South Carolina made news recently when they took down the Confederate Battle Flag which had been flying in front of the state capitol. The flag had flown since it first took up residence beside a large Confederate War Memorial in 1960 first established to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Civil War.
Like all things Southern this was not the entire story. Southerners take a great deal of pride in saying one thing, doing another, and meaning something completely different. After all, “Bless your heart,” is most likely the nicest put down a Southern will ever give, and they can mean it in a variety of ways.
So, Southerners didn’t just raise the flag as a means to show pride in our Civil War past or to honor the men who died believing they were fighting for a just and right cause. We did it because we were pissed at the growing civil rights movement in the south at the time of the 100th Anniversary of the Civil War. The Civil Rights Movement was another reminder that the Confederate States of America had lost the Civil War, and the demand for an end to Jim Crow was additional salt in the wound.
If this writer sounds conflicted, it is because she is. You see, I am related to Robert E. Lee; my son is related to Robert E. Lee on both sides of his family tree. This isn’t some passing fantasy that southerners have, this was what I was born and raised knowing. The Family Book of Bridges showed the connection plainly as the connection my ancestors have to the Cherokee Nation. On my son’s side of the family, whose surname is “Lee,” the connection is more direct. His family line descends directly from Robert E. Lee’s brother, Sydney Smith Lee.
This family connection, however, doesn’t erase the sins of the past nor does it take away the right of all Southerners to say something, do something, or be something that has multiple meanings. What do I tell my son? Do I tell him that his ancestry is rife with a deep sense of hatred for the black race as nothing more than chattel? Do I tell him that Robert E Lee was such a great battle general they still study his wins and loss in military institutions?
How do I tell him that our family is on the wrong side of history?
I just tell him.
My family, our family, was wrong. Slavery was wrong. Chattel slavery was vile. We come from a history of keeping slaves and enjoying the benefits of an unpaid work force that we stole from another continent and forced to work in our fields without any benefit unto themselves except what our family would give. And, in all likelihood our ancestors did not see this issue as we do, with the benefit of time and enlightenment. They thought, truly, that the Confederate States of America was protecting a way of life — and they were, but it was way of life bought and paid for in black lives. They believed in this so deeply that they went to war and died to prove how just and right their way of life was. Their lives, their blood, does not, however, trump the blood and lives of black slaves.
We can admire things about Robert E Lee: his skill as a general, a leader, and a warrior. However, in the end, we must admit, he was wrong. The Southern way of life was not one worth preserving if it came at the cost of chattel slavery – and it did, without flinching or shying away from the truth. It did.
The other thing that white southerners have to get over is the loss. It is as if for generations we have been mourning the loss of the Civil War and the integration of the South with the rest of the United States. We have continued to punish black Americans for the loss we had. In the end, the righteous prevailed and it wasn’t the Southern Confederate States of America. We were wrong and we need to let it go.
Ultimately we have to understand our own history, not through our own eyes, but through the eyes of the very race upon which we built our nation. We have to take a deep breath and admit that fellow Southerners raised that battle flag in South Carolina not to honor or commemorate our long dead Civil War heroes, but as a signal that a battle was still raging in the south. Only now it was over Jim Crow, the right to ride on any seat in the bus, the right to vote unimpeded or intimidated, the right to peacefully march and not to fear.
When that flag was raise in 1960, it was a signal that a battle was going to be fought and lives were going to be lost. And make no mistake about it, they were. The flag was a warning, the first shot across the bow that we Southerners would not go down without a fight.
We southerners were defeated and now it is time to let those hopes and dreams shift and be filled with the unrelenting, unfiltered truth of our past and our present. It might cause the heart to twinge, but our hearts should burn with the loss of bloodied bodies that are still being spilled in this fight. Our hearts should recoil at the destruction of the sanctity of Mother Emmanuel.
If we take down this flag from state grounds across the south, we are saying – “We battle no more.”
We battle no more. We surrendered to the quiet and righteous truth that all men are created equal. We are willing to lay down the barbs of our tongue and the holding hatred in our hearts. We are willing to acknowledge that we do not want any more. No more bloodshed or unfair and unjust treatment of an entire race. We understand that years ago what we once thought was right, good and just was none of those things. It was wrong. Wrong on a level of wrongness that even now, hundreds of years later that injustice still rings, kills and decimates – not only the black race – but the southerner’s very soul.
We take down this flag because we know all of this and we only want to battle no more.
You may have noticed that I’ve got some big news: The Busy Witch will no longer be a column here at the Agora, but has grown into its very own blog! Thank you for welcoming me here in this space for the past two years, and for giving me the room to grow when the time was right.
I’ve loved connecting with all the other writers here at the Agora, but I’m ready to take my writing (and my practice) to the next level. The regular blogging commitment of having my own space will (I hope) help me as I re-establish the magical habits that have been slightly on hold as my family expanded in the past year. I’ll still be sharing simple charms and spells, as well as my thoughts on a variety of magical and mundane things, and I’m also going to post more quick and easy rituals for solitaries and circles as the wheel turns. I hope you’ll join me on this new part of my journey!
The wheel of the year turns on, and as summer makes way for fall, I’m eager to begin tending my new hearth.
The Busy Witch used to be published on alternate Tuesdays. Follow it via RSS or e-mail! Or, check out Jen’s her Facebook Page for writings, ramblings, and more magic! Drop by and say hi!
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[Author’s note: This is the third and final piece about my coven’s visit to a “spirit-filled” Christian church. In the first part I wrote about what prompted us to visit the church and together with Autumn, who has no background in Christianity, we shared our initial reactions. In the second part Autumn and I compared notes on our experience, how we sensed and sawthe flow of energy and understood the sermon.]
A collage in the hallway of miracles. I recognized the faces of some Christian friends in it / Annika Mongan
“You’re here for the healing rooms? Ok, so I need you to fill out these forms.” It was Saturday morning at Bethel and we had just walked in the door, still in the process of waking up after a night in a stuffy hotel room. We were handed clipboards and ushered into a waiting area where we hurried to fill out the forms.
Born Again? Yes – No – Not Sure
Baptized in the Holy Spirit? Yes – No – Not Sure
The form asked if we were under the care of a doctor or counselor and then told us to read a “Legal Liability Release.” I was reminded of last year when my coven also sat in a waiting area with clipboards, signing pages and pages of disclaimers in preparation for our first Skydive.
Autumn: Our clipboards in hand, we headed to the “hall of miracles,” which was by all appearances just a double-row of chairs inside the hallway at Bethel. All of us filled out our forms, which had us specify why we were there along with basic demographic and contact information. I went ahead and wrote down my fatigue/adrenal issues as well as the headache I had from sleeping in a poorly ventilated hotel room the previous night. No particular reason to refuse healing from any source, I figured. While we were in this waiting area, there was a brief opening prayer and we all held hands. The young woman who was holding space for the group suggested we didn’t need to wait to be healed, and we could be healed right now! She asked if anyone was here for joint pain and suggested trying to move the joints and see if they felt better just from being here. It seemed a little odd to me; I’m used to energetic healing practices not deliberately suggesting what is going to happen. But maybe this could help some people if they really didn’t believe that healing was possible.
Annika: A man stood up and said that he did indeed suffer from joint pain. He started walking down the hallway accompanied by other murmuring “praise God”, and “yes, Jesus, yes”. When he had walked the length of the hallway once, the young woman asked him if he felt better, and he nodded. This was met with exclamations of “praise the Lord” and “oh, thank you Jesus, thank you!” Bethel staff called out a couple of other ailments, always resulting in someone standing up, walking the hall, and agreeing more or less enthusiastically that they were now better. While I have been to many charismatic and Pentecostal churches, this was a new experience for me. I am used to everyone having some time to shift into sacred space and establish a group connection before there was an expectation of healing and miracles. This felt forced and awkward and I didn’t want to stand out as the person who wasn’t joining in the excitement. Thankfully, I wasn’t finished with my form yet, so I buried myself in my clipboard. I was hoping we would soon move from the “hall of miracles” to the healing rooms, which I assumed would be a more contained space.
