Love is the Source

Adonis said he didn't understand what the heck I was talking about when I said that "the energy of joy and pure love that they [babies] bring is the energy that grounds Being--the energy that some of us call, in convenient shorthand, Goddess." That's what I get for blogging while sleep-deprived, because usually he knows what I'm talking about.

Terri says it differently here: "Love is the Ground of All Being, the Zero Point of the Universe whence all matter and spirit is bound." To use Plotinus's image, Love is the One overflowing, self-generating.

Carol Christ writes about attending her mother's death that she (the daughter) experienced the overwhelming presence of Love, and that for her that was a tangible, indubitable experience of Goddess's presence.

It's just a belief. A tenet of faith. In the beginning, there was Love. At the end, there will be Love. Love is the Source. Love is the Ground. If you believe this, you will experience the universe thus. Call it confirmation bias. Call it revelation. Call it faith. Regardless, it is a rich and joyous way to live. It is a good way to regard the earth and all her creatures.

When I gaze upon my baby's face; when a dog at the SPCA crawls into my lap; when a friend offers me compassion--then I feel the Source rise in me like sweet water from a spring. And my faith, which is so often a guttering candle, burns a little more steadily and brightly.

Embodying the abundant universe

(From the Gaian Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert)

I believe as a tenet of faith that the universe--the Goddess, the Mother--provides what we need in abundance. Always.

This belief doesn't reside in my intellect, if you will, but in my gut. My brain easily generates myriad reasons why this belief is false; begin with the reality of poverty. But my belief, which relies on faith, isn't so much a proposition against which to marshal arguments. It is, rather, a way of understanding the world. It functions like a background assumption. (I'm well aware of problems with confirmation bias, but I'm not doing science here. Grant me poetic license.)

I think that whether or not this belief (or way of understanding the world) comes easily to you depends on the circumstances of your early life. That's not to say that we can't come to believe that the universe provides for our needs in abundance even if the circumstances of early life were meager in the relevant sense. The first step in coming to believe is realizing that we believe otherwise; for example, to realize that we're acting from an assumption of penury, that we believe fundamentally that life is hard, that we're its victims, that we're undeserving, that things never get better, that people are out to get us. Thus we uncover our operating assumptions. We work to accept that we have them (and acceptance is no small feat, though I give it short shrift here). And we begin to pay attention to all the hints we're given that assumptions of scarcity are false. When people make gratitude a practice, that's what they're doing: they're paying attention; they're counting their blessings.

(I've had a hard time with the idea of practicing gratitude because I have an old belief that I don't deserve my many blessings. Gratitude is, in my mind, and for biographical reasons, linked with feelings of guilt and undeservingness.)

Very early in one's life sojourn, one learns on a basic, physical, preverbal level that the universe provides for one's needs, or one learns that it doesn't. I think I'm lucky; I got the message, somehow, that my needs would be met. Maybe I carried that belief into this life with me. (My "soul card," in tarot, is the Empress. Both my rising sign and my Pluto carry the message, too.) Maybe my faith formed as the result of responsive early mothering. (Thanks, Mom!) Things--mostly thoughts--have happened to occlude my faith, but I think that at its foundation it's solid. It is a glorious piece of luck.

I know that as I spend these early weeks with my child, my one task, as I see it, is literally to embody for him the abundant universe. He's still coming into this life; he's new here. How is the world as he finds it? There is a lot of big, scary, uncertain stuff that he doesn't need to know about yet. But he is almost always held. We hold him bare skin against bare skin. We hold him in the sunlight streaming through our bedroom windows. We carry him, we sleep next to him, we wear him in a sling. He is never away from us. He is never left alone. We sing and babble and kiss him and make jokes. He is always fed when, or even before, he asks. There is plenty to eat. He is kept dry and clean and warm. That big, loud beast, the dog, is his friend. He shows no fear.

And there is a huge, excited, welcoming, loving community holding him and his parents. We were held during the birth by an extended network of friends. Witches worked magic for him. Astrologers watched the sky. Gifts continue to arrive. People come to visit. Home-cooked dinners appear on our doorstep every other day; his body is literally being built by the community. I'm in awe of the generosity, love, and good will engendered by this small being.

He affirms my faith in all things good.

Spirit is not separate from Matter

Terri writes this incisive bit of thealogy at her blog:

Spirit is not separate from Matter. I don't believe with some people of faith that Spirit was inserted into Matter at some point in Creation. Neither do I believe with some Buddhists that Spirit is ultimately the important thing.

Spirit and Matter are co-dependent. They are so inextricably intertwined in one another that not even death completely separates them. Spirit suffuses every atom of Matter, and Matter interpenetrates Spirit from each and every one of those atoms. Spirit Matters, and Matter is en Spirited.

Thus the conclusion that Earth is Primary is inescapable. Our landbase is what makes our consciousness of Spirit possible....

Life does indeed teach Life, and toxified and sickly Life can only inform pathologically.

