Could you pls explain this "Pop Culture Paganism?" I've heard it mentioned before & your post today reminded me of it. Or a link if you've gone over it before a'course. Thx!

Pop Culture Paganism is the term for taking characters/ideas/themes/settings from popular culture and utilizing them in worship and spells. By “utilizing”, I mean that the characters are worshiped or incorporated into religion as themselves, unlike the (also common) practice of taking pop culture images and applying them to older, historical polytheistic figures. (I’m going to use “historical” in this post to mean polytheistic gods and spirits people normally think of, regardless of how old and historical some pop culture figures are.)Hah, that seems ridiculous, who came up with that? Some fandom people on Tumblr? Nope, stuff like this has been around for a long time, although it wasn’t always called Pop Culture Paganism. Outrage about people doing this sort of thing seems to go in cycles. People have been doing this before the popularization of the internet. Hell, arguably this is pretty damn old. A lot of folk magic utilized symbols found on product packaging to design spells for particular effects so, yeah, in a very real way, folk magic and pop culture magic have twined together for a long time since capitalism became a thing. Folk magic used what was cheap and easy to get, and local herbs, mass produced products, and stuff lying around the home all make their appearance. You can take a look at commercial products associated and used in hoodoo as just one example (which you can find buried in various page links on this website).Also, go ask ceremonial magicians about how they felt about chaos magicians when they first popped up.But isn’t older stuff better and more legit? This is an idea that’s been floating around forever. I can’t seem to find the quotes again, but I remember sitting in some Classics classes and reading ancient Greek texts that were the same thing people seem to say in every part of history: “Man, kids today, our future is screwed and things are so terrible and fake and shallow right now. The past was SO much better and purer and authentic. We should recreate my rosy-tinted view of it.”There’s something to be said about stuff that’s endured. People kept it for a reason (whether good or bad, because people keep absolutely terrible things that are historical too, like historical bigotries). But people often try to toss around historicity, sometimes even make up some fake bullshit about how something is historical, to try to make it seem more legitimate, authentic, and valuable. New isn’t bad by default, and old isn’t good or better than new things by default.Also, take a moment to think, and I’m sure you can come up with several examples within the Pagan community alone of people making up fake history or secret hereditary traditions and so forth to try to seem more elite or legitimate, sometimes outright denying when traditions were actually formed. Every single branch of Paganism has this, and this is not something that’s unique to Paganism by any means.But… it’s so commercial? Aren’t these pop culture things all designed to sell stuff? Again, commercial stuff has been used for magic and worship before. Since forever. Religion has not been some magical thing never paired up with trade to make a profit. If “but people are using this to sell material goods for their own gain” is what delegitimizes a religion, we’re going to have some problems. I mean, really, take a look at the history of “religious tourism” in the middle ages via competitive pilgrimage routes, monks going incognito to steal each other’s relics and put competitors out of business (my favorite story is the long scheme to steal Saint Foy’s relic that ended up with her head being hidden in a sack of potatoes), people selling souvenirs (like scarves you could snake through a hole in the floor to touch a relic to make the scarf holy, or “real pieces of the cross”, all kinds of things). Look at just how much stuff is in occult shops that they try to convince you that you need. I bet you could ask the Kemetics and they’d be able to give you examples of really old religious commercialism. The fact that people are selling stuff that might be tied into someone’s religious practice, in and of itself, doesn’t delegitimize that religious practice.But it’s really low-brow? A lot of stuff that we utilize for modern pagan practices wasn’t kept going by the elites of society. Folklore, folk tales, folk traditions… we kept going by the common folk. By “country bumpkins” who got made fun of and spurned by the elites until industrialization and urbanization started taking off and Romanticism started up and the elites started imagining this delightful, colorful, fictitious idea of pure, authentic peasant life in the countryside in ye olden dayes. They wanted to play around with that idealized novelty… just, y’know, with all those dirty smelly uneducated country peasants still staying far away, but handing over all their whimsical traditions for free.Same deal with folk magic versus so-called “high magic”. It’s not a matter of one being superior to the other, except that people try to cast it that way, which ties into classism. Some people will insist you have to be highly educated and have these rare manuscripts to study and these secret teachers and memberships in that occult group and these highly specialized and expensive tools custom built to very particular instructions (and all the accompanying money and privilege and social ties to make these things happen) or you can’t do magic, and then got mad (or scared?) when the poor and unprivileged were also doing magic with plants from the backyard and waste ditches, little bits of string, and common kitchen supplies. People don’t like equal access to power, historically and currently. Which isn’t to say complicated ritual magic is bad or ineffective or anything, it’s just a different kind of magic. It’s one more tool in the toolbox, it’s just one that isn’t always accessible to everyone, although digitalization projects are making a lot of that sort of magic, and documents about ancient magic techniques, more accessible than ever before.What’s the difference between ´Historical´ Gods and figures from Pop culture receiving worship? Depends on who you ask. Pop Culture Paganism is a really wide umbrella, and so what answer you get about this is going to vary from person to person. Which is just like Paganism as a whole, and the variety you see in each branch of the traditions considered to be more historically-based.How can one establish a ´canon´ about a pop culture character? In a general way, or in a personal interpretation sort of way, which I have to point out is exactly the bloody same as with historical gods and spirits. How many versions of the myths are there, some of which contract each other? How many different personal interpretations of the same historical gods have you seen? People tend to come to a general consensus about who a god is and what they’re mostly like, but the details get fuzzy and shift around.The acts and behavior of pop culture characters come from the mind of their writers. True of False? Yes and no. This gets tricky. You ask some writers, some of them will tell you that characters popped up and they got to know them over time. Some people construct a framework and the character evolves from there.I think what you’re trying to get at, though, is “what about intellectual property laws? Don’t creators get to control their characters? What if they’re unhappy about what people are doing with their stuff?” The answer to which is:

