The Ravens Nest

I got to watch about ten minutes of Tucker Carlson’s interview with John Daniel Davidson concerning how “pagan” America has become.

To watch the entire video, I’d have to pay for it.

That’s not going to happen. Ever. Instead, I’ll simply rebut what I saw in that first ten minutes and you can watch it here.

Author’s Note: I’ll be using two versions of the word “pagan” in this article. One will be the simple term “pagan” which I’ll clarify the meaning of ahead and the second will be more of a proper term that’s been capitalized when I write “Pagan” to describe religions as an umbrella term.

The primary issue I have is with Tucker’s guest. From the beginning, he went on at length with wild stories of human sacrifice, ritual and all the things that I had to hear as a kid during The Satanic Panic. Tucker seemed as though he either wasn’t interested in asking some difficult questions such as “When you say pagans, which sect of pagans to whom are you referring?” or “Are there are pagan people that may hold the same traditional American values and seek self-sufficiency and just want to be left alone?”

If any of you saw the full interview and personally observed some of those questions being asked, please, feel free to let me know in the comments section.

In the two-minute trailer and the ten minutes of video I was able to watch, it seemed that the narrative came across as one that you can’t be anything other than a Christian if you don’t want to come across as suspicious and bent on the destruction of The Constitution and the American way of life where one can take advantage of new technologies or opportunities to create and generate wealth for themselves. I’d like to set the record straight. To quote Gandalf Freyasson, We Can And We Are.

There are pagans out there in just about every denomination that lean Conservative to Libertarian. The thing they all have in common is some shared values, even where we disagree, we do so respectfully.

Let’s talk about paganism for a second. I’ll answer that first question that I think Tucker should have asked early on. What exactly is a pagan? Today, paganism encompasses a wide range of various religions. As it was put to me once, “Every Wiccan is a Pagan but not every Pagan is a Wiccan.” It certainly holds true. Before we can describe the many sects of pagan religions, let’s look at the origins of the word itself, something many don’t know…

By and large, the term was used to describe rural people. While it encompasses those that don’t subscribe to one of the three Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam or Judaism. There are those of us that believe that the deities and emissaries from those religious books do exist, and some of us who don’t believe they exist.

Rural people in those centuries both before and during the expansion of Christianity all over the world believed different things. The thing to understand is that those people had values of community, self-sufficiency, agriculture and other values of rural people at those times.

In this context, the people that reside in rural areas, they’re pagans. Even the Christian people who are out there farming, ranching and living a little more remotely from civilization than the rest of us. That’s not to say that they subscribe to a pantheon of gods, certainly not but, with them, I can agree that their right to the land they’ve bought and kept, generationally, belongs to them and they should be able to do with it as they wish without government interference.

Why would I say that? Simple.

The Wiccan Rede. The link provides the full version. The very final words of it are the clincher. It forces the individual to observe their actions to ensure they’re truly not harming anyone else.

The Havamal, translated by Dr. Carolyne Larrington provides insight into why moderation, caution, observation, hospitality, charity and even the carry and deployment of weapons.

Most of all, we believe in the inherent rights acknowledged by our Constitution.

Primarily, the First Amendment which protects the rights to freedom of speech, that includes the right to rebut speech that is made in error, the right to freedom of religion, note that it doesn’t specify which religion, nor should it, the right to peaceable assembly, the right to petition government for a redress of grievances and the right to Freedom of The Press.

That means I can’t censor you, nor would I want to. It means I can’t tell you that you’re not allowed to practice your religion and/or worship freely. I can’t tell you that you can’t picket or petition and I can’t tell you that you’re not allowed to speak on subjects to inform others. What you do and what I do are protected by that amendment and tells the government “You! Hands Off!” when it comes to that right.

Likewise, the Second Amendment guarantees our right to defend ourselves, our homes and property and our rights and the rights of others, by force if necessary.

To Tucker and Tucker’s guest, John Daniel Davidson failed in the first ten minutes to even acknowledge such facts.

Also, there’s the matter of Easter. The origins of Easter are Pagan. There were a great deal of us that were raising eyebrows at the current resident of the White House declaring Easter “Trans Visibility Day” as we found it disrespectful and could have fallen on any other day out there. None of us believed it was coincidental. That being said, Easter was once known as Eostre and it was, and still is a pagan fertility festival that celebrates the beginning of spring and the exit of winter. It was Pope Gregory who appropriated the celebration when he sent missionaries to the British Isles in 596 in an attempt to convert the Anglo-Saxon people of that time.

Such is the case with many other Holidays. Halloween was co-opted from Samhain, St. Valentine’s day was co-opted from a Roman holiday called Lupercalia, Yule became Christmas, so on and so forth. Simple web searches will confirm this and more.

Today, these holidays have become polarizing even in Christianity with some going so puritan as to say they refuse to celebrate these holidays due to their pagan origins. Meanwhile, Pagans have done what they can to reclaim them and return them to their roots and traditions as according to the practices they could uncover. Meanwhile, there are Pagan people and families out there and these are not monolithic in their beliefs.

