I’ve forgotten why I cared: The irrelevance of (un)belief in the gods

Last updated on: December 28, 2015 at 6:06 pm By John Halstead

Have you ever asked a question and then, in the course of the ensuring conversation, forgotten why you asked the question in the first place?

I’m feeling like that.

I don’t know what happened. I remember caring about whether gods are real.

No, that’s not it. I remember caring a lot about whether you believe the gods are real. I remember caring a lot.

I just can’t seem to remember why I cared.

Of course, when I was Christian, I cared a lot about whether my God was real. If he wasn’t, then why was I doing some things I really didn’t like doing, and not doing some other things that I thought I might like to do, and feeling guilty about doing some other things that I did do?

And in my secret heart of hearts, I hoped that believing in God would be enough to save me, in spite of what I did or did not do.

And then I realized that I had made my God in my own image, that he wasn’t real, at least not in the way I thought he was. And that mattered too. It meant I could stop doing some of the things I didn’t want to do, start doing some things I though I might like to do, and stop feeling guilty about any of it.

That was a big deal for me.

Then I found Paganism, which seemed to be the perfect religion for people who realized that gods are made-up and wanted to go about making them up in a more deliberate sort of way.

And I learned about Jungian psychology, which explains how the gods are both made-up and real.

But then I met some Pagans who said their gods were real and not made-up. Some of these people got mad at me for saying their gods were made-up. And I got mad at some of them for saying my made-up gods weren’t real. And then we had all kinds of conversations about what “gods” means and what “real” means.

And then back in March, I had this acute feeling of apathy about it all.

Maybe it had something to do with my turning to prayer to my “personified impersonal” when I feared my son had a serious health issue. Maybe it was because I was becoming more active in support of causes I cared about, like marriage equality and a healthy biosphere. Maybe it was because I was observing Lent and made some room in my life for something new to enter in.

Maybe it was all of that.

Somehow I eventually lost that sense of apathy, and I got sucked back into the arguments again.

But now I’m having trouble again remembering why I cared.

It’s not just that, at some point, you have to stop caring what other people think and do your own thing. That’s part of it, but not all of it.

And it’s not that I’ve started to doubt my doubts about whether the gods are real. I don’t. They’re still make-believe to me (but a very real kind of way).

It’s that I have a this growing suspicion that the whole question of “realness” is a straw man.

Worse, I think it’s a sign that I’ve still been trying to be saved by belief.

Now I find myself excited at the possibility, not of new answers, but of new questions.

“Atheist Pagan” Does Not Equal “Secular Pagan”

Last updated on: October 29, 2015 at 9:26 pm By John Halstead

(image courtesy of Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

I recently came across a blogger calling themselves “The Veiled Witch” who made the claim that “Pagan atheism is secular humanism.” The entire post, the title of which was “Pagan Atheism: is this a thing?”, was dismissive of “Pagan atheism.” It was clear that the author really did not care to know if atheist Paganism (or “Pagan atheism”) is “a thing,” and that she obviously felt threatened by it. She also had not done her homework. Two of the four blogs you she linked to as examples of “Pagan atheism,” were not even Pagans. One was a self-described ex-Neo-Pagan and the other was a polyamorous atheist. The other two were Stifyn Emrys’ blog and my own blog here. I attempted to respond to the author, but she has ignored me.

Out of all of it, the statement, “Pagan atheism is secular humanism,” bothered me the most. Lately, I’ve been giving some thought to why. And I think the statement is dismissive in two different ways. First, it attempts to dismiss atheist Paganism as secularism. Second it attempts to reduce atheist Paganism to humanism. In what follows, I want explain why atheist Paganism is not secular and why it cannot be reduced to humanism.

Why atheist Paganism is not “secular”

What is Atheism?

You’d think “atheism” would be easy to define, but it’s not. This weekend, at my Unitarian church, I told someone I was an atheist Pagan, and she (neither an atheist nor a Pagan) became visibly agitated. I got the feeling that the word “atheist” meant something to her that maybe it didn’t mean to me. The person I was talking to seemed to feel much better calling me a “non-theist.” But what exactly is the difference between a-theism and non-theism? For some, it seems, the word “atheist” implies a reductive materialism or an anti-theism (think the New Atheists). I guess “non-theist” seems less threatening. But non-theism can mean anything from not believing in any deities to not believing in a certain kind of deities. For example, according to some definitions, pantheism is a form of non-theism (in spite of the obvious etymological problem of that categorization). And non-theism can also mean a kind of agnosticism or indifference to the question of the existence of deities.

