“Goth Zodiac” Art Series: Ophiuchus

A series exploring how the qualities associated with the signs of the zodiac can manifest in Goths!

After finishing the series with Pisces, I decided to do one more to represent Ophiuchus, for all those who follow the 13-sign zodiac (although I’ve never met anyone who actually does). I enjoyed the opportunity to use some more colours and try and draw something Japanese-inspired, anyway!

Now, do I include Cetus as well??

You can view the rest of the series so far and my other artwork here:http://trellia.deviantart.com

“Goth Zodiac” Art Series: Pisces

A series exploring how the qualities associated with the signs of the zodiac can manifest in Goths!

We finally get to Pisces, the final sign of the classical Zodiac. Pisces seem to be the archetypal Romantic Goths to me – dreamy, melancholy, artistic and mystical.

And so this spells the end of the Goth Zodiac series…or does it??

You can view the rest of the series so far and my other artwork here: http://trellia.deviantart.com

Illegal action against freedom of expression is just plain lazy

The statue of Manannán Mac Lir in Londonderry before it was stolen

Just weeks after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, another incident happened in Northern Ireland in which it appears religious fanatics took illegal action because they were offended by artistic expression.

A beautiful and impressive statue of the Celtic sea god, Manannán Mac Lir, was stolen from Binevenagh Mountain in Londonderry. In its place, the thieves left a wooden cross with the words ‘You shall have no other gods before me.’ More details are available at the BBC website here. The evidence suggests that the statue was stolen by Christian fanatics who took offence at having any God but the Christian God depicted in the vicinity.

There have been many times in my life where I have been offended by the actions of others. I have witnessed animal cruelty, environmental destruction and members of the far-right marching in my very home town, and every time I saw such things, I felt literally sick with rage. All these things I saw went against everything I had been brought up to believe in about respecting life, being kind to people and animals, and tolerating other cultures. The primitive, animal part of me wanted to physically hurt and destroy the offenders, so I wouldn’t have to look at them any more.

But I never did anything of the sort. Instead, in all these cases, I found other like-minded people and together, we raised our objections. We sent letters to the offenders or to MPs telling them what we thought. We raised public awareness of the issue to try and get more people on our side. We participated in noisy demonstrations and protests. But we never did anything illegal. While we all hated what the offending party said and did, we respected that they had the right to free expression within the law, just as we did.

Which is why I disagree so vehemently with some of the comments that are coming out in the wake of Charlie Hebdo saying that the right to free speech has limits when it comes to religion – in other words, saying that those who insult religion are “asking for it.” I say a big NO to this. Aside from hate speech and other speech that incites criminality, by definition freedom of expression gives us the right to offend. It gives us the right mock religion and any other aspect of human culture without fearing either action by the state or vigilante action, terrorism or otherwise. That does not mean that you are free to say what you like without anyone else countering you (expect to lose friends very fast when you spout unpopular opinions) – but those who counter you must also act within the law. There is NO excuse for murder or any other illegal action against those you find offensive.

If someone wants to make fun of me for worshipping a fox-god, fine – don’t expect me to be very nice to you, but I’m not going to hurt you or do anything illegal in response. And if you want to tell me that my religion is blasphemous to you and offends you, that’s fine too – again, you’ll probably make me very unhappy, but you have the right to say it. And if you take offence at a statue of a Celtic sea god, you have every right to tell the world and protest about it and give people a chance to hear why you don’t like it. But you never, ever have the right to take the law into your own hands and actually destroy the statue. When you think about it, it’s just lazy. It’s just refusing to engage in the long process of protesting and slowly bringing people to your way of thinking. And it makes you look barbaric and idiotic.

And no, I don’t think the entire Christian world needs to be condemned for the actions of a few fanatics.

As for a response to the theft of the statue, I think the best thing to do would be to replace it with 100 more statues. I’d like to see someone try to steal all of those…

“Goth Zodiac” Art Series: Aquarius

The latest in my Goth Zodiac series – Aquarius!

I see Aquarius as being very much the opposite of its adjacent sign, Capricorn. For me, Capricorn symbolises things that are old, dark and heavy – hence Capricorns are said to be long-lived, conservative and stubborn. Whereas in my mind, Aquarius is new and breezy, which is reflected in Aquarians’ tendencies for creativity and unconventionality. In this series, I therefore gave the Capricorn Goths an oldy-worldy Steampunk look with occult trappings, while Cyber fashion inspired my Aquarius Goths.

