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Tag: reimagining

Published on Leave a comment on Down to the core

"Finding balance" by woodleywonderworks; Creative Commons CC BY 2.0

Sometimes we talk about balancing the elements in ourselves: balancing the wild passion of Fire with the practicality of Earth; balancing the emotions of Water with the intellect of Air. It strikes me that that's a bit like balancing by focusing on your limbs. Balance isn't in your arms and legs - it is in your core.

To balance your body, brace your core, focus your eyes, and breathe. If your core is strong, your limbs can be flung in any direction, you can be still or moving, you can be on a small base of support, and still you will be in control.

Maybe to balance your magic, brace your spirit, focus your intention, and breathe.

Published on Leave a comment on As above, not so below

A close-up of a sundial surrounded by low greenery, showing a time of about 12:30.
"Garden sundial MN 2007" by SEWilco is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5

I've never been too fussed about always going clockwise in Circle, and the Silver Spiral tradition doesn't have it as a requirement. We sometimes forget to tell guests and start off watching them awkwardly spin three-quarters clockwise instead of one quarter counter-clockwise until they realize that we don't bother. Up to them, though; if deosil is their preference, they can have at it.

It's all a matter of view and perspective: Rise to the sun and the moon, and gaze down with Them on our rites, we seem to move clockwise. Sink down in to the earth below our feet and look up with Her, and we seem to move counter-clockwise. Every deosil contains widdershins, and each widdershins contains deosil.

Pull back away from our sun, and see the planets spiral through space. If they left trails, they'd be like be like the double helix of DNA. Our little sacred Circles on the earth spiral through space with Her.

A computer generated image of a double helix DNA strand: dark blue on a lighter blue background.
"DNA Double Helix" by cookiepx2016 is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

Clockwise or counter-clockwise, circles or spirals; it's all a matter of perspective.

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Published on 3 Comments on What is remembered?

A black cat curled up on a cream coloured cushion.
Our beloved Puck passed away last summer at the age of 17.

There will always be loss. It is fundamental to Paganism that the wheel turns for each of us, and eventually life becomes death, which feeds new life.

As the weather has turned cold and grey and wet, I've been cuddling up in sweaters and listening to a lot of the Sickboy podcast. I've listened to about 20 episodes in the last couple of weeks, and I've been particularly interested in the episodes about those facing death. Jeremie, who has Cystic Fibrosis and is therefore facing a shortened life span, is a strong believer in doctor assisted suicide and death with dignity. He also seems to be an atheist. In one episode1, he talked about death as a final peaceful sleep - a welcome end when his body is failing. His intention is to live until the point when a double lung transplant is recommended, and then, as he says, to gather his loved ones and "drink the juice or whatever".

I've been thinking a lot about a phrase I see a lot on social media when Pagans lose a loved one: "What is remembered lives."2 As our lives become more digital and we each leave ever more long-lasting footprints - more photos, writings, recordings3 - it is possible than our distant descendants will easily know more about us than we could ever uncover about our great-greats.4 We will live on in memories and imaginations for as long as anyone cares to follow our digital life trail, but eventually there will be so many lives memorialized that we will be archived and allowed to rest unremembered.

I don't participate in ancestor worship myself. I remember those I've loved who have passed on and hold those memories dear, but I believe that those who have passed through the veil have earned their rest. When I light candles in their names at Samhain, it is for me, not for them.

Rather than ancestor worship, I propose descendant worship. In circle, let's honour and venerate those who are coming after us. We can draw strength from who they will be to power magic and action for a better future - the future they will inherit from us.

What is remembered lives... even if they haven't walked this earth yet.

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Published on 1 Comment on The philosophy of boycotting Lughnasadh

Bread with wheat design decoration I didn't do particularly well in university philosophy, so on the scale of depth, this will be closer to a stoner's "what if this is all just someone's dream, man" than to a real treatise...

The Allergic Pagan has a brilliant post called "Why I'm Boycotting Lughnasadh". Reading the comments section, the response post from another Pagan, and the comments section on that post reminds me of why I don't usually read comment sections; a lot of people seemed to miss the point of the post, or didn't read it at all and were reacting to the title. The boycott article reminded me of articles about understanding Baudrillard using pumpkin spice lattes and FaceBook and the hyperreal.