Joy seeping in

Gryphon is next to me on the couch, sleeping underneath a quilt. This is his favorite way to sleep, completely buried in covers, preferably with a warm body next to him. Earlier this evening he was lying alongside me with his head resting on my belly, and the baby was kicking more than I've felt in days. (Either the baby has had a mellow week, or the kicking has become less novel, so I notice it less.)

Earlier still today we took a walk through a beautiful, spirit-filled state park. The leaves are turning. There was no one else around, so I let him spend some time off leash. It's so fulfilling to see him begin to enjoy himself more, bounding in the dead leaves, or even walking on leash beside me, his head alert but relaxed, his tail lifted, a spring in his step. It's like joy is seeping into him. That capacity for joy after all the hardship in his life is a basic spiritual lesson for me. It's a holy thing to witness.

We spent my lunch hour on a quilt in the backyard (how grateful am I that I live in a place where I have a 5 minute commute to work? incredibly grateful). He wandered the yard a bit, and rolled in the grass on his back, and sat next to me to share my apple. I had a magazine with me to read, but I spent most of my time watching him and rubbing his head and belly.

In many ways it's been a hard week. I've felt dissatisfied and unsure of what I need. I've been weepy. I've felt lonely and isolated. My job is mostly boring me. I've had a couple of minor disappointments. I've been anxious about the state of the world. The equinox was particularly intense, energetically. (The penumbra of Mercury moving retrograde, perhaps?) I've felt spiritually disconnected. And yet. I've been blessed by this wonderful new relationship with this sweet dog. My spiritual practice has been to spend time with him.

Today while we were walking and I was watching him and thinking about his blossoming, I thought again of one of the most important lessons for me of the last several years. I credit Lugh, my first dog, largely, as well as the mystery school and my ever-deepening relationship with my beloved life partner. The role of care and loving attention in enabling a being to flourish cannot be underestimated. It is crucial, as essential as clean water. It's such a simple thing, so potentially abundant, something any of us can do. Cruelty, willful ignorance, and neglect sadden me more and more as I grow older; my willingness to tolerate those things diminishes. To care for one another in simple ways; to offer respect, love, attention, and a spirit of nonjudgment to this person, this animal, this tree, this soil...I'm tempted to say that that is all we need.

Baptism

(The Guardian [Queen] of Water from the Gaian Tarot, by Joanna Powell Colbert)

Still no internet connection at the new homestead, so blogging hasn't been possible. That should change today. Also, things have been a bit hectic while trying to get settled in the new house.

My dad called Sunday morning and said, "is it true that you're not going to baptize your kid?" Oh boy. Talking to my mom later that morning, she said, oh yeah, he's really upset about that, he keeps saying "that's the final straw, I'm disowning her." (What you need to know about my blustery but very loving parents: they would never disown me. Dad threatened to disown me for having a child outside of legal wedlock, but then he helped us with the down payment for our new house, so you can see how that goes. They adore Adonis, and my mom says that we have the best marriage of anyone she knows--except for the part where we're not married.) Both my parents would prefer that we have the baby baptized. My sister, who is a formidable advocate for us, told them that I wasn't going to do things the way they would have me do them, so they just have to suck it up and let it go. My mom is actually kind of adjusting to this idea. Oh but it's difficult for me, the oldest and always a good girl, to "let them down" by doing things my own way.

Why not baptize the baby? Well, there is the obvious reason that Christianity is not my religion anymore. But that's not my main reason. I would even consider baptizing my baby for my parents' sake if I could get past the symbolism of baptism. Yet I believe strongly in the symbolic value of ritual, and how ritual enactment in part constitutes reality. The ritual message of baptism is this: human beings are born innately sinful, in pain and blood from a woman's body, products of a sinful act; being born human, from sexual intercourse, and of a woman necessitates purification, the cleansing with holy water. And to this I say, bullshit. Human beings are not innately sinful. To be born in the midst of blood, sweat, shit, and ecstasy is a holy thing.

I like the idea of an elemental blessing. I imagine that at a Wiccaning or Pagan baby naming ceremony, though I've never attended one, the child is blessed with earth and fire, water and air. In becoming human we become one with the elements, and to enact that symbolically seems a good thing. So we'll have a ceremony, and there will be a sacred cup filled with water, but the ritual will be something altogether other than a Christian baptism.

Desire's end, part II

A couple of months ago, a grumpy old guy named Billy visited this blog and apropos of nothing except the blog's name left this comment:

Hey, there is no end to desire. We have been at that for billions of years.

The whole cosmos is nothing other than sexual energies, it's just in our human forms that it gets all messed up.

So maybe he didn't get the reference to the Charge of the Goddess, or maybe he didn't care, but the thing is, I agree with him. Desire seems to be a fundamental operating principle of the universe. As such, it seems perverse to wish for or anticipate its end.

