western witches/wiccans can be some of the most bigoted and willfully ignorant people alive
‘burning times’ ‘heirs of salem’ ‘ancient mother goddess ’ why don’t you read some wikipedia articles and calm down
all snark aside the number of practitioners who genuinely believe the salem witches were burned at the stake (they were not), or that men were never accused of witchcraft in american or european trials (they very frequently were), or even believe that there actually WERE members of an ancient hereditary matriarchal witch cult living in new england (lol no) is mind boggling
Though the church had a special interest in burning midwifes and other powerfull women. But yeah “Wiccan” and “Celtic witch” are kind of big red flags for general ignorance and often cultural appropriation. Wicca was formed in the 1940-60s by white people and is generally a cultural cherry picking mess. Celtic is an umbrella term coined in 1707 and is later applied to Gaels and Gauls. But basically the problem is that “celtic” includes wide array of ethnic groups from Scotland to Bretagne and if someone says “celtic people believed..” it’s in similar vain as “the native americans believed”. So someone claiming to be a “celtic witch” hasn’t really done their research.
I’ve spent years making post after post trying to pinpoint the exact thing that Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket) did differently than J.K. Rowling, which caused him to somehow turn Olaf into an amazingvillain while Snape is still causing hatred and controversy in the fandom a decade later.
And after mentioning something in passing in another post, it suddenly hit me what that difference was.
J.K. Rowling approached her character with the mentality that a person can be redeemed if its revealed that they couldhave been a good person but circumstance and tragedy got in the way. She sees the fact that you could be forced into being a horrible person as a huge tragedy and tries to emphasize what could have been. She doesn’t just do it with Snape (Dumbledore’s another great contender) but Snape’s arguably her biggestvictim when it comes to this. She shows you what his life was like and lets you know what couldhave been if only this had changed or that had changed. And she does so in a way that makes you feel sympathetic towards Snape, enough so that you’re supposed to totally agree with Harry when he names his childafter him. Because sure he wasn’t that great but he couldhave been had the situation been different.
And Daniel Handler begins doing the same thing with Olaf. After books upon books of building him up to be this evil guy, he abruptly releases one of the most tragic backstories in villain history, making you realize that Olaf‘s life could have been a lot different had he not been forced into certain situations due to tragedy and circumstance. And like Rowling, Handler also presents this as something that’s tragic. But here’s where he differs.
Because Rowling’s stance is: “This character could have been this instead and can you imagine how wonderful that would have been, had it not been for these circumstances?”
Whereas Handler’s stance is, “Well yeah, this is what the character could have been but this is what he ended up becoming and like it or not, this is who he is and this is who he’ll be remembered for.”
Rowling wants you to know that doing horrible things doesn’t make you a horrible person because there could be a rhyme or reason to your actions. A solid grey morality.
Handler wants you to know that doing horrible things doesmake you a horrible person because no matter what the motif is, you’re still doing horrible things and will be remembered for said horrible things.
Which is infinitely more tragic, infinitely more morally ambiguous, and infinitely more interesting.
J.K. Rowling tried to redeem Snape.
But Handler? Handler managed to redeem Olaf and not redeem him at the same time. Handler made his backstory tragic and he showed the reader exactly how things could have ended up, causing you to sympathize with the villain. But he also showed the reader exactly how things didend up, reminding you that no matter what could have been, it’s not what happened; instead we have this evil man who has done horrible things that are far too heinous to take back, no matter how much he may want to.
And while Rowling and many other YA authors took the approach that it’s never too late to redeem yourself and become the good person you should have been all along, Handler straight up took the, “Nope, for some people it’s far too late and no matter how much they may want to redeem themselves, they never will and they’ll have to die knowing that they are hated.”
And I don’t care how much you love Harry Potter, Handler’s approach to this character and the overall bleak philosophy and moral implications is on a whole other level of writing! I think the only other piece of fiction I’ve ever seen that approaches this philosophy of un-redemption is Bojack Horseman and you can still argue that Handler does it better because he’s able to scale it down so that kids can understand it, even if they don’t want to.
And yet, at the end of the day, Handler’s entire philsophy of how you might not be able to redeem yourself can really be summarized in one gif:
I feel like this stems fundamentally from Handler’s Jewishness as opposed to Rownling’s Christianity. Christians believe we’re all sinners, but we can be saved at any time in life through Jesus (details vary by sect). On the other hand, Jews believe that there ARE things that cannot be forgiven, evil deeds that you cannot be redeemed from after they’ve happened…
Because forgiveness involves being forgiven, and you can’t forgive someone for murdering you (because you’re dead)
Equally important is that Christianity tends to think that not being forgiven is the worst possible thing that can happen, since it results in eternal torture. Judaism doesn’t have eternal damnation, so it doesn’t have the same need for everything to be forgiven.
Why is it that your family gathers on Christmas in order to celebrate peace? Why not Eid? Why not Rosh Hashanah? Why not a million different holidays from the literal thousands of existing religions?
The reason you’re celebrating on Christmas of all holidays is because you’re culturally Christian. It’s not something to be ashamed of - you just need to be aware of it.
Huh. I’d never thought about it that way.
I know, right?
