Thoughts on Urban Paganism and Urban Spirit Work

This is a revised and expanded version of an earlier essay I've written.

One of the challenging things about my path is that it is entirely urban. This doesn't mean that I create new, urban deities and follow those but rather than my practice draws me to the city and binds me to the city in a way that some people are bound to the countryside.

I don't follow "Squat, Skor and Skram" or make offerings to "Asphalta," I don't get tattoos for competition representing capitalism (particularly because, for most of us, capitalism is cooperative and not directly competitive), and I don't have body piercings or plan to get them. I don't use gasoline or antifreeze in my rituals, and I think if I ever think that such is a good idea for my elemental practice I should have someone commit me to an asylum. I am not a tribal eclectic pagan or chaos magician who happens to live in the city, which seems to be who Kaldera and Schwartztein's book The Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle is aimed at. I am also not studying what is called "Technoshamanism," per se, and am not a member of the modern primitive movement. I have no issue with those who practice such paths, but they are not my path.

Read the rest of this essay over at Weaving Wyrd.