On Discernment...

On Discernment...

…This side of the hedge.

Today we’re going to learn about pathos, a literary device that is used to persuade readers to take the proffered side in an argument. It can be used appropriately, but it can also be used inappropriately, such as to manipulate. As a preliminary note, the adjective form of pathos is “pathetic,” meaning “of pathos”–so when “pathetic” is used here, it is not used as a negative or disparaging word, only a factual descriptor. Here’s some info about pathos:

“When an author relies on pathos, it means that he or she is trying to tap into the audience’s emotions to get them to agree with the author’s claim. An author using pathetic appeals wants the audience to feel something: anger, pride, joy, rage, or happiness…Emotions can make us vulnerable, and an author can use this vulnerability to get the audience to believe that his or her argument is a compelling one.” [source]

The same source also says, “When reading a text, try to locate when the author is trying to convince the reader using emotions because, if used to excess, pathetic appeals can indicate a lack of substance or emotional manipulation of the audience.” (Emphasis mine.)

There’s also some great information here (and here, here, here, and here) about fallacious pathos, which is pathos that is used incorrectly or excessively to manipulate others. Here are some indicators that are common in witchblr:

Knee-jerk, blind, immediate dismissal of others’ views. If someone dismisses other viewpoints without giving a good reason for it, that’s a red flag. If the reason doesn’t make sense or hold up under scrutiny, same thing. This also extends to directing others to dismiss other viewpoints without engaging and deciding for themselves.

Unjustified and/or irrelevant emotional appeals. If somebody is using a lot of extremely emotional language, it’s probably a good idea to look closer. It’s possible that the emotion is being used to distract people from the facts; this happens a lot, for example, in political arguments. An additional sub-type of this is using a personal anecdote to gain pity from others, although in most cases, the personal anecdote has little bearing on the argument as a whole. This is especially effective on people who are generally empathetic and caring, because they tend to put themselves in the person’s shoes and thereby fall for it a lot easier (speaking as one who has learned the hard way).

Using guilt. If a person tries to guilt you into believing them or doing what they want, I’m guessing you already know that’s a big problem. But this can be more subtle than most people realize, and you may not notice it. Watch for language like, “If you do/don’t do x, then y (bad thing) will happen to me.” A related concept is using fear, which most people recognize pretty readily.

The slippery slope argument. This is when someone says things like, “If this isn’t taken care of now, the community will suffer for a long time to come.” For non-native English speakers’ reference, the name is derived from the phrase “it’s a slippery slope,” referring to walking along the top of a muddy hill and trying to avoid sliding down to the bottom.

Loaded terms. Using loaded terms is always, always an attempt to sway readers’ or listeners’ opinions, and it often works, while simultaneously being subtle enough that many people don’t notice the manipulation. That makes it quite prevalent in abusers’ speech. A loaded term is a word or phrase that is very difficult to argue against, like “freedom” or “responsibility”. No one wants to argue against these concepts, and that can lead them to subconsciously be more willing to believe the argument they’re presented as part of.

Generalization. We’ve all seen this a thousand times. “All Wiccans are fluffy,” “all tradcrafters are snooty,” and so on. This can also be slightly more specific, however: “that whole server is bad,” “all their followers are kids”. Whatever it is, it’s worth a second look, because generalizations are almost never correct. If ever–but then, that would be a generalization. ;)

I think that’s enough for now. There’s plenty of resources linked here, so I encourage everyone who is part of witchblr, or any social media group really, to use them. Do your research. Think for yourself. Vet everyone and everything–including me. Good luck.

Hi chat, I have a question. What are some of the biggest misconceptions you know about? Unlike most of witchblr, you actually read academic texts :p but yeah! Thank you!

Ah, the infamous witchblr. I hope it’s not as bad as tiktok. I’ve got quite a few, and I’ll go over them here.

The idea that hellenic polytheism is not a religion because it’s not Christianity 

You might go — “wait, what?” But I’ve actually seen this quite a few times. Ive met people who say they’re hellenic polytheists, but then call themself an atheist because “hellenic polytheism isn’t a religion.” Well, it is, even if it doesn’t have culturally Christian standards :p This idea comes from the idea that Christianity = religion when Christianity is just one religion. Hellenic polytheism is a religion. 

