Thank Gods

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Hi everybody, I know it’s been a while. Sorry for the hiatus, a lot of stuff has happened including a global pandemic.

First of all, Black Lives Matter, and Black Trans Lives Matter. Many activists rightfully question the so-called nonprofit industrial complex, so I highly recommend reading critical race theory written by Black authors and donating to individual Black folks instead of to organizations (unless you are certain you can trust them). Here I suggest you donate to Erik, a Black trans artist.

Now I’d like to talk about the despicable Golden Dawn, given recent news. I’ve seen plenty of Classicists talk about them before for good reason — they, like many neo-Nazis and fascists, love to use ancient Greek motifs and imagery. That gets into the whole White Supremacist idea of so-called “Western Civilization”.

Anyway, a mere two days ago Golden Dawn was officially declared a criminal organization by the Greek government. This is amazing because a fascist, violent Nazi party having governmental representation is fucked up and does not set a good precedent. Yet, at the same time, a volunteer lawyer for the victims of Golden Dawn quoted in the article expressed concern that the system wasn’t taking this kind of fascist violent threat seriously, which I think is both true and a common fault in judiciary settings (they sure aren’t where justice happens).

This article covers what has transpired since 2013(!!) with the Golden Dawn and how the trial came about. I have to admit that I didn’t know the trial or investigation had happened.

In October, five months after the election, a coalition of NGOs including the UN’s refugee agency warned of a steep rise in racist assaults in Greece, many of which shared the modus operandi of Golden Dawn’s alleged attack squads. Other violent incidents began to stack up: one of Golden Dawn’s MPs slapped a female leftwing opponent in the face live on television; two others led a mass assault on a community centre in suburban Athens that offered language lessons to immigrants, in which witnesses described adults being beaten in front of terrified children. A string of assaults, increasing in severity, preceded the killing of Fyssas.

Daniel Trilling, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/mar/03/golden-dawn-the-rise-and-fall-of-greece-neo-nazi-trial

The article also mentions the Greek police’s decisions to stand by or aid fascist attacks, much like police in Amerikkka. Both Greek police and Amerikkkan police have significant histories of police brutality, and Greek anti-Black police brutality is attested to in the article as well.

Now you may be thinking — okay, this is modern Greek politics? What does that have to do with paganism? Well, first off, religion is deeply political, and always has been. But more directly, the Golden Dawn loved Ancient Greece, and the article touches on its “occult” rituals documented in member homes. More directly: the Golden Dawn has a pagan element. Time and time again, I have seen Greeks deny their Nazi-ness by saying Hellenic Paganism doesn’t allow for such thoughts, that modern beliefs don’t fit with ancient ways. This is simply untrue, and can be seen in organizations formed more explicitly to this end like YSEE and the one group I won’t even bother naming because it’s so extreme and too niche (and I don’t want to give it free publicity, whereas YSEE is popular enough that I won’t be helping them much by merely mentioning them). Logically and rhetorically, this is no surprise, as much of the xenophobic ideology behind modern Greek pagan groups is that Judaism/Christianity/Islam are foreign and thus evil, which is more than compatible with classic fascist logic. For more on YSEE and fascism/xenophobia, check out these articles by Van Voulgarakis.

I think for those of us living on what is called the United States, this is an important lesson we can learn from. Greek resistance methods and the fundamental vulnerability of electoral politics could be something we learn from, especially as pagans.

For Thanasis Kampagiannis, a lawyer representing some of Golden Dawn’s alleged victims, the trial is only one tool among many to counter the party. He believes the case may not even have come to court were it not for mass anti-fascist protests in the autumn of 2013, which placed the government under public pressure and sought to reclaim city squares dominated by Golden Dawn. “We do not trust the institutions to dismantle completely this Nazi organisation,” declares a statement issued by Kampagiannis and other lawyers in 2013.

“For now it [the Golden Dawn] is our problem – migrants and refugees,” he had warned. “But soon it will be a problem for all of you Greek people too.”

Yonous Muhammadi, quoted in https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/mar/03/golden-dawn-the-rise-and-fall-of-greece-neo-nazi-trial

What’s wrong with the book review?

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The responses

Apparently there was a lot of pagan and witch uproar to this book review. The responses to this book review prove the author right, to be honest. It’s new age shit, and any claim that happiness is ensured is bullshit. I’d think most people incensed about the review would agree, but suddenly when the non-pagan, non-witch world gets involved, white people get overly up into arms and delve deep into fetishizing oppression and imagining themselves as being victims.