Feri tradition tells a creation myth in which the Goddess gazes into a mirror and, falling in love with herself, gives birth to the universe. It seems to me at least a lovely metaphor, and I think more than that, to say that longing is what draws us into this world (the parents' desire for each other and for a child, the soul's desire to incarnate). Longing lures us through life, however messy and complicated, and it beckons to us from beyond the veil. How unfortunate it would be, then, to deny the power of this longing, to try to make ourselves, as if we could, beings without desire.

Yet we do just that. We deny ourselves all kinds of pleasure, including the pleasure of simply feeling our desires. Think about the fundamental things humans long for: food, water, shelter, touch, sex, companionship, beauty, comfort, meaning, creativity, expression, and connection to the world around us. Which of these isn't affected by practices of self-denial and wishing things were otherwise? How often do we fear that our wanting something will be too painful, that our desires will languish unfulfilled, and so we cut ourselves off from the wanting? What would it mean if instead we allowed ourselves fully to inhabit our desires, to know them intimately, to know ourselves intimately? Is it too much of a risk? What are we risking? And what do we lose if we don't taste the depths of those things we want?

I know my own litany of fear runs like this. I won't get what I want. I want too much, and that means there's something wrong with me. I don't deserve to want or receive things. I'll be judged. I'll be rejected. My needs can never be met. I'll have to give too much of myself away. It will be too painful. I don't want to be needy. I don't want to risk being disappointed. If I "give in" to my desires, they'll overwhelm me, or someone else. I'm powerless in the face of them. I'll hurt someone. I'll be consumed by them. I'll lose control. I'll feel empty, isolated, alone.

In a puritanical culture, whence come many of these fears, desire is something to be kept under tight control if not altogether annihilated. It's an unseemly artifact of our animal natures. We identify desire with women, in whom it's deemed uncontrollable. Like the feminine, it needs to be mastered. Desire leaves us vulnerable and exposed. We feel its tremors, and we turn away.

What would it be like if instead of trying to master, ignore, or squelch desire, we rode its currents instead? What if we became intimate with not just the contents or objects of our desires, but with the very shape, texture, and taste of desire itself? What if we allowed ourselves to dive deep into the wanting? What if we sat with desire and allowed it to unfold within us, to reveal its layers and secrets, to discover what's underneath the ripples of surface longing?

What if we were honest with each other about our desires? What if, instead of furtively confessing, we boldly stated, explored, investigated, and celebrated them? What if we stopped being coy and embarrassed? What would it mean to take responsibility for desire in the full context of that desire? To work skillfully with it? What if we acknowledged and accepted that we're desirous beings and got to know ourselves as such?

Buddhism on desire

Buddhist meditation launches an individual headlong into a curious yet rigorous examination of desire. Overly simplistic formulations of Buddhist philosophy make many folks think that desire is a bad thing, plain and simple. But the true Buddhist perspective on the all-too-human experience called desire--whether it's hunger for a slice of pepperoni pizza, longing for world peace, or just some good old-fashioned lust--is much more nuanced. Ultimately speaking, Buddhism takes the perspective that desire is 100 percent natural and incredibly positive. The problem, however, is that unchecked fear and unexamined habit can pervert desire into addictive tendencies--habits which are destructive for an individual, harmful for a community, and disastrous for our planet. What Buddhist meditation necessarily reveals to us, moment by moment, is the problematic nature of our impulse for instant gratification.

(Ethan Nichtern)

Desire's end, part I

In Atlanta this past weekend, visiting my friend Scrivener for his birthday, I met Rahim and his partner, both of whom I took to immediately. Rahim asked me about the name of this blog. While I wrote a bit about it way back in the beginning, I've been meaning to revisit the concept of desire. My belief in the goodness of human desire is one thing that drew me to Wicca. So it may seem strange, on the face of it, that (what I take to be) a central and singular text of our thealogy, the Charge of the Goddess, declares that the divine is that which is attained at desire's end. It sounds a little like a common misunderstanding about Buddhism: that to be holy, to reach enlightenment, we must rid ourselves of our desires. I don't think Buddhism teaches that, and I don't think the Charge does, either. But it does pose a puzzle--perhaps a Wiccan koan--and I'd like to worry it a little.

The Charge of the Goddess is a poem written, or channeled, by Doreen Valiente. (The text I quote here is Starhawk's adaptation.) The Charge has much to say about the primacy of desire in human experience. For example,

Sing, feast, dance, make music and love, all in my Presence, for Mine is the ecstasy of the spirit and Mine also is joy on earth. For My love is law unto all beings.

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.

The Pagani tend to like a good time: feasting, drinking, dancing naked around bonfires, singing, drumming, dressing in costume, joking, pulling pranks. Oh, and the sex. Pagans, generally speaking, have sex-positive, libertarian, and libertine values around sex. Sex, like other expressions and experiences of embodiment, is a sacred part of our spirituality (sacred, that is, when it's not profane, if that's what turns you on).

