Let there be light on indigenous religions

Contemporary literature has continuously charmed Americans with genres of fantasy and supernatural, both in print and broadcast. In 2001, the first Harry Potter movie was released. People were captivated by the wizarding world and were followed by seven more installments later to witness how Harry Potter tracked the secrets of You-Know-Who, unravel intents of his confidants, and matured from a promising wiz-kid to a stupendous magus. Fast-forward to 2014, film connoisseurs and comic buffs celebrated the debut of Wanda Maximoff – the Scarlet Witch – in the post-credit scene in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” In the last two years, Wand Maximoff is revered as she stars in her own MCU series “Wanda-Vision” and fought against the Master of Mystic Arts, “Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Henceforth, the name “Scarlet Witch” became pervasive and has been an integral part of popular culture, particularly resonating with the LGBTQ+ community not only for her potent chaos magic, but also for her humane trait of grieving over the loss of loved ones, her simpatico amour, and her yearning for a family. These were not the only media that offered alternative viewpoints to the conventional and supernatural. Set in the fictional place

Let there be light onindigenous religions

By Chris Ceguerra

Chief Copy Editor

Ama Bayar/The Skyline View Occult Student Alliance (OSA)’s president Em Weissensee (right) and her predecessor Sunny Hibbis (left) strikes a pose during their end-of-semester Bacchanal and last meeting of the semester on May 5. called Greendale, Sabrina Spellman returned in the “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina,” a revival of the 1996 TV series “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” which was inspired by the Archie Comics of the same name. In the 2019 film “Midsommar,” despite its fictitious and horrific depiction of the people from Harga, Sweden, the maypole celebration can be traced to its Christian tradition. Today’s generation has been more accepting of the notions of magic and witchcraft; people have also been more open in acknowledging and practicing belief systems and spiritualities that lies outside major world religions. Despite what people considered to be progressive to dissent and exercise religion, some parts of the country aren’t fond of entertaining these philosophies. The Harry Potter book series is banned in some educational institutions in the country for promoting themes of wizardry, magic, curses and the occult. Similarly, Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) places the latest Dr. Strange movie in hot water with “heroes casting spells, using Occultic Methods and eastern religion elements, and interacting with demons.” The same Dr. Strange movie and last year’s Marvel’s “Eternals” was banned in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries as the films display LGBTQ+ themes.

A brief foundation for spirituality

Dr. Sophia Pandya from California State University Long Beach (CSULB) first started with the basics and provided the etymolo-

gy of the word “religion.“ “(Religion) is a word that comes from the word ‘religio,’ which means ‘to bind,’” Dr. Pandya said, who teaches and serves as the chair of CSULB’s religious studies department. “So at the basis of this, it’s a something that binds people together, it creates an identity for them, and it creates a set of doctrines, practices, mythologies, social institutions… that shapes their identity and that helps them orient themselves in the world.” Mainstream world religions share parallels with indigenous religions. For instance, Hinduism and Wicca are similar in terms of revering a creation god while also worshipping a pantheon of deities: Hinduism has Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva as the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the universe; Wicca on the hand worships the Horned God and the Great Goddess. Mythology does not only exist in the literature, nor in fictional movies as set in Stan Lee’s world-building of the Marvel Universe. It also manifested in sacred scriptures, and in a religious studies context, Dr. Pandya said that Myth isn’t to say that the “story isn’t real.” “When you have Jesus walking on water, or Jesus creating many loaves out of two loaves, or those are the mythologies of that different tradition,” Dr. Pandya explained. “You can study the Bible as literature too. The Quran is literature too. But of course, that’s not, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have practitioners of those fates.” San Francisco State University student Sunny Hibbis is this school year’s president for the university’s Occult Student Alliance (OSA). She originally practiced Christianity, but later connected to her roots and discovered Celtic Norse Paganism. “Norse Mythology is the main deities I work with,” Hibbis said. “I actually work a lot with a wolf ally, like a wolf spirit that’s like been with me for a long time.” In a Norse pagan setting, Hibbis said that she performs rituals called “Galdr” to work with particular gods or archetypes for their aid. Aside from sacrifices, incantations and arias, Galdr could also be kinetic and could be carried out with dancing and drumming. SF State student Em Weissensee is set to become the OSA’s president for the next academic year. As a practitioner of Italian Witchcraft, they aim to dispel misconceptions about magic. “Magic doesn’t look like what it looks like in the movies!” Weissensee exclaimed. “And I know that can sound a little silly, but a lot of people think that we just can, I don’t know, move sh*t with our minds.” “Magic is really just about working with the energies and the to improve your life, at least that’s the way I like to go about it,” they further elaborated. Dr. Pandya explained that calling unconventional traditions or rituals “magic” marginalizes the practitioners. In the eyes of some people, they use the term “magic” in reference to unsanctioned practices from their religion. This creates an “othering” towards people’s rites and beliefs. “If I’m a Pentecostal, that’s a Christian from the evangelical tradition, and I’m placing my hands on you, and I heal you, it’s a sacred healing,” Dr. Pandya said. “But perhaps I would not approve of somebody else from another culture… they made that concoction, ‘What’s in that?’ and then they said these words, maybe that’s a spell… I might just say, ‘Ah! What you’re doing is magic.’”

