My hot take on the moon hexing is that "in public" is a terrible place to believe anything. I think we'd all be better off if we adopted a notion of non-overlapping magisteria not just for material/science concerns and immaterial/spiritual ones but also between spiritual ones.

And when I say that "in public" is a terrible place to believe anything, I'm not saying "You should keep your spiritual beliefs and practices private". I mean the modern reality is that a conversation between you and friends, or you and your audience, *might* be seen by millions.

Somebody wants to hex the moon? And somebody else is upset because they work with the moon in their own faith practices? A thousand years ago... or twenty years ago... you would have no idea the moon hexing happened and it would have nothing to do with you or you it.

Thousands of cultures have all worshipped the same sun without worshipping the same sun god, and so nobody else's spiritual beliefs had to incorporate the moment when Zeus struck down Helios's chariot on Bring Your Child To Work Day.

The number of things that *don't* go viral, that *don't* get a million random people arbitrarily seeing it... and that don't get *the same* millions of people seeing them... I mean, this thread right here is late to the discourse but it will still be news to a lot of people.

My other hot take is that the moon hexing was faked. It was all done on a studio backlot. There's no such thing as TikTok. They hexed an empty field in New Mexico.

But seriously. Like, an obnoxious atheist doing horrible things to the Eucharist should have zero implications for Catholics beyond thinking he's kind of a jerk for no reason, if the Eucharist means nothing to him. He can't desecrate what is not, for him, sacred.

"But I can't *not* care about the moon hexing because in my practice, it's a horrible thing to send negative energy out into the world."

Then? Don't? Do? That?

Other people don't have to practice according to your beliefs. This is basic religious freedom and social plurality.

I mean yes but also no. If someone else's spirituality is incompatible with yours, then insisting that they're doing the same thing as you but wrong is a self-inflicted harm. https://twitter.com/SnailChimera/status/1285226480419713024

Very much this. The freakout is made possible/inevitable by the combination of global communication network plus a Christian-inflected idea of a global/universal faith. https://twitter.com/Teknogrot/status/1285227691654942721