WW

1. Do you wear any religious symbol jewelry/clothing? If so do you wear it openly in public?

Not normally - I had a necklace at one point, but it broke. I don't tend to do well with jewelry, as my skin is very acidic and tends to eat metal. But I do occasionally wear long pendants if it matches what I'm wearing, normally of semi-precious stone. I don't actually own any religious symbol jewelry, but I do have a t-shirt that I go grocery shopping in - it's black with gold printed people dancing in a circle, with the title "Wild Witches Don't Get The Blues".


2. How do you feel about the issue of wearing religious symbols in schools and how some young teens are forced to remove their religious fashions?

If it's ok for a "mainstream" religon to wear their symbols, then it should be ok for a non-mainstream one to do so. As long as the symbols or images aren't violent, then there shouldn't be an issue with it.


3. Have you ever experienced a confrontation about wearing your jewelry in public? How did you handle the situation if so?

Yes, I did... It was rather amusing, actually. I was wearing the one piece I designed and wore for a while - a pentacle in brass, on a choker necklace of tiger's eye and black jet.

I wore it to work when I first started working in a call center. I had 3 cubemates, and one of them was a Jehovah's Witness. Unfortunately, she was quite distressed at the symbol, and said that I needed to remove my "devil's symbol". I asked her what she was talking about, and she pointed, horrified, at my necklace.

I had to sit her down and explain about the actual background behind the symbol, and how the christian faith had deliberately manipulated it to be a negative symbol in order to convert people out of fear. It was all very traumatic for her, as she was such a devout believer in the anglo-saxon version of the bible. It was almost frightening to me that she was SO closed-minded.

I wore it a few times after that, and it wasn't an issue, but then the necklace broke, and I never re-created one.

~M