Nearly every blog and article that criticized Radford’s article pointed out that if she had applied these same tactics in an article or book review that was based in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other mainstream religion, the backlash would’ve been such that she would likely still be laid out.

–The Wild Hunt

Whataboutism helps nobody. This is the stupidest and weakest argument I’ve ever seen in response to external criticism. Part of the reason why I dislike witches so much is the deep-rooted ignorance of actual oppression and violence in the service of appropriative practices and good vibes.

Moreover, the shit she mentions jokingly (flat earthers and so on) exist in our community. Pretending they don’t does nobody any good. Flat earthers, anti-vaxxers etc. are in a lot of places, not just the pagan and witchcraft communities. It’s simply ignorant to pretend they don’t, instead of maybe trying to get actual conversations going with those people or protecting those with weak immune systems and children (in the case of anti-vaxxers).

This isn’t to say the article doesn’t have its flaws, but I’m honestly disappointed that this is such a big issue for people who frankly didn’t lift a finger for anyone actually facing oppression and violence, such as the indigenous peoples in Brazil in the Amazon forest, Black and Brown trans women all over the world, etc. The selective attention is blaring.

On to the article itself.

I’m not sure what “whiter than a student union snowflake” means, but it does remind me of how white, and often white supremacist, witchcraft tends to be in the US and Europe. Those countries are already racist, of course, but the spiritual and religious movements therein are obviously going to be affected by this. Gerald Gardner, Aleister Crowley, Wicca, Helena Blavatsky (and her bastardization of the practice of astral projection), are all people with deeply white and questionable mores, of varying types. Wicca (and therefore Gardner too, likely) for example, is full of homophobic, gender-essentialist, misogynistic and racist rhetoric in terms of its rituals, associations and so on. Witchcraft is white as hell, and the way people are responding to the review frankly seems to be partly in denial of that.

I won’t hide the fact that I don’t have any intention of nor will I claim to have read the actual book in question, but the review seems to touch on how witchcraft has become a part of capitalist, Eurocentric and colonialist “self care” narratives that are rooted in no specific culture and often end up stealing from marginalized ones instead. Buying crystals isn’t the way to happiness. Hell, the book’s entire premise is kind of dangerous, in the same way a lot of self-help books can be. You can’t spiritually pray away the depression.

The author’s criticism of confirmation bias is incredibly correct. Lots of pagans (moreso than witches, I’ve found) hate to admit that it exists, or may be at work. This is why discernment is necessary, and it’s disheartening to see big-name pagan groups like the Wild Hunt make no mention of the fact that this is actually an issue. In my time in varying communities I’ve run into people so deep into confirmation bias that they become hostile when I suggested their astral projection was racist, or who simply attacked me instead of listening to the evidence that has suggested that witchcraft or no, confirmation bias exists. It also cheapens the spiritual experience. When I cross-check or have someone else with no knowledge do divination on something I have questions on, it is one of the most direct ways that the Theoi seem to shake me by the shoulders, waking me up from any doubt I had. My friend Oli has truly shown me how important discernment is and once I started putting it into practice, my own faith has become more secure. It’s the closest to ‘proof of god’ we will get, or that I need.

On the other, witchcraft is no less irrational than any other religion and many of its practices are in fact a fairly reasonable response to the major challenges of our time. Rediscovering nature, reclaiming the sexist trope of the witch as a symbol of female empowerment, switching off from the constant thrum of social media and consumerism: what’s not to like?

Though the consumerism thing is specific to this book, I think, I see no issue with this really. Religion is irrational, spirituality is irrational, and there’s nothing wrong with  being irrational. The Colonial racist mindset has taught us that only logic and proof and cold hard facts with no emotion are the truth and the superior way of existing, when traditions practiced by racialized cultures often deeply value emotions and feelings.

My biggest issues lie with the concluding paragraph:

The answer, of course, is that however benign or even beneficial the rituals, it’s all built on a wobbling base of bats***. No matter how many spells we cast to ask the universe for help, the universe isn’t listening. On a personal level, it’s probably better for us to just accept that life doesn’t always go our way and lower our expectations: Catherine Gray’s wonderful The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary is a lovely new year read on finding the magic (no k needed) in the mundane. And on a broader level, the recent zest for the mystic is part of a worrying backlash against the enlightenment values that have driven human progress. On the one end of the political spectrum, you get the anti-vaxx movement; on the other, climate change deniers. Standing in the light of a full moon to recite our resolutions may be harmless, but as a society we shun science at our peril.