But while we often emphasize the fun aspects of human embodiment--the acts of pleasure--a well-developed Wiccan thealogy, I believe, would also express the sacraments of our bodies sick and in pain; scarred from trauma or abuse; aging, dying. What matters is being present in our bodies, and that can be as difficult during acts of pleasure as it can be when we're in pain. A worthwhile practice for any Pagan, and really anyone at all, I believe, is to practice being present in one's own body. Such presence can be cultivated in various ways: breath work, body work, meditation, yoga, and ritual.

Sickness, pain, and death aren't signs of our fallen nature, as at least some versions of Christianity would have it. From a thealogical perspective, it doesn't make sense to long to be free from our bodies anymore than we long to be free of this earth. (And part of being Pagan, I believe, is to take pleasure in the earth, really to love it, know it, treat it with respect, and give thanks for its abundant gifts.) Reincarnation makes a lot of sense to me as an expression of Pagan thealogy; hey, we get to come back. Reincarnation with the hopeful goal of finally getting off the wheel, of being free from incarnation, makes no sense to me at all.

What then do we make of the final line of the Charge?

For behold, I have been with you from the beginning, and I am That which is attained at the end of desire.

Where is the end of desire? Does it happen in death? When we get to heaven? When we reunite with the oneness of the universe? When we reach enlightenment? When we're really lucky...and thank goddess we don't have to feel the tug of these human bodies anymore? Is the end of desire a desirable state, something we should pursue or at least look forward to? Desire seems essential to being human, in a body, and that is something we Pagani hold sacred. So why is the end something to be attained?

What makes us wise

Today is the first day it's been warm--in the high 50s--and sunny. After spending the morning cleaning house, Adonis and I spent two hours walking around the neighborhood: getting mochas at the coffee shop, stopping to talk with friends and neighbors working in yards, assessing the little house for sale that we have our eye on, pausing to love up the neighborhood dogs. It finally feels like spring. (How I long for a garden and dogs! My dad cautions us not to buy a house just because we want dogs, but of course that's exactly why we're buying a house. Oh, and it's a good investment. Unlike most places in the U.S., my little town hasn't been hit by the housing and mortgage crises. Prices continue to climb. Why do people move here? Don't they know winter is six months long?)

Tomorrow is the new moon in Aries. Even as the cold days have lingered here in the north, I've felt the shift in energy that early spring brings. I'm moving more, working off winter's lethargy, and feeling stronger, more vital. I have a renewed taste for raw, bitter, green things. I'm starved for sunshine. Adonis and I seem to occupy the slightest lull, a suspension, before the activity of summer commences. Beginning this week, we're both traveling. Adonis is headed to New York City a couple of times for work; I'm headed to Atlanta to do healing work and visit my good friend; and we're traveling home together at the end of the month to celebrate my grandmother's 98th birthday.

I've been thinking a lot about happiness. This past year has been challenging for me: lots of intense growth and new life emerging, but also, and perhaps not coincidentally nor paradoxically, stark confrontations with mortality and grief. It's been just six months since I lost my beloved Lugh. On that very six month date, last week, my sister had cancer surgery (and is doing well). I'm learning something about the kind of happiness that depends on things going my way, and about the kind of happiness that can arise independently of felicitous circumstances. I'm thinking about happiness as a spiritual practice and what that entails for me. I often dream of that lyric from Sinead O'Connor's song "What Doesn't Belong to Me;" I take this to be a profound thealogical truth:

And the goddess meant for me only joy.

New moon in Pisces

I assure you this won't turn into an astrology blog, but there have been some big astrological events lately--or at least they've been having a big impact on me. And there is just one more that I want to write about right now.

(One thing I love about Wicca and Paganism, at least as I think about them, is that they encourage reading the events of our lives like a literary text. Did you have the experience in high school where your English teacher would explain the symbolism in the book you were reading, or you would study various critical reviews of, I don't know, The Scarlet Letter, and someone--maybe even you--would complain, "yeah, right, how do you see all that in this book? We're just making this stuff up." Many people--maybe even me, at times--feel the same way about a magical worldview, about religion, about tarot, astrology and other kinds of divination. Did the bird that flew into the glass of my bedroom window [the only time it's ever happened in my seven years living in a window-filled, second-story apartment] on New Year's Day last year while Adonis and I were discussing getting pregnant really presage the miscarriage I had six weeks later? Was that event a symbol invested with meaning? Is it "okay" to read our lives that way? Sometimes I feel that if my life were a novel, the symbolism would be pretty heavy handed.)

I often think of astrology (and tarot) as a set of texts for interpreting human existence. Recently, I've talked about Pluto entering Capricorn and the lunar eclipse in Virgo. Today is the new moon, completing the lunar cycle and beginning another anew. The moon is in Pisces, as is the sun. I found the article by Simone Butler on Mooncircles to be particularly apt.

All addictions stem from the same root: feeling separate from Source. The Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program succeeds because it teaches participants to give their problems over to a higher power. Making the connection to Source through prayer, meditation, or spending time in nature reminds us that we are one with all that is.