To philosopher Jean Baudillard, a simulation is when a representation of something takes the place of the thing it originally only represented: where pumpkin spice flavouring take the place of real pumpkins, where digital representations take the place of real people, and where the grain festival mythology takes the place of what is actually happening in our backyard. These simulations act in the same way as the things they've replaced but they're ultimately empty of substance, without juice or depth. According to Baudillard, there are four steps in the process of separating simulation from reality. To use Lughnasadh as an example:

1. First is a faithful image, where rituals of early August are created to reflect the weather and seasons of the local climate right in front of the creators.

2. Second is when images do not faithfully reveal reality to us, but hint at the real reality which the image itself is cannot completely include, such as when the early August rituals are labelled as "Lughnasadh" and created into a tradition that transcends the actual weather or activities in any given year.

3. Third is when the image pretends to be a reflection of reality, but it is a copy with no original, such as when those Lughnasadh traditions are exported wholesale into completely other ecosystems and eras.

4. Finally comes pure simulation, in which the image has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Images merely reflect other symbols, as where a ritual is constructed around the theme of sacrifice where the God of Grain dies in order for the wheat to be harvested... when there's no actual wheat ready to be harvested where you are. Of maybe no wheat grows in your area at all, ever.

Our Pagan rituals are at risk of becoming mere simulations. It isn't about faking connection; we may still be participating fully in our rituals, but as Emile Littre says "Someone who feigns an illness can simply go to bed and pretend he is ill. Someone who simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" but that doesn't make them sick.

Baudillard continues to say that when simulations interact, they create a hyperreality - a web of interconnected simulations that separates us from reality. A simulation of the wheel of the year does not celebrate the changing of the seasons, but puts a layer between us and the real, sacred earth.

The Allergic Pagan says it well: "Bend down and touch the earth." If it is around the beginning of August, you can call the result Lughnasadh, or Lammas, or first harvest, or nothing at all, but try to celebrate the actual dirt under your hands and not an image of a season from another place and another time.

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Published on 1 Comment on We will be ancestors

Orangutan Woodcut
Public domain

Ever since this past Samhain season, I've kept tripping over information about ancestor worship, working with ancestors, ancestor shrines... These things have never been a part of my personal practice and I still don't feel called to them now, or, at least, not in the ways I've seen them done. There's nothing wrong with those ways; just not my thing. But I do see the power of acknowledging where we come from.

I have two urges: To go very far back and to go very far forward.

I want to go back to the ancestors of modern homo sapiens - Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Adam - and honour our deepest origins and our beautiful shared humanity.

And I want to go forward and explore what it means to be the ancestors of the future, worthy of being honoured.

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Published on 1 Comment on Paganism without faith

Rainbow in an industrial area "I wished I could believe like that. It must be so comforting..."

There are all kinds of Pagans. I hang out with a lot of humanists and skeptics, and fewer mystics and believers, so I hear the above phrase a lot. I've said it a few times myself.

There's something condescending in that, though, right? 'Ah, to be so naive again!' says the world-weary realist.

That's not to say that the envy isn't also real for some of us. We do want what (we think) faith will give us: feelings of being cared for and watched over, purpose and direction given to us from outside, and comfort that comes from Someone having a plan. We think it will be less work; we think it will be easier than always doubting, analyzing, thinking, creating, and then doubting and analyzing again.

I think we underestimate the work involved in believing, but this isn't about the faithful. This is about letting go of the story of "I wish to believe" - both the patronizing and the jealousy - and embracing our unique ways of being in this religion and what we can contribute to the larger conversation about spirituality's role in saving humanity. We can be a bridge. We can make religious offerings that are gifts to the world. We can offer community and connection. We can bring each other back into the earth and show what's worth saving. We can make thoughtful critiques, show that comfort is not the most important thing, and create something beautiful and true and powerful... then doubt and ask questions and create something even more beautiful and true and powerful. There's a lot of work to do; let's stop wasting time wishing we were different.

