dreamer_easy: (we are as gods)
dreamer_easy ([personal profile] dreamer_easy) wrote2009-12-29 08:17 am

woo

Discovered the term "woo" at a particularly smug militant atheist blog this morning. Can't quite work out if it refers to falsifiable superstition and/or divisive OTWism, or to all forms of spirituality. These things are always confusing when you're a naturalist freethinker up to your elbows in gods. Require advice.

(Also need advice on an alternative term for "militant atheists" so as not to piss off majority of atheists who are not ignorant evangelising twerps. In the meantime here's something we can both enjoy: Fred Nile nosedives after distributing Islamophobic "survey". OWAG.)

ETA: By a circuitous route, however, that annoying blog did lead me to Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers About the Heathen.

[identity profile] klgaffney.livejournal.com 2009-12-29 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
woo is increasingly often used within the pagan community too, to refer to anything from actually having a conversation with your gods/spirits, to dream/trance work, UPG (unverified personal gnosis) etc. mostly due, i think, to the increasing trend of discrediting anything to do with actual spirit-work with deity as a living breathing personality, and leaning towards describing them as metaphors, abstracts, archetypes, etc. (which is all well and good until one of them reaches over, gives you a good shaking, and tells you to sit down and damn well LISTEN to your elders for a change. >_>; )

[identity profile] kateorman.livejournal.com 2009-12-29 10:12 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, that's very interesting indeed. On the one hand, I think a little skepticism with a k could do the Pagan community some good - there's plenty of snake oil out there. But on the other hand, it's lolarious to think of Neo-Paganism, of all things, nekkid magick polytheism, becoming secularised - presumably to gain mainstream acceptance.

These days my own Paganism is almost entirely confined to book-mucking. I badly need to return to ritual. When that happens there's gonna be UPGs all over the damn place. >:)