During most of March, with the sun in Pisces, a sign that rules both addiction and spiritual surrender, we're asked to awaken from our illusion of separation and jettison crippling habits that hold us back. February's solar eclipse on the 7th opened our wounds for healing, and the lunar eclipse on the 21st shone a bright light on the need to fix what's broken.

(Deborah Oak had a particularly harrowing wake-up call.)

Now, on March 7, Uranus the Awakener conjoins the New Moon in Pisces--a wake-up call for sure. In Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac, we merge with Source on our journey back home....

Trust is a key word for Pisces.... The Hopi say we're in a rushing river, that we should stop clinging to the shore and allow the current to bring us to the river's calm center.... Pisces demands surrender to "what is," rather than railing against what isn't. Surrender leads to the calm center within. Otherwise, you end up lost in your fears--and the endless cycle of addiction.

If you're feeling unusually vulnerable or empty these days, remember that the aching void is also your access point to Source.

As in the beloved Leonard Cohen song,

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Even at the dark of the moon, blessings.

Holiness

I spent the weekend, and my birthday, at the mystery school, assisting the 2nd-year class. We were studying a defense structure--called the schizoid defense by Reich--that is deeply conflicted about being incarnate, being human, living on earth. This defense is characterized by anxiety and fear, and the experience is often one of fragmentation and "checking out." Spending the weekend in that energy was challenging; I found myself feeling distracted, fidgety, irritable. The curative is to ground.

I found myself thinking about one of the tenets, if you will, that I value most in Wicca: life on this earth is utterly sacred and holy. Divinity isn't elsewhere; it's right here. In this moment, in this body, on this land. To hate any part of that, or to wish that it were different, is to fragment, to cut ourselves off from Goddess. If we Witches had blasphemy, that would be it. But the concept of blasphemy connotes blame, and we can't blame ourselves for wanting to escape or for desiring things to be different. That, too, is part of what it means to be human.

Nonduality, polytheism, pragmatism

It is a point often made by Pagans that what smart atheists, à la Daniel Dennett or Christopher Hitchens, reject is a version of religion and cosmology that many Pagans also reject. And not only Pagans are making the point.

The unreflective religiosity that still holds sway in much of the world today, which posits a father figure in the sky who listens and gets angry and forgives and judges just as we do -- not allegorically, but in some way literally -- is one which requires not merely a suspension of disbelief but a suspension of the act of reason itself. As many of today's "new atheists" have pointed out, this belief is intrinsically both unverifiable and irrefutable, and thus consonant only with faith in its most fideistic form.

Jason Pitzl-Waters links to this smart, provocative article by Jay Michaelson, on nondual Judaism, in which Michaelson explores the felicitous pairing of nonduality (the belief that the divine, the world, and humanity aren't separate) and polytheism (the belief that the gods are many). Why do spiritual traditions that embrace one often embrace the other, when the two appear contradictory?

We have at our disposal thousands of myths, symbols, and other linguistic technologies that enable us to speak obliquely of the unspeakable. And the more deeply we know ineffability, the more amenable we are to multiple forms of approximation. So nonduality and polytheism exist not in uneasy tension, but as complements of one another.

Micahelson also explains why, despite his own nondual and polytheistic leanings, it might still make sense for him to practice a form of Judaism. Here he takes a pragmatic and theologically humble approach to religious practice that greatly appeals to me.

As I return to my cherished symbols, to challah and wine, candles and songs, I do so with no pretension or desire that they are in any way superior to other symbols, or more accurate, or more holy. Yes, some symbols are better than others, relatively speaking; better candles than guns. But their worth is evaluated in a consequentialist way, in terms of the kinds of life on this world they engender. In terms of the absolute, they are all technologies, nothing more; they are fingers that gesture at the moon, and that also, if I may extend the metaphor, reflect the moonlight into hand and home. Could challah and kiddush be communion wafers and wine instead? Of course. Are they in fact descended from loaves baked for Astarte? Most likely. But it doesn't matter. This is an antifoundationalist religion, as Richard Rorty would describe it: one without claims of priority, but with an affirmation of utility. I take up these tools not because they are God-given or superior to others, but because these tools work, especially for someone who grew up with them. They work because they have been used for thousands of years, refined by tradition, and imbued with value and mystery I cannot understand. They also do not work, for many people, and though I might at times labor to justify and elaborate on them, ultimately that is deeply fine as well. I choose these tools because I love them, and nothing more. No theology, no history, and community only, for me, in a secondary role. I love them; that is enough.

(With thanks to Jason for his incomparable reporting on issues of interest to Pagans.)

In the presence of Santa Muerte

(The painting is "La Ofrenda" by Patrick Murillo, found at Adorn)













I remember that when all is said and done...there remains the moss-covered, secret shining truth...of Samhain in the core of my heart, and within that truth is the fact that this season has always held something precious, gorgeous and mysterious for me, since before I had a name for it. And I have always felt that the veneration of my ancestors is crucial to the practice of my spiritual being. And I am ever in awe of the power of Death. And I am ever grateful for the outstanding and overwhelming explosion of Life that comes through and between and in spite of and because of Death....

