Everything comes full circle. This is
my advice for the next 4 or more years.
Forty years ago, after studying my
entire life, reading cards since I was 5 and the Tarot since I was
16, freshly minted as an astrologer I made the decision to exit the
broom closet. It was the beginning of my journey when I attended a
conference for Wiccans even though I was a Druid. It became obvious
that I was a good choice as an ambassador for the pagan community.
There was no internet, only magazines, TV, radio and newspapers. I
had worked in the newspapers and still had contacts. I was well
spoken, well read and funny. I was also pretty. That got me
interviews and publicity.
It also got me hate. Keep in mind,
there was no internet. I started getting death threats which I turned
over weekly to the local post office. My house was egged regularly
and finally my tires were slashed. The cop on duty refused to make
the report so I could file insurance claim so inserted myself into
his door so he couldn't close his cruiser and he recanted. Today he
would probably have just shot me.
Then came the religious fliers in every
mailing from as far north as West Virginia. How on earth someone in
WV got the address of a Druid in Pompano Beach on a Rural Route is a
mystery but I felt sorry for the poor misguided people sending these
little books. I knew they were buying them and then paying almost a
dollar to mail them, which was a lot of money in a dirt poor area
that I knew well from my youth. My mother was born there. I would
never have considered sending an unsolicited religious text to
someone but they just kept coming and the weekly bonfire got bigger.
Back in those days, we had one enemy,
Sen Jesse Helms. His idea, since lynchings had gone out of style, was
to deport all pagans and he had quite a following. The IRS refused to
go along with him and issued non-profit status to any religious body
meeting their criteria. But old Helms wasn't through. People lost
their jobs, homes and children in these beginning days. It really
wasn't a question of whether someone would bake a solstice cake for
you but whether they would poison it because they knew they would get
away with it. People, including me, suffered constant vandalism and
others had their pets killed, children beat up and family threatened.
I didn't back down or off. I wasn't raised that way. Finally, ten
years later, we were getting a little tired. It was perfectly okay to
be a psychic, Tarot Reader or Astrologer but add the word pagan and
you were not welcome. So I went on another publicity blitz and
suddenly the establishment of psychics discovered people would pay to
see me so it was really dumb to exclude me from their events because
I was a Druid. I remember Sybil Leek's advise to me, “Use them
back.” More and more people came out of the closet. Helms finally
kicked the bucket and we gained a tenuous equality as “metaphysical”
shops sprang up in every city and the “New Age” was becoming
accepted. It was a pretty quiet 20 years and then a few years ago, I
saw the hate rising again.
At first it was subtle, sending the
kids to do the dirty work. Then it started coming out of the woodwork
as the Dominionist movement gathered steam. Remember, I live where it
started and much to the dismay of their founder, Kennedy, he knew me
well. He also knew I knew where the bodies were buried and would not
hesitate to call the local rag and tell them. We had an uneasy truce
until he died and the Cruz faction arose.
Now that this faction of Christianity
is in power, every person of another faith, another color or another
sexual orientation should be scared witless. Your lives are about to
go back to what mine was 40 years ago. I can't do anything. I am too
well known, but if you are not fully out of the closet, slam the door
and lock it. If you can move and start over, do it. Remember,
anything you put on the Internet never leaves. The horoscopes I did
20 years ago are still there on websites I have never heard of until
I GOOGLED them. Those horoscopes were done before the internet.
Everything you do electronically leaves a trail. There are still some
independent Wiccan and Pagan bookstores. They can order books for you
but if you go for that instant gratification on the net you also get
an instant record of your order. There are so many spying shopping
bots you probably have a half dozen on your computer. All of them can
be used to identify you as something to eliminated. Shop local. If
you want to have an altar, make certain the room is locked. Most of
us learned to have a designated room of worship with a padlock and to
very circumspect about who we allowed into our homes. Black out
curtains are an excellent investment.
One case I was called on in the early
days involved a nudist family that had purchased 10 acres in Florida
with a lake which they had dreams of turning into a nudist retreat.
They had three children under 5 who swam in the lake nude. Like all
proud parents, they had an album of pictures of their children in
which some of them were nude. They were well known nudists and the
father published a nudist newsletter. At no time were those pictures
ever out of that album or shown to other people. However on a
harassment raid by the DEA and local cops, they searched the trailer
and found the album. The parents were arrested for child porn and
their children removed from them. I don't know how long they spent in
jail as they lived in the “Bible Belt” of Florida.
It hit home for me because I realized
my parents could be arrested at any moment for the same charge. They
had pictures of me, topless, at 5 because when I grew up, little
girls went topless until school age and there was the obligatory
bearskin rug nude photo of every kid, all of which were in that
family album sitting in the living room. What do you have sitting
around that is perfectly innocent that can be used against you
because it will be?
We are entering into a period of
persecution and any way any one of these Christian Jihadists can harm
you, they will. With drones, cameras everywhere, Facebook, the
Internet and GOOGLE earth, there is no place to hide. You have to be
very circumspect with your every move. But far more than that, 40
years ago no doctor could have imagined withholding treatment or
harming a patient because of their religion. Now it will become
common place as it already is down here. No doctor would imagine
their office taken over by the staff, and patients, even of the
doctor's religion, being persecuted and harmed and they not being
able to do anything about it because of contracts and insurance
regulations. It is happening and now it is going to get Federal
approval. This is more than baking a cake. This is life and death and
you have to consider what will happen while you are unconscious.
So, yes, hide. This is not a battle we
are going to win. It is a war we will win in the long run because
people just don't like to be repressed for long periods but for right
now, the bigots are drunk with power and they actually have the
power. We must do what we always have, retreat, hide and wait and
keep you children, your pets and your property well protected. It is
safer to be classified a paranoid conspiracy theorist nutcase with 10
motion activated flood lights than gay or pagan. Save the pentagrams
for ritual use only. Cover your tats. There is makeup. Dress
conservatively. Learn to blend into the wallpaper. It is much safer
there.
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