[MR] pentagrams in devices

[Wayne Remes]

I'm mostly replying as the email is getting pretty long..so it's probably 
time to trim it down.

Actually the 4th poster to the blog thread pretty much said that...yet the 
blog continued sameolestuff just continued his rant based on blatently wrong 
information. It tuned into the normal conservative-liberal name calling we 
find everywhere nowadays, and Pagan/Neo Pagan vs Conservative Christanity 
finger pointing about who's percecuting who, and how the other group is 
responsible for the sorry state of moral affairs of the current world. The 
point is that the SCA was co-opted into their arguments when neither side 
really knew who we are and what we are about, because both sides saw us as a 
Pagan organization. The 1st post was made on June 20th, probably when the 
orginal poster drove by and saw th Kingdom Archery Championship...the SCA 
did not even know about this until we luckily had a lady ask us about it 3 
weeks later.  Personally I could care less about Paganism or Christanity in 
the SCA, I just think that since we need to deal, by and large, with the 
Christian community when dealing with recruiting demos, event sites and 
perception of our activities, it would be a good idea to not alienate them.

Axel


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven Chang" <moondragn at gmail.com>
To: <atlantia at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 9:44 AM
Subject: Re: [MR] pentagrams in devices


And this is why the guy is still confused about the SCA, because the
people who replied to him failed to explain anything at all. Instead,
they were trying to change his point of view on Christianity.

You get into trouble when you dabble in another man's faith. All that
needed to be said was: "The SCA is a group of people that love history
and like to dress up pretending they are living back in the days of
King Arthur"

Thats it. Heck that would have made it clear to him even if he was
dumb as a brick, which sounds like he is.  The issue actually was
confused by the extra stuff that was dished into his small brain. I
think it got overloaded, and the rest of what was said went right over
his head.


On 7/23/09, Wayne Remes <wremes at carolina.rr.com> wrote:
> As much as I hate to admit it, the people complaining of allowing the
> Pentagram into SCA heraldy have a point.
>
> Sacred Stone within the last year have had local police stop by SCA events
> at least twice. They were there to investigate complaints of animal
> sacrifice made specifically against the SCA from locals. It so happens 
> that
> an actual Pagan organization also uses the campground, and some of the
> locals seem to have confused us with them. Of course these local bozos 
> don't
> really know if the Pagans were actually performing animal sacrifice, as 
> they
> are actually too small minded (and truthfully probably too scared) to
> approach anybody to ask what it is they are seeing. The probem with us
> fighting locals perceptions that the SCA is involved with devil worship 
> and
> withcraft is that it is rumor speading underground via word of mouth and 
> the
> internet, so usually by the time we hear of it...rumor and inuendo has
> already done it's dirty work. Luckily we had a (1 and only 1, ein, uno,
> hanna, ichi)  local stop by Kingdom Assessments to check out a story
> accusing us of being Pagans and involved with witchcraft in a local right
> wing online blogsite. The lady drove up, rolled down the window of her car
> and asked me "Are youall involved with witchcraft and Paganism?"
> (Incidently, I had the same question asked of me by a lady when my Canton
> walked past her as we particpated in a Thanksgiving/Christmas Parade about 
> 3
> years ago. At the parade it was probably the black cloaks worn by many of 
> us
> as it was cold in late November).
>
> As you can see we, as an organization have enough problems getting lumped 
> in
> with Pagan activities now, without dealing with what mainstream 
> conservative
> Christian America's thoughts on a pentagram means to them when they see it
> displayed prominatly in heraldy used by us. It is not the SCA's job to
> witness for Paganism, or attempt to improve current Pagan-Christian
> relations. Neither are we a historical evangical organization bringing the
> truth of Pagan culture to the world in general. We gather together among
> ourselves to promote historical knowledge and skills AMOUNG OURSELVES. Yes
> we do historical demos at places other than our events....but that is not
> really our purpose, otherwise we would be advertising our activities in
> mainstream publications instead of our SCA specific publications.
>
> Below is the contents of the Blog in question. The idiot who started  this
> thread was so stupid he didn't even realize that the link that he visited
> and got riled up about was not even an SCA link, or mentioned the SCA. Nor
> did he bother to google SCA after seeing our sign...and still, nearly 3
> weeks after a post by our Baronial Seneschal explaining who and what we 
> are,
> hasn't biothered to say "Oh..I'm sorry I prefer to keep my head up my butt
> 24/7, otherwise I might actually have a clue, and or learn something.
> (hopefully the cut and pasted blogs will make it thru the Yahoo filters.
>
> Axel