#wiccans — Public Fediverse posts

Apologetics: Stranger in a Strange Land – Another New Age Expo.

It’s been several months, which means that it’s time for yet another post about my experience at the New Age Expo. Yippee!

This expo was a lot smaller than the one I went to earlier in the year. It was at a different location that was tiny compared to the last one, yet somehow, the organizers managed to shove at least a quarter of last time’s booths into the space. This inevitably made it a cramped maze of booths and tables (mostly revolving around crystals and psychic readings) that made it hard to navigate. And since most of the people there were selling psychic readings and were doing sessions with their clients, I didn’t get the chance to talk to a lot of people. But the ones I did speak with were interesting.

The first person I spoke to was a lady who was essentially selling various talismans, herbs, potions, etc. designed to bring about various things like love, prosperity, inner peace, protection…blah, blah, blah. We had a conversation about energy and how all the things that she was selling give off energy and can help change vibrations. Her reasoning for this belief is that vibrations determine how we sense the world around us, so various things to affect those vibrations will help change our reality and bring us various things.

This is obviously pseudo-science. While there is something to be said about vibrations affecting how we perceive reality, we can’t just tamper with those vibrations to manifest a new reality for ourselves. Sure, the sound of ocean waves or a certain smell may calm us and help us feel better, but they can’t bring about money, love, protection, etc.

Speaking of that, the next person I spoke to was yet another woman who was selling various types of jewelry that were meant to bring about similar things. Essentially, what she would do is have you pick your jewelry, she would perform a ritual over it to give it the power to attract whatever thing you wanted and then put it on you. We had an interesting talk about religions and worldviews and about more holistic approaches to addressing your mental health, and I was able to share the Gospel with her towards the end of the conversation.

Now, we come to the longest conversation I had at the expo. If you remember my post from last time, you will remember that my mom and I spoke to a guy I’m going to call Wyatt. At first, we thought he was a Wiccan, then thought he leaned more Luciferian, and he was claiming that he was God and could help others reach their god-ness.

But that was the conversation we had with him. This time around, I talked to a friend of his who was part of the same group. I’ll call him Jerry.

The conversation I had with Jerry can be summed up as circular and slightly disturbing. According to Jerry, we aren’t God per se but are part of God in a sense and will go back to him at some point. Who exactly God is or what will happen to you after death (Heaven or Hell) in this view, I’m not entirely sure, as he seemed to be intentionally vague about it. He told me they don’t believe in reincarnation, and when it comes to figuring out morality in this life, while it’s okay to life by your code of morals, it’s better to live by God’s code of morals.

What’s God’s code of morals according to Jerry? Glad you asked. It’s whatever seems good to us humans.

This is where the conversation started getting very circular, contradictory, and a bit disturbing from a Christian P.O.V. According to Jerry, the Bible is man-made, Christianity was created by Paul, and what’s good and brings glory to God is essentially just what we would agree on is good. We shouldn’t judge others as some things are between them and God, and if something works for you, then God must approve of it. Why? Because God is good…whatever good is since there is no set standard other than not being a horrible person.

To support this view, Jerry then resorted to a handful of cherry-picked and radically misinterpreted Scriptures, namely the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman, and the verse about knowing good by its fruit.

“But wait!” You might be saying, “Where in the Bible does it say that what’s good is known by its fruit?” The answer is nowhere, or at least, not in the sense that he meant it.

This quote comes from Jesus in Matthew 7:15-20, where Jesus says:

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? 17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

You see the problem here? Jesus was talking about false prophets. False prophets in Scripture are defined as those who deny the teachings and commands of God. Sure, they may be doing what seems to be “good,” but ultimately, they are workers of evil, “ravenous wolves.” Jerry, to some, may be doing good in helping them reach his spirituality’s version of enlightenment or healing, but ultimately, he is rejecting God’s commands (like don’t be playing around with the occult, which he is), and selling a counterfeit worldview.

Because of this, since he believes himself to be a worker of goodness who does everything by the power of God (whoever his version of God is), he believes he’s in the right. That’s where it got disturbing for me, as it was clear that he knew at least some of the Bible and was content to twist it as necessary. To some extent, that alone made the conversation almost feel like talking to Screwtape. I’ve seen people twist Scripture before, but to see someone twist it so blatantly to defend their views right in front of me made it hit differently. Add on the fact that he hardly let me get a word in edgewise, and it was even weirder.

Eventually, after about 40 minutes of going in circles, being talked over, and listening to Scripture get twisted into a jumbled mess, I made my exit. At that point, I was so confused by what he was saying because it was so out of left field and tired of going in circles that I decided it wasn’t worth it anymore and moved on. I located my dad and after walking around a bit more, we left.

Until next time,

M.J.

Defense Department slashes its religious designations list from more than 200 choices to 31

By TIFFANY STANLEY
Updated 5:01 PM EDT, June 5, 2026

WASHINGTON (AP) — "The Department of Defense announced on Friday a significant reduction in the number of religious affiliations it officially recognizes.