Autumn: From the hallway we moved into what looked very much like a largish conference or meeting room, except with no center table and chairs around the perimeter. As we entered we were given a handout, and I noticed a “now serving” sign in the corner with red digits — this was the group (assigned on our forms) in the healing room itself. I don’t recall what this room was called or if it had a name, but I remember it primarily as a “briefing room”. A woman introduced us to what we would be experiencing, including the upcoming healing rooms and the Encounter Room where we would commune with the Holy Spirit. In addition to these logistical notes, she quoted from several Bible verses about how healing through Jesus is possible. Annika mentioned many people come to Bethel when healing has seemed out of reach and these are people truly looking for miracles.
A waiting area for the healing rooms / Annika Mongan
Annika: I thought we were going straight into the healing rooms, but I was mistaken and felt confused. A woman paced the middle of the oval room challenging more people to stand up and experience healing right now. She talked of how the Lord had brought her here from Sweden and ended every sentence with “yeah, thank you Jesus.” She spoke at length of how Bethel was a place of miracles and urged us to believe that Jesus wants to heal and that He will heal us, that today is theday of our healing, no matter how often we have prayed before. I had heard many similar sermons before and my stomach dropped as my mind wandered to a childhood memory.
My parents had taken me to experience a special healing service led by a preacher touring the country with promises of miracles in every city. I remember hearing the same message, God will heal you now because today is theday of your healing. People got up out of wheelchairs and the crowds clapped and cheered and I was amazed and caught up in the excitement, happy to have witnessed so many healings and to serve a God of miracles. I chattered about this happily in the car, but my parents didn’t join in. I sensed that something was wrong. My dad had tears in his eyes and was shaking with emotion. He told us that he had walked up to one of the side exits. There he saw several disabled individuals who had put all of their hope in this ministry and had believed with their whole hearts. They had been prayed for, they had believed, but now the left through the side doors not only with their disabilities, but also with a broken heart and spirit.
“What about them?” my dad wanted to know? “Why didn’t God heal them? How can this be their fault for not believing harder? How can a loving God do that do them?”
Autumn: It was another paradox: we were being asked to will ourselves to not use our will and have God do all of the work, and it seemed like failure was not an option. Not the usual way I participate in energy healing work. Some of the first words my teacher in Reiki healing said about it was a caution in getting too attached to results. This kind of results-focused approach was alien and a bit mechanistic to my eyes. How can someone let the Divine do their work if the state of mind everyone is in is that they must be healed immediately, right this very moment?
After this briefing session, we moved on to the Encounter Room. This was the same gymnasium that we had been in the day before, but it was laid out with a center area where artists were painting and concentric circles of chairs facing both inward and outward. Keeping my awareness of the “now serving” number displayed both on the screens and in the familiar red LEDs, I sat down and settled in to feel the energy and await our turn in the healing room.
Annika confused / Autumn
Annika: I had been so caught up in my memory that was thoroughly confused when we were moved from the oval room back into the large gymnasium. The band was playing background music; there were people in the middle of the room painting on canvasses; women and children were dancing their the room waving flags and scarves. Where was I supposed to go and what was I expected to do to receive the healing prayers? I thought we would arrive at Bethel, go into a healing room, have people pray for us, and that would be that. To my surprise Autumn wasn’t confused at all and explained to me that the gymnasium was the Encounter Room and that we would be hanging out here “soaking in the Holy Spirit” until our group number came up on the “now serving” sign. I had never been to a church that functioned like this and couldn’t understand why all of this made sense to Autumn.
Autumn: The Encounter Room was interesting, and I was starting to realize I was way more comfortable with what was going on than Annika was, which kind of blew my mind. After all, she was the expert on how Christians typically do this! As I wondered about that, I explored the room and felt into the energy, which was largely calm and peaceful — if a bit rehearsed. Given that this happens every week, though, I suppose that’s to be expected. There’s a routine, and those holding the space here are moving to it. A pattern… Yes. There was something there oddly familiar but I hadn’t quite grasped why yet.
After circling around the room a couple times, passing the simple altar to Jesus in the corner of the room and examining the really quite good artwork by the artists in the center, I sat down to reground and center myself. After I did so, a group of children led by a couple of young women asked if they could “prophesy” over me through dance. Sounded neat, so I centered myself and watched as they danced around me, with silk scarves of blue and green and gold. Most of them seemed to have that sort of not-quite-random movement style I saw before — except for the youngest one. She was maybe 4 or 5, and waving her little scarf up and down very very intently — without the artful, practiced movements of the others. I could tell that she really was feeling into it.
Afterwards, the adults asked the children if they had any Words for me (which is their way of doing divination, as I understand it). The older ones seemed as though they were in their heads, eventually coming up with generic words that they knew would not get them looked at strangely. But when it came to the youngest, she blushed, and whispered into the ear of one of the adults. “She felt peace, she said.” I smiled at the young one and thanked her, which for some reason threw everyone off.
Annika: When the children waved their scarves in front of us, I thought about how I was just like them when I was their age, completely involved in whatever ministry was happening at our church, dancing, performing pantomime, praying, worshipping. Suddently the woman sat next to me, placed her hand on my knee, and said she “had a Word” for me. I was excited to hear it. Just a few months ago I had met a couple of women from Bethel and they gave me an amazing prophecy, astonishingly accurate and full of things they couldn’t have known about me.
“I feel the Lord saying to you that He is very pleased with you. You have been so faithful to Him. You have been faithful to His Word, even when though there are many people telling you that you are now going the wrong way. But God knows it isn’t true. He wants you to know that He is proud of you. God knows that you are walking with Him and He is so proud of your faithfulness.”
I smiled and nodded, and said “I know”. Then she looked into my eyes, repeated how important it was for me to know that God approved of how I lived, and implored me to keep doing what I was doing. When she stood up and the girls wrapped up their scarves, I sat there speechless. This was essentially the same prophecy I had received from the two women several few months back.
Autumn: The counter on the wall clicked upwards gradually, and at last it was time for our group to go in. We were among the last of the day, and so as our number came up, they announced that if anyone in the encounter room still would like to receive healing, now was the time. Our coven moved to the healing rooms, clipboards and forms in hand. Now this was totally familiar, but from nothing in my spiritual experience.
The room had a modern industrial design, with exposed beams and ductwork, and energetic music playing. A few tables on the right had church members with laptops ready to take down our healing testimonies, and we were ushered into the front of the row seating to wait for our prayer team to come and pick us up. Church members with clipboards were moving papers around, and suddenly I realized why I found this familiar. I’ve worked a large part of my life in the tech industry, and this resembled an in-house product demo with bloggers and members of the press. The upbeat music, the decor of the room, and the efficiency in which we were moved from stage to stage reminded me strongly of a tech demo session.
Annika: Once we entered the healing room, it was my turn to look perplexed, not unlike the way Autumn responded on our first day upon seeing the “Sacred Starbucks”. This was the part I had been looking forward to the most, because I expected the healing rooms to be intimate spaces where we could really open up to the flow of energy without the corporate style big gymnasium and being herded from room to room. I thought there would be people praying in little groups, some sitting on the floor, some standing, laying on of hands, a comfortable warm place without interruptions.
Instead there was crowd control tape, people with laptops and clipboards everywhere, a big screen, neat rows of chairs for those waiting, and a prayer area that people were brought into, prayed over, and then taken to the line of volunteers with their open laptops, like some kind of prayer assembly line. Organizers with earpieces were rushing around and official looking Bethel staff constantly entered and exited the room. I was completely taken aback and slumped into one of the waiting rows, watching those all around me get picked up for prayer until there was almost no one left.
Autumn: Unfortunately for us, our coven must not have looked desperate enough for healing. The chairs were emptying gradually around us and I realized if we weren’t careful, we might get overlooked entirely. I shifted my energy from “I’m sitting here in my power observing and relaxed” to “I’m worried, is anyone going to pick me?” Seconds later, before I could explain to my coven mates that this was what was needed to get picked, a prayer team came to lead me into the center part of the room and begin the healing.