You can view the rest of the series so far and my other artwork here: http://trellia.deviantart.com

Handmade Felt Brighid

My friend who made an offering at Fushimi Inari Grand Shrine on my behalf was kind enough to bring back a little “Make your own felt penguin” set from a hundred yen shop. I’ve never made felt before so I was reluctant to open the pack and have a go for ages – until I had an idea to use the contents to make a felt Brighid for Imbolc! Imbolc is associated with lambs, so it seemed more than appropriate to make a representation of the goddess out of felt wool to put on my Imbolc altar.

It turns out you make felt by repeatedly stabbing wool with a sharp needle – you need a lot of patience and very thick skin as you will end up pricking yourself on multiple occasions! I didn’t really know what I was doing (and I’m not at all patient) but I managed to make a sort of head and body, with blond felt hair.

Brighid is sometimes known as “Bride,” and indeed she is sometimes associated with brides. It therefore seemed appropriate to dress her in some of the leftover material cut from my wedding dress when it was altered (white is also a common Imbolc colour). I folded the material around Brighid in the shape of a lily (more commonly associated with Ostara, but it’s still a Goddess flower and not wholly inappropriate), tied it off, added a little paper rose for colour (red is another Imbolc colour) and left it as finished!

She’s fairly delicate (the felt’s not particularly tightly bound) so I hope she lasts until Imbolc!

Making recycled gift tags

I thought it would be a good way to kick-start my New Year’s Resolution to live a more green lifestyle to make some gift tags out of old greetings cards that my husband and I have received over the years!

As well as this year’s Christmas cards, they’re mainly from some of our milestone events, such as our engagement and house moving, so I’ve been reluctant to throw them out. However, they’ve just been sitting in a big envelope for ages and I have a feeling that if I don’t put them to good use, I’ll end up throwing them out. So I thought cutting them into gift tags would be a wonderful way to recycle them, so they can bring joy to someone else.

It was also really nice to go through them all again and read all the nice messages from people we’ve had!

I think I’ll keep on doing this with greetings cards in the future as it’s a really enjoyable way of recycling them.

Salt Dough Otafuku Mask for Setsubun

My salt dough Otafuku mask

Now that the Winter Solstice has passed, I’m already thinking forward to the next Sabbat – Imbolc in February!

As a Shintoist, I plan on celebrating Imbolc together with the Japanese equivalent, Setsubun. Celebrated at the same time as Imbolc, Setsubun celebrates the coming of spring. Setsubun is associated with a lot of activities and symbols, but perhaps the most well-known ritual is to scatter soy beans outside houses while crying out “Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi” (literally, “Demons out, fortune in.”) It’s a type of purification ritual, meant to drive out harmful spirits.

It’s interesting that both Imbolc and Setsubun are strongly associated with a particular goddess. The Celtic fire goddess Brighid is usually venerated by Pagans at Imbolc, while Setsubun is closely associated with an obscure female character known as Otafuku, who personifies luck and joy.

Although Otafuku is commonly regarded as a comical figure, I agree with John Dougill of Green Shinto that she is probably an aspect of Uzume no mikoto, a central figure in one of Shinto’s most important myths. Uzume is said to be the goddess of passion and mirth whose comical yet sensual dancing lured the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami out of the cave from which she was hiding from her frightening brother. It seems very likely to me that a figure attributed with leading the sun goddess out of a cave would have close ties with the coming of spring – a time when the sun emerges after being hidden in darkness during the winter.

I also suspect that Otafuku is also a symbol of fertility. Depending on how it is depicted, her face is often yonic or phallic in nature. Again, this would tie in with her connection to Uzume (identified as a goddess of love), as well as the coming of spring.

Because I’d like to celebrate both Imbolc and Setsubun together, I decided to make a miniature mask of Otafuku to put on my altar in the run up to the festivals. I made her out of salt dough painted in acrylic. Now all I need is something to represent Brighid…

Christmas 2014

Merry Christmas everyone!

As always I spent Christmas with my family, and since I’m pretty much out of the broom closet now in terms of them knowing that I’m a practising Pagan, this year I decided to make them some cookies with a bit of a Pagan spin on them – each one had a different rune cut into them (the recipe was basically the same I used for my Samhain soul cakes but with additional raw cane sugar for that extra Christmas flavour!). I let everyone pick their own cookie and look up their meaning on this chart.

