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March 18: In the days since posting this, it has become clear that we must practice the most strict social distancing possible, which means that we must cancel all in-person rituals and events unless they are only with those we already live with. I'm leaving this post up because the thought exercises in it are still useful for other situations where minimizing contact is important, such as when someone in your group is immunocompromised.

On an additional note, I know a lot of groups use a communal cup in their rituals, but those who aren't comfortable sharing will pour out a small amount or touch the cup to their forehead. Though that technically solves the problem, one of the techniques of ritual is bringing everyone together through the use of repetitive and identical actions. I believe strongly in trying to accommodate everyone by writing a ritual that everyone can participate in equally; whenever possible, let's not make people have to choose between standing out and compromising on their needs.

We may not gather weekly as a church, but when we gather, we tend to hug in greeting. Our rituals are full of shared food, shared drinking vessels, holding hands, and even kissing. COVID-19 and its social distancing recommendations will impact Ostara and maybe Beltane, and all the full moons and other celebrations until then, so we need to think about this.

Think carefully before having an event at all: the safest thing we can do is simply not have in-person gatherings. If you are going to have a ritual, keep the group small, encourage people to skip it if they are at all unwell, ask that people keep their distance from each other, and modify the ritual in advance.

If you've got a group with a deeply entrenched way of doing things, remember that now is not the time to cling to "tradition" if it is harmful to the greater good of flattening the curve. I have received at least 25 mass emails in the last couple of days from everyone from my puppy's daycare to my bank with information about what they are doing about this outbreak - there's no excuse not to think about this stuff in advance if you are going to be holding a ritual or event. Your participants need to know your plan so they can react according to their needs. Vulnerable people and their loved ones in particular need to decide if they should attend at all.

Outdoor rituals? If possible, doing rituals outside with all that fresh air may be healthier than someone's home where germs might be resting on the surfaces.

New pre-ritual ritual: Everyone washes their hands with soap and hot water before the ritual begins. This isn't a symbolic cleansing in salt water, but a real cleaning.

No hugging or kissing: We usually hug each other as a welcome to the Circle; I'm thinking bowing might be a substitute for us.

No holding hands: Our group starts every ritual with a short breathing meditation. We hold hands and stand close together so we can feel each other's deep breaths moving our bodies - now we will stand further apart and have no physical contact. We will have to listen for each other.

No shared drinking glasses: I circle with people with chronic illnesses and my own immune system is compromised by my Multiple Sclerosis medication, so we haven't had a shared goblet in years. We each bring our own goblets and we bless a carafe of beverages and share it out.

No passed food: Currently, we pass the food plate around the circle, speaking a blessing over it - letting our breath pass over the food and standing much closer to each other than 6 feet apart. I think each will help themselves to the food at the next ritual, if we even have food in the Circle.

Our religion is often embodied - the best rituals reach our spirits via our bodies... our bodies in movement, our bodies in community. So we have to find ways to bring our fragile bodies into ritual. If we can't use touch to connect us, we have to use our other senses. Maybe we will have to experiment with virtual/digital rituals. We have to be creative and open to change in order to be good, responsible Pagans in the time of coronavirus.

Links: Paganism in the time of coronavirus - part 2 and Paganism in the time of coronavirus - part 3: Virtual rituals.


Screen shot of the alt text over an image: "Blue and white stick figure actively wheeling a wheelchair."

I've been getting ready for the launch of A Broom and A Spoon, a podcast for and by Pagans with chronic illnesses made by ED and I. Since we also plan to discuss issues relevant to Pagans with mental illnesses, disabilities, and sensory processing differences, it is important to us to make everything connected with the project as accessible as possible. It has been quite the project, and I wanted to share some resources and tips I've discovered so far so other Pagan resources can also be made more accessible.