Annika: “If you’re still praying for someone, now is the time to start wrapping it up.” A man with a microphone made the announcement and motioned for others to take down the crowd control tape. A few volunteers were stacking chairs and closing up laptops. I saw Autumn and my other two friends being prayed over and realized that there was no one else left in the waiting rows. Even those who had come in after me were already done with their prayer teams and leaving the room. I had a sinking feeling that this would be just like PE in middle school where I was always the last one picked and the team that ended up with me would complain that they didn’t want the “Mongan-Mango”. No matter how much I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t in middle school anymore, I started to feel sad and sorry for myself.
But just as I felt myself slipping into depression, a man walked past me, then doubled back, and said: “you have been prayed for, haven’t you?” I shook my head. He looked surprised and then promised he would find me a prayer team. By the time an older man and a young woman came to pick me up, the person with the microphone was thanking all of the prayer ministers for their service and giving final breakdown instructions. The prayer area was no longer an option, so my two prayer ministers took me to the back of the waiting rows while clean up crews were milling all around us.
Autumn: The three people on my prayer team, to their credit, did not let the shifting energy around us affect either their focus or the time they would spend with me. I was encouraged to share more details of the problems I listed on the form, and I even felt heard in how I had suffered. It was a little strange being in the center of all three of them, making it hard for me to see all of them at once. For the most part, they were good with consent in terms of touching, which I was surprised by: Annika had warned me that Christians don’t practice the sort of consent culture to which I’m accustomed.
Annika: The man on my prayer team took my clipboard and read through the form, asking for details about the health concerns I had listed. He was specifically interested in current symptoms, but I told him I didn’t have any, most of my problems are more or less chronic in nature, and I wasn’t currently in any pain or discomfort. Both he and the young woman seemed very tired but they made an effort to stay present for me, even in spite of all the commotion around us.
The woman asked if she could lay hands on me, and I nodded. Then the man asked if it was OK to touch my back while praying for it, and if I wanted prayer for some of the other issues. I was positively surprised by how carefully and respectfully they asked for consent every step of the way. As they began praying for me, I got the sense that I was confusing to them, but I had no idea why. I was leaving myself wide open to the experience, not shielding or trying to manipulate the energy in any way. I just felt peaceful and grateful to sink into this experience, waiting to see what would happen.
Autumn: I think I was also a bit confusing to my prayer team; they didn’t recognize my pentacle necklace nor my energy in the moment. I guess the environment made it a bit hard for me to open up completely energetically, but I did set an intention for my shields: let the healing in, keep the expectations that were layered on me out. I was asked if I wanted to be born again, and my response, “no,” seemed to disappoint the one with the clipboard. I got a quick glance of it, and it became clear why there were so many people running around with clipboards. It was just like market research! They were literally measuring their miracles with 1 to 10 scales, presumably entering them into spreadsheets later to plot their miracle effectiveness. Any corporate marketing team would have been proud.
At the same time, I felt a little bad making that observation. Once Roman pagans were as integrated into Roman society as Christians are in American culture. Back then pagans had the fancy temples, the official recognition by heads of state. The line between government and religious thought was blurred for their benefit. It was Christians who were huddled in individual houses, practicing in secret, with few churches and little officially recognized legitimacy. As the prayer team laid hands on me, I thought about what Greer and Spengler call the Second Religiosity which emerges from the decline of our civilization. If a Pagan tradition comes to dominate, I hope we don’t turn the tables and wind up recreating the persecution of the past.
Annika: My prayer team didn’t know what to pray for. I realized that they were looking for something measurable but because none of my health concerns were, I wasn’t giving them any starting points. Since their hands were laid on me, I decided to use that bond to feel into their energy. I wished there was a way to communicate that it’s OK to finish early, that I wouldn’t be upset. I looked at the young woman, hoping she would read it in my face. We made eye contact, and she nodded and asked if she could share a Word with me and then both she and her prayer partner prophesied, saying that “God is so proud of you. The path you are on is so awesome and God really wants to affirm you in that. God is so proud of you. You are beautiful and a strong person. He wants to affirm you in your strength.”
When they were finished, the man looked at my form on his clipboard, clearly at a loss for what to write down, asked me if I still felt any pain. I reminded him that I wasn’t experiencing any symptoms when I came in but that I was grateful for the prophecy, as this was the third time I was given this message of God’s approval for my path. He nodded, scribbled something on the form, and I was dismissed, noticing that my friends were the only people left in the room who were not part of the clean up crew.
Autumn: As my prayer team wrapped up the laying on of hands, the woman offered a prophecy: “Expect breakthroughs. God wants you to know that, expect breakthroughs in your health, in your life in general, all of that. Expect breakthroughs.” I thanked them all and they again seemed shaken by the praise, immediately saying “Thank you, Jesus.” I found out later that the reason they were uncomfortable was because I was acknowledging their role in facilitating the healing — something that isn’t supposed to happen since it is Jesus doing all of the work.
The road to Bethel church / Annika Mongan
Annika: We were among the last leaving Bethel that day and talked about it during the long hours of our drive home. We compared our views on Christianity and empowerment, the concept that all of the energy work is done by Jesus, how Christians don’t actively study the “how to” or energy work, the origins of Pentecostal theology and practice, and the influence of “overculture” and American capitalism on Evangelicalism. Even today, several months later, we keep revisiting our experiences at Bethel.
Autumn: This was a fascinating experience for me. And I transformed as a result — but not in the way Christians might expect or hope. I no longer fear that energy. I began to recognize the system of thought Christians engage in and why many Christians engage in oppressive behavior without recognizing it. And I’m amazed that despite all these alien and seemingly disconnected structures, they can reach to deeper truths. I have no doubt now that at least some of the miracles they claim are true, even if I don’t agree on how they came about. But perhaps most importantly, I see them as the imperfect, striving human beings they are rather than just as the scary Christian evangelicals who oppress me. That gives me hope for the future.
Annika: Our trip was not at all what I expected it to be. I was shocked and taken aback by how much more corporate the culture has become since I left. I feel so much more at home with the lack of expensive and corporate infrastructure at our Pagan rituals, the power of circling in a meadow, the simplicity of a dance around a fire, the intimacy of a ritual in someone’s living room.
I was saddened by seeing the worship experience I once loved in a different light. I really wanted to lose myself in this ecstatic experience again. But while I didn’t, I received a precious gift. I felt a quiet but lingering joy in knowing myself to be more whole and fulfilled than I ever thought possible.
To my disappointment, the healing rooms didn’t live up to my expectations. I thought there would be less hype and more actual healing and “miracles”. I have experienced faith healing in my own body and have seen other miraculous recoveries through the laying on of hands, usually in much more intimate settings. I had been looking forward to witnessing at least some of these at Bethel, but nothing I saw personally seemed to be authentic beyond the hype. The prophecies, however, were amazing.
Being back in an environment where everyone attributes everything to Jesus and Jesus alone reminded me of how hard I used to try the same. But willing yourself to let go of all agency and personal power simply doesn’t work. While the leaders at Bethel were preaching the message of letting go, it was clear that they were holding on to enough personal power to be in leadership. I, however, had always tried so hard to follow the teaching that I ended up dis-empowered and confused. Having the tools I learned in Witchcraft to feel the flow of energy and make sense out of the experience was redemptive and empowering.
And finally being sent off with a prophecy telling this Born Again Witch – for the second and third time! – that God knows she is on the right path? That made our adventure at Bethel worth every single minute.
The wheel of the year turns and though the sun still burns bright and strong, the sunlit hours wane with every passing day. The pagan sabbat of Lammas, the early harvest, is upon us. Lugh, the Celtic God of light, reaches out a warm, golden-skinned hand to guide us in the mysteries of life and rebirth held within the living land and our living flesh.
As the sun begins its downward arc toward the horizon, Lugh waits for you on the summit of a hill, backlit by soft, descending rays. A panoramic view of golden fields spreads before you, an overflowing abundance ripe for the harvest.
Courtesy of SheBard Media, Inc.