My people [have] a theology, books of rituals/practices/meditations, beautiful stories, a veneration and a deep abiding love, all centered around this gorgeous, delicious time of year.

~ Sara Sutterfield Winn

I've been feeling deep appreciation for my Wiccan faith in the weeks since Lugh died. It has provided me with sustenance and comfort. I know that death is but one phase in an ever-revolving cycle, that Lugh's soul is on a journey, that he chose to incarnate in that sweet body and to live as he did because he had his soul's work to do, and because incarnation provides its own teachings, as well as the delicious joys and pleasures of living in a body. When it was time for him to leave, he did. Adonis says that Lugh always knew exactly what he wanted and what he had to do. He lived wholeheartedly, always in the present, without fear or hesitation. He lived in joy.

My faith teaches that death is normal and not to be feared, though of course we grieve and mourn and remember our dead. These things, too, are part of the cycles. My faith teaches that every winter is followed by spring, every death by rebirth. I don't feign to understand that in any rational way, but I know it. My faith teaches that there is great beauty in death, that there are blessings and gifts, even here. The dark is a place of comfort, of gestation and regeneration. The earth and her creatures turn inward in this season, but we will emerge anew in the spring. We take heart in the turning of the wheel ever onward.

Ritual, health, and changing self-stories

(Image: "Self-no Self" by Sandra Sunnyo Lee)

Fiacharrey at the Cypress Nemeton noted my recent post on the uses of life-narrative in changing the self, and my comment that ritual could be a powerful tool for retelling our life stories and reworking our sense of self. Fiacharrey discusses the idea of using ritual in these ways; s/he focuses on the role that externalizing a difficult problem can play in psychological health. According to the original NYT article, those who score highly on assessments of well-being describe their problems as something outside themselves, "villains to be defeated," rather than as persistent character traits. So, for example, someone who describes a period of depression as coming out of nowhere and external to the herself (e.g., referring to it as "the black dog"), scores higher on a well-being assessment that someone who describes herself as a "depressive." The study discussed in the article seems to suggest that it's healthier to externalize one's problems in this way. The way to externalize the problem is to tell a story about it, and presumably an individual has some measure of control over the kind of story she tells. So perhaps we can retell our way to a measure of psychological health.

Fiacharrey gives some practical tips on designing rituals that can help us retell our stories:

1. “Externalize” the problem you are dealing with. Make it real and separate. Represent it with some tangible object that you can work with.
2. Word spells in terms of overcoming obstacles. Word them with the problem first, then the resolution. Negative, then positive ending.
3. Use third person instead of first person as much as possible.

And while Fiacharrey says s/he is "leery of reducing magic to simply a mind-trick we play on ourselves," I don't think that's what rituals of this sort actually do. If we accept Dion Fortune's oft-quoted definition of magic as "the art of bringing about change in consciousness in conformity with will," then taking intentional action to change the contents of our awareness and our underlying beliefs is magic.

But as Witches and other practitioners of magic (ought to) know, we can't think of the will in a common way. The idea of "willpower" - that I can make something happen by trying hard enough - is misleading. The will isn't about wishing something were so, or trying really, really hard; and it's not about forcing something to change. Indeed, it's an open question whether the will is terribly responsive to conscious, rational argument at all.

I'm not convinced that change happens best when we try to make it happen. While there can be a conscious decision to start telling one's life stories differently, after that decision is made, one may need to employ other means in the retelling. And that's where ritual can come in. Ritual is a form of communication with the unconscious, with the child-self, with Younger Self. The Feri tradition teaches that the only way to reach the Higher Self is by going through the Younger Self; that's why Wiccan rituals are often designed with Younger Self in mind - the pretty colors, the yummy smells, candles, nighttime, poetry, drumming, chant! We alter our everyday consciousness in order to reach something deeper. Ritual isn't about convincing the rational, everyday mind - the Talking Self - that something is so. Rather, ritual courts the child in us, and thereby connects us to the Divine.

To take it back to storytelling and psychological health: it's not enough to tell yourself a different story. You have to convince yourself of the new story. You have to learn to embody the new story. You take it into your cells, your bones. The new myth becomes alive for you. It's not a dramatic epiphany - at least, not usually. It's piecemeal. It's process. And it has to happen throughout your being, at every level, not just in the conscious mind. As is said: the mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.

Thealogy: A set of beliefs you can take home to Mom

Over the past couple of years I've slowly revealed some of my spiritual beliefs to my Mom. My parents aren't Christian fundamentalists by any stretch, but they care about their nice, mainstream Protestant beliefs and would, I suspect, like it best if I shared those beliefs. Not being one to want to disappoint my folks, and having something of a "good girl" complex, I've been less than forthcoming where my religious beliefs deviate sharply from theirs. (I'm more outspoken about politics.) Over Christmas, after declining to go to the altar for communion after the minister invited "all Christian believers," I finally copped to my Mom that I'm not a Christian. Being my Mom and clairvoyant in the way many mothers are, she wasn't surprised.