Here we get to the latent white supremacy in the article. Claiming the rational is inherently better is a larger problem, not just her, though she’s not excused from what she wrote by any means. I also want to add that adding the K onto magic is kind of dumb (I forget and do it sometimes), and is something instituted by Crowley, of all people. I’ve run into at least some of his spirit and it was no joy, trust me.
That said, modern witchcraft does have a wobbly base. That base is made of Wicca’s racism (including cultural appropriation), homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, and ahistoricism. A refusal to change deeply flawed practices and to actually look at history is not a sustainable nor liberatory practice. It is one that favors the ones who made the modern practice of witchcraft, who may have intentionally or otherwise designed it as such: white cisgender people.

Love: The Ethics of Spells and Prayers

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I have been thinking about love spells a lot, recently.

I like the Greek Magical Papyri — they’re a terrific resource for historical spells and syncretic practices. At the same time, though, its love spells are quite violent and coercive in a way that I never want to mimic. Also, some of the ingredients mentioned within are hard to get even today (at least where I live).

At the same time, though my goddess-worshipper relationship with Aphrodite is not bad by any means (I used to be terribly insecure about this), I feel as though she isn’t particularly interested in helping me out here. Mental illness makes discerning this harder, though. Eros has proved more distant. Gender stuff makes it difficult to figure out who to ask for help (Aphrodite? Eros? Or someone else entirely? Maybe Peitho?).

It’s tough to find love when you are trans, disabled, mentally ill, and a person of color. I don’t want to get too personal on here, but it’s important to mention that people like me have barriers in dating. Even in the LGBT community, the standard of desirability is white as fuck. And so on. But at the same time, I want to value others’ wills and be gentle. Thus, a lot of the historical spells prove problematic.

This leads me to think: how does one approach asking for love from Aphrodite, Eros and their affiliated daimones and theoi? Prayer would be the answer for other things, but does there need to be a regularity with which it is performed? Or is this a time to make allowances for newer spells invoking Aphrodite for her divine help?

It’s a quandary I’ve faced before, I’m honestly unsure.

Doidalsas De Bitinia, 3rd C. Bc. The Photograph by Everett
My favorite Aphrodite sculpture. Image source

The Theoi are Not Ghosts

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I don’t understand why people treat or interpret the theoi as if they are ghosts, claiming to feel their presence in the room, a warmth on their left side, or using a ouija board.

I think it’s weird and incredibly misleading. It creates a self-perpetuating cycle of misinformation that this is how the theoi work (or how divinity works in general), when that is just based on American “ghost hunting” shows and the like. Some divinity may work like that, but the theoi sure don’t. We don’t have any historical documentation showing that the ancients experienced the divine in this way. I guess it’s possible this has changed, but why would it change? We still have divination, though the main methods have changed. There’s no need that I can fathom for them to change this (then again, maybe they have something in mind that I can’t figure out lol). More to the point — ghosts are everywhere. It’s possible your ancestors are actually the ones doing this. Maybe at least give them a greeting.

I have to admit that I have a weird relationship with ideomotor effect divination – that is to say, divination where there is motion affected by subconscious thoughts or spirit. I’m not quite sure if I believe it.

This includes pendulums, and…fucking automatic writing. Automatic writing? What goddamned century are we in? I thought we’d gotten past this, people! Automatic writing is the definition of ideomotor effect and also, I think, confirmation bias. You want it to say things, so your hand writes those things for you. That’s how it works. Pendulums and ouija boards are more sophisticated than just spacing out writing stuff, at least.

This is further backed by the outrageous shit people get from automatic writing. Pendulums (and even ouija boards) tend to yield much saner results.

Also, pendulums are yes/no/unsure/rephrase. They aren’t suited for a question more complex than that. Claiming you had a full fledged conversation through one is….incredibly suspicious. Unless your whole conversation is through yes/no/maybe, which I’ve done with pendulum. Just to be up front about it. I’m more open to pendulums and ouijia usage than automatic writing, though. There is just too little possibility at work in automatic writing. But yeah, considering how death was viewed as polluting in ancient Greece, it feels like a vast disrespect to communicate with the theoi in a way that is meant for the dead.

