One of the members of the divine feminine app put on a Yule event in Tuscambia, Alabama. The description is as follows:
A FREE EVENT! Saturday December 3 from 1-9pm. Come out and enjoy the Celtic and Mystical Vibes of the Holiday Season! Dress up if you would like in Celtic, Viking, gods or goddesses, wizards, witches, or any other mystic! Enjoy last minute holiday shopping, downtown local restaurants and some street food, some street performers and photo ops with a 7 foot Krampus and others in character walking around! A very entertaining event in the quaint downtown of Tuscumbia, AL. See you there!!
–Hesperia Mystic Shoppe
A few leaders from local churches became upset upon learning of the event saying that they were inviting in demons (the Krampus is what they were particularly opposed to). They asked to speak at the local council meeting, and you can see a news story and video here.
When I watch the video, I see their anger and fear. I see their closed off body language: arms wrapped around their chests and faces closed and tight.
Donald Trump may go on about being targeted in Witch hunts, but these are the true Witch hunts of our times.
All of a sudden, an innocent event is turned into something more.
I spoke to Kendall Gilchrist, the owner of the Hesperia Mystic Shoppe and organizer of the event the day after this exploded. She had not slept. She had 37 interviews with various media outlets.
She said she felt nothing but sadness and love towards the protestors.
You watch her newsclips, and you see this. Well, that is the edited parts that made the newsclips since mainstream news is slanted and more concerned about causing disharmony and getting ratings.
Things need to change in our world. Things are changing in our world.
I think about going to this event on Saturday and wonder if it is safe for my daughters and me. I worry about radical, conservative, looney-tune right wing Christians with guns losing it and hurting people.
Are these really Jesus’s followers??
I realize it is time to take it back.
Just as we are taking back words one by one: Witch, Pagan, Heathen, Mystic. We need to take back our culture and events as well. If you can have a Santa parade and Christmas lighting (both Pagan in their roots as so much of Christmas is) then you can have a Yule event with Celtic and Mystical Vibes and a Krampus.
You do not get to tell me any longer what is good and what is evil.
I have been walking this path for the past nine years, and I have gone to many Women Spirituality, Goddess and Pagan events over the years.
When I first started, I had to cross that fear, guilt boundary of my Catholic upbringing. It is a very important line to cross. It is vital that we learn to listen to ourselves and follow love. It is what Jesus preached and did.
‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.
Mark 7:6-7 (New International Version)
Taken from an Elephant Journal article I wrote in 2013.
Many years ago, I went to a Yule event on the North shore of Chicago hosted by a Pagan organization. It was held at this lovely, spirit-filled, Hogwart-reminiscent, old stone campus that held the ghosts of an orphanage, a missionary and more.
The food was incredible, and the atmosphere was magical. A lovely homosexual couple with a large horse skeleton head and cloak did a Welsh rendition of a traditional Yule song and Wassail greeting.
The feeling from that event has stuck with me all these years. It felt like home to me.
I went to a few different events hosted by that organization and held at the same retreat center: one of them was a Samhain event where we invited in our ancestors and spirits in a very reverent, solemn and mystical manner.
Next door to our room was a very large, raucous, alcohol-filled wedding party and after the Samhain ritual was done, a couple of drunken wedding guests mistakenly opened the large wooden door to our room instead of their’s. They both had these looks of surprise on their faces as they looked at all the Witches filling the room, and I’m sure that even if not consciously, they caught our vibe.
They said hello, apologized and quietly backed out to go find their room.
I think to myself all these years later, who gets to say that their Christian wedding and party is any more wholesome than a calling of Ancestors and spirits?
Kendall told me that all types of people come into her shop: Christians, Pagans, Witches, Agnostics, Atheists, Hindus, even Satanists. I have known Satanists, and it, too is a misunderstood word in popular culture. I am not saying that there are not Satanists in the world doing evil, but there are all manners of people in all manners of religions doing evil. No one has a monopoly on that.
The people that come into Kendall’s store are all drawn to the mystical, the rocks, the crystals and more because the divine feminine and Mother Earth in every single religion is calling out at this time in Ourstory.
It is so very important that we answer Her Call.
*Picture is from a 1919 Austrian postcard.
