Ewww!

(This is large­ly the same thing that I post­ed to non­fluffy­pa­gans ear­li­er today. I’m not sure that some of you who would prob­a­bly be inter­est­ed read the com­mu­ni­ty, though.)

Some­one for­ward­ed Raven Gri­mas­si’s A Call for Need­fire to the Bor­der Pagans list today. I doubt my response will be post­ed on the list—it has­n’t come through yet. I find it some­what sur­pris­ing that the orig­i­nal was post­ed, as the list is usu­al­ly just about what’s going on with Bor­der Pagans, which is why it is the only pagan list to which I sub­scribe, oth­er than the few I own. I have very lit­tle tol­er­ance for the non­sense that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, fills most pagan lists. Most lists, really.

Any­way, Gri­mas­si pegged my BS meter quick­ly. The sec­ond paragraph:

In ancient times when trou­bles beset the land, and the King­dom seemed to be in per­il, the peo­ple turned to a prac­tice known as the need­fire. Fire rep­re­sent­ed the spir­it of the land, which gave life and pur­pose to every­thing in the realm. There­fore when trou­bles arose with­in the King­dom it was a sign that the fire had been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. The spir­it of the land had grown ill and required renewed vitality.

What king­dom? Where? When? The myth­i­cal matri­archy? Some sup­posed “Celtic” monar­chy? The only ref­er­ences I’m find­ing via Google don’t give me any warm fuzzies as to his­toric­i­ty. [Edit: Some­one has since said that there is a ref­er­ence to need­fire in The Gold­en Bough, but I can’t lay my hands on my copy at the moment.] 

The fact that the author is a mem­ber of the “illus­tri­ous [gag] Grey Coun­cil“¹For those who had­n’t heard of it yet, Oberon and Morn­ing Glo­ry Zell have a new mon­ey-mak­ing endeav­or. I don’t know that they’re abus­ing any ani­mals this time or defraud­ing con­trib­u­tors while sup­pos­ed­ly search­ing for mer­maids, but they are screw­ing around with con­cepts from not one, but TWO works of fic­tion! Yep, ol’ Oberon put out Gri­moire for the Appren­tice Wiz­ard, and now they have a “school” that is such a Hog­warts rip-off that I have pop­corn at hand, just wait­ing for cries of “per­se­cu­tion!” when the Zells get the cease-and-desist orders from J.K. Rowl­ing’s attor­neys. I don’t think J. Michael Straczyn­s­ki has quite as much of a case, but please—couldn’t they have found some oth­er name? Have they “engi­neered” their own Min­bari bone crests? (Hey, it worked for the goats!)
As lysana said, “Secret for­mu­la lost for cen­turies” is the line used by snake oil sales­men, not hon­est human beings. They tried to trick peo­ple for mon­ey. That is uneth­i­cal con­duct, and I don’t con­sid­er any­one who com­mits such to be appro­pri­ate teach­ers for any­body’s chil­dren. does­n’t help. In fact, had that been stat­ed at the begin­ning of the arti­cle, I seri­ous­ly doubt that I would have read any fur­ther. (I believe the ver­sion sent to the list was from WitchVox or a sim­i­lar site. The link I post­ed is for Gri­mas­si’s own group.)

I’m real­ly like Jacque­line Waters’ response, Play­ing With Match­es. She point­ed out some things I could­n’t quite verbalize.