When I call myself an atheist, I usually am trying to communicate that I don’t believe in “Gods” or “gods” in the way most people mean those words, i.e., reified “distinct, independent” (supernatural) beings. But I will sometimes call myself a non-theist when I want to talk about other conceptions of divinity that I do embrace, like pantheism or archetypal polytheism, which I think are more consistent with scientific naturalism.

What does “secular” mean?

“Secularism” is often refers to the separation of religious and government institutions. That’s not the definition we’re talking about here. When the Veiled Witch says Pagan atheism is “secular humanism,” she’s not talking about a humanism that endorses the separation of church and state. She means a humanism that is “non-religious.” This is the second definition of secular. But defining “secular” as “non-religious” which raises the even more problematic question of what is “religious.”

I’m not going to try to define “religion,” but I do want to identify some things that it is not. “Religion” is not synonymous with belief in the supernatural. Some people seem to think that, if you don’t believe in the supernatural, then you’re “secular.” If this were the case, then a lot of Pagans would be “secular,” since many Pagan reject the naturalism-supernaturalism dichotomy altogether. “Religion” is also not synonymous with “theism.” There are clearly non-theistic forms of religiosity, like Buddhism and Taoism.

Secularism and Ritual

It should also be said that “secular” is not synonymous with “meaningless.” I think this is the sense in which the Veiled Witch meant the word when she said Pagan atheism is “secular”. She was attempting to denigrate it. But these are many secular activities which are full of meaning. Holidays, like Valentine’s, the Fourth of July, and birthdays, as well as social action like Pride Day marches and environmental protests, can be entirely “secular,” but deeply meaningful.

So what then is the difference between secular and religious? I think we can illustrate the difference by considering the difference between secular humanism and religious humanism. Many people may not realize that the two movements are distinct, both conceptually and historically. Secular humanism has its roots in the Ethical Culture movement founded by Felix Adler in the 19th century. Secular humanism tends to eschew any of the “trappings” of religion, including most ritual or ceremony. Even the lighting of candles or communal singing may be viewed by secular humanist with skepticism. In contrast, religious humanism is more closely related to Unitarian Universalism, and it embraces religious ritual, at least to some degree. The difference, then, between the secular and the religious may be said turn on one’s attitude toward ritual.

Of course, there are secular rituals. All of the secular activities mentioned above — Holidays, like Valentine’s, the Fourth of July, and birthdays, as well as social action like Pride Day marches and environmental protests — involve symbolic actions, i.e., rituals. But most people don’t recognize them as such. In fact, if I told someone buying a Valentine’s Day card or marching for marriage equality that they were participating in a “ritual,” they might be offended. But most people recognize that what happens inside the walls of a church is ritual. So, the difference between the “religious” and the “secular” isn’t whether there is ritual, but whether we recognize and embrace the ritual as such.

Belief and Practice

When the Veiled Witch calls atheism “secular,” I think she is conflating two different categories altogether. We can think of theism and atheism as existing on a spectrum, a spectrum of belief. On the other hand, we can think of the religious and the secular as existing on another spectrum, a spectrum of practice. The theist-atheist spectrum deals with the question of belief, specifically, belief in deity. The religion-secularism spectrum deals with practice, specifically ritual. These two spectrums intersect and create four quadrants.

Religious theism/theistic religion: combines the belief in deity or deities with a ritual practice. These are most of the folks that attend weekly religious services in the U.S. This also includes Pagans who believe in gods and engage in devotions to deities or celebrate the Wheel of the Year.

Secular theism/theistic secularism: includes a belief in deity or deities but without any ritual practice. These are the believers who want nothing to do with organized religion and those who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” but don’t have any regular spiritual practice. It also includes “spiritual but not religious” Pagans who believe in gods and goddesses, but don’t really practice, either privately or with any group.

Religious atheism/atheistic religion: includes ritual practice, but without the belief in deity and deities. This includes many Buddhists and Unitarians, for example. It also includes Atheist Pagans, and many Humanistic Pagans and Naturalistic Pagans, who do not believe in gods, but who do celebrate the Wheel of the Year or perform other Pagan rituals in a meaningful way.

Secular atheism/atheistic secularism: involves no belief in deity and no ritual practice. I think this might include atheists who attend Pagan ritual for fun or for the after party. They may participate in the ritual, but it is not meaningful to them. I think there is a fear, on the part of some theistic Pagans, that atheist Pagans fall into this category. This is why I balk at the Veiled Witch conflating religious atheism and secular atheism. I am a religious atheist, not a secular atheist. When I attend a Pagan ritual, I’m not there to socialize or have fun (although I may do those things too). I am there to have a religious experience, to connect with something larger than myself (even if it is not deity).

Why atheist Paganism can’t be reduced to humanism

What is Humanism?

