Pagan Labels

What trad am I, anyway?
Nowadays, the movement in magick is away from the label “Wicca”, since apparently, Gerald Gardner only used the term once; and the connotation is of fluffy bunnies, little girls on Tic-Toc trying to curse the moon, and authors such as StarHawk and Scott Cunningham, who had beautiful liturgy but were a bit short on historic facts.
The Wicca label is useful since it’s now federally recognized. The US Army uses it – Dave was one of the first to have it put on his “dog tag” identification prior to Desert Storm. It was helpful in that the chaplain would have to look up appropriate prayers and rituals instead of just mumbling the Lord’s Prayer over a wounded soldier, and calling it good. We got our holidays recognized, which doesn’t get us any federal days off, but at least kids in school might get a nod for Beltane. So thank you, Wiccans, for helping to gain federal recognition for soldiers’ tombstones, hospital and prison visits by chaplains, and a minimal recognition by local governments when it comes to holiday celebrations and gatherings.
The current trend is toward using the word “Witch” and “WitchCraft”, which many people like, but I have a few issues with. For one thing, some magick-users are trying to be ooky-spooky as part of their mystique, and I am hustling away from that stereotype – I’m scary enough without openly calling myself a Witch. The appellation “Swamp Witch” is true, but mainly used humorously. For another reason, “Witch” comes from the Anglo-Saxon-Germanic languages, and those folks were the historic enemies / colonizers of we Cymric people. The Dobunni tribe, who were Celtic, once dwelled on the eastern side of the Severn River in what used to be Cymru, and is now England. The Dobunni were wiped out by the Hwicce tribe of Saxons. So I don’t want to use my enemies’ name for myself – Witch, Welsh, none of that.
Many people have rejected the term “Pagan”, since it meant “people of the country” in Latin. Urban magick-users don’t really want to call themselves Pagan, or Earth Religions, or Nature Spirituality. However that moniker TOTALLY applies to me, since I AM, in fact, a hick from the country who goes barefoot and eats venison and can identify every local species of bird. I do realize that term does not fit everyone. “Polytheist” means people who worship multiple deities, entities, and spirit beings. That also applies to me, but I realize there are non-theistic magick-users. And even with the “K”, magick-user sounds like someone engaged in a tabletop role-playing game that involves wizards, monsters, and polyhedral dice. (Nothing wrong with that, but it ain’t a religion.)
I have some Cymraeg words for use in my file about “Witchy Words” on my “Works” page on this website. For example, a dyn hysbys is a male wizard, and a gwrach is a female magick-user. Although it sounds like a cat vomiting. So yeah, gwrach gors would translate at swamp witch. At least I can communicate with the raccoons and frogs.
So let’s see. I’m Earth Religious, and a practitioner of Nature Spirituality. I am an animist, believing that everything has a soul. Even cars. Especially cars. I am a polytheist, which includes deities, ancestors, spirits, land wights, the Fae, and other beings. I am of Cymric heritage, but purists keep arguing that I was not born there – to which I reply that African-Americans were not born in Africa, either, yet the hyphenated term is a good one to signify African or Cymric or any other ancestry. My tradition is part hereditary, partly achieved by study and research, and partly I made it up or swiped it from others, because it works. I can blend in reasonably well with Wiccans and Heathens at their events, so that makes me a bit eclectic. I refuse any initiations, degrees, or other gate-keeping measures – they are useful for many practitioners, since they welcome the discipline and recognition of achievement. I practice folk magick but it’s not all from Cymru – there are elements from around the British Isles. My ancestors did a lot of that form of magick, but I also learned by observing and just trying out stuff for myself.
All of this is too darn complicated, so I’ll just keep calling myself a PAGAN. So there.

Ace & Dave in their natural environment.