WitchyBitch

This makes me want to go bang my head against my altar.

Today's Dear Abby [click here for the archived version after 22/10/04] had a letter from a lady wanting to know where she could obtain a spellbook so she could make her daughter break up with her abusive girlfriend.

That's exactly the kind of publicity we need, y'know? The news media already makes a disgraceful hash out of things every time they try to explain Wicca and paganism to the public, and now we have people coming out of the woodwork asking for spellbooks. [Apparently the lady who wrote this letter has never been to Barnes & Noble, or, for that matter, Amazon.com, or she wouldn't be asking Dear Abby.]

So I wrote an e-mail to the Abbess herself pointing out a few things for "Witch Way"'s benefit, not the least of which was that if you pick up a spellbook knowing dick shit about how magic works, it most likely won't. It would be like me trying to fix my car. I don't know crap about that thing, and if I bought "Auto Mechanics For Dummies" or whatever and started dinking around under the hood, I'd probably have a nonfunctioning car, because I don't know what the hell I'm doing. You can't do it right if you don't understand the underlying principles. I introduced a few other salient points, and hopefully Abby's Halloweenish mood will persist [come on, she probably gets letters like that all year round; she probably printed this one about spells because it's That Time Of Year] and she'll print it, or perhaps print a letter from another, less prolix, witch making similar points.

And then my friend C. showed me this.

School Says Halloween Disrespectful to Witches

The superintendent made the decision for three primary reasons, Hansen said. First, Halloween parties and parades waste valuable classroom time. Second, some families can't afford costumes and the celebrations thus can create embarrassment for children.

Both of those reasons seemed sensible to the parents who spoke to ABC News affiliate KOMO-TV in Seattle. But the district's third reason left some Puyallup parents shaking their heads.

The district said Halloween celebrations and children dressed in Halloween costumes might be offensive to real witches.

"Witches with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion and so we want to be respectful of that," Hansen said.

The Wiccan, or Pagan, religion is said to be growing in the United States and there are Wiccan groups in Puyallup.

On the district's list of guidelines related to holidays and celebrations is an item that reads: "Use of derogatory stereotypes is prohibited, such as the traditional image of a witch, which is offensive to members of the Wiccan religion."

"I do lots of things that are not revolving around wearing a black outfit and stirring a cauldron," Wiccan priestess Cheryl Sulyma-Masson said in an interview with ABC News in which she explained that Wiccans, or Pagan Clergy, celebrate nature.

Thank you, ABC. My acid reflux was beginning to calm down, and we can't have that. See, it's not enough that the news story makes us look like a bunch of whiny party-poopers who hate seeing children happy. Please note, if you will, the clumsy, boneheaded references to "Wiccans," "Pagans" and "Pagan Clergy" as if Wicca and Paganism are exactly synonymous [which they're not, by a long shot; I'm sure the Asatru and the Discordians are up in arms like Norplant over stuff like this], and as if Wiccans were the designated priests of the Pagan religion, which we most certainly and emphatically are not. That's like saying Episcopalians are the "clergy" of Christianity.

Why is it so fucking hard to get it right? Do I have to draw you people a goddamn picture? Okay. Here.

See? Does that make it simple enough?

I'm going to go take some Rolaids.

same bitch time, same bitch channel...

Posted by Frida Peeple at October 22, 2004 10:01 AM