My husband tried one with a Peorth/Hearth rune on it, which apparently means “Divination/Luck/Primal Law.” We’re looking for a house right now so I hope a rune with a combined meaning of “Hearth” and “Luck” foretells some good fortune in that area in 2015! My sister, who’s recently given birth to her second son, picked out the “Fertility” rune and refused to eat it!

Although fortune telling activities like this aren’t usually associated with Christmas (it’s more of a Halloween thing in Britain), it is associated very much with O-shogatsu (Japanese New Year). Dreams had on the night of New Year are taken very seriously as they are said to fortell the year ahead, while a popular activity that Japanese may do while visiting the temple or shrine at New Year is O-mikuji – a kind of fortune telling “raffle” where the participant receives a slip of paper that tells them how lucky they will be in the future.

Because my sister now has two young children, our Christmas celebrations have changed quite a bit – they’re far more child-orientated now, just like they were when my sister and I were children. I think this is how it should be. Christmas is a very magical time for children indeed, and they should definitely take central stage. And as a Pagan, I can now celebrate the Winter Solstice as a more spiritual and personal time, so everyone’s happy!

“Goth Zodiac” Art Series: Capricorn

The latest in my Goth Zodiac series – Capricorn!

Capricorn is my sign! Although I don’t think I’m a very typical Capricorn at all. I think I’m much closer to Aquarius, which I was only a few days away from (and I was born early…). I think Capricorn has some rather dark aspects being so linked to Saturn and the sign of the goat – I can imagine this pair here in high-powered jobs by day, but into some serious Crowley-inspired ritual magic by night!

I’d like to dedicate this to Goth icon Chris Sheehan, former guitarist of the Sisters of Mercy, who recently died of cancer.

You can view the rest of the series so far and my other artwork here: http://trellia.deviantart.com

Harry Potter and the …School of Witchcraft without Wiccans??

J.K. Rowling frequently treats fans to explanations and back-stories to the world of witchcraft she has created in Harry Potter through her official website Pottermore and her Twitter account. But last week she dropped a bit of a bombshell when she tweeted: “To everyone asking whether their religion/belief/non-belief system is represented at Hogwarts: the only people I never imagined there are Wiccans.”

As both a long-time fan of the Harry Potter series and as an Eclectic Pagan influenced by Wicca, I have a problem with this tweet. It seems utterly unnecessary to say such a thing that is inevitably going to make some of her Wiccan fans feel alienated. She later explained that Wiccan magic is somehow not compatible with the magic of Hogwarts, but this has a rather hollow ring. There are plenty of other religions that have magical elements to them (including Judaism, which J.K. Rowling categorically stated is represented in the student body of Hogwarts), and much of the magic in Harry Potter is clearly inspired by Wicca and related living witchcraft.

This tweet is also very dismissive when bearing in mind how loyal Rowling’s Wiccan fanbase has been. Let’s not forget that she came under a lot of fire from conservative Christians for writing children’s books featuring witchcraft. Many Wiccans, on the other hand, love her series (I even featured Harry Potter in my list of top 10 Wiccan movies for children!), and I know from personal experience that she inspired a generation of young people to gain a serious interest in magic and witchcraft. It therefore strikes me as insensitive, if not downright mean-spirited, to say that Wiccans are not represented among the students of Hogwarts.

Finally, I find it very sad that J.K. Rowling has been so quick to exclude Wiccans from her world when she has famously stood up for marginalised communities in her writing. Even when it meant incurring the wrath of those who disagreed with her, she has given a voice to the LGBT community, immigrants, victims of abuse, the disabled, the impoverished, and even criminals. Why, therefore, has she stated that Wiccans don’t belong at Hogwarts? Wiccans and other practitioners of witchcraft have faced persecution for hundreds of years now, and even today a great number feel the need to conceal their religion from others out of fear of misunderstanding and discrimination. It feels like being kicked when you’re already down when the famous champion of victimised minority groups doesn’t make you feel welcome!

The only reason I can think of for J.K. Rowling to say such a thing is to be “ironic,” without really thinking through how it might make her Wiccan fans feel, or because she lacks an understanding of what Wicca really is – does she somehow think that Wiccans wouldn’t want to be at Hogwarts for religious reasons? Because in my experience that’s not the case at all.

So let me be clear now – J.K. Rowling, you do have many Wiccan fans who have taken a lot of pleasure and comfort in your representation of a world where magic has a place, and many of them have been left puzzled and saddened by your throw-away comment on the lack of Wiccans at Hogwarts. Please think more carefully about how your words may make your fans feel in the future.