There are Pagan people and groups that vote for the very nonsense that Davidson points out, however, they do not represent us. Also, the cover of Davidson’s book is meant to invoke a fear and panic response out of you. Remember what I said about seeing The Satanic Panic as a kid? This is the very thing I’m talking about. Some of us remember history and it’s the one thing we’re attempting to keep from ever happening again.

This is why what Davidson is saying, especially unchallenged, is dangerous. The thing that I continue to attempt to impress upon people is not to overcorrect. We all know and have borne witness to the absolute mayhem of the past 16 years. It started slowly, at first but then, 2016 happened and it ramped up from there with riots in the streets. Property being destroyed if not vandalized, people being assaulted and ostracized for their values or having their lives destroyed for not properly putting toes to line, and those goalposts were ever-moving. The ones who are still holding onto those fallacies as true are outnumbered, scared, desperate and on the run. They’ve torpedoed businesses from within. They’ve truly separated families and now, the exiled outnumber the exilers.

I am aware that the sentiment is to see to it they are destroyed because they would do the same to us, however, when I heard that, I saw more of this coming up. Even in the Q+ movement, they don’t tolerate tough questions. People far older than me in those movement are leaning so hard on the aspects of the narrative that these politicians worship demons and they want to bring back the satanic ritual abuse angle that they will allow no dissention and will only welcome those who believe upon first glance what little evidence they present to their wild claims, most of which have nothing at all do to with the actual posts.

Tucker probably doesn’t seem to understand that current Internet culture is like Trashy Daytime TV Culture on Mescaline, Meth and Steroids.

This type of overcorrection without any sort of reason or logic behind it, it’s not just dangerous to us as Pagans, it’s dangerous to everyone, without exception. It should be noted that The First Amendment alone means that Christianity cannot be officially and politically observed as The National Religion because then the question becomes…which sect? Catholicism is corrupt at the highest levels so what does that leave? Sedevacatism? Baptist Churches? Pentecostal? Seventh-Day Adventism? Lutheran Churches? Methodist Churches? I’m seriously asking and then, what do you do if someone practices, say, Buddhism, Shintoism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Wicca, Asatru, Heathenry, Druidism, and so on and so forth? Outlawing a religion outright has been proven in History to not eliminate the religion, nor the practice, but it will simply go underground.

Case in point, we, as Pagans, ourselves would, in fact, distribute digital versions of The Bible via torrent networks if government were to overstep it’s boundaries and ignore the restraints placed upon it. If Christianity were outlawed, many of us would aid and abet anyone seeking to practice it because, we understand the value of those first ten amendments and what they represent. Outlawing Christianity wouldn’t do anything other than drive the practice underground. Thank goodness for that. I wouldn’t put up with someone on the street telling me what I can and cannot believe, I certainly won’t put up with it from a politician.

To me, it doesn’t matter what it is you believe. If it brings you peace in these otherwise chaotic times, makes sense of the seemingly senseless and gives you the drive, determination and motivation to keep going when all the odds seem stacked against you and you can practice it without harming someone else, then I refuse to stand in your way. Daring to impose a belief system or trying to take my own away will result in the assertion of my own resistance of such actions.

I know that the point of the video was Abortion as a means of Child Sacrifice. In order for something to be sacrificed, it has to mean something to you. Catholics practice sacrifice during one particular season of the year. That’s called Lent. Muslims practice Ramadan where they fast from Sunrise to Sunset. Everyone who wants to lose weight will sacrifice their favorite foods to look and feel better. I think the wrong referent for the word “sacrifice” has been used.

I can tell you what resembles the referent used for sacrifice a little more closely; The Death Penalty.

Every execution has an air of ceremony. The condemned inmate is housed nearly isolated from all others, then moved to an area where they’re kept close to the chamber. There’s the last meal, a visit from a priest if one is so desired, the escort to the chamber, the restraining of the inmate, the recitation of the warrant, a hooded or even hidden executioner, an audience to watch it and then the commencement of it all. Then the inmate is pronounced and the witnesses are led out of the area.

That, if anything, is a ritual.

Debate on how right The Death Penalty is or not is another topic for another time but, while I don’t agree with abortion, it’s with exceptions. If it does threaten the life of the mother in a way that it can’t be corrected, then I personally wouldn’t stand in the way. Much like The Death Penalty, I don’t support it as too many innocent people who have done nothing wrong have been caught up in the gears of that machine (The West Memphis Three are a prime case of that) but, it’s also with exceptions. When you have a truly remorseless killer, I think that person does not need to be part of society anymore.

Tucker, understand something. If you are going to platform people like Davidson, then know that, we expect you to own your responsibility to at least challenge the rhetoric Davidson puts across. If you believe in fair and objective reporting, this is what we expect. If not, then you can expect us to not allow the lies to go unchallenged which does damage your own credibility.

Understand something. You see what happened to these people when they alienated and exiled us. The same can happen to you as well. It’s only a matter of time and, as our gods have taught us, what goes around, comes around.

As I once told my Catechism teacher when it came to the wild rhetoric that Dungeons & Dragons would lead to murder, suicide, etc, “If Satan is the Father of Lies, what makes it right for you to do so?”