Putting God back into schools.

[Ninurta]

lol Barnes and Nobles witches, I get it. I also picked up the fuss Wiccans have with the witch hunt.. However I can relate to it a bit, not by heritage but there is a town near me, where the witch burning was daily business. Also hanging and burning at the same time. The place it happened, it's not visible anymore. But it's located on a hill and I am not saying it's because of some blood thing, I actually don't believe that, but I picked up the bad juju from that place, without knowing before. Of course when I heard about it, it was clear to me.

Here is one of those families although I can't vouch for anything that goes beyond my mother's Nonna when it comes to this. Not writing this to say I am special or on top, or that it gives me any extra legacy in my opinion. I still had to learn runes, several types and also old Germanic writing, that's how I try to extract the old knowledge from writings that are in my possession and sometimes, but seldom, I will find a treasure in a library. My brother had to learn it too btw, it's not exclusive to women / girls.

My daughter is going to learn them as soon as she can read and write the normal German language. However I never got anything taught by my mother about that. I've seen her practicing it, do blessings and how she behaved in the forest, but she never could teach me anything, I was too young when she died and didn't  fully understand the meaning of the texts I translated while learning the old letters and grammar, I had to teach myself the rest after she died but with a break in between. But I have inherited her books of shadows, with her thoughts in it that tell me I might be on a path that isn't too wrong.

I agree about the similarity in mindset between Christianity and Wiccan and in that sense you are right, I think it is inspired by Christianity (the Wiccan Rede being similar to the Christian idea about only doing things you want to experience yourself), not in the sense that Wiccan was entirely inspired by Christianity. It's hard to relate such a mindset to Paganism, because there was never a centralized idea of it. It's much more folkolore and woven into many things we do, say and see today, but so many do not know. I actually find that a bit saddening and would like the rest of the world to look into it, so not gatekeeping here at all.

The Earth accepts energies, both positive and negative, and can retain them for a long time. So "picking up" on a hilltop where a lot of people died horribly and left part of their energies there is understandable. That's not a Wiccan or Pagan or Christian or anti-Christian notion, it's just basic conservation of energy.

Did you have to learn any particular futhark of runes, or all of the futharks?

The old mountain witches here don't belong to any particular tradition. Many of them are "blended" - this area was settled by Germans coming down the Great Valley of Virginia, Scots fleeing the English crackdown after Culloden, Scots-Irish "transported" here from Scotland via the Northern Irish Plantations after the religious troubles in Scotland exemplified by John Knox, Irish coming here just to get away from the English in general, and some few English bold enough to leave the relative safety of the coastal settlements and venture into the deep dark forest. All of them brought their own individual folk magic traditions, and over time they all fused together as families intermarried. Added to that was the Indian traditions, also fused into the whole, so what has developed is probably a uniquely Appalachian version of older folks magic and healing traditions. It would likely be unfamiliar and confusing to any actual Old World pagans, although any of them might find some unsettlingly familiar aspects of it.

What none of them bear any resemblance to is Gardnerian Wicca. he was just too late to the party to get incorporated. Oddly, some aspects of Appalachian Witchery were drawn from Christianity - for example, a Bible verse that is recited to stop uncontrollable bleeding.

Be that as it may, I think that what is going on now in the US regarding kids shooting kids is a facet of their becoming ungrounded from their own culture and society, whatever that background may be. I have noticed it even here in the boonies, as kids get plugged in to the internet and start losing their own identities as hillbillies. If it's happening here, it's happening everywhere in the US as kids all over are being ripped from their foundations, whatever their own culture may be. It is not being supplanted by a "national culture" or any sort of blended culture indicative of a forming national unity, but rather by no culture at all, or maybe a newly devised "internet culture".

And that is a problem. Religion is only one facet of a culture, only one part of the foundation that kids used to have but are increasingly losing.

.