in many, many circles without open hostility and in some cases (usually Theodish) threats of violence. It was my work and the work of many of my colleagues who changed that. If that’s too hard to swallow for people like Svendsen then maybe grow a set and admit it, instead of pretending innocence while practicing erasure. When you don’t publicly cite someone, but you draw upon their work in any way, that’s called PLAGIARISM. Plagiarism is theft. Scholarship means coming up with your own ideas, or correctly citing the work of others as you engage. It doesn’t mean copying someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own without attribution. Not citing extant sources is theft and appropriation. That’s it’s definition. It’s also cowardice and poor scholarship.

And now the Apostate has defenders.

I suppose it’s indicative of Heathenry that a wife-beating apostate has defenders, because way too many Heathens respect neither women nor the Gods. This misguided person is doggedly defending Swain Wodening on both counts, blaming his ex wife for her own abuse, excusing Swain’s apostasy as though it were nothing but a momentary error. He dismisses any criticism of this piece of garbage by asserting that those of us criticizing him are acting on hearsay.

Actually, those of us criticizing him knew Swain and his ex wife, we worked with him when we were Theodish, and saw first hand what a mewling, characterless cretin he was –and obviously remains (constantly blaming everyone else for his own missteps is just the beginning). We’re not acting on hearsay at all. Nor is his mental illness an excuse. There are PLENTY of people in the world diagnosed with General Anxiety disorder who don’t behave in the fashion swain did.

Do I blame his wife for anything? Maybe for not shooting the son of a bitch the first time he attacked her. But then the laws in this country don’t always support women who do the right thing in such situations, and she had children to care for. She made choices congruent with keeping her children safe. Brava to her. She survived and I am glad to know that she is living a good and happy life now– far away from Swain. It disgusts me that in every case I have seen in our communities, where a well-known male figure is guilty of some sort of assault, those he assaulted get blamed (I saw the same thing happen in the Wiccan community with pedophile and wife beater Kenny Klein, may he rot in hell).

Even putting aside the spousal abuse, Swain says his “conversion to Christianity was a mistake.” no shit. A leader, as Swain was within Theodish Heathenry, who turns his back on his Gods and *publicly excoriates Them* has no right to expect return. He is garbage, living garbage. He committed apostasy of the highest order. A “mistake?” Yes it was and mistakes have consequences. In a proper community he’d be driven out, not defended. But then a proper community would care about the quality of its leaders, and integrity before the Gods. Swain has neither quality nor integrity and yet these fools defend him. His personal integrity – – if he came back, why would he be seeking public position in stead of just worshipping quietly? If he’s coming back to try to reclaim his public position — oh hell no. There is no excuse for what Swain did. He apostatized and wants to come back as though that never happened and didn’t matter AND as on every other fault, not only blames everyone but his own lack of character and poor judgement, but apparently has other men doing the same. Grow the fuck up, Heathens. This man is polluted garbage, poison. There’s no place amongst decent, devout people for his kind. This man’s deeds are to beat his wife and publicly turn his back on his Gods. He and his family popularized the maxim “we are our deeds.” Well, to quote another maxim, “it is by one’s deeds that we shall know them.”

As I said before, it’s one thing for laity to apostatize. They struggle with our spirituality and it can be very hard. There’s going to be movement and sometimes even syncretic practice. That’s fine. That’s not Swain. Swain was one of the most well known of Theodish leaders and, might I point out, according to the interview linked above, he’s not taking responsibility for his apostasy either. He says, ‘I never fully accepted the [Christian] doctrine.’ Great. So you’re an apostate twice over. (Nor, might I add, did Swain ever criticize Theodism as the article asserts. If he did, he was awfully quiet about it). Also, his belief “But the core of my beliefs, that good deeds not faith get you into Heaven are what I truly believe” is heresy both in most Christian denominations and Heathenry. It’s one fucking step away from prosperity gospel bullshit.

Swain didn’t just hold Christian views, but wrote a book on it trying to capitalize on being a covert from Heathenry. They finally see through your Bullshit, Swain? Is that why you’re back? Hoping a new generation of Heathens won’t know what a piece of shit you truly are? Did you get kicked out by Christians AND Heathens? wow. Maybe try Wicca next. Their standards might be more flexible. After all, many of them defended Kenny Klein and Isaac Bonewits and probably Marian Zimmer Bradley too so you’ll be in good company. But fuck off out of Heathenry. You have no place here and every time your name comes up, we should spit that foulness out of our mouths, and speak aloud your unending list of transgressions against your family, your tribe, and your Gods. None of us who knew you during that time, will ever forget. And forgiveness without recompense is not part of our tradition.

After all as the Havamal says, “When you see evil speak out against it and give no truce to your enemy.” A man who beats his wife, terrorizes his children, abandons his faith and publicly apostatizes will always be my enemy.