Particles of fluff...

[gemmagic]

Since the last thread in this community, I have realised more than ever that many people seem to have different ideas and opinions regarding what actually constitutes being fluffy. I'll cite a few examples (feel free to bring up your own examples) and ask "WDYT

Comments

[sylvanstargazer]

I typically define fluffiness in three ways

[mirhanda]

One is the "ooh, oooh, look at me!!" way to be fluffy, where one isn't doing whatever one is doing for one's self or one's gods, but instead to be seen to be doing it.

Totally agree with this. Laurie Cabot is a rather famous example of this kind of behavior. She may (or may not, I really don't know) know her stuff, but flapping around Salem like a bat is a huge red flag for fluffy, in my book.

The Christian version of this is all the Christians who say "Jesus is just about love!", who clearly have never read any vaguely-faithful translation of the Bible, are willfully ignoring the last 2,000 years of history and most current-day Christians ("they aren't *really* Christian!"). I would disagree with this. Jesus himself taught that the old testament was over and done with, so a Christian can safely ignore it. Paul never knew Jesus, so any follower of Christ who decided Paul didn't know his ass from a hole in the ground is fine as well. There's no reason to think that the "canon" was picked for any reason other than political, so

[sylvanstargazer]

I have no problem with, for example, Jesuits who say that they live Christ is Love, but in my experience they also don't attempt to erase the complexities of Christianity either: instead they engage with the whole of the texts, culture and history. Saying "none of that other stuff matters, because I choose to ignore it!" is my central definition of fluffiness here. It isn't fluffy to think that's the *real* version of Christianity, but it is fluffy to think it's not okay for other people to criticize Christianity as it is manifest because a hypothetical "real" Christian wouldn't be criticizable. It comes back to that "willful ignorance" principle proposed above

[mirhanda]

Ah, now that I can get behind. It is complex. It was complex back in the day too, that's why all the squabbling which what we know as Christianity won. That's a real shame in my book, because all these other Christianities which are just now coming to light are so fascinating. And I weep for those Christianities which are lost forever.

[pierceheart]

Fluffy: burning a beer cooler on your front lawn, dancing around it, and claiming it's part of your religion when the police bust you

Fluffy: talking about the witches who were burned to death in Salem.
See http://somethingpositive.net/sp04242002.shtml

Fluffy: doing invocation work (actually calling deities through full scale trace possession) without training ... bonus points for calling deities within the same general pantheon, who are portrayed as opponents, without any thought for consequences (Demeter and Hades, for example)

[pierceheart]

Oops, sorry, it was her back yard:
http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/45570097.html

[onyxtwilight]

My, how that tale has spread. And grown somewhat distorted along the way, it seems. :-)

[brock_tn]

The most useful distinction between "fluffy" and "non-fluffy" I've seen to date came from Zak Kramer:

"It seems to me that one of, if not the, primary distinction between fluffy and 'hard' practitioners is that the hard practitioner is attempting to directly grapple with the problems and possibilities of existence, while the fluffy is trying to escape into a self-centered world of wish fulfillment."

Simple inexperience or lack of knowledge do not a fluffy make. Willful ignorance and willful stupidity are indicative of fluffyness.

A notable example of fluffyness might be Edain McCoy's book Witta: An Irish Pagan Tradition. In that book McCoy asserts that ancient Irish pagans used potatos in their magical workings. The potato is a plant originally native to South America, and cannot have been introduced into Ireland much earlier than the mid 1500's, which was rather a few years after Ireland stopped having any significant population of pagans. Even worse, the "w" phoneme isn't used in Erse, so the name of her "ancient Irish pagan

[pierceheart]

See also 21 Lessons of Merlin.

[mirhanda]

I had to look this up on Amazon. I love that one of the reviews was titled "21 Lessons of Hogwash"! Haha!

[pierceheart]

There is, according to one late pagan elder, some potential that the author of that book may have stolen a book from a public library, or at least pages of it, from a copy of Barddas by "Iolo Morganwg" and tried to pass it off as being from the Pherrylt, or however that is spelled.

[misslynx]

I don't really find it useful to make declarations like "All pagans of category X are fluffy" or "Such-and-such practice/idea is always fluffy." To me, "fluffy" is less about what someone does or believes than about how they do or believe it. There are many, many beliefs and practices than can be approached either in a responsible and intelligent way, or in a lazy, shallow, irresponsible way. That to me is the key distinction.

[ianphanes]

This.

[sara_super_id]

I suppose I consider a fluffy person one who has no intellectual curiosity and one who acts like they know everything when in fact they are wrong more often than a broken clock--and that they're brand of wrong is particularly fantasy based rather than a hard reality ignorance like racism or sexism