Ryan Smith

I am still at risk of dying any moment, so please donate with "Mom" in the note so we dont have to cover any difference to keep an entire family from having no vehicle in an area thats not an option.

I also still need survival & treatment funds.
I still NEED to LIVE!
linktr.ee/wylder

White people: omg COP30 was the best COP ever

Brazilians: Curupira set the fire at COP because he was angry with them all

Hey everyone, I'm teaching Hexing & Warding this December alongside @rissy.ca, who is offering Finding Your Fylgja, & @karaunndis.bsky.social, who is teaching Magic of Fibercraft! Please sign up now while space is available.
#HeathenSky #PaganSky #WitchSky #Spirituality #Religion

A crowd gathers in a circle listening to a person speaking outside under streetlights. People hold tall red signs facing the center of the circle.

HAPPENING NOW: DC community members are outside MPD headquarters to demand independent investigations of and release of all officer names and body cam footage in the three deaths in police custody this week, as well as the termination of Trump’s “DC Safe and Beautiful” Task Force.

Myth take:

If you think something is a dick reference or a dick joke then it most likely is one.

Paganism take:

Newbie questions are good for the health of our movement. The moment we stop welcoming them and start treating such questions with disdain or scorn is the moment we've started cutting off our potential for growth, adaptation, & change.

Myth take:

Nordic myth generally supports doing what we call pragmatism & practicality. That said, it is important to remember those are NOT the same thing as expediency & the expedient thing does, at times, create more problems than it solves.

See Fenrir for one great example.

She IS the leader of the valkyries so that tracks.

Which is further emphasized by the running joke of Loki coming up with increasingly transparent bullshit to explain away why "Freya" is acting a lot like Thor.

Paganism take:

Our eventual inclusion in society as a "legitimate" religion should not come at the expense of what makes us unique, weird, and wonderful.

It also shouldn't come at the price of ceasing to speak truth to power.

Myth take:

Ambiguity is good. Embrace what it teaches instead of puzzling over what is lacking.

Myth take:

It is important to remember that Nordic myth is a product of a poetic tradition that prized riddles, indirect descriptions, & at least three degrees of separation inside references. Taking it literally misses the point.

Myth take:

Nordic myth tends to land on the side of doing whatever you can when you see harm being done over playing it safe. How you do that is, however, very open-ended.

Paganism take:

Please keep getting weird with it.

Every religion is weird in its own way. Trying to downplay that is generally a bigger problem than accepting the strangeness, the earnest, & the cringe.

Myth take:

Nordic myth generally favors fighting to win over fighting fair.

That is also probably because violence is not treated as a first or most ideal solution to most problems.

Myth take:

Odin spends far more time in myth riddling with giants, tricking people, killing bad hosts, & disguising himself as a wandering beggar than he does as some kind of conquering patriarch.

Myth take:

Interpretations of myth are only bad if they encourage genuine harm to others. Someone associating Loki with the color purple or spongecake harms no one while someone saying Odin wants only white people absolutely does.

Paganism take:

Morality is a compass, in that it helps us find out bearings, and not a map, in that it does not dictate precise actions for all scenarios.

Reversing those tends to cause problems.

Paganism take:

Myths teach us with the good & the bad examples.

Bad examples exist to be discussed and avoided, not dissected and justified.

Myth take:

All the Nordic Gods are interrelated on some level.

That's why it doesn't work to say Aesir = Good and Jotun = Bad.

Myth take:

While blood feuds and pointless vengeance are bad, fully justified vengeance that resolves problems rather than escalating them is defensive.

See the Volundarkvithka for one example.

Paganism take:

Forgiveness is not, unlike in Christianity, inherently virtuous. Sometimes the right answer is telling someone to fuck ALL THE WAY off.

Myth take:

Repair and restitution are good things while pursuing vengeance to the bitter end is generally presented negatively even though the latter is depicted far more often in the sagas than the former.

That's probably because it makes for a much more exciting story.

Paganism take:

It IS OK to ask Gods for things. They may not deliver in the way you expect, but it is OK to ask.

Paganism take:

It is OK to say No to a God.

Especially if they ask you to do something that sounds stupid and/or dangerous.

Paganism take:

Trickster does NOT mean, "I do what I want" or, "that means I'm allowed to be a dick."

It is A Problem that there are folks who treat it as a license to do either or, worse, both.

Pop culture take:

The main way Game of Thrones was subversive was how it portrayed its nobles as out of touch, generally abusive creeps.

That this was ever subversive says a lot of unkind things about fantasy as a genre.

Pop culture take:

Robert Eggers is a genius who should keep getting money for whatever he wants to do.

Paganism take:

We are a movement that relies heavily on Internet architecture that we do not control.

That is a major problem which must be fixed tho fixing it will not be easy.

Paganism take:

Our movement's greatest challenge after surviving Christo-fascism is and will be ensuring that high control, authoritarian spirituality (popularly known as cults) is uprooted from our movement and is firmly kept out.