(And just in case, please don’t argue this point with another unrelated topic. I’m only talking about this specific case.)

The notion that kids or beginners can’t worship the gods

Saying that the kids can’t worship the gods is so historically inaccurate it hurts my soul. Do they forget that this was a religion that people were born into? That they worshipped the gods since they were young? I understand that kids can be stupid, but I’ve seen 13 year olds who are well read, pious, and respectful. 

And the idea that a beginner polytheist can’t worship the gods because of a lack of experience — then how will they get experience?? It’s like trying to apply for your first beginner job and one of the requirements is experience, but you don’t have experience yet!

Lastly, we all know how witchtok likes to gatekeep gods and it doesn’t make sense. These are gods that have been worshipped by kids and “beginners” for thousands of years. You have highly parental gods, gods like Apollon & Artemis who protect the youth. 

The idea that the titans aren’t gods and that you can’t worship them 

The titans are gods. And you can definitely worship them. I mean, they had cults back in antiquity too! Some might say “well, the titano-” no. Hell, not every titan sided with the other titans — titans like Helios joined Zeus’s side :p Even Kronos was celebrated — alongside Zeus, and he’s the ruler of Elysium — granted by Zeus.

And as someone who worships Helios, I get very annoyed at that one. 

The idea that you can’t worship x god because you’re y

You can worship Artemis if you’re a man or nonbinary. To say otherwise is just... plain wrong. I guess they’ll just have to ignore all the Male devotees back in Ancient Greece. Smh. 

That you can’t worship heroes 

This probably due to hero worship not being a well known topic, but you can totally worship heroes. I even made a Hero worship 101 guide.

That magic is “untraditional” “not correct” or “not historical” in our religion 

This one in particular annoys me. It’s like, read a damn ancient magic academic book right now. Look to gods like Hekate, Helios, Kirke. Yes, modem witchcraft isn’t like Ancient Greek magic, but like. Stop. Everything changes and grows. 

And oh, some might say “adding the gods to witchcraft is not historical-” stop. Look to magic in Alexandria, the PMG, the curse tablets, Medea, etc. Some hellenic polytheists hate witches and I’m like :// stop. Yes, Wicca can be annoying because of all the misinformation, but still. 

Even in the Iliad, there’s magic. Look to Kirke, daughter of Helios, for more information. 

I’ve even seen some say that the “true religion” doesn’t allow witchcraft and divination, and to that I say, run because that’s a literal cult if they say they have the true religion. And divination was HUGE in Ancient Greece. We have multiple divination types, and even an academic text I’d recommend on it: Ancient Greek divination by Sarah iles johnston. 

The idea that an altar is necessary 

It’s not, and not everyone in Ancient Greece could have a shrine. An altar is a tool for worship, not a requirement. 

That altar is spelled “alter”

Altar and alter have very different definitions and I tend to get confused because I don’t realise that they’re trying to say altar and not alter.

That some gods are “beginner friendly.” 

There is no such thing as a “beginner friendly” god. Gods aren’t level up systems, they’re individuals. It’s like saying you can level up with your friends, like, dude no. Go with who YOU want to worship and feel comfortable with.  

That tiktok is a good source.

Tbh I’d just stay away from tiktok. It’s not going to help you at all. If you need academic texts, hmu and I can try to get some for you. All I want is for y’all to succeed.

These are all the ones I can muster up right now. This took quite a bit of energy from me to create — feel free to add on! And give good reasoning too. That’ll help anon most : D

No offence but you know what's really weird about America? You've got hardly any history past a couple of centuries. No medieval castles, no Roman walls, no bronze age settlement sites. Is there even anything for archeologists to dig for?

People have been here for quite some time, they’ve only been white for 500 years

This is a long read, but important

this came from a friend’s post…..For those of you complaining about Trump being blamed for the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic: Note: I didn’t write this.

I thought I would post a little history lesson for everyone on both sides of the political divide. I think it’s important that we understand the truth, especially come November when it’s time to vote. Forgive the length, but hey, we all have time on our hands to read, correct?