Atheism and humanism have a lot of overlap. Most humanists are probably atheists. Both humanists and atheists tend to be philosophical naturalists (rejecting supernaturalism). But atheism and humanism are two different things. Atheism is about disbelief in gods. Humanism is about belief in humans — in human goodness and human potential. Humanists tend to share a human-centered ethics, although increasingly the humanist ethic is being expanded to include all forms of life in a bio-centered ethic.

Theism and the Three Centers of Paganism

There are atheist Pagans who are Humanistic Pagans. Humanistic Pagans may be Pagans who share a love of the myth and ritual of Paganism, but not belief in literal deities, as well as non-theists who are looking for a spiritual practice to help them celebrate the natural world or experience a deeper connection to the Universe in a way that is consistent with scientific naturalism. But I don’t think the Veiled Witch was really talking about humanism as something positive when she said that atheist Paganism is “secular humanism.” I think she was being dismissive again. It’s not stated, but I think it’s implied that, from her perspective, if one is not deity-centered, then one must be human-centered. This is a common accusation I hear from some deity-centered polytheists: that non-theistic Paganism is self-centered. It’s true that there are forms of Paganism that are Self-centered, but the “Self” in question is not the ego, but the Deep Self, the divine within. But not all non-theistic Pagans are centered on the Deep Self either. Some are are earth-centered or nature-centered.

Like some other deity-centered polytheists, the Veiled Witch claims that Paganism cannot be divorced from polytheism. Obviously, that’s not true. At the recent Parliament of the World’s Religions, for example, Don Frew defined a “pagan” as anyone whose spirituality is an expression of their relationship with the place where they live. This is similar to Emma Restall Orr’s definition of pagan as one who looks “to the landscape, the environment, the ecology of a place, nature herself, for guidance in every aspect of their lives.” I think these definitions are consistent with the history of the word “pagan,” which meant the people of the countryside (from Latin paganus, civilian, country dweller, from pagus country district). Of course, I’m comfortable with these definitions, because they jibe with my own focus on the land and nature. But they don’t take account of those Self-centered or deity-centered Pagans for whom the earth/nature is not a major focus.

Inclusive Paganism

When we talk about capital-P “Paganism,” we have to do it in a way that takes into account the diversity of the contemporary Pagan movement, which is not a single religion, but a family of related religious paths. If I had to define “Pagan” (uppercase) I would say it refers to anyone who (1) looks toward the ancient pagans for religious inspiration and (2) chooses to be identified as Pagan or part of the Pagan family of religious paths. I think that is sufficiently broad to include just about everyone who wants to be included, but excludes others who want to be excluded. It’s clear that the idea of “atheist Paganism” creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for some people, like the Veiled Witch. She writes:

“Let pagan atheism be what it actually is. Pagan atheism is secular humanism. Let us know them by their true name and deal with them on our own terms. Allowing them to define the discussion (which they have been doing thus far in many cases) is leading to a denigration of all pagan belief systems. We must stand up and calmly refute their positions and reassert that we’re an equally valid belief system, regardless of what pagan belief system we practice.”

My hope is that the Veiled Witch will come to see that, yes, atheist Paganism is “a thing,” and that she will extend the same courtesy of acknowledging that “we’re an equally valid belief system” to atheist Pagans as well.

John Halstead

Grok Earth! Thou art God/dess!

On Gods and Stained Glass Windows: A Response to Morpheus Ravenna

Last updated on: September 24, 2015 at 12:25 am By John Halstead

mucha_DSC5377 — Stained-glass window designed by Alphonse Mucha at St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague

This past summer, Morpheus Ravenna delivered the keynote speech at the Many Gods West polytheist conference. Her speech was entitled, “Deep Polytheism: On the Agency and Sovereignty of the Gods”. It was later published at polytheist.com, and I encourage you to read it in its entirety. I’ve been meaning for some time to write a response to Morpheus’ speech, for a couple of reasons. First, I am always interested in the intersection of Jungian psychology and polytheism. In fact, it was the pairing of these ideas in Margot Adler’s 1979 Drawning Down the Moon that drew me to Paganism in the first place. Second, I think Morpheus is one of the most interesting polytheist writers out there, and I am often surprised at how much of what she writes I agree with. Her keynote speech was no exception.

