Plaguecore's Blog

An Update

Warning beforehand, I am off my ADHD meds and you can tell. I will not attempt to organize this even a little <3

I don't know if I've gone through my whole College Saga here. I'd rather not go over it, I'm just a bit worn out by the whole thing, but I finally have been able to take classes again so I'm able to actually make progress towards finishing my degree.

Anyway, that's not what I'm really here to talk about. I'm taking an English composition class (again, because they are not transferring my credits yet. Long story, irrelevant to the current topic) and for an assignment, I chose to talk about how the internet has impacted the pagan community and what the implications are. To oversimplify. It's been really interesting to see how things have changed. In some ways, the changes have been pretty big (ie there is less overtly new age-y influence in most modern pagan spaces). In other ways, things are pretty similar. Most people are solitary, most people really only had access to information about Wicca until like 2015, and we have all been reading the same authors since 1976. Which isn't a problem, by the way. There's something really unifying (for lack of a better term) realizing that the people in these early pagan forums were aware of and influenced by exactly the same books as pagans are currently.

...The ones that still read, at least. I do feel pretty pessimistic about the modern pagan community, which is why I am always trying so hard with the very, very little reach I actually have. The professor noted on a draft I submitted that I very clearly had a deep understanding of the topic as well as "personal investment" and I was just like girl...you have no idea. This is like. The only thing I think about when I'm not doing some nerd shit. But to get back on topic, I am pessimistic because I feel like...most newer pagans are not learning anything from worthwhile sources. It feels like all of them got pagan-ized via TikTok. Which isn't an issue on its own, by the way. If you find a spiritual practice that is meaningful to you (and not fundamentally evil, don't become a scientologist), it doesn't really matter how you came to it. The internet is how I learned that I could be a pagan without specifically being Wiccan. We all have to learn about things somehow...but I wish new pagans and witches had the intellectual curiosity that used to be the driving force behind the witch/pagan community. There used to be whole entire online study groups where people would share resources, but now it feels like people just see things online and just. Do not verify it. Or seek out more information. There is no real desire to learn more. This isn't exclusive to pagans, but that just happens to be what my paper topic is so.

But seeing that pagans from the 80s and 90s read the same books as people who were learning about paganism around the same time I was. Silver Ravenwolf is mentioned in a book I was skimming for this paper from 2005. I think she's a hack, but she is definitely a Big Name in the Wiccan/eclectic witchcraft space. Particularly with teenagers, since some of her books were specifically aimed towards teens. Scott Cunningham came up. He's Wiccan, but we own at least one Cunningham book. Very well known. Of course, Spiral Dance and Drawing Down the Moon are mentioned. Margaret Murray, my actual nemesis. Galina Krasskova, whom I have personal beef with (not quite a long story, but not pertinent information right now). ecauldron and Geocities were mentioned. A lot of the things people were doing in the 90s-00s were very similar to what I was doing in the 2010s. A little less similar to what I've noticed going on in the 2020s. But the same authors are still around.

I straight up keep forgetting what I'm typing, my brain is starting to turn into mush because I went directly from writing an essay to writing a bearblog post. Who gives a shit, read more books. I can give you recommendations if you d like. I'll give you some right now, actually.

Here they are:

Most of these authors are pretty decent, though I'd also like to recommend Morgan Daimler, if you're interested in Irish paganism, faerie faith or Norse paganism. Or just reading a they/them pagan author. Stephanie Woodfield writes a lot about the Morrigan, if you're curious about her. Sharon LaBorde, from what I can tell, has started branching out into Sumerian paganism (at least on her website). S. Connolly is a very well regarded demonolatrist, if you're into demons or satanism. Alaric Albertsson writes about Saxon paganism, but his books are mostly out of print from what I can tell. I can keep going, but I have to do more stuff.

Eternal Egypt and Everlasting Egypt are also decent if you're a Kemetic pagan, but they are dense and not inherently useful. But they're referenced so much by Kemetics that they're just listed as "EE". "EE" most often refers to Eternal Egypt, since Everlasting Egypt came out more recently.

Pagans please read more books. Please. I see misinformation so often that I've actually largely disconnected from the online pagan sphere because I just Cannot do that. Not that books will help with that. I also think part of this is a result of the apparent literacy crisis going on in the US. Okay, I neeeeed to get back to work.