Indiscriminate Blessings

Pagans love to bless things. Whether or not they are sincere about it is immaterial. No matter whether you met just that moment or have known and despised one another for a decade, still
the proprieties must be observed, and observed with a treacly smile and a chirpy "Blessed be!" (This may or may not be accompanied by a Creepy Hug, which is a topic we'll address at a later time.) The process will be repeated upon departure, making "blessed be" the same sort of multipurpose greeting as "aloha."

The even perkier variant, "Bright Blessings!" is almost invariably used in a passive-aggressive manner. It is most effective as a sign-off to an offensive email or message board post. Nothing gets the message across faster than six paragraphs of poorly-spelled and poorly-reasoned flamebait capped off with "Bright Blessings!!!" (Superfluous punctuation is also de rigeur.) The general rule is, the level of the poster's sincerity is in inverse proportion to the size of the font and the number of exclamation points. "Bright Blessings," in paganspeak, is roughly analgous to "die in a fire."

The other most commonly used all-purpose blessing is "namaste." This is a Sanskrit compound word, from namas (to bow) and te (to you), and is a culturally-specific salutation common in India and Nepal which has since been widely disseminated thanks to Eastern disciplines of yoga and meditation becoming popular in the West. Most pagans don't know or care about the etymology of the word, because it sounds cool and lends an air of multicultural exoticism to their communications. (Speaking foreign languages where there are perfectly good English words available is a method of one-upmanship which we will also tackle in a later post.)

(Note also that the very word "bless" appears to derive from the Old English blodsian, meaning "to make sacred or holy by marking with blood." No doubt many of the pagans brightly blessing their coreligionists with chirpy words and creepy hugs would prefer to be marking them with blood, but that being frowned upon by the larger culture and often prohibited by law, they make do with what they have. Blessed be, readers!

Reclaiming Holidays

Modern Pagans, themselves masters of cultural appropriation, will happily inform you that a great many holidays common to western civilization were utterly stolen from their wise unbroken ancestral traditions.

For example, one week from today is the Christian holiday of Easter, which Pagans want you to know has notoriously Pagan origins. All of those painted eggs and promiscuous bunnies are remnants of the Pagan festival of Ostara. Ostara is an ancient mystical festival with deep prehistoric roots that has something to do with rabbits screwing and laying decorated eggs. It's very mysterious and occult. Besides, Ostara and Easter are practically the same word, so Easter was clearly an idea stolen from the wise Pagans.

Likewise, Pagans don't celebrate Christmas. Of course not. Christmas is simply another example of those oppressive Christians appropriating our sacred festivals. Pagans celebrate Yule. They put up Yule trees decorated with Yule ornaments, and sing yule carols, gather for Yule feasts to exchange Yule presents, and watch traditional Yule television specials like The Year Without a Santa Claus. Really. Okay, maybe not that last part. Maybe.

Pagans enjoy Thanksgiving, but feel guilty about all of that unfortunate ancestral Native American oppression and don't identify with uptight Puritans. Pagans celebrate Mabon, which in no way is a made up holiday intended to bring the Wheel of the Year up to an even eight festivals. No way. The anchunt and seekrit festival of Mabon is a Celtic myth about the divine son of the Great Goddess who had to be rescued by Arthur and his knights through a series of adventures that involved talking to animals. Obviously, this translates into partaking in a big autumnal feast. It makes perfect sense.

Halloween is never called Halloween, regardless of how much it resembles Halloween. It it called Samhain, which, as all Pagans know, is pronounced just as it is written. Pagans are expected to dress in costume for Samhain (although, as Pagans do this everyday the distinction may be lost on some observers,) and vehemently educate the public about what REAL witches look like, which is demonstrated by their costuming. Samhain is the greatest and most sacred of Pagan festivals, and thus merits a good deal of raucous binge drinking.

Renaissance Festivals

Generally speaking, Pagans enjoy appropriating cultures and time periods to their own norms. They also enjoy dressing up in costume, Arthurian myth, bellydancing, browsing without any intention of buying, and anything vaguely Celtic (all of which will be covered in future SPCL entries). It is therefore only fitting that Pagans adore that perfect storm of all above elements, the Renaissance Festival.

Renaissance Festivals, or Ren Faires, are the pilgrimage of the modern Pagan. Pagans who barely have the motivation to regularly bathe themselves will trek across several states dressed in nicer clothes than they wore to their own wedding in order to hike around in extreme temperatures and they will pay for the priveledge.

If you have never been to a Ren Faire, try to imagine an outdoor shopping mall catering to Pagans of all persuasions where everyone is dressed like extras from that old Robin Hood movie with Errol Flynn and they all quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail while swilling large quantities of mead.

At any given Ren Faire there will be at least one young woman dressed like an Amy Brown fairy, a gentleman dressed as a Sorcerer's Apprentice style wizard, and a young man in a cloak with a pentacle the size of a dinner plate on his person. These people will happily volunteer to you that they are in fact Pagans, which may cause you, should you also identify as a Pagan, the desire to impale yourself on the nearest sharp object.

Sharp objects of the cheap and bladed variety are in abundance at the Ren Faire, so do be careful. Should you encounter anyone with more than three visible weapons on his or her person at the Ren Faire you may be dealing with an Advanced Pagan. It is best to disengage.