Historical Gods and Pop culture Characters dwell most often in Literature, so I understand they might be seen in a similar light, but what about revealed Gods or ´Grassroots´ spirits? How are they different? Again, this is going to depend on who you ask. I’m not really comfortable speaking for everyone. I could speak to my own theories about things, but that’s probably best done by people asking me and doing a separate thread on my personal views.

Norse gods exist in certain worldview, but pop culture spirits seem to exist in different worldviews, so… how do you make it work? This, again, is going to vary from person to person. Keep in mind that the Heathen community is full of people who can’t agree on one official worldview and they keep verbally punching one another over it. What Heathen worldview you subscribe to will color how you incorporate pop culture spirits. Or maybe you end up doing what some multi-trad people do and keep both practices separate. Or maybe you take a page from the chaos magicians and become a paradigm pirate.

Any Pop Pagans Tumblrs? I’m really pretty worthless to ask about blogs to follow, because on the whole I don’t follow blogs. Or the blogs I follow are not ones tied into the stuff I write about. I get really anxious and stressed and angry and depressed and otherwise-emotionally-unstable really easily due to my neurodivergence, so for the sake of my health I avoid a lot of stuff.Other stuff to read:

Could you pls explain this "Pop Culture Paganism?" I've heard it mentioned before & your post today reminded me of it. Or a link if you've gone over it before a'course. Thx!

