will-o-the-witch:

christowitch:

soloontherocks:

moonsofavalon:

pieandhotdogs:

moonsofavalon:

pieandhotdogs:

pieandhotdogs:

moonsofavalon:

pieandhotdogs:

soloontherocks:

moonsgrimoire:

friendly reminder that calling pagan holidays “sabbats” or “sabbaths” originates from antisemitic propaganda and saying “holy days” or “holidays” instead harms absolutely no one!!!!

Hey yeah I’m a Jew and what the shit are you going on about @moonsgrimoire

Honestly, neopagans could really benefit from learning the difference between “this comes as a result of language norms founded in Christian imperialism” and “this is literal antisemitism”

gatherings of so called “witches” in the middle ages were called sabbaths because of the jewish word shabbat, and christians of the time held jewish people and witches/satan-worshippers/heretics as one and the same. have you ever heard a christian refer to their “sabbath” if they were quoting directly from the bible?? it’s not a word they use for themselves, it’s meant to Other.

Christians literally refer to Sundays as “the Sabbath day” omfg get out of here.

Also WHY the actual fuck are you still talking over Jewish people about what you think should offend Jewish people, sit the fuck down.

i never said anyone should be offended, what offends you or doesn’t is your business, I’m just saying calling something a “witch’s sabbath” has kind of an uncomfortable history and that’s something that gentiles should be aware of

also I’ve known a lot (a lot, I’ve grown up in a catholic city) of christians, both devout and not, and I’ve never heard a single one use the word sabbath to refer to sunday. and if you do any research on modern christian theology, having a sabbath day, as a set day or time in the week, has been it of fashion among christians since before the protestant reformation. it’s not a thing for them anymore (aside from a couple groups that are a minority within the wider christian community)

You’re actually way off base there. Eastern Orthodoxy still observes the Sabbath on Saturday in rememberance of the Hebrew Shabbat. In Catholicism and most sects of Protestantism, the “Lord’s Day” is considered to be on Sunday, the first day. Communal worship, including the Holy Mysteries, may take place on any day, but a weekly observance of the resurrection is made consistently on Sunday. This is due to Christian edict that this day must be observed, along with the celebration of the Eucharist. Failure to observe the Sabbath is considered a mortal sin, one that must be rectified through confession and reconciliation.

Western Christianity refers to the Lord’s Day as a “Christian Sabbath”, distinct from the Hebrew Shabbat, but related in varying manner. This is also true of most English-speaking Protestants since Puritan times. Maybe your failure to notice something happening isn’t actually an indication that that thing isn’t happening, or should I inform my father’s entire family that they haven’t been observing the Sabbath all these years?

While it’s true that medieval Christians did use antisemitic rhetoric in their portrayal of witches, and used that rhetoric to demonize Jewish “heretics”, the usage of the word “Sabbath” to refer to a gathering of witches is unlikely to be due to that same connection, since the church used the word to refer to their own weekly observances. From the Catechism of the Council of Trent:

“The Church of God has thought it well to transfer the celebration and observance of the Sabbath to Sunday.”

What is more likely, is that the medieval church was attempting to paint witches as having “reversed” a celebration of Christianity. This is the same attitude that led to a general belief in “black masses”, curses utelizing repetitions of three (to mock the Trinity), and– more modernly– inverted crosses and pentagrams, which were considered “perversions” of Christian symbolism.

But what would I know, with my clearly limited experience with both Christianity and Judaism. By all means, keep trying to school me on the subject.

well I don’t know why you felt the need to be so rude right off the bat when I never attacked you or anyone else?? maybe I was misinformed in my original post but you could have just offered a correction instead of telling me to fuck off and shut the fuck up??

though I still maintain that none of my lutheran family or my methodist family or any of the dozens of catholics and epsicopals that i know has ever referred to sunday as “the sabbath” or even to a sabbath at all. I know fringe groups like evangelicals have started it up again, but I would hardly call them representative of christianity at large lol

We as JEWS are entitled to be rude to any nonJew who tries to tell US, AS JEWS, what is and isn’t antisemitism, and who fucking presumes to know more on the subject than US, AS JEWS, and continues to argue the subject with US, AS JEWS, after WE, JEWS, repeatedly correct them, and who instead of apologizing for speaking over ACTUAL JEWS, *TO* ACTUAL JEWS, feels the need to come out with “well, maybe i didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about but you hurt my feelings!!”

You didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about because you AREN’T FUCKING JEWISH, and you damn well deserve to have your fucking ~feelings~ hurt for repeatedly, knowingly spreading false information about Judaism TO JEWS. And ain’t nobody gotta be fucking nice to you when correcting that, because your fucking HURT FEELINGS aren’t more important than accurate information about the violent attacks against a minority ethno-cultural identity, MY identity, NOT FUCKING YOURS.

Newsflash, fuckface: the only people who get to decide what is and isn’t antisemitic are JEWS. *YOU* get to sit down, shut up, and nod along.

Guess what, buddy? Wiccan holidays are called sabbats! They’re allowed to be called sabbats! They’ll always be called sabbats! Shut the fuck up and mind your own business when you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!

And you know what? Lutherans and Methodists ALSO call sunday the Sabbath, so apparently you were just as shitty a Christian as you are a pagan. Oh well.

There was another post like this a while back… literally we have the Commandments and it says ‘honor the sabbath and keep it holy.’ This is from a Protestant view. The best I could tell that way back when the church decided the term Sabbath literally just meant the holy day that is observed by the religious people in worship. Thus when the witches would gather is was obviously the sabbath to them.

So people took the term and to branch away from the church called it a sabbat instead.

Also I am Methodist and we refer to Sunday as the Sabbath.

Chiming in as another Jew! 

It’s called a sabbat. I’m a Pagan with Jewish heritage and I have never once had a problem with the word sabbat, people using it, or calling it that myself. Just because it uses a similar word with a similar root =/= “propaganda.”

As a general note, if you ever find yourself speaking for a closed group you don’t belong to, and MEMBERS OF THAT GROUP are telling you you’re wrong, maybe step the hell down and listen to them. Otherwise, what are you really trying to accomplish, because helping that group is clearly not the true priority.