The politics of fear and power

Dr. Pandya introduces the centuries-old doctrine “Malleus Maleficarum.” Translated as “The Hammer of Witches,” the material penned by inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger serves as literature introducing the idea of a witch, how to identify a witch, and how to deal with a witch. The literature fueled the 17th century European witch hunt. Dr. Pandya explained that a woman who may be marginalized and impoverished, unmarried, or single, have knowledge of herbal healing may be accused of practicing witchcraft. “There was a lot of there was a lot of language in the malleus Maleficarum, in which women were in very misogynistic texts,” Dr. Pandya said. “Women were painted as, like, you know, having a voracious sexuality, and being seduced because of the

sexuality by the devil.” Speaking of the devil, Dr. Pandya describes the European depiction of the embodiment of evil to be racist; the devil is portrayed to have dark features composite with animalistic trademarks of horns, tails, and hooves. “It’s the fear of the European white man, of people from other countries that they will somehow, you know, seduce the European woman,” Dr. Pandya said. “This is how I interpret the devil, the European concept of the devil.” As someone who had given talks on the psychological roots of terrorism, Dr. Pandya said that “this type of exclusionary religious language fuels a lot of violence,” and explained how the concept of hell creates exclusion among people with a different faith. “If you’re not in my chosen group, and God’s not shining on you, then you’re going to hell,” Dr. Pandya said, explaining that people see others only be a potential threat in “polluting” their women and families and how this othering may cause them not to consider their other people as humans. As the chair of CSULB’s, Dr. Pandya said that her department is better named the “Department of Religion and Global Spirituality.” “The word spirituality kind of implies that we are inclusive of people practicing Wicca, we’re inclusive of people practicing paganism, we’re inclusive of people practicing magic,” Dr. Pandya said. “Even yoga can be considered a form of spiritual practice. And indeed, it was by Hindus for centuries.”

In film and fantasy

“A lot of modern film and narratives kind of Change who the gods are to make them more comedic,” Hibbis said and explained how for instance the Norse god Loki is often portrayed to be a trickster. According to her, Loki, as a chaos god, will do you favors if you are good and noble with yourself. Dr. Pandya stresses how Hollywood tends to repeat stereotypes of various cultures, especially on the past. Today, however, she is cognizant that more filmmakers are trying to be more careful. “You would find stereotypes about, say Santeros from the Santeria tradition, practitioners or Vodou, or Native American religious traditions,” Dr. Pandya said. “You would see them in the media, in cartoon fashion, they would just reinforce a stereotype about that community, fetishize stereotypes about that community.” Weissensee spells out that magic isn’t tantamount to curses and maledicts, as the effects of magic vary depending on the caster’s intent. “I think magic has the same essence as prayer has for Christians,” Weissensee said. “Magic is just about focusing on whatever spiritual intent you want to focus on in that moment, so magic is prayer to some people; magic is meditation to some people. It’s a different term for the same thing that all human beings are familiar with, in my opinion.” Dr. Pandya raised the issue of people’s lack of knowledge and understanding of religions. “This idea that we can discriminate against other people’s cultures, identities, sexualities, and religions, this is as old as time,” Dr. Pandya said and suggested that there should be a world religion class that covers major world religions and indigenous relations. Religious studies isn’t offered in all schools nor mandated in higher education. California recently passed laws that require an ethnic studies course for college students to graduate starting fall 2021, while also requiring the same discipline in high school starting 2030. While she acknowledged that institutions are getting better, students are still not required to take a course in religious studies, and she thinks that they should. For Weissensee, she believes that humans have the innate drive to look for purpose and understand our existence, and she’s just “choosing a different route.” “As human beings, we’re all ultimately striving for the same thing, and that’s purpose,” Weissensee said. “We’re all looking for something that makes sense to us about the way the world works, and so it’s really no different than what Catholics and Hindus and Jewish people are doing.” “I find it disheartening when someone’s entire objective is to disprove you because I’m not trying to disprove them,” Weissensee followed.