Say NO to Faery Dust!!!

I read a rant somewhere that sort of goes with my next post here...unfortunatly I can only really remember the theme, not what the rant itself said.

It seems a lot of Pagans today are embracing this "Be whatever you want to be and it's ok" mentality. There is no such thing as structure anymore when it comes to being...well almost any type of Pagan these days. I came across a question today that asked "How can I dress as a Pagan Faery".

Pagan Faery. Welp, as a Witch who probably somewhat fits under the term of Paganism (I'm somewhat earth centered but I don't allow it to rule my life), I don't buy into all this Faery, pixie, angelic nonsense (and I apologize to those who do). It seems like many older people (I'm not necessarily going to outright say Teenagers because there ARE some who are well within the adult range that still have a teenagers mentality) are still stuck in the fairy tale world, a world in which fairies reign, Witches wear pointy hats and have green faces, trolls run rampant through the forests and unicorns are abundant.

Is this what Paganism has become? A fairy tale? I thought the idea was to educate people into realizing that Paganism is a legitimate belief system encompassing a great number of SERIOUS religions including Asatru, Norse Heathenry, Druidism and Wicca. Since when do these religions include the belief in fairies, trolls, gnomes and the like?

When I was young and naive, I toyed with the idea in believing in fairies...every time something of mine went missing (particularly my SUV keys), I would blame it on a fairy. Fortunatly as I got older, I realized that it was just nonsense to blame a "fairy" for stealing my keys when it was my own stupidity that misplaced them.

I'm sorry but I cannot continue to sit idly by and not say anything when I see a bunch of newbies going around asking the best way to contact their house fairies, and make little fairy cities in their gardens. It may seem heartless for me to say such things, especially to those who wholeheartedly believe in such creatures, but it just seems silly to me. It could be quite the contradiction for me to believe and practice such a difficult-to-prove practice such as Witchcraft and not believe in other mythical entities, but that's me.