Masks of Gods

The theme of Morpheus’ speech was how the gods are distinct from Jungian archetypes. Morpheus defines archetypes as “images arising from the collective consciousness of human beings which are reflective of essential human experiences or responses, and which may or may not be enspirited with consciousness of some kind.” This is close to a Jungian definition, but there is one critical distinction I would like to draw. For Jung, archetypes are not images. Archetypes are the powers behind the images. Archetypes are always unconscious. This means that we cannot experience them directly. According to Jung, they are “irrepresentable” and “can be grasped only approximately” by the conscious mind. Jung distinguished between archetypes and what he called “archetypal images”. Archetypal images are what most people mean by “archetype”, in other words, a symbol. We can only know archetypes through the archetypal images. As will be seen, the relationship between the archetypes and archetypal images is similar to the relationship Morpheus describes between the gods and what she calls “archetypes”.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — Ancient Greek theatrical mask of Zeus

Morpheus says that these “images” (which she calls “archetypes”) can be “enspirited”, and it is the gods who animate them. Carl Jung himself probably would not have disagreed with Morpheus on this point. He was agnostic about the nature of God or gods and believed that we could only infer their existence through our experience of the archetypes. In her speech, Morpheus addressed the limits of our knowledge as well. The gods, she says, are always larger than our experience of them. The deific presences which we experiences are “masks” of the gods (a common Jungian term incidentally) which the gods assume in order to communicate their meaning to our limited consciousness. These masks are what Morpheus calls “archetypes” and what Jung called “archetypal images”.

To a certain extent, it may seem like the difference between Morpheus and me is merely semantic. What she calls “gods”, I call “archetypes”, and what she calls “archetypes”, I call “archetypal images” and “symbols”. But where Morpheus and I differ is that I believe that “the human psyche is the origin of the Gods”, and Morpheus believes the gods “exist independently of our experience” of them. I don’t think locating the gods in the psyche makes them any less “real”, though. As I have written elsewhere, the archetypes continue to upon us whether or not we believe in them — in fact, not believing in them sometimes gives them more power over us. In the end, I don’t think there is any way to prove which one of us is right, and I’m not sure anymore that it even matters.

The Stained Glass Windows of the Mind

The heart of Morpheus speech is an analogy. She describes the archetypes as stained glass windows which are “brought to life” by the sun behind it. The sun, in this analogy, is the gods. The glass is not alive, but only seems to come alive by virtue of the “elivening” power of the gods. The church which houses the stained glass images is the human mind.

I think Morpheus’ analogy to sunlight shining through the stained glass windows is a beautiful and appropriate one. There are two interesting implications of this analogy. First, while you can feel the warmth of the sun through the window and you can see the light, you cannot see the sun behind the stained glass window. You have to infer its existence and guess at is nature based on your experience of the light and the warmth. Similarly, we cannot know the gods directly. We can only infer their existence and guess at their nature based on the experience we have of them, mediated through the archetypes. I think Morpheus would probably agree with me on this point.

The second implication of Morpheus’ analogy is probably an unintended one. The sun is a single, undifferentiated source of heat and light, which can illuminate many different stained glass windows at once. This implies a monism which Morpheus may not have intended. It is possible that there are multiple suns on the other side of the window – indeed there are, if you consider the other stars. But there is no way to know whether the ultimate source of light behind the windows is single or multiple. We might believe the gods are multiple because we experience them through different stained glass windows, but it is possible that there is only one sun and multiple windows. Many polytheists believe that there are multiple “suns”. As a monist, I suspect there to only be one sun. But I don’t think we can prove this one way or the other.

And perhaps it doesn’t matter. Personally, I’m glad that the stained glass windows are there, standing between me and the sun. They give me something beautiful to appreciate, something to relate to. I might sometimes go outside and stand in the direct sunlight and bask in its unmediated warmth – some mystical experiences are like that. But as wonderful as that experience is, I wouldn’t want to give up the stained glass windows. It’s true that all the colors of the rainbow exist within the white light of the sun, but I can’t appreciate them in that form. It’s just too hard for human beings to relate to an undifferentiated Oneness. We need diversity and color.

Who Are We Talking To?

Morpheus goes on in her speech to explain how the gods are different from archetypes in the same way the people are different from the roles that they occupy. Thus, Goibniu, Brighid, Wayland, and Hephaestos are all gods who are smiths, but they are not the same person. And to have a “personal relationship”, a “full devotional relationship” with them, say Morpheus, you have to get beyond the surface level of the archetypal “Smith” and down to the level where each of these gods has different images and different stories.

red-book-0111 — A page from Carl Jung’s *Red Book*, depicting “Philemon”, Jung’s image of the Wise Old Man archetype

I think Carl Jung would have agreed with Morpheus on this point as well. Allow me to give you an example from Jung’s own life. One of the archetypes Jung wrote about was the “Senex” or the Wise Old Man. This archetype played an important role in Jung’s own individuation, as he recorded in his Red Book. Jung interacted with an archetypal image of the Senex, but he did not call it “Senex” or “Wise Old Man”; he called it “Philemon”, which was the name of a specific person from Greek mythology. Philemon had a specific appearance for Jung, which had the wings of a kingfisher. (You can see a picture of Philemon which Jung painted, to the right.) This archetypal image was unique to Jung. The Senex would appear differently to me or to you. But the image of Philemon was “archetypal” because it functioned in Jung’s psyche in the same way that another image of the Wise Old Man would function for me or for you.

