Friday, March 18, 2016

St Patrick's Day

I've seen some pagans spreading some really, really awful history these last few days. One meme in particular has been going around about how St Patrick is Hitler to pagans, etc. he slaughtered thousands of pagans! (Remind me how many people died in the holocaust, again?) Never mind the fact that, you know, no he didn't. Also did you know all the Irish pagans had snake tattoos? (Even though Ireland doesn't have any snakes. Why would they all get tattoos of some foreign animal?) I'm not saying the dude was perfect, and never did no wrong to pagans or anything, but come on, do we have to lie about this crap? The deliberate willful ignorance some people are happy to have, openly admitting that they'll trust their shit sources, because... well, because they say what they want to read.

It reminds me of a few weeks ago, when the Salem witch trials were the hot topic. People lamenting all the witches who were burned in Salem, and how they're our spiritual ancestors, and oppression! Wah! But... there were no witches burned in Salem. No one was burned in Salem, and the people killed were not witches. They were innocent people, Christians, and what happened to them was horrible, and for horrible reasons... can we not twist that into something else? There are still places in the world where innocent people are killed because people accuse them of being witches, places where people do not have the freedom to practice the religion they wish to, let's not shift attention away from those issues to cry about things that don't actually affect us like that.

Bad history is always frustrating, but I've always been more annoyed by it when it comes from pagans, people who you would think would be interested in the actual history they claim their spirituality pays homage to.

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