It’s Little Isis’s Birthday!

I turn twenty-one today. And yes, you should be scared.

The semester is almost over, so Tamerlane decided to interview me for this landmark day, and I was only drunk for part of it. The transcript:

“Twenty-One” Questions with Little Isis.

Tamerlane interviews little isis in honor of her twenty-first birthday, May 1.

tamerlane: Where does the name ‘littleisis” come from?

littleisis: After my matron Goddess, Isis. That and when I started blogging most girls my age were doing haul videos.

TAM:  Why ‘little’?

LI:  I’m younger than most bloggers.

TAM:  You describe yourself as a Wiccan.  What does that belief/practice entail?

lI: To be completely honest I’m a little too eclectic in my practice to be just a Wiccan, but it’s easier to identify myself that way. Most people don’t know what Wicca is, and that usually works to my benefit, because I don’t have to use the words “witch” or “witchcraft”.

Wiccan spells are for healing and transformation purposes — to bend and shape your environment in a positive way. The basic premises is to be a positive person, don’t maliciously harm living things (including people obviously), and that everything you do, both harmful and helpful, comes back to you times three. Karma, basically.

We celebrate life, honor the seasons and the cycles of the moon, and worship many Gods and Goddesses. For us, God is both male and female, and that was one of the big things that made Wicca so appealing to me. That, and as polytheists we generally don’t have any doctrine or dogma. We don’t evangelize because there’s no point. All Gods are one God.

TAM: Do you belong to a coven?

LI: I’m a solitary witch, because with my current family situation belonging to a coven would be inconvenient.

TAM: Have you ever had sex atop a satanic altar?  For that matter, have you ever had sex with Chrissie O’Donnell?

LI: Tam, don’t put our business in the streets! I know Chrissie broke up with you for me but that’s no reason put everything out there. And the Satanic Alter was ONE TIME.

TAM:  You also revere deities from other pantheons – Egyptian, Greco-Roman – how do they influence you?

LI: Isis and Osiris actually came to me in a fairly interesting way. When I first became a Pagan I got somewhat interested in Gnostic Christianity, because I wanted to reconcile the extreme Fundamentalist Religion I was raised with. Anyway, I felt a connection to the figure of Mary Magdalen and I read a lot of books about her. Her day is May 1st, my birthday.  We can only speculate as to who she actually was since there is a Mary every two pages in the Bible. But a lot of Biblical Scholars and Historians figure she was a Temple Priestess for the Goddess Isis. It’s actually interesting to know that strong women influenced Jesus’s teachings. But Isis ended up becoming my Matron Goddess. That’s just one example of a deity that I work with a lot and why.

TAM:  What level & forms of religiosity do you see in your generation?  How is it different from older generations?

LI: It varies. A lot of kids my age who are raised in religious households end up prodigals. I think monotheism is starting to become too incompatible with our current society to hold clout for much longer.  Statistically, Christianity is losing a lot more followers than it’s gaining. And other religions, like my own, are growing much more rapidly.

TAM: What’s your major?

LI:  Social Work with a minor in Theater and Dance.

TAM: Oh, you’re one of those people who want to be a millionaire by age 30!

LI: That would be nice, but I’m not all that focused on becoming rich, just comfortable.

TAM:  Well, what do you want to be when you grow up?

A social worker and an author, maybe I’ll go into public law. If I ever start my own non profit it will be for women with mental health problems and women who have been abused, and treatment will have a basis in alternative medicine. Big Pharma and I don’t have a good relationship.

TAM: What treatments you have in mind?

LI: My agency’s treatments would be Hollistic. If my patients really needed it or were in crisis they would be put on medication, but that wouldn’t be the only part of their treatment. We would focus on treating the whole person: mind, body and spirit. Here’s a good link that explains what Hollistic treatment for mental illness would entail.

Mental illness runs in my family, and it usually effects the women. (I’m happy to report that I’m still in posession of all my faculties!) I’ve found that with my mom, her medication makes her a zombie. There’s always a fashionable mental illness that they pin kids with too. In the nineties it was ADHD and lately Aspergers is a popular one. I just think there’s a problem when you’re putting kids on meth amphetamines when they’re six because they “are hyperactive and have trouble paying attention.” Are you serious? That’s because they’re KIDS! Studies show that kids put on Ritalin often have problems because of physiological issues and they’re likely to become cokeheads later, because basically Ritalin and cocaine are the same thing. That’s just wrong.

Pharmaceuticals are supposed to be used to temporarily relieve symptoms, they are not a cure. Also, the side effects cause other health problems and people have to be put on more drugs to fix that shit. Its all profit.

This is one of my biggest issues and I could go on about it forever.

TAM: You wrote recently about some suicides that took place at your high school, including a couple of your good friends.  How has this affected your outlook?  

LI: It affected me pretty profoundly. I started getting a lot more involved politically after they died. I just felt like maybe that wouldn’t have happened to them if things were different. Even now it still gets to me and I wonder what I could have done, but there’s no point in it so I don’t think about that much anymore.

TAM: Do you believe there is a suicide epidemic among young people?