To be honest, I hadn’t either, not on any bone-deep level, until I started seriously considering converting, and it was only when I started realizing it on a personal level. But, then, I am also lucky in that we live in a school district where Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah and several other non-Xian holidays are given days off, which is just not the norm anywhere but in those gosh darn liberal enclaves on the coast. :P
This feels really relevant to me too. I stopped being Xian over a decade ago, and I felt…annoyed, honestly, that I was still expected, by family and friends both, to celebrate all of the major Xian holidays even despite being at that time an atheist/pagan. And that’s only increasing my discomfort now that I’m converting to Judaism.
I don’t even know if I can keep having conversations about religion with my parents anymore, our views on faith and holidays and deities are so different now.
My parents basically just ignore the fact that @dadhocand@mistresskabooms and I all converted. I hoped right up until the last second that they would show up to our Adult B’nai Mitzvah, especially knowing I was giving the sermon, but, welp, they didn’t.
Our class has gotten close though so it was okay. My mispacha was there, and one of the other converts in the class, herdad came, so that was good.
Off topic, so anyway.
I’d also like to add (for the fellow Gentiles out there) it’s NOT just the “obvious” things like Celebrating Christmas, either.
It is so, SO many “little things” that you don’trealize ARE Christian-influenced, that you might not even if you stopped and thought about it, because they’re SUCH a part of “secular” culture that you just assumed That’s The Way It Is For Everybody.
I had no idea for example, that the idea you had to have a witness in order for a marriage between two people to be “valid” was something not all religions and systems shared, until a Jewish person over on the NaNoWriMo forums corrected me and said “actually, you can do it just by the two agreeing if they’re above a certain age, in Judaism; it’s still considered religiouslyvalid”.
In the USA, for a marriage to be LEGALLY recognized by the State?
It HAS to have both an Officiant (not necessarily a Priest or Pastor of your own religion; sea captains, judges, and anybody who gets the right piece of paper, can do that), and a Witness. I know this, because I am Legally Married and it was part of the process; I had to get a friend to Officiate and a second friend to sign off as Witness on the paperwork.
And I knew on somelevel this was partly from “religions” “traditionally” requiring it…but I had NO IDEA this was really a Gentile thing, a Goy thing, in specific!
I just….assumed that since verifying it happened was “logical”, all religions would naturally require at LEAST an Officiant OR a Witness if not both, “though I could be wrong” I (very thankfully) admitted. Which in hindsight, is a big Assumption, thank goodness I left myself open for correction lol.
And see, I wasn’t even RAISED going to Church; my parents were ~liberals~ who basically raised me Agnostic.
But I wasraised by a dad whose parents were Protestant, and a mom who went to Catholic school as a kid. I grew up in the American South. I grew up inAmerica, and America is so darn Christianized, that it doesn’t matter that such things aren’t a requirement in Judaism, because they’re a requirement in Christian practice, so they become a requirement in the secular realm as well.
Even the very definition of “religion” is often mistaken for REQUIRING a “belief in the supernatural or a literal higher power” - not because this is in any way anthropologically accurate (not only does Judaism technically allow for the opposite, so do some variants of Hinduism; There’s posts on that blog that covered it better actually but you might have to dig for them; at least those both mention it), but - ding ding!
That’s still how many people in the West think it’s “defined” because that’s the requirements of the Christian religion. A belief in a literal higher power.
Like, I have seen Culturally Christian atheists INSIST that you cannot possibly be “religiously Jewish” AND an atheist/not believe in a literal higher power, only to be corrected by actual Jewish people that “uh, no? That’s not how it works, you’re thinking of CHRISTIANITY?”.
Because they were so entrenched in the Christian Definition of Religion, it never even occurred to them that there was such a thing as a “religion” that did it differently than that.
Because even “secular” society in the West usually defines it that way, because Christianity does.
Heck, the idea of “Judeo-Christian” is…heh, well. Ask a Jewish person or two and if they have the energy you’ll probably get a nice rant on why that term is a serious misnomer; but it’s VERY common to treat Judaism as if it was just the “precursor” to Christianity, as if Christianity is just an extension of Judaism with an extra set of Books, and it’s…it’s not. It’s REALLY not. That thinking stems from Christian cultures trying to simultaneously erase actual Jewish culture (where it actually differed from theirs), and pretending that theirs ~supplanted~ it and ~took its place~ like the New and Improved version, which… of course, being that most Christian sects insist that Christianity is The One True Religion, of COURSE they did.
Even the idea of weekends is pretty much derived from the habit of most Christians to make Sunday a Sabbath and “day of rest” (some Christians do actually use Saturday instead - much like Jewish folk do - but Catholics and a majority of Protestant sects use Sunday).
Even some Really Big “little things” are more Christianized than you think though.
There’s…I mean off the top of my head, that’s it, but there’s definitely more I’m not even remembering and I’m sure quite a few that I’m not even personally aware of yet.
Personally, I’ve found that the more I learn about other cultures, religions, history, etc, the more I realize how very insular and Very Specific and perhaps even culturally weird in the grand scheme of things, my own upbringing was. That’s not a bad thing though! As far as I’m concerned, it’s just helping me learn what my biases and assumptions are, so A+ 10/10 recommend expanding your awareness of this stuff. <3
I’ve noticed this in the way people talk about assassinations. They say Martin Luther King “died for our rights.” I don’t know what that means. He lived for civil rights, and then someone killed him. The idea of a savior’s death causing salvation for all generations thereafter is alien to me. That concept is a result of growing up with a religion where it’s the core of the faith, but to me it doesn’t make logical sense.