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Published on 1 Comment on Our place in the cosmos – part 2

The planet Earth as viewed from space.
Wikimedia Commons Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

"We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

We are stardust breathing and dreaming and thinking and creating. Our very bodies are made of elements born in centres of long-gone stars.

Eyes evolved and we saw the stars. We are stardust star watching. We are the cosmos seeing itself.

Critical thinking evolved and we thought about the stars. We are stardust contemplating the heavens. We are the cosmos exploring itself.

Imagination evolved and we dreamed ourselves among the stars. We are stardust inventing the future of the stars. We are the cosmos creating itself.

But we are not unique. Our world is made of stardust. Every life on this earth owes its being to the death of stars.

Our eyes are not the only ones seeing.

Some of the beings with whom we share this beautiful world see things we cannot and perceive things we are not equipped to observe. The mushroom, the crow, and the oak tree are all stardust seeing the stars in their unique ways. The mountain, the wind, and the ocean are all cosmos perceiving the cosmos with their different understandings.

We are not special, but we are part of something immense. Though we are the cosmos, it is also beyond our understanding, because to understand it requires the simultaneous views of the mushroom, the tree, the ocean, and the human. But we can pray and meditate and do ritual and get a little closer to our source. We are made of stardust and to the stars we will return.

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Published on 1 Comment on Not your bird

Two eagles on a cross on a steeple. There are two bald eagles perched majestically on the cross at the top of a beautiful steeple. They are posed picturesquely against the blue sky, seen only by those, like me, who stare at clouds.

Wandering through the side streets on a certain evening, I come across an awesome sight: hundreds of crows in the trees, on the streets, and on the lawns. The sky fills with black wings as the nearest take brief flight at my appearance, and the cacophony is almost frightening as they call to each other over my head.

Walking to work one morning, a crow swoops suddenly at my head, screaming. She doesn't hit me, but flies so close I feel her passing, then wheels in the air above me and comes back towards me in another ferocious dive. I run to a nearby building and hug the wall, while she dives repeatedly down the edge as much as she can, unable to get me because of the steepness of the wall. I creep along the wall, crow screaming above me and cyclists and other pedestrians watching, until she gives up and flies away.

If I relate any of these stories to people of a certain mystical bent, they will tell me what eagles and crows symbolize and what these encounters mean about me. They may tell me that when "an eagle appears, you are on notice to be courageous and stretch your limits. Do not accept the status quo, but rather reach higher and become more than you believe you are capable of ". Since the eagles were on a cross, surely my goals must be spiritual in nature. They may tell me that crows are all about "prescience and precognition", and that a big group of them might indicate an important magical happening coming up and that the attack is about me fighting my intuition or instincts. I worked in a new age store for several years; I heard these kinds of interpretations all the time (plus the woman who was sure that her deceased ex-boyfriend was haunting/stalking her in the form of pigeons, memorable only because she began sobbing about it on the store counter).

I know the truth, though. The eagles are a mating pair that nests in a nearby park. They like the steeple for its tall 360 degree view of the area, to better spot potential prey. The massive crowd of crows occurs nightly, the exact time shifting with the season, as the huge flock of crows that spend their days in Stanley Park cross the city diagonally to their evening nesting area in a park in Burnaby. And the crow who attacked me: I probably walked too close to a nest, and it is quite possible that I was wearing a hat similar to someone who is scared of birds and sometimes throws rocks at them. All very explainable; if I were to believe otherwise, I would need to get over myself. It isn't all about me.

In my opinion, much of modern Paganism has an anthropocentrism problem. Basically, this is the belief that human beings are the most important species and that reality can only be understood in terms of our senses, values, and experiences. There are thousands of rituals based on this: spring is about growth, so what, metaphorically, are you planting and growing this spring? I've created a fair number of those rituals myself, as they are easy to write and are readily understood by a group. However, I have felt myself starting to balk a little at the idea that all our Pagan rituals – all our nature-worshiping, earth-honouring ceremonies – end up being about us. We step back from nature when we present Her stories only as symbols to be applied to our lives.

What it all reminds me of is when someone is telling me a story that reminds me of something that happened to me and I want to chime in and tell them about that. Even though I refrain from actually interrupting, my attention is not on what they are actually saying anymore, but on what I'm going to say. Their words are only important for how good or poor a lead-in they are for my story. I try to stay focused, but I don't want to forget my response, so I am rehearsing my words and watching for an opening. I can hear them, but I am not listening.