Now, like most Pagans, I'm faced with the challenge of describing my beliefs to someone with no frame of reference whatsoever. (During the Christmas conversation, my Mom asked me who I pray to. "Do you just make up a goddess or something?") I've turned to Isaac Bonewits, in his handy Essential Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft, for a pithy summary of Pagan belief, one I can more or less take home to Mom.

Here are the first five ideas:

1. Neopagans believe that divinity is both immanent and transcendent. Isaac glosses "immanent" as internal and "transcendent" as external. I would define those terms somewhat differently. The Goddess is immanent; she is around and among us. She is concrete. She is the earth, trees, soil, animals, water, stars. And, yes, she is in all things and all beings. But the Goddess is at the same time transcendent; she is the Mystery at the heart of life. She is more than what we can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear. She is more than we can rationally understand.

2. Neopagans believe that children are born holy. We don't believe in original sin - that children come into this world needing to be cleansed. Nor do we believe that we need to be saved from sin. We don't need a Messiah. All children are sacred.

3. Neopagans believe that divinity is just as likely to manifest in a female form as it is in a male form and that the word "Goddess" makes just as much sense as the word "God." A lot of Christians would have a problem with this, but I chalk that up to sexism in the culture. More progressive Christians have sought feminine god-language in the bible. My Mom thinks that God is ultimately beyond male or female, so she has no problem with describing God as "She."

4. Neopagans believe in a multiplicity of gods and goddesses, as well as "lesser" beings, many of Whom are worthy of respect, love, and worship. OK, Mom is not going to buy this. She'll think it's weird. Isaac says that "Neopagans have a wide variety of nonexclusive concepts as to the nature of these entities. Among Wiccans, female deities are usually seen as aspect or faces of a single 'Triune' Goddess, most often described as a Maiden, a Mother, and a Crone. Male deities are likewise usually seen as aspects or faces of a single 'Biune' God, most often described as a vegetation/hunting and solar deity.... Thus, Wicca is predominately 'duotheistic'."

5. Neopagans believe that no one religion, philosophy, scripture, or other approach to understanding can explain the infinite complexities of the multiverse. There are many paths up the mountain. Again, I find that progressive Christians are hip to this and have no problem with different people having different faiths.

Next week, more Pagan thealogy for Mom.

Polythealogy 2

I like calling Paganism the "Old Religion," though I know that's a piece of romantic revisionism. And Diana Paxson nicely states some central tenets, if you will, of our religions: that "Divinity may be worshipped in many forms and by many names; that the physical world is as holy as the spiritual realm; that humankind should live in harmony with nature; and that magical or sacramental practices are effective." I don't know about you, but that sums up my beliefs quite well.

When I start to think about the differences between monotheism and polytheism, the distinction starts to break down. I mean, contemporary fundamentalist Christians believe there is only one God, though they also posit the existence of Satan, who seems like a demi-god to me - a god ultimately less powerful than the Big Guy, but still pretty damn powerful. And what about the Holy Trinity - three gods in one? three aspects of the same god? It's the stuff of theological debates. To Catholics, Mary is the mother of God; does that make her a god, or no? (Of course, we all know who Mary really is.) The ten commandments, important to both Christians and Jews, state that the people shall have no other gods before the God of Israel, which isn't the same as saying there are no other gods. As for traditional polytheists, do the Hindus believe their gods are many or ultimately one? Or both?

Among Pagans, we debate the value of sticking to one pantheon or choosing from among many. We call ourselves polytheists but are less clear about what that means. My own belief tends toward the Divine as both one and many, the great Mystery, known in many guises and by many names. Is that just a holdover from my Christian, monotheistic days, or from growing up in a culture where monotheism is the dominant model? Do I fail to make the necessary imaginative leap to true polytheism? When I think of polytheism, I picture first the squabbling Greeks I learned about in high school, and as much as I groove on the archetypes of Artemis, Demeter, and Hecate, I can't take Zeus and his ilk seriously. Like a lot of Goddess women, I mix my pantheons freely, being partial to the aformentioned Greek goddesses (but not Hera, please, never Hera, and I have some problems with Athena) plus Kwan Yin and Brigid. Since I like my gods to challenge dominant masculine norms, and it took me a long time to divest myself of the idea of big-white-bearded-male-God, I prefer to think of the god in even more abstract and less human terms, as the Green Man and the stag. But ultimately I believe these characterizations of the Divine are limited if useful tools for grasping parts of what cannot be fully understood.

Polythealogy 1

This is a lazy person's blog post to begin a discussion of polythea/ology. Not only will I quote a famous Pagan author, but I will quote a passage found on this website. Call it a notebook entry to inspire later conversation.