Pop Culture Paganism is the term for taking characters/ideas/themes/settings from popular culture and utilizing them in worship and spells. By “utilizing”, I mean that the characters are worshiped or incorporated into religion as themselves, unlike the (also common) practice of taking pop culture images and applying them to older, historical polytheistic figures. (I’m going to use “historical” in this post to mean polytheistic gods and spirits people normally think of, regardless of how old and historical some pop culture figures are.)Hah, that seems ridiculous, who came up with that? Some fandom people on Tumblr? Nope, stuff like this has been around for a long time, although it wasn’t always called Pop Culture Paganism. Outrage about people doing this sort of thing seems to go in cycles. People have been doing this before the popularization of the internet. Hell, arguably this is pretty damn old. A lot of folk magic utilized symbols found on product packaging to design spells for particular effects so, yeah, in a very real way, folk magic and pop culture magic have twined together for a long time since capitalism became a thing. Folk magic used what was cheap and easy to get, and local herbs, mass produced products, and stuff lying around the home all make their appearance. You can take a look at commercial products associated and used in hoodoo as just one example (which you can find buried in various page links on this website).Also, go ask ceremonial magicians about how they felt about chaos magicians when they first popped up.But isn’t older stuff better and more legit? This is an idea that’s been floating around forever. I can’t seem to find the quotes again, but I remember sitting in some Classics classes and reading ancient Greek texts that were the same thing people seem to say in every part of history: “Man, kids today, our future is screwed and things are so terrible and fake and shallow right now. The past was SO much better and purer and authentic. We should recreate my rosy-tinted view of it.”There’s something to be said about stuff that’s endured. People kept it for a reason (whether good or bad, because people keep absolutely terrible things that are historical too, like historical bigotries). But people often try to toss around historicity, sometimes even make up some fake bullshit about how something is historical, to try to make it seem more legitimate, authentic, and valuable. New isn’t bad by default, and old isn’t good or better than new things by default.Also, take a moment to think, and I’m sure you can come up with several examples within the Pagan community alone of people making up fake history or secret hereditary traditions and so forth to try to seem more elite or legitimate, sometimes outright denying when traditions were actually formed. Every single branch of Paganism has this, and this is not something that’s unique to Paganism by any means.But… it’s so commercial? Aren’t these pop culture things all designed to sell stuff? Again, commercial stuff has been used for magic and worship before. Since forever. Religion has not been some magical thing never paired up with trade to make a profit. If “but people are using this to sell material goods for their own gain” is what delegitimizes a religion, we’re going to have some problems. I mean, really, take a look at the history of “religious tourism” in the middle ages via competitive pilgrimage routes, monks going incognito to steal each other’s relics and put competitors out of business (my favorite story is the long scheme to steal Saint Foy’s relic that ended up with her head being hidden in a sack of potatoes), people selling souvenirs (like scarves you could snake through a hole in the floor to touch a relic to make the scarf holy, or “real pieces of the cross”, all kinds of things). Look at just how much stuff is in occult shops that they try to convince you that you need. I bet you could ask the Kemetics and they’d be able to give you examples of really old religious commercialism. The fact that people are selling stuff that might be tied into someone’s religious practice, in and of itself, doesn’t delegitimize that religious practice.But it’s really low-brow? A lot of stuff that we utilize for modern pagan practices wasn’t kept going by the elites of society. Folklore, folk tales, folk traditions… we kept going by the common folk. By “country bumpkins” who got made fun of and spurned by the elites until industrialization and urbanization started taking off and Romanticism started up and the elites started imagining this delightful, colorful, fictitious idea of pure, authentic peasant life in the countryside in ye olden dayes. They wanted to play around with that idealized novelty… just, y’know, with all those dirty smelly uneducated country peasants still staying far away, but handing over all their whimsical traditions for free.Same deal with folk magic versus so-called “high magic”. It’s not a matter of one being superior to the other, except that people try to cast it that way, which ties into classism. Some people will insist you have to be highly educated and have these rare manuscripts to study and these secret teachers and memberships in that occult group and these highly specialized and expensive tools custom built to very particular instructions (and all the accompanying money and privilege and social ties to make these things happen) or you can’t do magic, and then got mad (or scared?) when the poor and unprivileged were also doing magic with plants from the backyard and waste ditches, little bits of string, and common kitchen supplies. People don’t like equal access to power, historically and currently. Which isn’t to say complicated ritual magic is bad or ineffective or anything, it’s just a different kind of magic. It’s one more tool in the toolbox, it’s just one that isn’t always accessible to everyone, although digitalization projects are making a lot of that sort of magic, and documents about ancient magic techniques, more accessible than ever before.What’s the difference between ´Historical´ Gods and figures from Pop culture receiving worship? Depends on who you ask. Pop Culture Paganism is a really wide umbrella, and so what answer you get about this is going to vary from person to person. Which is just like Paganism as a whole, and the variety you see in each branch of the traditions considered to be more historically-based.How can one establish a ´canon´ about a pop culture character? In a general way, or in a personal interpretation sort of way, which I have to point out is exactly the bloody same as with historical gods and spirits. How many versions of the myths are there, some of which contract each other? How many different personal interpretations of the same historical gods have you seen? People tend to come to a general consensus about who a god is and what they’re mostly like, but the details get fuzzy and shift around.The acts and behavior of pop culture characters come from the mind of their writers. True of False? Yes and no. This gets tricky. You ask some writers, some of them will tell you that characters popped up and they got to know them over time. Some people construct a framework and the character evolves from there.I think what you’re trying to get at, though, is “what about intellectual property laws? Don’t creators get to control their characters? What if they’re unhappy about what people are doing with their stuff?” The answer to which is:

Historical Gods and Pop culture Characters dwell most often in Literature, so I understand they might be seen in a similar light, but what about revealed Gods or ´Grassroots´ spirits? How are they different? Again, this is going to depend on who you ask. I’m not really comfortable speaking for everyone. I could speak to my own theories about things, but that’s probably best done by people asking me and doing a separate thread on my personal views.

Norse gods exist in certain worldview, but pop culture spirits seem to exist in different worldviews, so… how do you make it work? This, again, is going to vary from person to person. Keep in mind that the Heathen community is full of people who can’t agree on one official worldview and they keep verbally punching one another over it. What Heathen worldview you subscribe to will color how you incorporate pop culture spirits. Or maybe you end up doing what some multi-trad people do and keep both practices separate. Or maybe you take a page from the chaos magicians and become a paradigm pirate.

Any Pop Pagans Tumblrs? I’m really pretty worthless to ask about blogs to follow, because on the whole I don’t follow blogs. Or the blogs I follow are not ones tied into the stuff I write about. I get really anxious and stressed and angry and depressed and otherwise-emotionally-unstable really easily due to my neurodivergence, so for the sake of my health I avoid a lot of stuff.Other stuff to read:

Do you have any pop culture pagans "on staff" who might be able to help me with getting in contact with a god from a video game universe (who is also canonly dead)?

Not sure if we do actually!

I am currently thinking about getting into pop culture paganism though. And these are a few blogs I follow popculturepagan popculturewitches popculturepaganstuff

Maybe they can help you as well :)

Estelle

Uuuuhhh

We sadly don’t .///.

But I imagine you should collect as much information from the video game series you’re playing, and then analyse it. Maybe something a certain character said points to the fact that the deity has a certain animal or flower dedicated to them?

I’m so sorry this isn’t really much help…

~Mahigan