“Below us is the great exchange of life,” He says, “the miracle of sunlight transformed into sustenance to feed the children of this hungry world. But there is a price to this miracle; the seed of the new resides within the body of the living, and something must die, must fall, for something new to be born.”
A sword appears in His hands, its hilt toward you and the tip pressed against His breast.
“Everything has its season,” He says, His clear-seeing eyes never leaving yours, “The grain must be cut down for the seed to find new soil. One cycle ends so another can begin.”
With a wave of His hand, your awareness shifts and you can see into the weaving of life that underlies the golden fields: the parched, barren soil, the particles of contaminants in the air, and the murky sludge in the nearby stream.
“Like the green-growing realm, humanity has also come to the end of a cycle,” Lugh says, “For millennia, your species has lost sight of the natural ways and rhythms of the Mother Earth. You have taken more than She can bear, and despoiled the air, water and land that sustain you. This imbalance has come to a breaking point, threatening the very ecosystems that support human life; you are reaping what you have sown. Yet all is not despair and gloom. Within everything is the seed of a new season and a new harvest.”
The sword appears in His hands once more, with its sharpened point now pressing against your tender skin.
“This outer imbalance and the seeds of a better world reside within you,” Lugh says, “and along with them, the hope of a positive, new beginning. You must ask yourself: what is ready to be harvested and cut away in your life in service of a more sustainable, life-serving exchange between yourself and the Mother Earth? What lessons must you ingest to aid you in your transformation? What are you willing to sacrifice for these new seeds to take root in yourself and your human society?”
The sun now kisses the horizon and you feel the chill of the impending darkness. Lugh’s light is dimming and you reach out to touch Him, and to take inside of yourself the magic of His sunlight embrace of the green-growing world.
He speaks to you one last time, “Remember that the seeds of the new are held within the body of the living. Everything you need to heal, grow and transform yourself and your world is present in this now moment, in the golden field that is your life. Be bold, be brave, be wise. One cycle ends so another can begin.”
With a sudden gust of wind, Lugh is gone, transformed into a descending spiral of golden chaff. And in your cupped hands are the seeds, the miracle, of the new world and the new harvest to come.
The Path of She is published on alternate Saturdays; follow it via RSS or e-mail! If you like Karen’s work, like her page on Facebook or maybe buy her book, Tale of the Lost Daughter, a fictional spiritual adventure into the life-changing world of magic and the sacred feminine.
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[Author’s Note: Throughout this column I use the terms “Heathen” and “Asatru/ar” interchangeably for those people who follow a modern version of the Viking Age religions. Not everyone who follows a Norse path consider themselves to be Heathens.]
Welcome to Happily Heathen, a new biweekly column here at the Agora in which I get to wax poetic about all of the reasons that I love Heathenry and am Happily Heathen. Unfortunately, I’ll have to start my run here by discussing the one big reason that makes me unhappy (and frankly ashamed) to be Heathen: the prejudiced fringe element.
Heathenry has so many cool and interesting things to talk about. Rune stones! Seidh! Old Norse texts! The deities! Ancestor worship! Polytheism! These crazy myths! Cross-dressing Thor! Icelandic zombies! As a long-time Heathen, I wish that the second thing out of my mouth after I introduce myself as a Heathen to someone new does not have to be “…but I’m not a racist!”
Thor fights the Midgard serpent (Stockholm, Sweden; Cara Freyasdaughter)
Last week, Iceland Magazine interviewed the high priest of the Icelandic Asatru movement in Iceland, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson. He stated in the interview that ever since word got out that his organization was building the first official Heathen temple (hof) in Iceland, his group has started to receive hate mail from conservative Asatruar. Hate mail, from other Heathens, aimed at a group that not only got Heathenry accepted as an official religion in Iceland, but is also now finally building the world’s first modern-day hof where Heathens from all over the world can come worship. Why the hate mail? Icelandic Heathens, like Heathens all over Scandinavia, are very liberal and perform same-sex marriages. This group has a long history of tolerance and acceptance towards all people, both Heathen and non-Heathen, and have always accepted people from any background to be Asatru.
The hate mail Hilmar Örn has received specifically threatens that these Heathens will attend the temple’s opening ceremony, “to ‘correct’ what those groups see as the incorrect tolerance of Icelanders.”
As soon as word of this got out, the international heathen community responded in outrage, shock, anger, and disappointment. Esteban Sevilla, leader of the Irminsul Kindred in Costa Rica, responded with an open letter to Hilmar Örn and his group called “We Stand With You Iceland” and started the hashtag #WeStandWithIceland. Haimo Grebenstein started a Facebook event called “Ásatrúarfélagið – we are at your side!” which as of this writing has almost 2400 “attendees” and over 2600 people who have signed their full names in support of the event. If you check those who have signed the event, many of those who signed are signing on behalf of a family, kindred, or organization; and those who signed come from all corners of the world. Many of those who signed are not even Heathen, but are pagans from different paths who are offering their support to both Heathenry and Iceland’s Heathens.
Hilmar Örn has handled the hate email well and has calmly, yet pointedly, struck back at his detractors.
[He] adds that he and other members of the congregation are not interested in using the ancient religion of Ásatrú as a vehicle for romanticized machismo, as well as rejecting any tendencies to inject the practice of Ásatrú with conservative Christian morality:
“We know these texts; we have lived with these texts for a thousand years. We are not coating them in some Viking or warrior romanticism. And we are not obsessing over some books on morality, dating back to the year 70AD, as many of these foreign practitioners of Ásatrú do, considering that book a source on how the ancient religion should be practiced.”
I can guarantee Freya does NOT discriminate. Her Hall Sessrumnir is many-seated; there is always room for one more.(from Archaeology & Celtic Myth, by John Waddell.)
Let me say this loud and clear, so that no one may mistake what I am saying: NOT ALL HEATHENS ARE INTOLERANT RACISTS. In fact, most Heathens are friendly, generous, community-oriented, spiritual people. Most Heathens will open up their hearth to you should you attend one of their rites. How do I know? I’ve been a Heathen for over 15 years. I’ve been active in online communities and in-person communities. I’ve attended large events and I’m a member of large organizations, such as the Troth and ADF, where there are people who are following the Heathen path in a respectful, friendly, and open-minded way. And very often, when a new person attends a Heathen event, they say that what strikes them the most is the sense of community and of coming home. Community and hospitality: two of the biggest tenets in Heathenry. Exactly what that unwanted fringe element is missing. (Coco the Spooky Librarian gives a stellar breakdown of why “racist” Heathens should not even be allowed to call themselves Heathen. Her well-worded rant starts around minute 8:30).
Interested in learning more about Heathenry, but worried that you run into one of these fringe groups? Here are some good places to get started:
The Troth, the largest international Heathen organization. (The Troth has a database with of all of their kindreds throughout the world and regional Stewards who field inquires from newcomers.)
ADF, not a Heathen organization, but home to many allies who also walk a Norse path
And many others that are not listed here. If you are one of the many liberal Heathen kindreds or hofs and are not on this list, please share your information in the comments section below! We need to let the world know that Heathenry is for everyone. This visibility makes a huge difference. As Hilmar Orm said in response to the worldwide support: “You always take most note of the loudmouths and yappers. But we know we have many friends around the world. But we usually hear less from them, they keep to themselves. So, it has been really pleasant to see the overwhelming support we have received since the article ran on Tuesday.”
From a travel agency in Stockholm, Sweden. Heathenry is everywhere! (personal photo)
Hail to Hilmar Orm and the Iceland Ásatrúarfélagið! May your strength, courage, and tolerance guide the rest of us into growing and creating an more hospitable Heathen community.
[Editor’s Note: For a “throwback Thursday” Conor wanted to share an essay originally written as part of his clergy application within Hellenion. It was originally posted on his site, Under the Owl’s Wing, on August 13, 2013]
The strengths and weaknesses of reconstructionism as a methodology are many and varied, and are things that could be hotly debate by individuals for a while, the views presented are my own as arrived at by introspection and contemplation as well as by interaction with various Hellenists and reconstructionists of other polytheistic faiths.