If we see every story in nature, every bird and plant and season, in terms of what they symbolically mean to us, we are not listening to nature. And if our deities are to be found there, we are not listening to them either. We are taking their words and using them as excuses to talk about ourselves.

Now, I will concede that if you believe in deities as literal beings, they may employ animals and other natural phenomenon to send messages to you. I personally believe that such messages would be rare – why would a god interfere with a real animal to tell you something that could be conveyed in a dream, vision, or meditation – and that they would be marked by a provable departure from ordinary behaviour for that animal. I believe no one is getting true divine messages from the crow migration because it happens every evening; that I should only stumble upon it once in a while does not change the fact that it has nothing to do with me.

If we are to respect the autonomy and individuality of the other beings with whom we share this earth, we cannot simultaneously cast them as props in our lives. The crow cannot have both freely chosen your tree to call from and be there as a symbol for you to interpret, and if asked to choose, I will always assume the crow's free will. Just as someone with a disability is not here to be your inspiration, the crow is not here to give you meaning. They have their own lives and loves and needs, and it is isn't all about us, as individuals or as a society.

I know I am asking a lot of myself and my fellow Pagans here. The culture that surrounds us, at least in North America, is anthropocentric to the core. Where we try to give animals voices, we tend to anthropomorphize them, thus silencing them further. In fact, as a society we still engage in extensive othering of other humans, so it seems an impossible task to stop the othering of animals, plants, and bacteria. But I believe in Paganism's ability to create new culture based on new values; that's the kind of magic I believe in.

I said earlier that I would have to get over myself were I to believe the eagles and crows were there for me, but I'll take that a step further. I think Pagans should make an effort to get under and beside themselves; to fundamentally get outside of themselves to try to meet non-humans where and how they actually are. We may not always succeed – in fact, we may never succeed – but the effort itself is worth while.

Further reading:

Paganism's Messiah Complex by Traci at "A Sense of Place".

Defining Anthropocentrism by Alison Leigh Lilly at "Holy Wild".

Anthropocentrism and Magic by Taylor Ellwood at "Magic Experiments".

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Published on 1 Comment on Link roundup: inspiration

Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
Source: Hubblesite.org

Being a part of a diverse religious community of passionate people with strongly held opinions can be challenging. Sometimes it is really easy to get caught up in debates and drama and forget how powerful and beautiful our community can be. As organizers begin working on their local Pagan Pride Days, I suggest reviewing HecateDemeter's posts on framing (this one is a good one to start with) and creating your own quote about why you are proud to be Pagan. Here are some I found around the Internet:

"We are the intellectual heirs of the ancient Greek philosophers who invented democracy, poetry, philosophy, the Olympics, etc. We're going to be holding a Pagan Pride event on Sept. 23rd to emphasize how local Pagans contribute to our local economy by farming, creating jobs in local businesses, supporting our local schools by donating books to school libraries and...

"Stop letting your opponents define your message."

– Framing on the Eve of Lughnasadah.

"[Pagans'] work may seem silly to outsiders, but they have taken on a huge task – to create anew what was lost, a vibrant culture, filled with songs, ceremonies, dances, lullabies, myths. To create such a culture – one that is rich yet at home with notions of individual freedom and modern life – what a Herculean task!

"But a possible one. And as the last flames flicker out and the last tone dissipates, each person returns to their ordinary life with some small remnant of the incredibly subversive notion that the world can be transformed and reborn, that 'we are as gods and might as well get good at it'."

– "Heretic's Heart: A Journey Through Spirit and Revolution" by Margot Adler, quoting "Whole Earth Catalog" (Menlo Park, Calif.: Portola Institute, 1969) 367; I found it here.

"Paganisms are not proselytizing religions. We don't have to proselytize. Our job is to provide for ourselves a vibrant, flexible, and ongoing sustained pagan culture that is so beautiful, so rich with, and so sexy and so desirable that people will want to come to us because they see us and they say, 'I want what they have.'"

– Steven Posch, quoted in Five ritualists I'd like to invite to dinner, Part 2: Steven Posch.