Interestingly, Jung described his encounters with Philemon in terms that resemble those used by many polytheists to describe their encounters with the gods:

“Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. … I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. … Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality.”

Morpheus writes that it is important to understand the nature of the gods, because “we can’t form relationship to beings while we are misconstruing their identities.” I don’t know if I agree with this. I think we form relationships with people all the time with only very little knowledge of their true natures. A person can form a relationship with a person remotely, like on the internet, for example, and easily misconstrue their identity. You might argue that you don’t really have a relationship with them if you don’t know who they “really” are, but I’m not convinced that’s true. I don’t know that it matters what we believe about the metaphysical nature of the gods, so much as how we interact with them. Whether we believe they exist entirely independently of us or not, we can still act as if they are persons. And this is precisely what some archetypalist Pagans and atheistic Pagans do.

Connecting to the Source

Morpheus’ concern is that, by essentializing the gods, we can end up treating them like “divine vending machines”. We see this in Neo-Pagan talk about “using” gods in ritual, what has been called by some polytheists “plug-and-play religion” and “the god faucet”. I have the same concern that about “using” archetypes that Morpheus does about “using” the gods — because for me the archetypes are gods. Many Neo-Pagans understand the gods as archetypes, but they misunderstand the nature of archetypes, confusing them with mere symbols. When we see the gods as mere symbols, it is easy to treat them as things, objects to be manipulated at will. And we start to believe that we can create the gods. This is problematic, not only from both a devotional polytheistic perspective, but also from a Jungian perspective. A Jungian would say that, even though the gods arise from within us, we cannot create them, any more than we create our dreams. Rather, they are something which happens to us. Nor can we manipulate them at will; rather it is they who manipulate us. To view archetypes as mere symbols is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of archetypes. For the last four years I have been advocating the “regodding the archetypes”, restoring the sense of numinosity, of mysterious otherness, to the archetypes, both here and on my other blog, Dreaming the Myth Forward.

51439934_scaled_384x288 — underground water spring

Whatever our differences about the ontological nature of the gods and the archetypes, one thing Morpheus and I agree on is the importance of the connection between the forms by which we experience divinity to the source that vivifies those forms. Morpheus’ analogy of the stained glass windows reminds me of a similar analogy Jung used to describe the relationship of archetypes to archetypal images. Rather than sunlight, he used the metaphor of water. Water represented, for him, the vivifying energies of the unconscious, what we might call“eros”, the energy of life. This “water”, he says, comes from deep down in the unconscious and runs along secret channels before it reaches the daylight of consciousness. The underground channel though which it runs is the archetype. The place where the water springs forth is marked by an archetypal image or symbol. This symbol merely marks the place, the locus, of the experience of the archetype. But the symbol should not be confused with the experience (drinking the water) or the archetype (the underground channel through which the water flowed) or the collective unconscious (the source of the water).

The point is that when the connection to the source is broken, then religious forms become empty and powerless. To use Jung’s metaphor, without the water flowing through the underground channels of the unconscious, there is nothing to drink at the spring. The symbol becomes an empty idol. Or to use Morpheus’ analogy, without the sun shining behind the stained glass windows, the images in the windows seem dead and lifeless. I agree with Morpheus that a lot of Neo-Paganism seems to have has lost that connection to the source, leaving us playing with forms, without experiencing the substance. I think both of us are, in our own way, trying to find a way to restore that connection.

Why “Pagan”? – An Atheist Pagan’s Response to a Theist

Last updated on: September 14, 2015 at 9:00 pm By John Halstead

Over at the Heathen blog, Jön Upsal’s Garden, the (unnamed) writer of the blog has addressed “A Question for John Halstead”.

His question is essentially “Why the heck do you call yourself Pagan?” Since I don’t know the author’s name, I will call him Jön. Jön’s question is a genuine one, and it is one I have heard several times in the last few weeks. Jön’s question is addressed not just to me, but to other atheist Pagans and Humanistic Pagans out there, so I encourage others to post their responses as well. And to that end, I will be cross-posting this response on the HumanisticPaganism.com blog next month. The blogger, NaturalPantheist, and social media coordinator for HumanisticPaganism.com has already posted his response here.

So the question is: Why do we call ourselves “Pagan”? Why not just call ourselves atheists or humanists? What does the “Pagan” label add to our identity? Implicit in Jön’s question is the assumption that the term “Pagan” implies a belief in the literal existence of gods. And it is that assumption that I need to address first.

