I'm also recalling that I explore these themes, in my novel Emerald City Dreamer and its unpublished sequels, before I had much of this language or these models to describe it.

It's about faeries and faerie hunters, based on Celtic and Scandinavian faerie lore. Fae lore is one remaining piece of pre-Christian animistic religion that managed to "survive", though barely intact.

I explore those themes via the hunters' perspective and the fae, trying to capture the spirit of actual lore rather than a rationalized version of fairies. These are capricious beings with alternative kinds of reason and morality than humans can understand. Just like nature, the Fae are neither "good" or "bad," they just are. I also explore themes of fae eradication by the advent of iron, Christianity, and later science.

In later books, I explore how colonization affected indigenous spirits in the Seattle region, in that the presence of European humans changed them against their will. And that's why all the fae in Seattle are somehow Celtic and Scandinavian.

I guess I've been thinking about this stuff for long time. And I've been pissed about the loss of Celtic culture for a long time. Because I've gone looking and it's more question marks than periods.

Regarding folk horror, which is absolutely dealing with these themes in really interesting ways (paganism vs Christianity, Christianity vs science, science vs paganism), there's a great documentary about folk horror on Shudder that should make sense. My lost contribution was just further exploration of what it had to say, via movies I was watching at the time.

It's called Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. A must if you're a horror fan.

There's also the side quest into folk horror tropes, which ties nicely into this, but I've already written most of that thesis someplace else. Probably on here. Somewhere.

[I tried to find it but alas. Perhaps I wrote that on my first instance, .lol, which is all but dead... the archive is really hard to read and search, and then I'd have to repost it. A whole project.]

It's actually two games set at different times in the same fantasy world that is loosely based on Europe. Only, instead of being set in the Iron Age, they are set in the Bronze Age.

The games are King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages. These are old games but have been ported to modem systems including mobile. They really hold up. (I played them on iPad.)

These are story-based games in which you run a tribe. Each year is broken into four seasonal turns. Magic is real, but it's not a "rational" system like most games set in the Christianized fantasy worlds. There's no mana and no assured outcomes. Because it is a system based upon appealing to the gods. Each of which has a certain personality, realm of influence, relationship with the other gods, and backstory.

Each season you are presented with various events that require you to make choices. Maybe the neighboring tribe brings a territory dispute, or an earthquake destroys your huts, or an emissary from a further tribe brings you a lavish gift. Your decision will have impacts later in the game. You can also allocate resources, explore, raid, build, etc. and there's a system for holding rituals with huge benefits — but it's a story-driven ritual, and if you haven't learned the pantheon lore, you WILL fail.

It's a hard game. But super interesting. And educational. It puts you in a pre-colonized mindset. You ARE at the mercy of the elements, and the morality in these situations has no relation to modern moral luxuries (like you might have to marry someone off to prevent a war).

So along with Heilung, I recommend these two games for white folks trying to decolonize in a way that actually connects us to our past.

Did I mention this could be a thesis?

Have you ever noticed that most fantasy settings are medieval? What's with that?

They happen to be set in a time just after the Christian conquest had been completed.

It doesn't matter if the worldbuilding includes *specifically* Christian elements or not. The majority seem to begin just after the time our ancestors were actively "civilized." Subdued.

There seems to be a yearning within our creative subconscious towards a more natural, sustainable, or even pre-Christian life, but alongside it is a barrier that says GO NO FURTHER THAN THIS.

As the tropes go, any "tribal" elements in western fantasy settings are racially-coded and off-limits. The only folk practicing the old ways are the ugly barbaric evil trolls/goblins (POC) or the beautiful elusive incomprehensible elves — neither of which is for you, (white, civilized) human.

Obviously there are exceptions to this, but these are the central tropes going back to Tolkien. And these are the deep intergenerational conditioning and traumas that the white collective subconscious has been chewing on for the last century.

But there IS a game that I think passed this barrier in a way similar to Heilung...

If you're white, your ancestors lived in a tribe. There's no good in remaining divorced from that.

Now look, I love literacy and science as much as the next guy. I'd be pretty upset to lose my internet

But we do need to live more sustainably. And we do need to connect with nature and our own feelings and instincts. And we do need to stop oppressing people who don't conform to the "whiteness" construct. And a lot of other things.

I have NO IDEA where this line of personal growth is headed, nor where it could head if all of us figure these things out. But having a plan? That's very.... colonized. That's very controlling, dominating reality, and trying to be the boss of everything.

I'm hearing this call and I'm fearlessly following it where it goes. Like Cedric says in The Last Unicorn: Magic, magic do as you will!

And I'm sharing what I learn on the way.

They tried to destroy it, but they didn't quite succeed. There *is* an ethnic identity waiting for us on the other side of this bland, soulless, plastic, vampiric, artificial whiteness.

Because the secular post-Christian stance is still couched in the worldview of colonization, right? Our whole story is still that pre-Christian western Europeans were "uncivilized" "barbaric" "savages." Their beliefs were superstitious and backward. Their lives were nasty, brutish, and short. We have better tools and understandings now. We don't have anything to learn from them!

So when do we get to uncover what was ours?

That's what Heilung offers.

My fellow whites: Do you see how much there is to gain by decolonizing? By unpacking our superior attitudes not only towards BIPOC but also towards our own deep, unrecorded, and sullied history? Do you see how deeply biased we are against OUR OWN grandmothers 25 generations back? They who had lived their traditions for thousands of years?

And I know neopaganism is a thing, and I've practiced it both solo and with others, but Heilung really puts in the work, the research, the energy, the spectacle, to make it feel real what it might have been like to sit around a fire where the elders were preparing for a raid, acting out a divine scene, or appealing to the harvest spirits, knowing you're at the mercy of inhuman powers far beyond your control and understanding.

There are many paths out of authoritarian Christianity. And those paths have shifted over the centuries. Time was, your only other option wasn't atheism, it was deism, an enlightenment version of god as a scientist-creator who abandoned the universe after creating it. Now it's atheism, and from there you may end up at suburban paganism-lite, or a secular philosophy. Or you can look to various world religions.

Every one of these routes is some form of colonized or colonizing.

But Heilung is *decolonized*.

There is nothing about the culture Heilung displays on screen that is stolen from some entirely different People. (Obviously they had trade with and raided one another and nearby regions, but they didn't systemically *colonize* the way The Roman Empire and later Roman Christianity did.) Heilung gives us something that is 100% ours.

Their name means "Healing," and I could write a thesis on why that is true for me.

It takes me beyond deconstructing, into reconstructing, a space I'm less comfortable with.

Do you frequently or constantly feel like you or your thoughts are being observed, even when there are no cameras and no one around?

In cult research, there's a concept called "spiritual surveillance," wherein one has been convinced they are being watched by God or the leader or invisible beings. A similar concept is known as "the fishbowl effect."

In 25 years of being an atheist, I still haven't shaken this feeling.