Don’t go to war for Ares (or Hades, or anyone else)

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Don’t go to war. This should be an easy enough statement to make, but I keep seeing people say they are joining the Army or whatever else to honor a deity (usually Norse, but sometimes Greek).

Just. Don’t??? I don’t really feel like explaining why you shouldn’t kill people or participate as a pawn in a worldwide-scale domination game that murders civilians (including children)…just look it up please.

 

 

On Worshipping Humans

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I think there is a significant difference between worshipping a hero from mythology such as Atalanta or Herakles versus a historical figure. Ancient Greeks considered heroes from their area to be a sort of communal ancestor. Mikalsson notes that in Ancient Greece, “Because a hero’s cult was centered on his real or imagined tomb, the hero was bound, unlike a god, to one locality. He usually would have only one sanctuary, in only one city-state, unless two or more states laid claim to his bones. Because his heroön was accessible to the offerings of only the residents of that state, the hero’s activity and influence would affect, at most, only that state and perhaps only the immediate neighborhood in which his heroön was located. (Ancient Greek Religion)”

This is where it gets tricky for us non-Greeks. I still pray to heroes sometimes but the connection is different and fainter. Herakles went to Olympos and became immortal, but other heroes died a mortal death. So I personally just admire the way they lived instead, and consider them mythological, not historical, beings. That doesn’t preclude them from possessing an attractiveness to us through their stories, nor does it necessarily preclude them from having powers (if deified).

In my time online, however, I have seen people worship much more historical figures in the name of Hellenic paganism.  I think it’s disrespectful and inappropriate to worship someone not from ancient Greece who was not also a Hellenic pagan as a hero.

I’ve also seen people applaud Alexander the Great or Julian. First and foremost, I am a firm believer that it is crypto-fascistic to worship emperors. This comes from my unique lived experience as a Japanese person where deified emperors were enforced (as they usually are — monarchs don’t tend to be accountable to the people, and state religions are handy political tools) led to imperialism, fascism and violence. Although I will repeat forever that Shinto is not pagan nor “polytheist” (or any other rigidly defining Western term!) I find State Shinto from the 20th Century era of Imperial Japan to have some disturbing trends in common with say, the pre-Christian Roman Empire. This isn’t to compare the scale of violence committed in either period, but rather to point out that kings who are turned into gods tend to be horrible people, and their godhood is a political pawn to further nationalism.

Secondly, Alexander the Great sucked ass. Emperors in general are bad, inherently, but ones that wage wars are even worse. I really don’t understand why imperialistic, colonialistic murderers are so hyped up (wait, I do: racism and imperialism!). Emperor Julian was also an imperialistic murder who oppressed Christians and arguably was anti-Semitic as well. Ask any Classicist online and surely they’d give you reasons why both were at least kind of assholes.

Back to my earlier point, though.

State religion is inherently oppressive, IMO. Shinto proves my case quite well, as does more complex cases like the modern US and its Protestant/Puritanism written into the founding texts. Without venturing too far out of my area of knowledge, State Shinto is the period of Shinto where the emperor of Japan (most infamously, the Showa emperor) was deified and seen as a descendant of Amaterasu Omikami. The US made the emperor announce his human-hood after Japan’s defeat in WWII in the so-called Humanity Declaration (though he was still emperor afterwards, Japan became more democratic). It’s worth noting that the imperial clan, through power (and probably politics) made its clan kami Amaterasu Omikami the ‘supreme’ kamisama and also made her the only sun kami (Origin and Growth of the Worship of Amaterasu, by Matsumae Takeshi).

Though I personally find no wrong with Greek reconstructionist hero cult, it does bring up this question for other acts of worship of past mortals: if you deify real people, what negative things have they done? And how does this factor in to the deification, if at all? Is the deification itself a denial of the very real complexity of human nature (good and bad)? I don’t have an answer to this, either. I feel very weird whenever I enter a shrine or temple and the kami/buddha enshrined within is an emperor or daimyo, but I find myself being notably more comfortable when it’s someone like Sugawara no Michizane, a scholar.

Tokenization in the Pagan Community (White Supremacy is More Common Than You Think!)

