Didn't you know? Yoga is evil.

I could almost understand thinking pilates is evil. I mean, you have to get on that contraption and it kind of resembles the rack and it could bring up all kinds of scary past-life traumas that we won't mention in present company. But yoga? Evil?!

Apparently, yoga is a mere drop in the evil bucket. According to Marsha West - Founder and Editor of the E-Mail Brigade News Report, an online news report for conservative people of faith, freelance writer "specializing in the Christian worldview" and recent guest op/ed writer for the website The American Daily - all of these things are evil:

Flee from horoscopes (astrology), numerology, séances, tarot cards, tealeaves, palm reading, crystal balls, talking boards, omens or signs; do not get involved in wizardry, witchcraft, the study of Kabbalah, nature religion (Wicca), the practice of yoga (its purpose is purely spiritual) — basically, stay away from pagan customs and practices. Eastern mysticism is off limits (Buddhism, Hinduism, New Age beliefs).

Marsha seems to have a big problem with Spiritism, a word she says has replaced "animism and other religious practices involving the invocation of spiritual beings." This is "not to be confused with spiritual or spirituality" - which seems to imply that those are okay. I guess the big S makes all the difference.

Spiritism, as I discovered, is a body of knowledge with scientific, philosophical, and moral/religious components, first compiled by the French pedagogue Allan Kardec in 1857. It is a scientific approach to the nature, origin and destiny of Spirits, as well as their relationship with the corporeal world. It seems to center around ideas of reincarnation. According to one of the primary sites about Spiritism on the web, one of their beliefs is that there will be a "promised Consoler [who will come] at the appointed time, to compliment and remind us of what Jesus taught, "reestablishing all things in their true meaning", so bringing to Humanity the true basis for spiritualisation."

Okay, I can see how this statement and certain other tenets of Spiritism might run afoul of strict, by-the-book Christian doctrine. And, interested as I am in comparative theology, I might have enjoyed a thoughtful article on how Spiritist beliefs are appearing among modern-day Christians and what the effects that this is having on the Christian faith actually are. Alas, instead, this author simply uses her pixels to bash just about everybody who doesn't happen to subscribe to her particular variety of Christianity. She states that Spiritualism is the combination of Spiritism and Christianity (which, of course, is very evil indeed) and the rest of her article, Going Against God, "Just For Fun", goes on to condemn various forms of Spritism, which along the way somehow turns into sorcery and occultism. (I thought it was Spiritualism she was against, but I digress.) That poor, misguided youth pastor who had the audacity to state on his blog that he's a Gemini! The innocent souls who read his blog will surely burn in hell!

By now, I'm sadly accustomed to seeing the Wiccan faith bashed from here 'til next Tuesday by conservative Christian writers like Marsha West who want to demonize anything that they either don't understand or simply hate for being "other." Most of it is ill-informed, illogical screed, fueled by irrational ignorance. It would be easy to dismiss writing like this if it weren't for the fact that people are reading it and forming their opinions - and consequently their voting practices and other actions - with a horribly skewed and biased view about what Wicca is. For those of us who are practicing Wicca, our religion is no less sacred to us than Christianity is to those who follow that spiritual path. Ask the 750 million Hindus in the world if they are practicing their religion "just for fun."

Marsha completely lost me when she claimed that the reason that yoga is evil is that "its purpose is purely spiritual." Mkay ... but I thought spiritual was only bad if it were capitalized?

Posted by Angela-Eloise at 11:09 AM