The biggest strength of this methodology is that you don’t have to make things up as you go along. Reconstructionism has a base foundation set-up, individual devotional rites may vary from person to person but will tend to have the same essential form. This method also provides us with a calendar (however vague it may be) and sets us up a way of tracking time that reinforces our religious identities and helps us separate ourselves a bit more from the sometimes secular, sometimes Christian culture that we are surrounded by.
Another benefit of this approach is that we can more clearly and more carefully define who we aren’t and who we are. Polytheistic religions in general tend to have many variations and nuances from region to region (just looking at Hinduism [not technically polytheistic, but close enough in function], Shinto, and West African religions) even among the same general “grouping” given to the faith from those with an etic perspective. Thus certain boundaries get very blurry and it can cause the ‘essence’ or the distinctness of the faith to be muddled with other traditions. This is not to say that this methodology prevents people from doing these things, but rather that things can be a bit more clearly defined as Hellenic and non-Hellenic, though not with one-hundred percent precision. In concept this is a big asset to allowing religious exploration in other areas in so long as it results in a dual practice [two religions that are practiced by one person yet kept separately] and not syncretism (historical syncretism is a different issue and will not be discussed at this time). A Hellenist should then, very easily, be able to practice Shinto, Kemetism, Heathenry, Ceremonial Magic, Buddhism, or Hinduism assuming that it does not interfere with or appropriate things from their Hellenic faith. Sadly this concept is not always followed and persons who engage in dual faith practice are often marginalized by other Hellenists and driven from groups, which is a habit that we must avoid.
We also can (with some ambiguity) point to what the ancient Athenians or Spartans did and draw from this into creating a modern practice and tradition that will withstand the test of time. This however, is also a big problem for us as many folks assume that they must draw the attitudes from these time periods and places as well which is certainly not the case. We see this most prominently with the treatment of magic within the Hellenic community. The objections are generally rooted in ancient attitudes and beliefs about magic which aren’t necessarily reflective of modern magic and certainly not indicative of the behaviors and attitudes of Hellenists who have such practices. There is no general worldview that can be reconstructed, I believe, since worldviews are born into and altered from there, immigrating into another country will not result in a person adopting that country’s worldview wholly, but rather will result in an augmenting of their former worldview and even after decades of immersion the individuals often only adopt a fraction of the worldview. Thus we should mindfully and carefully adopt these attitudes and viewpoints and keep in mind that the worldview of the ancient Hellenes was not universal and did change throughout time. Doing otherwise will result in a stagnant faith that will not survive the next two hundred years.
Our wealth of source materials and secondary academic texts is also another example of something that while being a huge asset is also a huge burden and potential failure. It benefits us for the fact that we have things clearer than some other reconstructionist faiths (Celtic Reconstructionism, Natib Qadish, Reconstructionist Heathenry etc.). We also have a wealth of preserved myths and philosophical writings that can be used and read by modern Hellenists as a means of connecting with the gods and honoring them. This, however, is also a big burden because of the text bias imported from Christianity by many Hellenists. Appeals to Plato, Sallust, and Hippocrates to “prove” an individual correct or incorrect are all too common within Hellenic circles and the sentiment that if it isn’t in Burkert you shouldn’t do it seems to be even more pronounced. These attitudes are dangerous. The information we do have is often incomplete and thus means that we must fill in the gaps with innovations fueled by personal gnosis. There is an issue however with many Hellenists blocking attempts to do this via social pressures and exclusions by generally citing “the Greeks didn’t do that” which indicates that they wholly miss the point and proper execution of the reconstructionist methodology. The tendency to fall into absolute mimicry is all too common and can be sourced towards the aforementioned text bias in many cases. There is some stifling of needed innovations and the creation of new rites, rituals, and initiations compatible with the Hellenic religion.
In the end, Reconstructionism is a tool which must be wielded carefully and with care. In the wrong hands it results in a stifled, stiff, and ultimately stagnant religion which resembles an academic exercise at “The Ancient World” immersion camp for young adults. It is, however, a tool that we do need to utilize lest our religion become watered down and its core torn apart and made unrecognizable. This is just as much of a failure as creating a religion which is too stiff and stagnant.
ADDENDUM: This has no relation to P. Sufenas Virius Lupus’s (PSVL) “Reconstructionism as Methodology” class. I am sure that e has far more to say on the subject than I and goes into it more thoroughly. At the time of the writing of this essay, I was completely unaware that the class existed and want to make it clear that I did not plagiarize from eir page, class, or posts and that the thoughts contained in my post are my own and have absolutely no relation to Aedicula Antinoi, Academia Antinoi, or PSVL.
[Editor’s Note: Please welcome Camelia Elias and her column, The Cartomancer. It runs on the second and forth Wednesday of every month. Subscription links are in the footer.]
Cards: They answer questions. Not only that, but they also teach us to be better at asking the really good questions. The questions that map our concerns beyond our fears.
Back in my youth, when I didn’t read aphorisms or The Three Musketeers, I’d read about all things magical. My fascination with mysticism – in spite of all my Marxist beliefs – is vibrant, and I try to incorporate as much of it as I can in my personal and professional life.
Although I work for a living as a professor of American Studies at Roskilde University in Denmark, my area of interest is sacred and secret texts, the history of the so-called occult sciences, and telling stories with cards. I’m interested in poetic language and its oracular voice. Whenever I hear this voice I experience the sublime. It’s like going to a museum, getting quiet contemplating an image, and listening to its message hit me hard in the gut. I decide that I don’t know what it is, but I like it. When I encounter the oracular I’m ready for action: ‘Hello God, nice to meet you again. What am I good at today? What am I good for?’
In my professional life I pretend that I research into poetry, creative writing, and critical thinking, but the truth is that what I’m always looking for is to get a sense of all the writers’ souls. What are they afraid of? How do they fix it? Do they ever go to see a fortuneteller? The famous poet T.S. Eliot did, though by the time he sat down to write what some claim is the most famous poem in Western literature, he forgot to credit Madame Sosostris who provided him with all the inspiration for his wasteland. But I come along and do some digging here and some there. I restore some justice and quietly curse the ingrate. It’s not the worst kind of job. It allows me to claim that all poetry is a form of divination.
Lecturing on the tarot (Photo: Manna Hojda)
The same goes for divination. It’s all poetry. It’s kicking the soul upstairs where it can make some serious distinctions. When are we sensitive? When are we cunning? If I listen intently to my own questions, I find that my ambivalence gives rise to the oracular voice. But what does it all mean? I lay down three cards and I get an answer. I find that what I read in the cards is the kind of poetry that has the power to act as spell work. I get to work. Do I understand what I’m doing here? Do I know my place? Does this knowing of my place require knowing myself first? How about bewitching myself?
I grew up in Romania where I lived until I was 21. At 46 I often go back to my childhood place. I hear the voice of my mother: ‘I’m going upstairs for coffee.’ But in Romania, widows who lived on their husbands’ pensions didn’t just have coffee. ‘Is Madam Gibesco going to read your cards again?’, I hear myself echoing from the past, while mother is making a dismissive gesture. ‘I’m too complex for that woman. She can’t read my cards. We’ll just have a splash of tasseomancy, reading the coffee beans in our cups instead.’ After the séance mother would come home and do some serious bibliomancy. She thought the Bible was the best. ‘Now, let’s see if Madam Gibesco got it right. You never know about this woman’s magic and interpretative skills’. And so it went, divination ad infinitum, checking and double-checking, asking the question and answering it too.
Tasseomancy (Photo: Camelia Elias)
The women I grew up with didn’t read the cards for growth in their personal spirituality. They just read the cards. They looked at the images and observed what elements in each card would rhyme with other visual cues in some of the other cards: ‘Now, look,’ they’d say: ‘Do you see these two cups turn into two horses? Do you think that’s good?’ That usually wasn’t too good. Too much work having to discipline those animals all the time, what with each pulling in different directions. What tone did the cards have, rising or falling? Look at the Knight of Coins, chasing his dream. But going about with your head in the clouds can make you lose it. Here comes the Hanged Man, empty-pocketed, coins splashing in all directions on the ground. Boom. That didn’t go too well. ‘Watch out for the 10 swords.’ Too late. It’s all done.