1. Theism was never a necessary element of contemporary Paganism.

I guess it makes sense to assume that all contemporary Pagans must be polytheists, given that ancient pagans were polytheists. But I have always found this assumption to be odd, given the history of the Neo-Pagan revival. Following Sarah Pike, author of New Age and Neopagan Religions in America, I date the beginning of the Neo-Pagan movement to 1967, which was the year three of the most important early Neo-Pagan groups were organized. In 1967, Feraferia was incorporated, the New Reformed Order of the Golden Dawn was founded, and the Church of All Worlds filed for incorporation. Literal belief in gods was not a requirement for membership in any of these organizations. Even if you date the Neo-Pagan revival earlier to Gerald Gardner, literal theism was not a requirement for British Witchcraft either. Even modern Heathenry (which also began in the 1960s) was historically ambivalent about the nature of the gods.

In any case, since that time, Pagans have always held a wide variety of beliefs about the nature of Pagan deities. Margarian Bridger and Stephen Hergest have famously described Pagan theology as a multi-colored triangle with three extreme positions which subtly blend into one another. The red corner represents the view that the gods “are personal, named, individual entities, with whom one can communicate almost as one would with human beings.” The blue corner represents the view that the gods are “humanlike metaphors or masks which we place upon the faceless Face of the Ultimate, so that through them we can perceive and relate to a little of It.” The yellow corner represents the view that the gods are “constructs within the human mind and imagination.” Atheistic or Humanistic Pagans tend to fall more into the yellow part of the triangle.

Bridger and Hergest’s model was published in the first issue of The Pomegranate in 1997. But atheistic/humanistic Pagan is much older than that. Writing in 1979, Margot Adler observed in Drawing Down the Moon that, for some Neo-Pagans, the gods are “not to be believed in or trusted, but to be used to give shape to an increasingly complex and variegated experience of life.” In fact, nowhere in Adler’s opus is there any indication that belief in literal gods is a necessary element of Paganism. Reading Drawing Down, it is possible to walk away with the impression belief in literal gods is more the exception than the rule among Neo-Pagans. Maybe this is a reflection of Adler’s own bias, but she was a professional journalist, so I’m inclined to believe her.

Another useful way of thinking about this is the Three Centers model of Paganism, which views Paganism as a Big Tent with three “poles”: Nature, Deity, and Self. Individuals may find themselves closer to any one of these poles or anywhere in between. So a Pagan may identify with the Nature or Self pole (or both) and not with the Deity pole at all and still be a Pagan.

2. Not all contemporary Pagans are reconstructionists and not all ancient paganism was theistic.

the-household-gods-1880 — John William Waterhouse, “The Household Gods”

But what about the ancient pagans? Didn’t they believe in literal gods? It is difficult to say what exactly ancient pagans believed about the nature of the gods. The terms “theistic” and “atheistic” are products of a post-Enlightenment culture, and we should beware of projecting our categories backwards onto peoples far removed in time and space from us. But even if ancient pagan were theistic in the sense in which we understand it, not all contemporary Pagans are trying to reconstruct the ancient pagan past.

Isaac Bonewits famously distinguished between Paleo-Pagans, Meso-Pagans, and Neo-Pagans. A fourth category might be called “Retro-Pagans”. In contrast to Retro-Pagans or pagan reconstructionists, Neo-Pagans attempt to blend what they think were the best aspects of ancient pagan ways with modern humanistic, pluralistic, and inclusionary ideals. Polytheism may are many not be among the elements which Neo-Pagans choose to include in this blending. Humanistic Pagans, for example, draw inspiration from ancient pagan myths and rituals, but attempt to do so in a way is both intellectually and emotionally satisfying to modern people. As a result, some Humanistic Pagans may use theistic language in a metaphorical or Jungian sense, while others exclude theistic language from their practice altogether.

It is also important to note that, atheism was not unknown among the ancients. Humanism, philosophical naturalism and paganism have a shared history, spanning centuries. Both humanism and naturalistic science flowered in Classical Greece, for example. While they declined throughout the Christian Middle Ages, they enjoyed a resurgence during the Renaissance, which also saw a renewal of pagan imagery and symbolism. Some ancient pagans — like the Stoics and the philosopher Plutarch — adopted allegorical interpretations of their myths and metaphorical understandings of the gods. See, B. T. Newberg’s Naturalistic Traditions series, Luc Brisson’s How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology, and Anne Bates Hersman’s Studies in Greek Allegorical Interpretation.