In December 2013, an 18-month-old boy in Guinea was bitten by a bat and died a brutal death a day later. After that, there were five more fatal cases. When Ebola spread out of the Guinea borders into neighboring Liberia and Sierra Leone in July 2014, President Obama activated the Emergency Operations Center at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. The CDC immediately deployed CDC personnel to West Africa to coordinate a response that included vector tracing, testing, education, logistics, and communication. Altogether, the CDC, under President Obama, trained 24,655 medical workers in West Africa, educating them on how to prevent and control the disease before a single case left Africa or reached the U.S. Working with the U.N. and the World Health Organization President Obama ordered the re-routing of travelers heading to the U.S. through certain specific airports equipped to handle mass testing. Back home in America, more than 6,500 people were trained through mock outbreaks and practice scenarios. That was done before a single case hit America. Three months after President Obama activated this unprecedented response, on September 30, 2014, we detected our first case in the U.S.A. A man had traveled from West Africa to Dallas and somehow slipped through the testing protocol. He was immediately detected and isolated. He died a week later. Two nurses who tended to him contracted Ebola but later recovered. All the protocols had worked. It was contained. The Ebola epidemic could have easily become a pandemic, but thanks to the actions of our government under President Obama, it never did. Those THREE EBOLA CONFIRMED CASES were the ONLY cases of Ebola in the U.S.A. because Obama did what needed to be done THREE MONTHS PRIOR TO THE FIRST CASE. Ebola is even more contagious than COVID-19. Had Obama not acted swiftly, millions of Americans would have died horrible, painful, deaths like something out of a horror movie (if you’ve never seen how Ebola kills, it’s horrific). It is ironic because since President Obama acted decisively we forget about his actions since the disease never reached our shores.

Now the story of COVID-19 and Trump’s response that we know about thus far: Before anyone even knew about the disease (even in China) Trump disbanded the pandemic response team that Obama had put in place. He cut funding to the CDC, and he cut our contribution to the World Health Organization (WHO). Trump fired Rear Admiral Timothy Ziemer, the person on the National Security Council in charge of stopping the spread of infectious diseases before they reach our country - a position created by the Obama administration. When the outbreak started in China, Trump assumed it was China’s problem and sent no research, supplies or help of any kind. We were in a trade war, why should he help them? In January he received a briefing from our intelligence organizations that the outbreak was much worse than China was admitting and that it would definitely hit our country if something wasn’t done to prevent it. He ignored the report, not trusting our own intelligence. When the disease spread to Europe, the World Health Organization offered a plethora of tests to the United States. Trump turned them down, saying private companies here would make the tests “better” if we needed them. However, he never ordered U.S. companies to make tests and they had no profit motive to do so on their own. According to scientists at Yale and several public university medical schools, when they asked for permission to start working on our own testing protocol and potential treatments or vaccines, they were denied by Trump’s FDA. When Trump knew about the first case in the United States he did nothing. It was just one case and the patient was isolated. When doctors and scientists started screaming in the media that this was a mistake, Trump claimed it was a “liberal hoax” conjured up to try to make him “look bad after impeachment failed.” The next time Trump spoke of COVID-19, we had SIXTY-FOUR CONFIRMED CASES but Trump went before microphones and told the American public that we only had FIFTEEN cases “and pretty soon that number will be close to zero.” All while the disease was spreading, he took no action to get more tests. What Trump did was to stop flights from China from coming here. This was too late and accomplished nothing according to scientists and doctors. By then the disease was worldwide and was already spreading exponentially in the U.S. by Americans, not Chinese people as Trump would like you to believe. As of the moment I am posting this, the evening of April 13, 2020, we have Coronavirus 577,729 CONFIRMED CASES, 23,115 COVID-19 DEATHS and 33,907 recovered in the U.S.A. The actual number is undoubtedly Many more than this, with people dying at home uncounted.

As if you needed one more reason to vote, here it is.

Hi, First time in your blog, I've been planning on contacting some germanic gods but I don't want to come out as disrespectful nor I want to end up looking for guidance or advice with neo nazis or that shit, is there any advice you could give an amateur? If not, some kind of internet source where I can get started?

The general understanding of respect and hospitality is fairly common, in my experience; however, despite having had some rather amicable contact with those divinities, my main practice and expertise lie elsewhere - so I pass the question on to @systlin