Jean Noblet, 1650 by Jean-Claude Flornoy (Photo: Camelia Elias)
The magical women I grew up with didn’t have any midlife crisis, identity crisis, or any other crisis that one encounters everywhere these days. If their husbands would cheat on them, they’d consult their cards. The actions ensuing were as sharp as a razor. Heads would fall down. No mercy. I’ve seen the cards make people condense their thinking so solidly that it rendered them as cold as ice. But I’ve also seen the cards make people understand their situations so profoundly that they would end up becoming professors of logic.
The Sorcerer’s Fortunetelling Playing Cards, ca. 1850, K. Frank Jensen Collection (Photo: Camelia Elias)
I’m here to impart some of this wisdom that came down to me in the form of stories with the cards, stories that can make people aware of their presence, or absence, in the world. Perhaps I’d like to give people a sense of how we can figure out what our place in the world is, if we dare to use the cards as a tool for asking the important questions, the nasty questions, the questions that hurt us, and the questions that teach us a lesson. I read the cards as a means of tapping into the wonderful memory of situated wisdoms.
I intend to write about people and their stories written with cards. No question is too small for the cards. They answer everything. I will use fascinating cards in my examples, from the old tarot cards to playing cards and other oracle-type cards. I will endeavor to introduce the readers to simple methods of reading the cards, and in the process contribute to building up a community of folks who think, and who think about themselves as relational selves.
Let me start with myself in context, posing this question to the cards:
How can I best serve Agora and its readers?
Three cards fell on the table:
The Star, The World, The Wheel of Fortune
The Star, the World, the Wheel of Fortune / Photo by Camelia Elias, Cards from Jean Noblet, Marseille Tarot
They say the following:
Give of yourself and guide according to your stars.
Enter the whole world naked, and address it from within.
Let the good times roll.
If you’re inclined to read more besides what I’m about to unfold here, I recommend a visit to my website.
§
NOTE ON THE CARDS:
Jean Noblet, Marseille Tarot, 1650, as reconstructed by Jean-Claude Flornoy.
The Sorcerer’s Fortunetelling Playing Cards, ca. 1850 in the collection of K. Frank Jensen.
“…brón trogein .i. lugnusad .i. taide fogamuir .i. is and dobroine trogain .i. talom fo toirtip. Trogan didiu ainm do talum”
– Tochmarc Emire la Coinculaind, page 246
“Brón Trogain, that is, Lúnasa, the beginning of autumn, it is then the earth is sorrowing, that is, earth under fruit. Trogan is another name for earth.”
Although Lúnasa is the common name among Irish pagans for the holiday celebrated on August 1st another, possibly older*, name for the holiday (and the one my family chooses to use) is Brón Trogain. Generally this is translated as “Sorrow of the Earth” although Sengoidelc being the interesting language that it is you can also understand it as “Sorrow of the Female Raven”, because trogan means, among other things, both “earth” and “female raven”. I have long associated Macha with this holiday based on my own intuition and because of a romantic notion that it may have been at a Lúnasa assembly that the Macha who cursed Ulster was forced to race**; then several years ago I had an dream of Macha and Nuada being honored at this holiday which was being called Brón Trogain. Since Macha and her sisters Badb and the Morrigan are called “mná trogain” – raven women – in the Sanas Cormac the idea of calling this holiday on which I honor Macha by a name that is, at least, a play on words with a term she is called by resonates with me.
My daughters, gathering berries for Brón Trogain, 2013 / Morgan Daimler
Every year on Brón Trogain my children and I go out in the morning and gather berries from our yard. We say a prayer as we do so, an old reaping prayer altered to be more pagan and rewritten slightly to fit our modern non-agrarian lives:
Reaping Blessing 89
Gods may you bless our reaping,
Each ridge, and plain, and field,
Each sickle curved, shapely, hard,
Each berry and handful in the basket,
Each berry and handful in the basket.
Bless each maiden and youth,
Each woman and tender child,
Safeguard them beneath your shield of strength,
And guard them beneath the shadow of your power,
Guard them beneath the shadow of your power.
Encompass each living things here,
Each person, each animal, each plant,
Surround the rocks and herbs,
And your blade between them and all harm,
Your blade between them and all harm.
May Nuada Airgetlam, twice-king, bless us,
May Macha’s blessing be granted to us,
May the people of peace bless us,
And our ancestors of the graves and tombs,
and our ancestors of the graves and tombs.
(based off of traditional prayer from the Carmina Gadelica)
Berries, waiting to be offered or eaten / Morgan Daimler
When we have collected a good amount we offer some of the berries to the aos sí and some to the Gods. The rest we bring inside and divide, a portion to have for breakfast and a portion to save for dessert later that night. Traditionally in Ireland the folk practice was to go out and gather the first crops from the fields, but as we live in the suburbs and have no crops only wild berries to gather we substitute these. Mixed into porridge the berries are quite good and the children are at least reminded of the idea of what we are celebrating, as well as getting to experience picking our own food from our yard.
Historically, Lúnasa was marked by athletic games and horse races, particularly a type of race where the horses had to swim across water. We don’t have many references to Brón Trogain directly, but we may generally assume that the traditions were similar as the two names were used interchangeably, so during the day before it gets too hot we play in the yard, making up our own athletic games with enough variety that each child is able to have fun without the eldest dominating everything (its harder than it sounds, with almost 10 years between oldest and youngest!). I tell the children stories, sometimes about Aine and Crom Dubh, sometimes about Lugh fighting Crom Cruach to win the harvest, sometimes about the Fir Bolg’s arrival in Ireland, or about Tailtiu dying to clear the plains. But I always include the tale of Macha the Fairy Woman and how she raced the king’s horses and cursed the men of Ulster.
Since one reference we do have to Brón Trogain mentions Finn mac Cumail having a feast prepared on this holiday, feasting is also an aspect of the holiday which we try to keep. When they day is done we have a big dinner with as many seasonal foods and vegetables as possible, portions of which are shared with our ancestors, the Gods, and the Good Neighbors. With the children being young our family ritual tends to be short and to the point, but I often will do a second one myself later in the evening as well, where I like to reflect on what I am harvesting in my life. It’s a good time not only to honor the Gods and Spirits who bless us but also to reflect on the things that I have worked for and put energy into in the last six months, to look at what has been achieved and what has failed. It sets the tone for the season as we move into autumn.
Wineberries, ready to harvest / Morgan Daimler
Brón Trogain – Sorrow of Earth – Lúnasa to most people, is a holiday to focus on both what we have to harvest and also on community. In my family we do this literally by gathering berries and by spending time together as a family as well as by enjoying local harvest fairs. We also honor these themes figuratively by reflecting on what we have nurtured and grown in our lives in the last six months. In the spirit of the ancient practices we have a small feast, and everything is shared in a ritual context with the Gods and spirits. Sharing what we have, which comes from the generosity of the Powers, is a way to show gratitude and also create reciprocity at this time when the things which have been grown since spring are falling to the blade of the harvest.
* M. MacNeil in her book Festival of Lughnasa discusses references in the Acallamh na Senórach which imply Brón Trogain was the original name later replaced by the name Lúnasa.
** according to the story it was at a great assembly with horse races, but the date is not given. However historically Lúnasa was said to be one of the most important holidays and assembly times to the pagan Irish so it is at least possible. To be clear though, the idea that she raced at this time is entirely my own supposition.
In my own path of spiritual seeking, I frequently reflect on my religion, my spirituality. I wonder if the label “Pagan” still suits me or if I’m something else. I also think a lot about my own theology and how that has shifted over time; I used to be more of a polytheist, and now I’m more of a pantheist/archetypist. I think about the mysteries beneath the surface of the world, and about the things that I don’t know…that I can’t know…but that doesn’t stop me from wondering. And I occasionally wonder what drew me to this particular spiritual path in the first place.