3. Paganism adds a emotional element to philosophical naturalism.

solsticio-1-a1 — Summer solstice celebrations at Stonehenge. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Now, to answer Jön’s question, What does Paganism add to humanism or atheism? For me, it adds an emotional quality. It speaks to the parts of my being that rationalism does not reach. Many religious humanists and religious naturalists, like myself, find humanism and philosophical naturalism to be intellectually compelling, but emotionally or psychologically unsatisfying. Humanism and naturalism just lack the symbolic resources of theistic religions. Paganism is well-suited to fill that void. On the other hand, contemporary Paganism can seem prone to irrationalism and superstition. Scientific naturalism can counter this tendency. Together, they balance each other. Naturalism can help keep Paganism true to the empirical world around us, while Paganism can enrich naturalism with symbolism and myth.

A good example of this approach is Áine Órga’s essay, “Emotional Pantheism: Where the logic ends and the feelings start”. Áine writes that while she does not believe in divinity in any real way, she has very strong pantheistic feelings:

“My beliefs and therefore my practice are certainly naturalistic. I leave room for the unexplained, and engage in practices that might seem empty or pointless to some naturalists or atheists. But I don’t take many leaps of faith intellectually, everything is based in reason. In this way I am a naturalistic Pagan.

“Where I do take those leaps of faith is in the emotional sphere. By engaging in this spiritual practice, I open myself up to experiencing things beyond the mundane. In many ways, it is in exercise in allowing myself to feel without judgement. My spirituality is my way of allowing my pantheism a space in my life.”

summerkingvswinterking — The Winter King (right, David Blumenthal) prepares to dispatch the Summer King (left, Joe Hope) at Beltane Fire Society’s 2012 Samhuinn. (Photo by Richard P. Winpenny.)

And atheistic or Humanistic Pagans like me find Pagan myth and symbolism — both contemporary and ancient — to be especially significant. For example, the Neo-Pagan Wheel of the Year with its corresponding mythology has a deep emotional and psychological resonance for many atheistic and Humanistic Pagans. The Neo-Pagan Mythos is an amalgam of myths and stories drawn from many different sources, both ancient and modern. It describes the passion of dying and reviving deities and heroes, often including the monomythic journey of the hero and the interaction of a tri-form goddess of nature and sovereignty who is wed to a duo-form phallic consort/sacred king with light and dark aspects, who perpetually struggle with each other, sow the seeds of their own rebirth, and are ritually sacrificed to or by the goddess in a cyclical pattern in order to renew the powers of life. This Mythos emphasizes those aspects of the deities which relate to sex and death, which have been excluded from or demonized in the monotheistic religions, and invests these traditionally negative qualities with positive meaning, including the valorization of the divine feminine generally, and especially the dark aspect of the divine feminine which gives death in order to generate new life; and the wild or bestial phallic/horned god of sexual license liberation.

4. Nature and ritual are two of my spiritual touchstones.

The experience nature as sacred is at the heart of why I call myself Pagan. Emma Restall Orr’s definition of a “Pagan” as “one for whom that ancient wordless book of lore, nature, is utterly sacred and as such, s/he listens more carefully, treads more softly, and celebrates with more exuberance” fits me well. And this is consistent with how the word has been used by many others, include the Romantics and Transcendentalsists. Jön asks:

“Is it to mark their belief in the importance of nature? That doesn’t work, because there are plenty of environmentalist atheists. I’d be willing to bet the intersection between those two groups was pretty significant, actually.”

418528_10151179495931081_7125030_n — photo could not be sourced — please email the author with details

Jön is right that there are many environmentalists who are atheists. I see Paganism as a form of what Bron Taylor calls “Dark Green Religion” which brings to secular environmentalism a sense of the nature’s sacredness. A purely secular environmentalism would be unsatisfying to me in the same way that a purely secular humanism would be.

Jön goes on:

“Is it about the rituals? Well, here he might have something, if he’s just looking at rituals as psychodrama (although I’m sure he won’t enjoy being reminded that Anton LaVey got there first in his Satanic Bible and Satanic Rituals). But if it’s about the plain efficacy of ritual, it still doesn’t explain why he doesn’t take the final step and just start his own religion, with its own rituals that hit the psychological buttons he feels are their purpose, but which doesn’t rely on any supernatural agency for its undergirding premise, and thus distance himself from those Gods-believers he seems to despise so much.”

I don’t think its any coincidence that the publication of LaVey’s Satanic Bible in 1969 coincided more or less with the Neo-Pagan revival. (I don’t think he “got there first”, though.) Both groups were on to the same idea of ritual as “psychodrama”.

