Between the Veils issued a public apology regarding their closing ceremonies on February 20, 2023, just five days after I called them out for failure to be accountable. It is a good start, and I am hopeful that BTV is trying do better, but I do have thoughts about the content of that apology.
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One of the community agreements of Between the Veils is accountability. When the closing ceremony of The Gathering Paths 2022 included aspects that were predictably triggering for those with Christian religious trauma, I expected BTV to adhere to its principles of accountability. Instead, here I am six months later, explaining how an otherwise amazing event was spoiled by hypocrisy and lack of integrity.
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Deluding yourself, lying to yourself, might seem bad, but it can feel amazingly good. It allows us to have hope and feel good about bad situations, helps to cushion the psyche against ongoing trauma and abuse, and helps us keep equilibrium in difficult situations.
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Gatekeeping gender terms is patently harmful, because it also erases and denies the gender experiences of people the gatekeepers feel do not “qualify”. Gender transcends the sex and the sex traits a person is born with, and so too must gender terms.
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How the concept of “don’t speak ill of the dead” is typically utilized is fraught with dismissal and erasure. Every time someone problematic dies, it is nearly inevitable to hear statements of “don’t speak ill of the dead,” but who does that idea serve? What benefit does it have? Certainly, if we want to learn from the past and honor those who have been harmed by people now deceased, we must speak honestly of the dead, even if being honest means speaking ill.
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I am a very strong proponent of Accountability Culture. Accountability is key to personal and community growth, healing and reconciliation, and achieving peaceful intersectional inclusion. Accountability Culture is to Cancel Culture, what Call-In Culture is to Call-Out Culture, in that it holds people responsible for their words and actions, while also providing the opportunity for growth, change, and reconciliation before bringing down the hammer of ultimate judgement and banishment on those who refuse to be accountable.
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I have mentioned repeatedly in various articles that it is important to be completely honest with yourself, especially when engaging with shadow work. I also usually include a few words about how critical it is to be compassionate and non-judgmental in your honesty, but what exactly does that mean? How do you avoid being hyper-critical or beating yourself up when you are honest with yourself about things you do not like? It is far easier said than done, but I believe that process works best with loving honesty instead of brutal honesty.
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Sure, haters do not inherently mean you are doing something wrong, but they also do not inherently mean you are doing something right.
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Banishing is used across all forms of magic. Banishing means to make something go away, to put it in the past, and remove it from the present and likely future. It is a loss that is welcome or needed. Most changes, especially deliberate changes, involve some kind of loss or banishment. This can be big things and it can be little things.
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From craft names to deadnames, nicknames to married names, usernames to aliases, there are innumerable reasons that most people have multiple names they currently use or have previously used to identify themselves. Despite what bureaucratic systems would have us believe, names, even magical names, are mutable and can change over time as our circumstances change and we, ourselves, change. Most of those names have deeper meaning than the specific letters spelled out on our birth certificates or driver’s licenses.
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