Image by Shauna Aura Knight
I never was really raised Christian, or at least, not a church-going Christian. My parents had both been raised Christian, and there was kind of an assumption from my classmates, teachers, relatives, and people I encountered of everyone following the dominant religion. But, my parents were both into kind of New-Age-y stuff…energy healing, psychic powers, Edgar Cayce, Atlantis, channeling, Reiki, psychic abilities, that sort of thing. They also raised me on a diet of science fiction and fantasy.
So I guess you could say I grew up exploring a lot of the mysteries, the questions, the secrets beneath. My parents raised me to question the status quo. They didn’t necessarily raise me to be Pagan, but they did raise me to not be satisfied with the dominant culture.
For a while, I labeled myself as an atheist. At the time, what I meant by that was “not Christian.” That didn’t last too long because I began having intense experiences of a particular angel/goddess. I have called her the Angel, Lady in the Blue Light, or Goddess of the Water Temple. Moonlight, water, nighttime stars…all those seemed connected to her. I began having visions, dreams. I talked to her at night and I felt her whispering back to me.
In middle school and high school I was bullied, and the connection to this goddess is part of what kept me from considering suicide. My spiritual connection gave me strength, even though I didn’t know who she was or what she was.
Being Different
I think a lot of Pagans will probably resonate with this: It’s really hard for me to separate my religious leanings with how different I felt from everyone else around me. One of the strongest sensations I had, growing up, was that I didn’t fit in with the crowd. It wasn’t just a religious difference, it was a social difference. I didn’t believe in the Christian God–or at least, I didn’t believe in the Christian dogma as I had learned it via osmosis from everyone around me. Moreso than that, I didn’t believe in how my classmates were forced to attend religious services, or do religious education. I didn’t like how people were indoctrinated in that way.
More and more, I value how my parents raised me to have an open mind.
If you’re familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality test, I usually test out as an INTJ, and I’ve read that INTJs value independence in others, and that resonates a lot for me. When I was growing up, and now as an adult, what has frustrated me more than anything else about the dominant religions–particularly Christianity–is the social controls. I couldn’t have articulated it as well as a kid, but I felt that “squeeze,” that pressure to toe the line, to be what the people in charge want you to be. Now I see it threaded through every aspect of society. Control over our bodies, over our sexuality, over our sexual health, through environmental pollution and waste, through capitalism, through discrimination and racism and homophobia.
When I discovered there was this whole modern Pagan movement I was about fourteen, and not long after that I began calling myself a Pagan. At the time, I wanted to be a druid, but being a teen in rural southwest Wisconsin before the internet had picked up steam, I had no real access to the Pagan community, other than the Pagans I met while working at the Renaissance Faire.
Cultural Fringe
As a teenager I hung out (and later worked at) the Bristol Renaissance Faire. In college I hung out with Goths, and began attending science-fiction/fantasy conventions. I slowly started connecting with other Pagans and eventually joined a Pagan group in my 20’s. What’s clear to me, as I look back, is how connected my spirituality is to being on the fringes of society.
Whenever I think, “Am I still a Pagan? Does that define me?” I look around me, I look at the dominant culture and the other major religions. And I think about the Pagan community. And–even with the frustrations within the Pagan community, the divisiveness, the drama, and the instances of horrifically crappy leadership and even abusive leaders–Paganism’s the closest I have to home. It’s where there are others like me who question things, who don’t just buy into the status quo. Who look beneath, who seek the mysteries themselves instead of letting someone else tell them, “This is what you must believe.”
It’s not to say there aren’t Pagans looking for leadership and guidance. There are plenty of Pagans out there willing to follow any strong leader–even an abusive one. But I’d say that in general, most Pagans are still more likely to question things than most people in the dominant culture.
But What is Paganism?
Sometimes I get stuck in the spiral of, “But what is Paganism?” There are so many paths under the Pagan umbrella that I can’t even say, “My Pagan values,” and have that be at all accurate because we aren’t a monoculture. I could say, “My values, as a Pagan,” but even that is a bit vague.
I can tell you what I’m not. I’m not Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. I’m not Buddhist. I’m not Hindu. I’m not “spiritual but not religious.” I’m Pagan.
The word Witch hasn’t really ever called to me, but that’s in part because the word Witch is now tied into Wicca, which isn’t my spiritual path. Druid is perhaps a bit closer, since I find I have a strong connection to the Celtic myths and language, but I’m more interested in the Druid as a role, not as a path. The local Druid was the priest, the poet, the oracle, the star observer, the keeper of the mysteries and the leader of rituals. Druidism wasn’t a path, back in the day, it was a job. Similarly, I find myself called to the word Shaman to define my path, but again, it’s more of a flavor of a job title. The word Shaman, anthropologically, tends to refer to the person responsible for the spiritual well-being of a tribal culture, and Shamanism tends to imply ecstatic trance practices as well. I see the job of the Shaman and the Druid to be pretty closely in alignment, though the Shaman has perhaps a more primal connotation which is probably why it draws me. But the word Shaman is appropriated from the Siberian tribes, so that becomes problematic.
So What Am I?
I’m a mystic–one who seeks and connects directly to the divine. I’m a seeker, I’m a questioner, I’m someone who always wants to explore and know more about the world and how things work. For me that could be exploring trance technique in ritual, reading an article on particle physics, or engaging in deep personal work to face my own shadows. My spiritual practice is ecstatic and embodied using trance practices to connect to the divine, and to help people connect to their deep selves.
In fact, I can’t even really separate my own spiritual calling and divine connection from my calling as a priestess/minister/leader/druid/shaman. For me, I wouldn’t be true to my faith and my belief if I weren’t helping to create community, to teach skills, to mentor and lead, to help make the world a better place. This is also where my spirituality connects to my activism. I wouldn’t be living my spiritual values if I weren’t fighting for equality, for justice, fighting for a healthy relationship with our environment, fighting for the rights of people of color, for people of diverse genders and diverse sexualities…for reproductive health, for my own body sovereignty and that of other women, for the right to choose.
All those things are core to my faith, and I believe that they are a strong part of the overarching Pagan community. While many Pagans unfortunately are still steeped in homophobic, transphobic, and racist culture (and often unaware of how systemic this is)
Faith
I have to admit, talking about my faith and using that word “faith” sometimes gives me a sensation of squick in my gut. What I mean is, having grown up in a dominantly Christian culture, whenever I hear people talking about “faith,” I tend to assume they’re talking about Jesus and Christianity, and that makes me instantly think of dogma, control, and bigotry. Now–I’m not saying in any way that all Christians are bad. I’m talking perhaps more about that fundamentalist aspect of Christianity that scares me.
And I suppose that’s one of the problems with any word. Pagan, Christian; there’s what the word is supposed to mean, and then there’s the connotation, the “brand” image based on the experiences we’ve had with that word. I’ve known a few really amazing, open-minded Christians that I call friends. And I’ve known a lot of controlling, misogynistic, homophobic, poor-shaming, sex-shaming Christians. And you can’t attend a Pagan gathering without hearing about the discrimination some Pagan has faced from the dominant religions.
I was lucky in many ways; by the time I was “out” as a Pagan, I was mostly around people who were accepting, or at least tolerant. And I’ve spent most of my adult life on the fringes hanging out with Ren Faire and sci-fi/fantasy geeks, other Pagans, and generally with liberal and open-minded folks.
Am I a Hypocrite?
This past weekend I had the opportunity to think a lot about my own assumptions, though. I went to the bridal shower for the fiance of one of my family members. The bride’s family is Wells Lutheran, and they really don’t like the groom. He’s liberal, not exactly Pagan but more “spiritual but not religious.” There’s an atmosphere of control and sex shaming. People are expected to wait for marriage to have sex. There’s pressure for an expensive wedding, and the parents are paying for a good chunk of it, but that also gives them control over the wedding. The couple had to attend pre-marital counseling via the church where they were admonished to not have sex. To put their relationship in God’s hands. The couple is struggling, financially, to pay for the wedding, and they are concerned that her parents will expect her to not live with her fiance in the final months up til the wedding, but they only have one car and can’t afford two apartments.
