I am sharing this post for the safety and protection of the Neopagan community both online and off. I have been made aware of deeply disturbing information about a man that many people know, and have become connected to by social media: Matthew Catalano, who also goes by the name Matthew McEwan, and sometimes Artaigne McEwan. The link I just gave to his FB may disappear soon after this blog is made public, but many screenshots from it are preserved below, demonstrating the potentially very dangerous, certainly hateful, and two-faced reality of this homophobic and racist man.
Catalano has been lurking in the Neopagan community for a space of years, wearing many hats within it. You may have seen him under these “Pagan” and “Witch” incarnations:
In October of last year, Catalano joined Josh Simonds– a fraudulent “psychic” whom he is friends with- in a smear campaign against me and my communities. I had to write a blog post about it, to speak for those communities, as you may recall. Catalano mass-friended people who were connected to me on Facebook, achieving nearly 150 or more mutual friends over the space of three days, before posting an attack against me and my communities written by Simonds, accusing me of being a cult leader and predator, and all the usual. The mass friending that Catalano did was done so that Simonds’ smear would reach a lot of people connected to me.
Catalano claimed he didn’t know me at all, and that he didn’t know Josh, and was just innocently “investigating” Simonds’ claims, but he also blocked every person who tried to respond to him and speak on my behalf. Catalano presented himself on Josh’s social media as a queer ally, a liberal democratic socialist, and eagerly plugged Josh’s books and work.
Catalano has clearly been operating as some kind of infiltrator of the Neopagan community for a long while, and is (as the screenshots below will support) a Fundamentalist Christian, a Christian dominionist, and a deeply homophobic and racist man. He’s also an anti-vax conspiracy theorist, apparently.
At the same time he was working with Josh Simonds (and several other obsessed people who dislike me, who friended Catalano and eagerly Joined Catalano and Simonds in their smear campaign) he was maintaining the Facebook page which contains the posts we have obtained below.
A day before this blog was made, Catalano’s FB page (celebrating his very Catholic “Lent” with his new cover photo) was as so:
And for the avoidance of doubt, this account was made in 2010, 13 years before most of us encountered Catalano:
UPDATE 3/12/2024: Catalano has added two new cover photos in the last few days:
A walk through the FB page revealed the following horror show of ultra-right wing extremism. Exhibit A would be Catalano (just five months before joining Josh in attacking me) making fun of the Pride Rainbow and the slogan “Love Wins” and making homophobic claims about anal sex, including the obligatory warning about the “wrath of god”:
And in the following conversation about this hateful lunacy, urging someone to sell T-shirts of it, and agreeing that “sodomy” is a disgusting practice:
Exhibit B is a post celebrating Uganda’s decision to fight against Pride Month and declare homosexuality potentially punishable by death:
Exhibit C is Catalano dog-whistling about the Conservative “Slippery Slope Fallacy”, indicating that any social movements towards Gay or Queer rights or equality will end in social approval for “bestiality”:
Exhbit D is Catalano telling us what he really thinks about Paganism, before engaging in an interesting conversation right after, a conversation in which he explains to his fundy Christian friends how modern Pagans are “unregenerate God haters”, are only practicing Paganism “to sleep with whomever they want”, how he has been “involved in Pagan communities for several years and recognized their utter contempt for the law of God”, and how all modern Pagans are “LARPing Atheists” with “dead traditions.”
Exhibit E is Catalano calling for a “Christian Nation”– a wish for a fascist Christian takeover of the United States, in the style of Christian Dominionists:
But Catalano definitely only wants that to happen for the best of reasons:
That’s a nice follow-up on Catalano’s nuanced view of gas stoves and other issues facing our society:
Exhibit F is Catalano’s (by this point unsurprising) shout-out to White Supremacy:
Tell us how you really feel, Catalano.
Exhibit G is some fun Anti-Vax super-right-wing trash calling people who got vaccinated “dangerous” to everyone around them:
Exhibit H is Catalano’s love-letter to Pat Buchanan, which I could not bring myself to reproduce for you here in its entirety, owing to my weak stomach when it comes to ultra-fascist right wingers:
It is important to understand that Matthew Catalano has been pretending to be a Neopagan, while being a supporter of the most extreme and violent right-wing ideologies in our society- a shocking and frightening thing for such a publicly open member of our armed forces in the Wisconsin National Guard. I can hardly imagine that his commanding officers would take kindly to this horrifying and hateful rhetoric in our modern diverse military, but we all know the nature of the conservative political relationship to the military.
If you became friends with Catalano on social media because you saw that he was a mutual friend with me, you should take steps to protect yourself and unfriend him. I believe that if you are sharing pictures of your children, or your home, or sharing intimate details about your life on social media, there is a possibility that you could be in danger from him or his completely insane right-wing friends.
Catalano has been friends with our favorite con man Josh Simonds for a long time. Below is a screenshot from 2019, from my Cylgh An Carow Gwyn community, in which Catalano thanks Josh for giving him one of Josh’s famous magical four leaf clovers- clovers that Josh falsely claimed to be “guided by spirits” to find in huge numbers as a sign of how mystically empowered he was, but which he actually planted himself, using four leaf clover seeds that anyone can purchase easily.
Here is Catalano giving a shout-out review to Josh’s fantastic psychic services on his racist and homophobic page (which you have been puking your way through for the last several minutes):
Here’s Catalano thanking Josh for one of Josh’s books he bought- a book of recipes written by other people’s dead relatives that Josh (a well known grief vampire) slinks them for, so that he can make money off of other people’s family legacies and memories:
Here’s Josh and Catalano, happy “brothers” to the end:
I urge everyone to share this information, because I believe any rational appraisal of what is being shown in this blog would be considered a sign of clear and present danger presented by Matthew Catalano and his supporters to all Neopagan and alternative spiritual communities.
Catalano has removed several of his “Pagan” profiles, but he windmills a lot- they disappear and re-appear regularly. You should be aware of them if they re-appear in the future.
On a personal note, I think it very exonerating that the kinds of people who join in public smear campaigns against me and my communities, making ludicrous claims that I am a “cult-leader” or a “predator” of some variety, typically end up being revealed to have the kinds of characters that Josh Simonds and Matthew Catalano have. I should probably be honored that a man like Catalano- an open racist, homophobe, and fundamentalist Christian- felt bold enough to claim the absurd things he said about me (including being brazen enough to call me racist and homophobic, rather shockingly considering he had this Facebook page you’ve been seeing here up the entire time.)
It is a strange honor to be targeted by objectively evil and corrupt people. It means that I and those near me are standing for something real and right.
Be safe out there, friends. There are a lot of bad people connecting to you through Facebook and other social media, and as we’ve all learned the hard way, social media gives the worst among us easy tools to harm others, and makes them very hard to fight back against.
The Feast of Dreams 
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