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I’ve had repeated issues with the “polytheist” sort (i.e., those who irrationally refuse to identify as “pagan” despite being, in all academic ways, Neopagan) who, to put it generously, tokenize the fuck out of POC. I’ve written about this before on other platforms, though less…organized.

Let’s start with something personal: I was tokenized for being a Hellenic pagan Asian person. Yet, as soon as I corrected someone about my other (non-pagan) practice Shinto, I found white people (and one non-white person) jumping down my throat to whitesplain me. Even within “polytheist” rhetoric, this is ridiculous: isn’t it supposed to be inherently accepting of diversity? Clearly, people are only willing to accept a monotonous tone of truth there. As soon as an unruly non-white person disagrees with the group consensus, a couple of reply guys materialize out of nowhere and start whitesplaining you to death.

I’ve noticed other people being faced with this tokenization too, albeit less explicit. I’ve seen a few white nationalist pagans retweeting Shinto shrine videos, for example. It’s bizarre to wonder how (and why) that works, but it’s not news that revulsion and attraction can coexist (see: transphobes being obsessed with porn of trans women).

That said, my own personal experience isn’t really enough to speak to a whole phenomena. Let’s look at some examples.

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Here we see some pagans making Mauna Kea defense their pet cause. They will Tweet about Pagans not talking about Mauna Kea, which is all well and good except for the performative aspect of this. While Mauna Kea and its protectors deserve much more press coverage for sure, it’s strange to link indigenous Hawaiian spirituality with paganism without Hawaiian consent, especially considering how a lot of what are called indigenous religions in the study of religion have historically disliked the word pagan. It’s also a classic example of white outsiders speaking over BIPOC who are actually involved, almost to the extent of a white savior scenario. This approach to faux-solidarity also centers (mostly white) pagans instead of the Hawaiians who are actually impacted by and actively trying to change the telescope construction.

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Here’s another example. A lot of “polytheist” sorts have been supporting Hindutva and Hindutva groups. To be fair, it can be hard to tell if a Twitter user is Hindutva, but Hindutvas are usually pretty easy to identify by their obsession with “Abrahamics”/”monotheists”, or self-identify as such. A simple search would be enough, TBH.

I can see why “polytheists” would relate to Hindutva due to their shared hatred of Christians and Muslims, but that certainly does not make it okay, considering the violent paramilitary group RSS and other violent tactics the BJP (India’s Hindutva party) have done. I’m not gonna go super ham about Hindutva stuff since that’s not my area of expertise, but suffice it to say I’m alarmed by the amount of support for them I’ve seen in pagan spaces.

So, to follow up on my previous image, here’s eSamskritiindia tweeting Hindutva things (one of many, I just didn’t want to make this post longer than it had to):

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I simply can’t call it sympathy if it’s done out of desire to speak over BIPOC. It’s a cooptation of BIPOC struggles that veers into overtly fascist territory at times and should not be excused. It’s another way white people seek to erase POC voices as well as use us as disposable tools for their own, tangentially related social causes. It’s dangerous and white supremacist in act/deed, sometimes in thought as well.

Fake Shinto Shrines in the US

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So I didn’t really know if I would end up posting about Shinto here at all, but for better or for worse enough bullshit has been happening for me to complain about it here (yay?).

One thing is this guy who claimed to have a Kyoha Shinto (sect Shinto) shrine in Tennessee while disrespecting the fuck out of whoever he’s enshrining. I won’t name names overtly but I will link to a video of a part of this “shrine” because well…it’ll maybe help drive my point home.

All of this? Complete horseshit. Let me explain.

  1. This is simply not what the inside of a shrine looks like.
  2. All the flags are extremely out of place, one of them appears to be promotional from a company
  3. The abundance of mirrors makes no sense either
  4. If this is supposed to be the goshintai (‘body’ of the kamisama, kinda?) then he shouldn’t be taking videos of it.
  5. Very New Agey dragon decor that is, again, very out of place. Exacerbates how this guy claimed to have used traditional architecture when nothing about this is traditional at all.
  6. That chandelier is more ostentatious than what I’ve ever seen at a shrine.
  7. Why the fuck are there runes on that thing?!

You may say “that isn’t explicitly listed as a shrine, it might not be!” well, fear not my friends. The sacred paper strips shown at the beginning are about the only accurate thing here (assuming he made them correctly).