Everyone at the bridal shower was nice enough, but I kind of blinked in shock to discover that the gift bags/favors given out included a small stone cross that said, “Be Joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer,” Romans 12:12, and the bags had a sticker with a quote, “God knows you! His thoughts of you outnumber the sand on the shore,” Max Lucado.
I felt that squirmy, uncomfortable, squicked-out sensation in my gut, and I had to explore it, think about it. Because that’s who I am.
Why did this make me uncomfortable? Why is it that Christian quotes and crosses feel smarmy and controlling to me, whereas Pagan quotes or devotional items inspire me?
I was watching a TV show where one character is a devout Catholic. On her dresser she has a cross, a rosary, images of Jesus, and she goes for her rosary to pray, and I find myself squirming again. And I thought, if that was an image of Sekhmet or Lugh, if those were prayer beads devoted to Freyja or Aphrodite or Brigid or the Horned God, would I have an issue with this?
And I wondered, if I get squicked out at Christian examples of faith and devotion, am I a hypocrite because I don’t have a problem when Pagans do this?
Faith, Freedom, and Control
I realize that so much of my issue is about that core issue of control. Of bigotry. My issue with the Christian prayers and dogma is the evangelism, the proselytizing, the assumption that not only is theirs the only correct path, but that I’m somehow bad or evil for following my own path. Pagans, we squabble, but ultimately even when we think we’re right, we also acknowledge someone’s right to follow their own path so long as they aren’t hurting anyone.
And maybe that’s the essence of why I’m a Pagan and why that’s the label I use–freedom. I want each person to have the freedom to choose their own path. I want people to have the freedom to question, to seek beneath, to experience their own divine rapture on their own without having dogma crammed down their throat. I want people to have sovereignty over their own hearts and minds and bodies.
This is why I can’t really separate my faith and spiritual path from my work as a Pagan ritualist and teacher and my calling to serve, and why I can’t really separate it from my politics and my activism. As long as there are bigots, as long as there is misogyny and racism, as long as there are people fighting for the right to take away my own choices when it comes to contraception and abortion–and with the other hand, fighting to make it harder for the poor to make enough of a living to raise a child at all–as long as these issues exist, I’ll be fighting for freedom and justice and equality.
Future of Paganism
I believe the Pagan community is going to grow more diverse in the coming years and decades, but I also believe that there will be more people identifying as Pagans, or in that spectrum between Pagan and “spiritual but not religious.” I think that more people are going to hear that call for freedom, that call to question things and not just accept what they were told is the “right” thing to do.
Sometimes, asking all these questions causes division. There are pantheists and polytheist and atheists in the Pagan ranks, and we often disagree with each other. But what I think most Pagans share is the inherent worth and dignity of each human being. I think many of us also share that sense of questioning, of looking beneath the surface. Of not just doing something because “the authority” told us to.
What do you believe? What is the core of your faith?
I had a hard time reading Celebrating Wildness, mostly because I kept being swept up in the exquisite and often deliberately mind-boggling art. But don’t be fooled: this is not merely a Pagan coffee-table book. The text is deep, rich, and every bit as beautiful and complex as the art.
Illustration by Fred MacLauren Adams
Celebrating Wildness is Jo Carson’s explication of and paean to the Feraferian Tradition, founded by Fred Adams and Lady Svetlana over 50 years ago. They became much admired and influential elders in the Southern California metaphysical community among both Wiccans and Ceremonialists, numbering both Ed Fitch and Poke Runyon among their friends and sometimes-collaborators. When people wonder aloud how the Wicca of Southern California became so much more nature-oriented and wild than the British traditions from which it arose the one factor they don’t take into account, but should, is Feraferia.
Feraferia – a word Fred Adams coined from Greek roots meaning “wilderness festival” – is a Pagan tradition unlike any other. Based on Fred’s visions of the Divine Feminine, the sacredness of eros and the potential for intentional communities that truly do no harm to anything, it also draws upon themes familiar to Wiccans such as sacred landscapes, prehistoric beliefs, and the Faerie Faith. As Wicca itself once did, it harks back to Minoan Crete in a much-romanticized way. But then, you could say that all of Feraferia is a romanticized view of Nature and our place in it.
The romanticization of Nature has been going on among poets and visionaries for a good four hundred years, longer if you count late-Roman art with its nymphs and fauns in idealized landscapes. The difference between most nature romantics and Fred Adams is that Fred had a Plan. Fred intended that Feraferia should lead the world into a paradisal future in which freedom, eros and play are the core values, where that built by human hands merges seamlessly into the Wild, and the Fae romp among us. Some of the illustrations are reproductions of Fred’s architectonic designs for the sacred landscape he envisioned. Jo Carson and others of Fred and Svetlana’s followers, along with newer members of the Tradition, continue to honor and pursue the vision.
Illustration by Fred MacLauren Adams
More of the Feraferian vision and philosophy is contained in Fred’s incredible drawings and painting than can be expressed in language, anyway. A complex and multi-layered iconography of the Magic Maiden in all her forms, often along with the Young God, Her consort, these images vary over the years from mystical to erotic, from cartoonish to exquisite. The painting I chose is illustrative of the themes and complexity but can’t express Fred’s style: there is no one Fred Adams style yet his work is always instantly recognizable.
But in an effort to express the Feraferian vision in words, Fred and his followers developed a sacred language. Not an invented language like Klingon or Esperanto, but a way of using existing language from ancient Greek to modern English in a sacral manner. For instance they often use a term like “Land Sky Love Body” where others might say ‘landscape’ or ‘ecosystem.’ Until you get comfortable with it, reading anything in the Feraferian canon can be frustrating, and Celebrating Wildness is no exception. We tend to assume anything this jargon-heavy is just New Age gobbledy-gook, but Fred spoke and wrote this way by necessity: There is simply no better way to express the incredibly nuanced and multi-layered concepts he was – and now Jo is – trying to get across.
After the usual prefaces and such, Celebrating Wildness is divided into four parts:
Part One, Visions of Goddesses, Earth and Nature, addresses in art and short essays the concepts underlying Feraferia, its history, philosophy, and overarching vision. Here we are introduced to Feraferian thealogy and faerie faith, and glimpse some of it ancient roots.
Part Two, Faerie Practices, gives directions for creating sacred space as well as the Feraferian seasonal cycle, symbols, rituals, and magical practices. This is as close to the ‘cookbook’ approach familiar from mass-market ‘witchcraft’ books as we’ll get. But it isn’t.
Part Three, Feraferia’s Deep Roots, covers the ancient cultures and practices that influenced Feraferia, including Europe’s megaliths, Minoan Crete, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the rites of Dionysos, and Fred’s personal epiphanies. As in the previous sections, everything is in the art, with essays by Jo, Fred, and others amplifying what we’re seeing.
And finally, in Part Four, we move from the past and present into the Feraferian dream for the future. Titled Paradisal Magic—Letting it Blossom, this section is by far the most esoteric and at the same time the most utopian. It includes instructions, simultaneously very specific and rather vague, about creating a paradisal sanctuary and how it is expected to transform the landscape and human consciousness. It goes into deeper detail about the Feraferian ideal of love – careless love for all things, as they call it – that is both erotic and innocent. And it gives us an outline for a Feraferian self-initation.
If I have any issues with this book, they are few and picayune: as a former copy editor I noticed a few annoying typos, and while the white-on-black pages are striking they’re hard on my elderly eyes and show every finger mark.
Celebrating Wildness is a unique, exquisite, and profound book. It created in me a sort of homesickness, a wistfulness for the idealist I was – we all were – back when we and the world and the Magic were all young and fresh. Though it’s a short book at only 115 art-laden pages, don’t expect to read it quickly; take your time and let it sink into your subconscious. What bobs to the surface will be wondrous.
[Editor’s Note: Celebrating Wildness is available for $45 from feraferia.com]
Annika: Our trip was not at all what I expected it to be. I was shocked and taken aback by how much more corporate the culture has become since I left. I feel so much more at home with the lack of expensive and corporate infrastructure at our Pagan rituals, the power of circling in a meadow, the simplicity of a dance around a fire, the intimacy of a ritual in someone’s living room.
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