Website testing: It turns out there's a lot more to an accessible website than alt text for images, though that is really important. This website was very enlightening to me about both of my websites: WAVE: web accessibility evaluation tool. Many of the defaults for both Squarespace and WordPress websites are not very accessible. For example, Squarespace's way of dealing with alt text means that when I use a screen reader app, all of the alt text is read twice. My WordPress pages are full of errors like "Missing form label", "Redundant title text", and "Redundant link", all of which are done by WordPress or the theme I chose and will have to be manually overridden (if they even can be at my skill level).

Keyboard accessibility: It is driving me nuts that I can't get focus indicators to work on either website when they should be on by default. WebAIM is full of tips and cautions for making websites more accessible.

Designing for everyone: I love these posters of how to design better for a variety of needs: "Dos and don'ts on designing for accessibility".

Closed captioning: YouTube auto-generated captions are on a scale from bad to terrible. Really, I tried to watch some of them on mute and I have no idea what the person is actually saying. Please, please, edit the captions.

Videos for the blind: On the subject of YouTube, if you are posting one, consider making a described video version for people with vision problems. There's an easy free tool at YouDescribe.org, though you have to send people to their website to see it. If you don't want to record your own, let me know - I love doing described videos.

Edited to add: Social media accessibility: I stumbled across this great tutorial on accessibility on the major social media platforms: Accessible Social Media.

I have a lot of work to do on my websites to get them to where I would like, accessibility-wise. I hope other Pagans will be inspired to check their own websites and online resources too, and pass on tips to each other. Let's make accessibility a core Pagan value!


Morning glory and mint growing together over an almost completely covered lawn chair.
A piece of our yard is the most peaceful of war zones, as morning glory and mint fight for dominance.

I had a beautiful weekend. On Friday evening, Silver Spiral had a belated Litha. It was a gorgeous ritual. In the power raising, the group was given a fairly simple poem to turn into a chant. It started as just rhythmic speaking, than acquired melody, then evolved into a call and response with a complex clapping rhythm.

On Saturday morning, I went to my weekly Tai Chi class. The instructor was emphasizing the importance of paying attention to the group's timing: pushing forward together, turning together, kicking together. Doing the Tai Chi set smoothly as a group requires paying attention to the people on all sides of you and matching your timing to theirs. It also means making constant tiny adjustments to your positioning, taking some smaller or larger steps here and there or nudging yourself forward or back in order to keep spacing even and keep the lines straight. You have your workout to do, but you are also part of the whole. Ideally everyone in that whole values both of those things so the whole works as one while the individuals also work and balance their bodies in the ways they need as individuals.

Silver Spiral's rituals are firmly grounding in consent culture practices. When it is "just family" at rituals, we often rely on our long-standing mutual understandings about consent and participation, but we sometimes use an explicit acknowledgment, especially when running a public ritual:

We stand here as empowered and free individuals. We are each able to make our own choices about coming to this circle, about staying in this circle, and about how to participate in the ritual. You may leave at any time and for any reason, return whenever you want, and sit out any activity. We ask of each other only that we don't interfere with the experience of other participants.

That isn't comprehensive, of course: we do ask more of participants than just not interfering with each other's experience. A ritual is a whole that is more than the sum of the individuals in it, but that requires that all participants put effort into it.

Friday's ritual's chant started as a slightly ragged spoken poem as we figured out the words. As we found our own individual ways, we also came together. Even as I slipped into a light trance, I could find ways to follow the group's shifting chant. I could find a place where my voice belonged and hear it contribute to the whole.

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Shattered glass tumbler with the broken shards of glass lying alongside on a black background.
Shattered glass tumbler by freebie.photography is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

My spine and brain is a frayed electrical cord, short circuiting and sending confused messages to my body. I lose connection to parts of me; sometimes I look at my fingers and toes to make sure they are still there.

Broken connections to broken dishes: mixing bowls and glass measuring cups are the victims of my numb hands. I can no longer tell what's a normal fumble that could have happened to anyone and what's my confused nervous system. Every time I slosh wine, every time I drop my phone, every time I trip over nothing, I wonder.

