Pagan Pet Peeves

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

The spelling of "wymen". (Non-Pagans do this as well, but it seems to mostly be a Pagan thing.)

[SleepingCompass]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

I admit, I usually spell it magik!
I don't know; I guess its more what it seems like the community is doing and wanting to be a part of the group for me. I could care less about how it's spelled, but it seems like the vast majority of people in the pagan community (at least from what I have seen), seem to favor the 'magik' spelling over 'magic'. Neither spelling seems wrong or annoying to me...

What were the arguments against using the 'magik' spelling?

[Jembru]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

The spelling of "wymen". (Non-Pagans do this as well, but it seems to mostly be a Pagan thing.)

I'd missed this one! What's the reasoning behind this?

Unless we're all gonna vote to spell things phonetically like German, then I'd prefer we left existing English words alone. Sure, lets invent new words as needed to describe our ever changing world, or even just to add some new spices to the English palate, but why must we add in pointless silent letters?

[Juniper]

My biggest pet peeve is unsolicited advice. This applies to any platform of social interaction... This (or any) forum, Facebook, real life, a social game. I truly hate it when I post a thought, rant, happy thing, any thing and someone takes it upon them self to comment about how I should try x, y or z. If I didn't ask for advice, prayers or opinions... DON'T. Just leave me be.

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

I'd missed this one! What's the reasoning behind this?

Unless we're all gonna vote to spell things phonetically like German, then I'd prefer we left existing English words alone. Sure, lets invent new words as needed to describe our ever changing world, or even just to add some new spices to the English palate, but why must we add in pointless silent letters?

Actually, I think I spelled it wrong LOL, now that I think about it, I think they write "womyn". I'm not sure! In either case, I don't know how it got started!

[faye_cat]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

Actually, I think I spelled it wrong LOL, now that I think about it, I think they write "womyn". I'm not sure! In either case, I don't know how it got started!

I've seen people who spell it way say it's to bring the femininity back (womb). I have no idea how it got started, but it was mentioned in Legally Blonde for sure. =P

[October]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

I've heard there's a trend in Lesbian literature that does that, to remove 'men' from 'women'. They also spell things like 'dictator' 'dick-tator'. From what I understand (I'm getting this second-hand), it's a socio-political commentary.

[anubisa]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

This is my pet peeve: People (my brother-in-law included) who think we are worshiping false gods and goddesses. Who the heck are you to judge? Besides we were around before your damn religion my friend! What do you think, that the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc... just got together and said we would say we have gods and pretend to worship them? It gets me so angry. Stop judging people when you don't know them.

[Rae'ya]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

Pagan festival flashbacks!

I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I find adding the 'k' to magic annoying or not. I used to do it when I was in my teens and early twenties. Having learnt of the arguments against doing so, I decided to stop. After all, magic and stage magic are already easily distinguished -by the word 'stage' dammit!! Now I guess the k seems noobish to me, probably because it reminds me of when I thought it was all cool and woo woo to use a weird spelling.

I still spell it 'magick'... out of habit rather than anything else. It's definitely something you pick up as a newbie, and I've just never felt compelled enough to bother changing it. I touch type quite quickly and have good muscle memory in my fingers, so retraining myself to not put the 'k' on the end will actually take effort. And I don't really care enough one way or the other to put in that effort! I'm inherently lazy lol. Maybe you can convince me to change!

Though I will say that I noticed something as I was making a post the other day... I actually rarely use the word 'magic/k' to describe what I do anymore. I noticed I've started just calling it 'a working'. Not really sure why. Eh.

[Louisvillian]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

People who overlook pagan history (or any religions history actually) because it's not nice enough or clean enough for them.

Similar vein: people who assert that the Romans were open and super tolerant when it comes to religion, and the Christians ruined everything. They certainly had more religious tolerance than the Middle Ages, but they were still very culturally chauvinistic, bordering on proto-Nationalism, and often persecuted or hamstrung indigenous religions of the people they conquered because they were "foreign" traditions. Fear of this "foreign other" led to the restrictions on Bacchic cult in Italy. And while that law was enforced rather spottily, it's still indicative of the larger trend in Roman religion: a regulated tolerance, provided that there's an obvious deference to Roman tradition, and an immense suspicion of foreigners.
Christianity wasn't tolerant, no, but it didn't discriminate on the basis of ethnicity or social class; not by the time it came to power, at least. The Romans weren't sunshine and rainbows.

[thalassa]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

Judging history by modern standards is its own ethnocentrism.

[DragonsFriend]

Re: Pagan Pet Peeves

In my youth I was very careful about "dictionary" spelling. Being a member in a large group with a long history you pick up the ways of the path if you want to progress. I have always been driven to excel at all that I do. The work of using your will to form reality is entirely different than sleight of hand and misdirection. That is why it is spelled differently. the spelling "Majick" is used more often in "high" magik traditions. As I understand it the spelling comes from alchemists notes and books from old English. It seems to be a tradition centric spelling. I have books with passages from older texts where there are many different spellings. Language was not always so structured as it is today. Look at the original texts of the declaration of independence and our constitution. "Choose" was spelled "chuse" and "s" and "f" were interchanged in a lot of words.

The structure of the written language is fluid and ever changing. Sometime in the future those reading my books may decide that the words I have used are misspelled and correct them for me. I don't mind that thought because the meaning is more important than the spelling. We could substitute "targeted energy work" for "magik" but not too far in the future that may mean the destruction of a target with a laser or microwave weapon. I will continue to use the spelling that I was taught while in the formal training of the mystery tradition of my Order. You are free to react as you wish and use the spelling that is correct for you.