It’s disrespectful to kamisama, it’s disrespectful to Japanese culture and it’s also extremely White to step in, steal someone’s religious practices, and manipulate it however you want. It’s also very White/Orientalist to sell this as authentic, as a legitimate Kyoha shrine when it’s anything but. The spookyness is weird, and it gets worse in a Halloween video where the shrine was…a haunted house. You don’t put spooky stuff near kamisama, Halloween is a separate and secular event in Japan. Kamisama do not like skulls and things. Don’t do that.

Another guy came up in the Twin Cities who made up some bullshit Neo Minzoku (folk) Shinto which is hilarious. Shinto doesn’t need a “neo-“, it isn’t pagan at all so I’m not sure why some white guy thought it appropriate to frame it like a neopagan reconstructionist religion. He also throws Baba Yaga into the shrine which also makes no sense, she’s Russian…?

The kami enshrined at the Twin Cities shrine are all vaguely-named kamisama of bad things like illness. There’s no parent shrine, a Wiccan guy just made up a bunch of shit and claims Japanese people are okay with it (this one isn’t!).

 

The point of this rant is that: as always, “Eastern” religions deal with the demon of Orientalism. People think we’re exotic and weird and spiritual and different. That leads to (usually) white Westerners decontextualizing the content of the beliefs instead of researching or asking an actual priest/ess, and putting out misinformation at pagan festivals with ugly decor and other Westerners accepting that as truth, because no one bothered to do any research. Slapping an “Eastern” label on something doesn’t mean it’s authentic; if anything you should be more skeptical if a White person is trying to sell you something packaged as “Eastern”, “Oriental” (yes, one of these people used that term) or “exotic”. Please for the love of kamisama do your goddamn research.

 

Dogwhistles: How the Fuck do I Tell if a Pagan I Follow is a Fascist/Racist etc.?

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Note: This page is intended as reference and I by no means endorse this content whatsoever. I avoid writing out slurs, but be warned of Nazism and references to violence.This list is by no means exhaustive.

Symbols

  • Tree emojis and mountain emojis signal ecofascists (more on that here)
  • Runes in general need discernment, especially when in tattoos.

Thor’s hammer, from Wikimedia Commons.

Valknut/valknot, from Wikimedia Commons.

A reproduction Roman standard featuring SPQR, from Wikimedia Commons.

  • SPQR
  • “Roman salute” (Nazi salute)
  • Swastikas (technically, the Kolovrat is a kind of swastika, but sometimes that is hidden by Slavic nationalists when they use it)

Words to look for in bios and posts

  • The suffix “-bol”, ie. nazbol, olbol
  • “Trad”/”tradition”/”traditionalist” ie. tradcaths (fascist pagans also use this prefix)
  • “Based”
  • Folkish
  • Odinists
  • Obsessions with Valhalla, fighting war for ___ religion/against ____ religion, etc. Usually these types have names like “Warrior of Odin” or something, and post macho Viking posts (this fixation contradicting historical evidence that most ancient Norse people were farmers, among other inaccuracies).
  • “Ethnic”, i.e. ethnic religion, ethnic Hellene, etc.
  • Echoes: ((( ))) usually used around names or antisemitic stereotypes
  • Slurs (reclaimed slurs will usually be pretty obvious in contrast to ones used against others), includes censored variants such as replacing Gs with 6s or censoring with asterisks (i.e. f*g), using gay as an insult, etc.
  • Monarchists, nationalists (usually self-identifying in their bios)
  • “Aryan”,“Germanic”, “Nordic”, calling a European group a “race” etc.
  • “Cuck”, as the kink has strong racist tones itself
  • “Pagang”, “Yang gang“: I’m guessing white nationalists like to adopt the word gang as an ironic parody of what they think is Black culture. Yang refers to Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang.
  • Wignat: identifying with them
  • Idolization of Ted Kaczynski

Rhetoric is more nuanced with some other terms which I won’t get into here. However, who somebody is friends with or regularly replies to is very informative. Scroll through a bit of their following if you can to see if anyone with these indicators is on there. Keep an eye out for these symbols/images/words.

I found this thread and this followup thread to be very true of what I’ve seen online, and also enlightening about the meaning/context of some of these hate symbols.

Here’s the ADL’s database of hate symbols, which covers stuff not as common in online pagan spaces.