Broken dishes to broken trust, as I don't know what to expect from my body anymore. Random surges of tingling, random muscle clenching, random weakness and tremors... my body is unpredictable and not in my control.

I have always believed in an embodied Paganism: a religion that doesn't deny the reality of being in possession of a body with needs and senses; a spirituality that acknowledges that we're animals and that we're natural beings; a faith that finds spirit and grace in the world instead of in the afterlife. But that was easier when my body was comfortable to inhabit. It was easier when I could trust my body.

This disease takes a lot from people. I won't let it take my Paganism, but some re-envisioning may be necessary to find perfect trust in my broken body.

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A woman sitting in a wheelchair smiling in front of a mountain vista. "Sedentarism is very much linked to consumerism, materialism, colonialism, and the destruction of the planet. If you're not moving, someone else is moving for you, either directly, or indirectly by making STUFF to make not moving easier on you. You were born into a sedentary culture, so 99.9 percent of your sedentary behaviours are flying under your radar. Start paying attention. What do you see?" - Katy Bowman, Movement Matters: Essays on Movement Science, Movement Ecology, and the Nature of Movement.

Every time I read it, my stomach clenches in the way that means that this is something important. I read the above quote on Boing Boing under the intriguing title "Your body has been outsourced". It pulls on my gut in many ways: as a fitness lover and a person interested in body positivity, as a person interested in protecting the environment, as a person who tries to think critically about capitalism and colonialism, and as a Pagan interested in embodied religion. I dug into Katy Bowman's blog with some trepidation, though, because I am now also a person with health conditions, one of which may prove to be profoundly life-altering.

At the end of 2016, I was a part-time fitness instructor going to the gym 4 or 5 days a week, who used a standing desk at work, and who commuted to and from my full-time day job and all over the city on my own two feet. At the end of 2017, I had given up my fitness class and my standing desk, I was working from home several days a week and commuting by bus when I had to go in, and waiting for my MRI results.

I think people should move, or not move, in ways they want to. Exercise is not a moral imperative; health isn't an obligation. And no matter how much we would like to pretend otherwise, health also isn't always in our control. Sometimes there isn't a choice to move or not move; your body chooses for you.

I curl up on myself, holding the parts of me that hurt, and know that I am privileged to get to sit for long periods every day with work, education, entertainment, and connection all delivered to me digitally, and sometimes food and other necessities ordered online and brought to my door. I am blessed that I can be sedentary; I try not to resent my body for needing so much stillness.

I feel the unfairness in my body.

I feel it in my numb and fumbling hands: I am outsourcing my personal labour when I choose to buy new socks rather than darn the ones I have.

I feel it in my aching shins: I am participating in environmental destruction when I choose to email my colleague instead of crossing the room to talk to her.

I feel it in the shocks that run down my arms: I am supporting the exploitation of people when I use one of my three portable phones instead of going to the phone in the kitchen.

I feel it in the brain fog and when I can't hold on to simple information: I am relying on ethically-challenged systems when I use apps on my phone to track my medications and keep track of appointments and meetings.

It's a kind of cognitive dissonance, I think. My gut tells me that it is right to do as much of my own labour as possible and my heart tells me that it's best to move, but my legs and arms and brain don't always cooperate. That might be my reality; it is the reality of many people around me, including some I love very much. I don't know how to resolve this push and pull when I am unwell, but when I am feeling well, I won't take it for granted.

Yeah, well, so mote it be, right?


