Dear President Obama,
You may be interested (or possibly amused) to know that you will be taking your oath of office with the prayers, good wishes, and magical spells of over a million Witches, Druids, and other nature Worshipers across America and around the world.
Fundamentalist Christians have been casting curses and exorcisms in your general direction. They and their fellow lunatics will be horrified to know that non-Christians admire you, and will take this as more “evidence” that you must be part of the Forces of Evil™. But the sane citizens of America and the world are delighted to see a kind, decent, and brilliantly smart person finally winning the Presidency after our long national nightmare.
While it’s probably not something you will publicize, we do want you to know that we will be doing all in our spiritual power to protect you from the haters and the killers who can, and will, threaten you, your beautiful family, and your vision of a kind and decent America.
Not that we will agree with everything you will do or say — we’re Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, and even Republicans, after all. But most of us know the stakes, both literally and figuratively. We know it’s going to take a lot of magic to fix the mess George W. Bush got us into at home and around the world, and to rescue us from the Republican Depression.
So if you feel a warm glow of safety around you, or if the Secret Service people are more intuitive and alert than ever before, or the lunatic haters find themselves making really stupid mistakes that reveal their intentions in time to thwart them, or you suddenly find yourself more eloquent and persuasive, that will (in part) be us. We say “in part” because we know you will also be receiving the prayers and good wishes of many people from many belief and non-belief systems. We Neopagans, however, know how to shape those vague feelings coming your way into actual magic that does something useful for you, America, and the world.
You will never be able to acknowledge us publicly, for that is the nature of American politics. We won’t mind. Just do the best you can to fulfill your ideals for America and the world, and we will be well rewarded. Of course paying attention to freedom of religion for all belief and non-belief systems, and taking bold action to protect Mother Nature would be nice too …
yours truly,
Isaac Bonewits
A PS to the other readers of this: Yes, I know there are right-wing and racist Pagans out there who don’t like President Obama much. That’s why I said, “we Neopagans.” Conservative Mesopagans are free to denounce our efforts and refuse to participate.
Thank you for speaking on behalf on Neopagans; very eloquent, yet straightforward. I’ll definitely be sending protection and other energies his way.
I, as a conservative libertarian, wish Mr Obama well and rejoice his place in history. He has a difficult task ahead of him and I don’t envy his position at all. The spells of guidance and positive energies I cast for Mr Obama to do what is right and best for THE MAJORITY is the same one I cast for every President since Carter, REGARDLESS of political affliliation!
“Lord of Day
Lady of Night
Creator of all
Maker of right!
Guide our Leaders on this day
From greed and corruption, deter their path
Help them understand what is right
And what is best for the majority of those they serve.
Let them not be influenced
strong-armed or blackmailed
by those who would wish for self-aggrandizement.
Let them follow their will and convictions.
Let them follow the proper path
Face the challenges of office, adapt and overcome,
For the benefit of all
So say we all!”
I fear that Mr Obama may disappoint many within his following for, as the great liberal Baltimore columnist, H.L. Mencken, once said of politicians: “A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.”
The fact that Mr Obama comes from the liberal (almost to a fascist degree) Chicago political machine which produced the likes of both Mayor Daley’s, Rod Blagojevich (yes, he is a liberal democrat, though you never hear that in the press), Roland Burris, Jesse Jackson Jr, Bobby Rush, et all, makes him doubly suspect, but only time will tell how many of the lessons he learned from the corrupt politicians there will cross over into Federal governance.
I don’t consider myself to be a “mesopagan”, even though I voted for Mr Bush twice, his father twice and Reagan once – any more than it made me a communist to vote for Socialist Party candidates in the past. Nor did I cast spells for the defeat of Clinton or Obama, attend any circles avocating negativism for the defeat and death of any liberal candidates or write any negative personal attacks on the liberal candidates – or the opposite, such as I witnessed on the pages of Witchvox advocating the casting of negative spells towards conservatives during the two Bush elections. In fact, I dislike and tend to eschew labels, but I know that it is human nature to try and place one into boxes and define those boxes. If it makes one comfortable to do so, I am fine with that. It’s on your karma, not mine. I really don’t care what people think. It’s what I believe and what is between me and my own personal god and goddess that counts.
Fundementalism is rampant on both sides of the spiritual aisle and is alive within paganism/wicca as well in a way that I call “pundementalism”. I have been the target of it many times over because I hold beliefs that “differ” from the leaders of communities or that don’t mesh with leaders suffering from obsessive-compulsiveness, where everything HAS to be done THEIR way or it “isn’t valid.”
It is my right to hold my own opinions – whether they be political, spiritual, ecological or other – without others resorting to derogatory name-calling, merely to belittle me without offering a substantive argument in return.
Just because I hold conservative opinions does not make them “correct” in all ways nor do they make your opinions any less valid. Our differences do not lie in the goal, but in how to achieve them.
Howeveer, I do not attack the PERSON that holds a differing opinion by vitriolic name-calling when I cannot come up with facts to refute them, I criticise what I believe to be their inaccurate political sophistry, their LACK of facts and poke holes in the arguments of those I disagree with, just as they should mine. As long as these discussions can be held on a civil level without rancor and personal attacks, they are simple disagreements in philosophy – not the hate-mongering that pagans are just as guilty of as christian fundementalists are.
And, when wiccans/druids or pagans come together to delve into negative energies for the defeat of and demise of people they disagree with, they are wandering into areas of hypocrisy within their belief and I will fight that type of fundementalism to my very death.
Paganism suffered justly for the karmic backlash of those negative spells cast in the 2000 and 2004 elections. I sincerely doubt that the devout christian that Mr Obama is will do much to forward the agenda of paganism in any form (read some of Rev. Wrights diatribes against homosexuals and unbelievers – meaning ALL pagans, which he equates to “satan worshippers” – to see what kind of church Mr & Mrs Obama attended for 20 years!).
So yes, I do mind if he doesn’t openly acknowledge us. His lack of acknowledgement puts him in no better light than Sarah Palin, who many pagans painted as an enemy worthy of destruction because of what HER pastor taught… and Obama’s church believed many of the same things HERS did. To say that he is “different” because he is a “liberal” is mere fluffery and whitewash unless he PROVES that he is more friendly to our beliefs.
Until we learn to avoid political and spiritual adventurism and engage in more positive aspects on a grass-roots level that presents our spirituality in a harmonious light (doing community work, helping the poor, raising funds for good causes, etc, OPENLY as a pagan community) then we will never succeed at being accepted. And until we learn that there are many among us that hold different beliefs and ideas of what is “right” and “acceptable” in our spiritualism and rituals, we will continue to breed fundementalism within the pagan community.