A useful term for the faith we practice is the "Old Religion," which includes both the uninterrupted tribal religions of native peoples all over the world, and contemporary attempts to recover native traditions interrupted by Christianity, and to combine religious elements from a variety of sources into a faith suitable for our pluralistic society. The various traditions of the Old Religion share a belief that Divinity may be worshipped in many forms and addressed by many names; that the physical world is as holy as the spiritual realm; that humankind should live in harmony with nature; and that magical or sacramental practices are effective. Most of these traditions also believe that both women and men have spiritual power, and that individual inspiration is as valid as inherited traditions.

An additional characteristic of the Old Religion is that its symbols are imprinted in the collective unconscious, and many of its practices come from the most instinctive levels of the mind. This gives us an advantage in recovering our traditions, since some material can be accessed by developing channels of communication between the conscious and unconscious minds. Our sacred book is Nature Herself. We are at a disadvantage when discussing with people whose sacred authority is the written word, for those are the people who have written most of the books by which people judge religion. Most religious writing assumes the inherent primacy of monotheism and masculinity, and the inherent inferiority of the physical world. Without allowing ourselves to fall in the opposite trap of assuming that everything monotheistic and male is bad and everything female or polytheisitic good, our study of the history of religion must be informed by intuition, and we must read as much, written from as many points of view, as we can.

- Diana Paxson

Thealogy: Imagining the Goddess

Wicca is about reimagining and re-cognizing God/dess, the Divine, the great Mystery at the heart of life. Witches offer an alternative to thinking of God as man, as Logos, as transcendent and separate from us, as ruler over nature, as object of belief rather than experience. A line from the Dar Williams song "The Christians and the Pagans" says,

You find magic from your God, and we find magic everywhere.

To become a Witch is to see with new eyes, to find magic where once we might have seen "God's will" or a disenchanted world. I know; I tried to live in a Christian world. I tried to make that theology fit my experience of life, but it always felt like I was imposing a structure from without. There were too many lacunae, too many gaps, too many things that Christianity couldn't explain to my satisfaction. It felt imposed on me. I also tried to live in the disenchanted world. Trained as an academic, I adopted a skeptical, rationalist, and scientific worldview that left no room for differing interpretations. I was angry a lot of the time, and very cynical. My creativity seemed locked up in a tight, dark box. In both cases, it was as if I were trying to cram myself into a garment too small, too scratchy, and ill-fitting.

Wicca isn't for everyone. We're not out to convert anyone. At the same time, we need to have a public face, to create a public space for ourselves, so that people know there are alternatives to the dominant patriarchal, monotheistic, Abrahamic religions. That is part of our work in a practical sense. More esoterically, we're creating a new imaginary - new realms for the imagination. Carol Christ explains in her excellent essay, "Why Women Need the Goddess."

Because religion has such a compelling hold on the deep psyches of so many people, feminists cannot afford to leave it in the hands of the fathers. Even people who no longer "believe in God" or participate in the institutional structure of patriarchal religion still may not be free of the power of the symbolism of God the Father. A symbol's effect does not depend on rational assent, for a symbol also function on levels of the psyche other than the rational. Religion fulfills deep psychic needs by providing symbols and rituals that enable people to cope with crisis situations in human life (death, evil, suffering) and to pass through life's important transitions (birth, sexuality, death).... Symbol systems cannot simply be rejected. They must be replaced. Where there is no replacement, the mind reverts to familiar structures at times of crisis, bafflement, or defeat.

If you're feeling caught in the dailiness of life, as if what you're doing has no larger meaning, remember that in your spiritual practice you re-form the very structures of the human imagination. Thus our spiritual work has important social effects. The world needs us and our way of seeing.

(Painting of Gaia found at Cedar Creek Clay)

Thealogy

“My theology, or rather thealogy, reflections on the meaning of Goddess, is rooted in my experience. Two intuitions nourish this thealogy. The first is that the earth is holy and our true home. The second is that women’s experience, like all human experience, is a source of insight about the divine.” (Carol Christ)

Thealogy is a neologism coined from the Greek work for goddess, thea, and the common suffix logos, which is Greek for study. (The Wikipedia entry attributes the first usage of thealogy to Isaac Bonewits in 1974. In Laughter of Aphrodite, Carol Christ attributes the coinage to Naomi Goldenberg.) Whereas theology is the study of god (theos + logos), thealogy is the study of the Goddess. The definition of thealogy I use is “the feminist study of the female divine.” The word feminist indicates the transformative nature of studying the Goddess; thealogians aren’t merely applying the methods of traditional theology but are developing new methods suitable to their study.

I’m a theory-head. I love theory not for its own sake, but for its ability to illuminate experience. I received an MA in philosophy eight years ago as part of a Ph.D. program; I’ve taught philosophy and feminist theory to college students. But whereas theory is heady and intellectual, the study of the Goddess, I believe, calls us to something more. We’re called to use not only, or even primarily, our intellects, but also our bodies, emotions, intuition, and non-verbal communication. How do we seek Mystery? How do we report back on our experiences? What does it mean to study the Goddess?

On Mondays, the moon’s day, this space will be devoted to discussions of thealogy.