Ain't no rest for the wicked until we close our eyes for good.
Cage The Elephant - "Ain't No Rest For The Wicked"

Similar to and overlapping with the issue of accessibility is the issue of Pagans dealing with chronic illnesses. This seems like a less explored topic. The Mighty, an amazing site created to empower and connect people facing health challenges and disabilities, has 4 articles when you search "pagan" and only one of those was an author describing themselves as Pagan. There was 1 article for "Wicca". I couldn't count the number of articles that come up when you search "Christian". Given how many Pagans have chronic health conditions, there's definitely room for more exploration of this topic. Here are some people who have started the conversation:

"Physical restrictions due to a chronic condition can make it difficult to feel as if you're connected with the Goddess (or Deity or general energy or nature etc). Conducting rituals indoors because cold weather makes your pain worse, you can feel cut off from the Earth and it's energies. You can feel cut off from other Pagans and the community at large because it's difficult to get out and get to meetings. And because the level of pain you're in is unpredictable, it often means you have to cancel plans at the last minute.

"This can be disheartening. You can end up feeling like you're not a proper Pagan. ...

"Illness isn't something that should steal your faith from you. There are things you can do. As in every other part of your living with a chronic illness, it can mean cutting back on what you do to save your energy."

- "How To Be a Practicing Pagan with a Chronic Illness"; guest contributor Nobby: Staff of Asclepius - Pagans With Disabilities

"Doing something may help you more than doing nothing. If you don't have a practice you can do on your worst days, it can be really easy to get out of the habit of checking in with your spiritual life (and feel even harder to pick up when you do feel better in the future.) Doing small things – especially things you set up in advance and use when you need to – can help a lot."

- "Chronic Illness and Pagan Practice"; Jenett - Seeking: first Pagan steps and tools

"No deity or Wiccan police have come to me and chastised me for not studying or working as much as Person B. If you need to take a few days away, do it! If you can only study 5-10 minutes a day- hey that's 5-10 minutes MORE than you knew before you did that, right? If you can only meditate a couple of minutes, well guess what! That's a couple of quality minutes you just spent to better your mind and body. If you only have time to study by listening to Wiccan audiobooks while you're driving to work or picking the kids up or fixing dinner- do it! That's time that you will spend learning."

- "Chronic Illness and Wicca"; Country Hippie Crossing


A close-up of two people holding handsMy partner sometimes tells a story of the early days of our relationship. I actually don't remember the conversation, per se, but it is part of the structure of our life together. As the story goes, I sat him down and offered him a simple agreement: we will both agree to say what we mean and we will both agree to believe what the other says. If you say you are OK, I will trust your word. We aren't perfect at this, but it has generally been a helpful guideline by which to live together: a goal of perfect trust.

On Facebook recently, I linked to a rant article about Pagan Standard Time. I was mostly interested in the cultural aspect, where Pagan culture has made flakiness, lateness, and lack of preparation and planning into values. It's as if we subconsciously believe that you can't be "magical" or spiritual and still be capable of reading a calendar. My experience with assorted community organizing certainly bears this out: there are the volunteers who don't show up for their shifts and never respond to emails about whether or not they are OK; there's the criticism of leaders who insist on event licenses and insurance with their associated costs; and there's a general acceptance of everything running late from the unapologetic leaders and the shrugging "Pagan Standard Time" response from participants.

After I posted the link, a fellow Silver Spiral member pointed out the ableism in the article. When you narrow the focus from the general culture of Paganism down to the actions of individuals, you can't tell the difference between flakiness and invisible disabilities (or other life challenges) that might stand in the way of someone being prepared and on time. There are those who would prefer to be thought of as flaky rather than share the private details of their physical or mental health or other life circumstances, and we should respect that.

In a perfect world, the Pagan community would have a simple agreement: everyone would do the best they can to be on time and to be prepared, and no one would question or complain about those who don't succeed. We would give up the mythology that our magic interferes with our ability to be practical. We would trust that everyone's doing their part, even if that part seems small. We would make room for those who need more support or more time because they'd no longer be lost in a sea of people who choose not to take their community commitments as seriously as their schooling or day jobs.

Given that I can't single-handedly change Pagan culture, I will commit to this: I am going to do the best I can to start my events on time out of respect for those who made the effort to be there promptly - especially those with challenges; especially those whose challenges are invisible or unknown. I am also going to hold space for those who aren't on time or prepared. When they arrive, they'll be welcomed and included. I'll try to work with the assumption that everyone is making their best effort and that they should not have to explain or justify themselves. I will try believing the intentions and words of others with the impossible goal of community-wide perfect trust.

