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In Starhawk's 1993 utopian/dystopian novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, all of the Pagan Resistance guys are named John. "It's one of their names for the Devil," explains one of the bad guys.

It's a solidarity thing. (Think: Je suis Charlie Hebdo. Think: Non-Jewish Danes wearing yellow stars during the Nazi occupation.) It's also a resistance thing: we're all one. We're all in this fight together, anonymously interchangeable.

To distinguish one John from another, they all have by-names à la Old Norse: Hijohn, Littlejohn, Johnny Be Good.

In that world, I would definitely be Johnny Deer. We're Deer Clan from way back, my people, and Deer's always been my guy. I'm built like a deer, I've got the cervine grace and moves.

But here in the Midwest Pagan Resistance, the guys all seem to be Jacks.

So what kind of Jack am I?

Jacks figure large in pagan lore. (Is he one, is he many? Reply hazy, try again later.) Think of Jack in the Green, and all his latter-day seasonal variants: Jack in the Sheaf, Jack o' Lantern, Jack in the Drift.

Even the resident priest at one of our local pagan land sanctuaries is a Jack: Jack in the Buff, it would have to be in his case, just like in the song. Hey, if anyone embodies the spirit of skyclad, he does.

Not to mention all those other Jacks of the legendarium: Jack the Giant Killer, Spring-heeled Jack, Jack in the Pulpit, jolly Jack Tar, Hijack, Car Jack, Whiskey Jack, Jack Daniels. Nor, of course, should we forget that perennial favorite, Jack Off.

(I presume that he's some sort of kin to the CBC's immortal Carol Off, long-time hostess emerita to the curry-souled All Things Considered North news program As It Happens.)

Well, the oathbreaker partisan hack Injustices of the American Supreme Court have (in effect) declared war on the Free peoples of the US, and—just as we've been doing for centuries—the Pagan Resistance continues our immemorial cultural rear-guard action. I'll have to dig my old “Wiccan Army: Thirteenth Airborne Division” patch out of the drawer. Our motto: “We will not fly silently into the night.”

John Halstead wrote an article around a table lifted from the anthology Deep Green Resistance*. It's a great piece: go ahead and read it.

There are three things I've learned never to discuss with people:

religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

(Linus von Pelt)

You may remember the chant from the demos following the last presidential election here in the States:

NOT MY presi-DENT!

(clap-clap clap-clap-clap)

NOT MY presi-DENT!

(clap-clap clap-clap-clap)

As chants go, it's really pretty good: focused, succinct, a nice alternation of verbal and non-verbal, words and percussion. And it certainly beats Hey hey! Ho ho! — — has got to go!

Unfortunately, they were wrong. If you're an American, the Troll-in-Chief is your president.

But it doesn't have to stay that way.

So I'm choosing to look on that chant, not as a statement of fact, but as a prediction which we know—and may it be sooner rather than later—will eventually come true.

So, riffing off the old chant, here's the new one that I'll be chanting:

[Image from http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/01/25/a_q_a_with_the_muslim_woman_whose_face_has_become_a_symbol_of_trump_resistance.html]