LI: Yeah, there is a problem with suicide in people my age. I have been there myself, mostly when I was a lot younger. And I think if adults paid more attention and our society was a little different it might not be that way.

TAM: Why do you write?

LI: I’m good at it, and I like it and it makes me happy. I first started writing Harry Potter fanfiction when I was fourteen or so and things just evolved from there, but I rarely write fanfiction anymore.

TAM:  Fanfiction?  Like those stories where Kirk and Spock are gay lovers?  OMG — did you turn Harry Potter gay?

LI: No, he and Hermione had an illegitimate child with an attitude problem.

TAM: What else are you working on?

LI: I’m working on a novel, and I have Gods know how many articles for the school newspaper due later tonight.

TAM: Care to share about your novel?

LI: I guess so. I had a dream once about a half demon guy who was stuck in a Grimiore (spell book) and he was very special to me in the dream. I couldn’t pronounce his demon name so I just called him Scooter.  My novel is about a pastor’s daughter who has just recently suffered from some family trauma, and she renounces God in a town in Florida filled with Psychics, so the Grimoire comes to her and she and Scooter end up falling in love.

TAM: Sounds cool!  I bet Lifetime ‘d be interested in buying the rights.

TAM: You’ve been observing politics, and obama in particular, since you were 17.   How do young people feel about him right now?  

LI: None of my non-black friends like him anymore. Literally none of them. Just the other night my friend was talking about how she’d put a lot of faith in him and ended up feeling very disappointed. At one point in time I would have gloated, because in 2008 I felt like I was living in a twilight zone, because no one else saw through him. She’s a very perceptive person and he fooled her. He fooled a lot of my friends, and I hate that he built up their hopes for a better future and then squashed them.

TAM: Do you see yourself running for office some day?

LI: Maybe, but at this point in time and with my background, I couldn’t be elected city alderman. A lot of things would have to change in this country before I would ever want to do that.

TAM: So, what ‘skeletons’ would the Swiftboaters hit you with — that thing about you & Chrissie on the altar?

There are too many to name, College skeletons that don’t matter much, but I was mostly talking about my lifestyle. And I think that’s pretty self explanatory. I just rambled for an entire paragraph up there about the Egyptian Goddess Isis.

TAM:  How did you develop your political views? 

TAM: My parents didn’t influence me much. They were conservative and to please them I pretended to be a Republican until I reached puberty.  When I was little I asked Dad what party President Clinton belonged to, and he said, “he’s a DUMBocrat.” But my Aunt was liberal, a Dem loyalist, and she influenced my politics a lot.  She would talk to me about the things Bush would do.

TAM:  Do you and Donna Brazile still stay in touch?

LI: Naw. Got nothing to say to her.

TAM: You describe yourself as a feminist.  What does that mean to you?  

Feminism to me is simply about equality between the sexes. If you believe in the social, political and economic equality of men and women you are a feminist. It’s not that deep, really, but a lot of girls my age won’t say they’re feminists because some people associate feminists with lesbians who don’t shave their armpits. I’ve gotten a lot of my friends to come around, and I’m told I’m nice to look at so maybe that has something to do with it.

TAM: Do you see today’s feminism in sync with that of earlier generations, or is it heading in another direction?

I agree with liberal 2nd wave feminists about pretty much everything, but radical feminists like Mary Daley ruined it for the rest of us in some ways. Some of her writing was beautiful, but in general Red Tent feminism isn’t feminism to me because separate but equal is not equal.

Today’s feminism, I’ve noticed, concerns itself with the media and female and male stereotypes, and that is one of my biggest concerns right now too. I think male social dominance really hurts men almost as much as it hurts women. Sometimes I think it must be very hard to be a man. Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, captured my feelings perfectly when she said: “I do not believe that women are better than men. We have not wrecked railroads, nor corrupted legislature, nor done many unholy things that men have done; but then we must remember that we have not had the chance.”

TAM: If you had to pick one word to describe yourself, what would it be?

Colorful.

TAM:  Every generation believes they see things more clearly than their predecessors.  There’s an old adage, “from the mouths of babes, wisdom comes.”    You’re a babe, so what message/warning/advice do you have for us old folks?

LI: Just that before you start complaining about our generation, remember who raised us, remember whose debt we’re inheriting and remember the world you’re leaving behind for us to fix. Every generation thinks it’s better than the other, but every generation has its own unique set of problems. A lot of older people complain about the Internet and social networking, but the web is giving us a global village, and it can have a massive impact on Social Change. And also, we do love you very very much. Maybe if we stopped resenting each other so much we would agree on more.

TAM:  I, for one, don’t resent your generation. Your music sucks, is all. Anyway, what plans to you have to celebrate your 21st?

LI:  A lady doesn’t kiss and tell.

TAM:  Well have fun!  And thanks for sharing — this was truly fascinating.  Oh, one last question — what’s your cup size?

LI: I just found out it’s a D, but my girlfriends had convinced me I was a C. ‘Natalie,’ they said,  ‘they’re supposed to push out that way!’

TAM:  You must be breathing easier now.

LI:  Crazy biatches!

I’m going to Hell. Thanks for the FB Birthday wishes, all!