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Chairs set up around an altar.

There's an ideal image of a witches' coven in ritual: A group in matching robes standing around an altar in the moonlight. The altar would be laid with a lovely cloth and be bright with candles with incense smoke curling around simple, beautiful, matching tools. The coven's hands are held high and they are ready to chant and dance and work magic. It's an image seen on many Pagan books and magazines. It's an image I was trying to recreate in the first rituals I did... often to the detriment of the ritual's content and focus.

Over time, I've moved towards focusing on substance over style in my rituals, and the practical needs of my spiritual community has overridden any desire to have our rites look like a magazine cover. Robes went first; we simply didn't have the desire to all get any sort of special clothing. Next to go was the moonlight; rituals, even ones centered around the moon, sometimes had to be in the afternoon or right after work. Incense was given up due to allergies. Most recently, we've given up standing and dancing, at least temporarily. At this year's Lammas ritual, out of the six people who were able to attend, three were unable to stand without pain and one had her tiny baby with her.

Over the course of adapting rituals to the needs of a group with mobility issues, we've learned a few helpful things:

- I've found that both the group energy and the mechanics of the ritual work best if everyone's on the same level: all standing, or all seated in chairs, or all seated on the floor. We try to have chairs that are roughly the same height. If we're sitting on the floor, an altar that is very low or even just a cloth right on the floor is important so people can see each other and what's happening.

- If the ritual is going to include holding hands or passing items, it is important to place the chairs close enough together and to choose an altar small enough to fit in the centre, rather than having an altar that's too big and having people too far apart.

- Getting in and out of a circle of chairs can be awkward, so circle casting is best either done from a stationary position or by walking around the inside of the circle of people if there's enough room. When planning, be aware that chairs take up more room than standing people, so your room will fill up very quickly.

- If possible, encourage people to sit up straight and at the edge of their chair to keep energy and physical attention on the ritual.

- Cross-calling the quarters: The person calling East sits in the West, therefore facing East, and so on. I saw a group use this technique when doing very large outdoor rituals because it made it easier for the whole group to hear, but it is also really effective in a group where people can't easily turn to face the quarter being called.

- Dancing might be out, but a lot of other energy raising techniques work just as well in a seated ritual: drumming and chanting, meditations and visualizations, etc. If more movement seems required, there are lots of options with a bit of creativity: clapping, stomping feet, passing items around, and hand and arm gestures.

At Lammas, we made for a very different looking circle than that Wiccan 101 book cover: jeans and t-shirts, sitting in kitchen chairs in a ring around an altar covered with a sarong and cluttered with a diverse collection of tools and a bottle of cinnamon whiskey. But the magic was undeniable.


Blue and white stick figure actively wheeling a wheelchairAs Paganism matures, we have to address a huge range of accessibility issues for our religion: physical accessibility for Pagans with mobility issues, assistance for Pagan parents, audiobooks for Pagans who are blind, sign language interpreters for deaf Pagans, inclusivity for LGBTQ Pagans, a welcoming atmosphere for Pagans of colour, accommodations for Pagans with allergies, and more. Luckily, we have some smart, helpful, welcoming Pagans talking about those issues already:

"In this case, the unpopular thing is the idea that we – Pagan leaders and ritualists – may need to change how we approach rituals in order to make our rituals more accessible and inclusive. We may even need to re-evaluate some of our dearly-held theological beliefs. If we want the dominant culture to change, to legalize gay marriage, support people with disabilities, eliminate racism... don't we have to do that work first ourselves, within our community?"