"... comfort is not what I seek from religion. I want challenge. I want danger. I want to be shaken to my depths. I want to be scared shitless. A Dionysian religion breaks down social structures and breaks down the walls of the ego. As Harry Byngham (aka "Dion"), chief of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, wrote: "Our Dionysian morality is not 'safety first', but 'vitality first'." Neopagan religion is not a religion of good behavior, but a wild religion, a religion of "drums, moonlight, [feasting] rather, dancing, masks, flowers, divine possession" (Robert Graves). It makes me very uncomfortable — and it is what I need."

— My love/hate relationship with Neopaganism, Part 2.

"We are a religion of many sects, many cults, many expressions. From the "hard Gards" to the solitary eclectics weaving their own magic. We are each full of the same awe, wonder, mystery, and joy. We cast the circle, call the elements, honor the Gods, celebrate the Mystery and send our energy to make a positive change in the world. This happens in rituals containing hundreds of people. This happens silently in candlelit bedrooms of closeted solitaries. Our words may be different, our mythos vary and the details be different, but as Wiccans we are all calling forth the same Mystery."

— Why I Love Wicca.

"There is nothing in our lives that is not sacred. ... There is nothing in our lives that is not sacred because life itself is a holy and blessed thing. Every flower, animated. Every rock, an ancient pattern. Each song, an expression of humanity in relationship to all things.

"We are star stuff, it is said, and this is true. We are made of the same iron that gives off distant, dying light. We are made of the same iron that anchors us to this earth. Sometimes we remember. Sometimes we forget."

– Living Sacred.

And because I think Paganism could fill this need:

"A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge."

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1984), as quoted here.

Published on Leave a comment on One sows while another reaps

Branches of ripe plums

Yesterday, a member of my Circle ran a sweet little Lammas ritual on the theme of "as you sow, so you shall reap". That got me thinking about Pagans, the wheel of the year, and its relationship to nature.

One of the wheel of the year stories we can tell through Pagan rituals is of planting and harvesting: we plant in the spring, the crops grow through the summer, we harvest in the fall, and then everything rests in the winter. Many rituals will draw connections between these literal agricultural cycles and metaphorical growth: starting new projects, nurturing their growth, reaping the results, and then resting to allow for new inspiration.

What is striking me as interesting right now, though, is that the human version of this story is almost exactly opposite nature's version.

The human version is based on agriculture and food. It is based on what we have done for ten thousand years to feed ourselves. Nature's version is even older, though. In nature's version, Lammas and Mabon are not the harvests, but the plantings.

All the luscious fruit and golden grains coming our way over the next couple of months are full of the seeds of the next generation. Imagine a wild apple tree, outside of a tidy orchard. Birds and animals eat the apples and distribute the seeds in their droppings, thus creating the next generation of apple trees. The tree is planting; the tree is creating new life and celebrating fertility; it is in its Beltane, not its Lammas.

Those seeds will not grow much immediately; they will rest in the earth, biding their time over the winter hibernation. When spring comes, the tree reaps her reward - seeds spread and the future of apple trees secured - in the spring. Nature harvests not for consumption, but for the next generation. Spring time is the tree's Lammas, not its Beltane.

I work in organic food. Every year, it is the same: we get some warm and sunny weather in May or June, and people start asking me where the local food is. They want to know why we've still got tomatoes and nectarines and strawberries from California during the summer; shouldn't we have BC products? So every year I have to educate people about the growing seasons: the local fruits and veggies are still on the trees and in the ground in May and June. That sunny weather that means summer to people is just the start of their growing season. Locally, the best harvests aren't until August and September, and sometimes later if we have a long, wet, dark spring. So I think that honouring our agricultural wheel of the year is very valuable, as it connects us to our own bodies and needs and reminds us to what extent we are still dependent on nature.

But if we consider nature to be sacred and beautiful in and of itself, not just in how it is useful to us as people, then maybe we will want to honour this contradiction between the agricultural cycle and nature's cycle. I don't know what this would look like yet, but I think it could be an interesting theme to play with. I do know we are sometimes so far away from our food, but maybe we are even further away from the wild.

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