"The new list of 31 is down from more than 200 previously recognized traditions that troops could choose from. The list no longer includes #atheists, #UnitarianUniversalists, #pagans and #Wiccans."

https://apnews.com/article/us-military-religious-affiliations-pete-hegseth-christian-002a610344189f4f456291d76b910d52

#USPol #Fascism #ChristoFascism

Maybe him and the Waffle House guy can team up and solve paranormal mysteries, yeah?

Fucking clown show....

#USPol #USPolitics #Monterey #MAGA #USMilitary #HungCao #Wiccans

On "real Christians."

This is a lightly edited version of a post I first made several years ago on Facebook. Sadly, it never seems to stop being relevant.

===

Every time I hear #Christians saying "they're not real Christians" or "this isn't real #Christianity," about other Christians doing something that brings discredit on the ##religion, my skin crawls.

Because if they're not Christians ... well, neither was Constantine. Neither were the generations of #monarchs who followed, invoking the divine right of kings. Neither were the #popes and #bishops and #priests—and note that I'm not just talking about #Catholics here—who almost universally supported and legitimized the idea that #God had put our leaders in place, and to oppose them was #blasphemy.

Neither were the #Crusaders, the #Inquisitors, the #witch-burners. Neither were the soldiers who fought generations of #religious #wars within #Christendom, including the Thirty Years' War that wrought devastation equal to both World Wars. Neither for that matter were the politicians who gave us what we *call* the First World War, in which most of the major combatants on both sides proudly claimed the Christian label, and in several cases were still official theocracies.

Neither were the Christians who rounded up their #Jewish neighbors in the Second for delivery to the camps—and if you claim that was the work of a #neopagan cult that maybe a few thousand people total ever took seriously, I'll laugh in your face before cutting you out of my life. (But I'll remember who and what you are, believe me.) Neither were the people who used Christianity to justify #conquest and #slavery and #genocide and #segregation, for centuries, and in many cases still do.

In short, if you say these people aren't Christians, you're saying most Christians throughout the *entire history of the religion* weren't Christians. You can die on that hill if you really want to. But you'll die alone, and most likely at the hands of your fellow believers.

Christians are, as a rule, no worse than other people. But you're no better, either. Do you *want* to be better? Great, that's what everyone else wants too.

So prove it. Stop making excuses. Own these people, and *then* confront them. Admit that they're yours, and then expunge them. Scourge the heretics with fire and sword, and send them wailing into the outer darkness tearing their hair and gnashing their teeth. Cast them into the lake of fire.

If you do this, if you have first the moral and then the physical courage to face this monstrosity in your midst unflinchingly and with full knowledge of what it is, then you'll have plenty of help. #Jews and #Muslims and #Hindus and #Wiccans and #atheists and all the rest won't just cheer you on. We'll be right there by your side.

And while there are in the US still more Christians than all of us put together, there aren't more of *this kind* of Christian than all decent human beings put together. We can't fight them alone. Neither can you. Together we can—as long as you're honest about what that means.

If you don't? We'll be right back to #Torquemada, with a high-tech gloss. You might live a little longer than the rest of us, but not by much, and you'll go to the rack and the stake and the oven with the words of your own holy writ shouted in your ears.

Those are the only two options. Your choice.

===

Addendum:

I have a great many friends who grew up Christian, and left the religion at some point. Despite having made the choice to walk away from their childhood faith, they often feel the reflexive need to defend the people they were, and in most cases their families still are.

Those who are still Christians, of whom I trust I also have a fair number left, may feel the same impulse—although interestingly, it seems to me they're less reflexive on the whole than the former believers.

We're all made of our #history. The people we were are still the people we are, in some corner of our brains. And there are complexities about being on the inside of any group that outsiders can never quite grasp. It's similar to the way I am about the #military, which is practically a religion in its own right.

Okay. Stipulated, as lawyers say on TV and maybe in real life too. I get it. Now please get this:

Unless you *grew up* as a member of a religious minority, you will most likely never understand, on a gut level, the terror the majority religion inflicts by its very existence.

This isn't unique to Christianity, to be clear. Every majority religion, in every time and place, has unconsciously (and often consciously as well, to be sure) been casually brutal to infidels and heretics. Nature of the beast. But here in the US, that beast invariably carries a cross, so there's the focus of my attention.

You don't have to understand it. Just accept that it exists, and it leaves scars. I can live with those scars, and so can nearly everyone else who bears them. That *stigma*, if you will.

But if you cut us, we still bleed. We'll heal from those wounds too, and add new scars to the old. Long after the bleeding stops, we'll remember who gave them to us.

Here I stand; I can do no other. How about you?

Happy #SilentSunday and happy #Imbolg to all you lovely #Wiccans

And this is good too

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnbeckett/2023/07/the-witch-stands-in-opposition.html

#witches #Wiccans #outsider #magic #values