- "Ritual: Physical Accessibility, Transgender Inclusion, and more"; Shauna Aura Knight: Pagan Activist

"Given the huge variation between and within lineages in Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, adding a bit more variation to the mix shouldn't be in the slightest bit controversial - but strangely, as soon as you mention including LGBT people, disabled people, and people of colour, it becomes controversial. I wonder why that is?"

- "But what do you actually do?"; Yvonne Aburrow, inclusive Wicca

"If there's any piece in a ritual that's gendered, they're usually for one of the two most common genders. Where do I fit if I'm involved in that ritual but the best descriptor for my gender mode is "the green of the deep woods in shaded places" (and yes, that is a gender mode I experienced very recently, and no, I don't have any better way to describe it). And that's just in ritual; what do I do in social spaces before and after? "Hi, my name is Dee and my pronouns are they and them," isn't necessarily the best icebreaker that doesn't also completely derail the purpose of the gathering (depending on the group, of course)."

- "Gender - What's the Big Idea?"; Dee Shull: The Liminal Waters

"And yet when these sorts of things occur, it gets kinda frustrating, and isolating, and lonely, and sad, and painful, and emotional... because when things like this come up I feel these complex issues do separate me. They kinda split me in half. I know I can go into the Deaf Community and they get it, and they can provide support... but they can't always provide the magick and the healing, and the spiritualness that gets me through days like this. But where can I find that same comparable understanding and support within the Pagan Community? I'm not saying it doesn't exist... but it does seem more challenging to locate it."

- "Mandela’s Fake Interpreter"; Ocean: Deaf Pagan Crossroads

"One of the walls I often crash against in the wider pagan community is the inaccessibility of events and rituals for children who have special needs, from autism spectrum disorders to physical mobility issues, that require accommodation. We are a community that prides itself on inclusivity, and yet I often see a lack of it towards children in general and specifically towards children who have behavioral or physical challenges. The biggest argument against it seems to be that something important will be lost if we change what we are doing to make it easier for children with different needs to attend. I disagree, and I think by making our [open, public] rituals too focused on creating a numinous experience for the adults present we are losing a more genuine feeling of community that should be present in religious worship by open groups.

"What frustrates me is that it doesn't have to be this way – while it does require compromise and reworking it is not impossible to accommodate families that need it. And I will never believe the Gods, ancestors or spirits are offended by the actions or needs of a child who is doing their best in the moment and only wants to be part of a spiritual celebration."

- "Irish-American Witchcraft: Pagan Events and Special Needs Children (or Adults)"; Morgan Daimler: The Agora

"There are also a lot of festivals, rituals and events, whether as small as a coven or large as a regional festival, that aren't very accommodating. And that's a problem.

"You see, we're getting old. As a movement, we are aging. Today Gardner would be over 120, and Alex Sanders would be in his 90's. The youngest of their initiates would be in their 40's to 60's now, and most would be much older.

"The Beatles wanted to know if you'd still love them when they turned 64. I wonder if our community will still be there for us when we're 72 or 86?"

- "Is Paganism Blind To The Disabled?"; Star Foster: Pantheon

"Some people in the Pagan community get it. They design gatherings with flexibility built in. They communicate clearly but inclusively — "We will be doing X" rather than "X kind of people should not apply." They are more interested in providing a positive experience and encouraging their fellow Pagans than in excluding people whose bodies don't meet their preconceived notions. They welcome questions and find ways to work around limits."

- "Welcome vs. Go Away"; Jane Raeburn: "Vulcan's Sister"

"There are also many people with disabilities whose voices are not included in this article. Some are quite isolated and have difficulty attending events at all, and rely almost entirely upon the internet to make contact with people of like mind. The Wild Hunt did reach out to a number of Pagans with disabilities about sharing their perspectives, but one thing that is all too common is that some disabilities — regardless of its other impacts — sap energy and make otherwise simple tasks much more difficult, such as sending an email or typing out a sentence or two in reaction. We would like to acknowledge these unheard voices within our community."

- "Pagans with disabilities face unseen challenges"; Terence P Ward: The Wild Hunt



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