For me, one of the the goals of Neo-Pagan ritual is to evoke powerful emotional responses for the purpose of incarnating, exploring, and consecrating the archetypal patterns of my unconscious, so as to resolve those intrapsychical conflicts which were created by the dissociation of the shadow components of my psyche (sex and death) caused by Western guilt culture generally and my monotheistic upbringing specifically, and to effect a healing reintegration of those elements.

I also use ritual to connect with nature and try to alter my consciousness to experience an expanded or deeper sense of “Self” which includes all living beings — an experience which is sometimes called the “re-enchantment of the world.”

This perspective is consistent with what some early leaders in the Neo-Pagan movement described as the purpose of ritual:

“We are talking about the rituals that people create to get in touch with those powerful parts of themselves that cannot be experienced on a verbal level. These are parts of our being that have often been scorned and suppressed. Rituals are also created to acknowledge on this deeper level the movements of the seasons and the natural world, and to celebrate life and its processes.” — Margot Adler

“The purpose of ritual is to wake up the old mind in us, to put it to work. The old ones inside us, the collective consciousness, the many lives, the divine eternal parts, the senses and parts of the brain that have been ignored. Those parts do not speak English. They do not care about television. But they do understand candlelight and colors. They do understand nature.” — Z. Budapest

5. We’re all just making it up anyway.

To answer Jön’s question why we don’t just create our own religion with our own rituals — I think that’s exactly what a lot of Neo-Pagans are doing! Many Neo-Pagans recognize that all religions are, on some level, invented. But rather than causing us to reject all religion, we embrace it! As Paul Chase was written in his thesis, “Neo-Paganism: A Twenty-First Century Synthesis of Spirituality and Nature”, “Neo-Pagans invent significance to fit their own interpretations and theological needs, claiming that the value of a symbol is not so much its historical reality as its usefulness as a spiritual tool in the present.”

Finally, Jön asks whether it wouldn’t be simpler to drop the “Pagan” label, so I wouldn’t have to keep explaining all this. I admit, there are days it is tempting to do so. But I think it is a mistake to believe that any label I might give myself would eliminate the need for explanation. Christianity is the majority religion in the United States, for example, but given the wide variety of definitions of “Christian”, people still have to explain what being Christian means to them. So I will go on calling myself “Pagan” and explaining why to those willing to listen.

Why I Am “Still” A Pagan: the Problem and the Promise

Last updated on: August 4, 2015 at 11:49 pm By John Halstead

This post is part of a Patheos Pagan series this month, “Why I Am Still a Pagan” (or Witch, Wiccan, Polytheist, Druid, Heathen, etc.), in which bloggers write about why we have continued to embrace our particular path and where we think that path is headed in the future.

The Problem of Paganism

The question why I am “still” a Pagan implies that there might be reasons why I would not want to identify as Pagan any longer. And there are. I believe that Paganism has the potential to transform our relationship with the earth, with each other, and with our deeper selves — but a lot of the time, I cannot relate to other Pagans.

flat,800x800,070,f — … or maybe psychology.

Among other things, I have a problem with the common Pagan belief in practical or instrumental magic — the idea that we can cause physical change at a distance without corresponding physical action. To me, this kind of “magic” is just ritualized wishful thinking. It is based on the false premise that thought or intention alone can change the material world. Worse, I think it can become just another form of “technology” that contributes to the disenchantment of the world. I also have a problem with belief in invisible beings, including gods, spirits of ancestors, fairies, and so on. To me, these beliefs resemble too closely the belief in an invisible monotheistic God that I abandoned before I became Pagan. I remember how certain I was of the existence of that God at one time. And I just don’t see any metaphysical difference between Yahweh and the Morrigan — and so I don’t believe in either. Like Carl Sagan, I believe “the world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence.”

But it’s not just magic and gods. Paganism unfortunately seems to be taken by many as a license to believe any fantasy we want want. “So, you were a priestess in Atlantis or you were burned as a witch in a former life? So you can see fairies? You collect pretty rocks with magical powers? You can control the weather with your mind? You can heal people far away by sending them positive energy? Well, it’s all good because you’re Pagan.” The one rule seems to be that no one is allowed to question another person’s beliefs.

Paganism doesn’t have any commandments, per se, but if we did, I think First Commandment of Paganism would be “Thou shalt not judge another’s experience”. And from where I stand, this is a problem. If we really want to avoid orthodoxy (as we so often claim), then we need to have more discussion, not less – and some of that discussion needs to be constructively critical. We need to get comfortable with idea that criticism can be constructive. So long as we avoid criticism, we are vulnerable to self-deceit and groupthink. Sometimes that criticism can come from friends, but sometimes it takes an outsider to challenge us to ask the hardest questions about ourselves and our experiences. When done in a spirit of openness and humility, critical questioning benefits both sides in the conversation, and the community as a whole. I admit, though, that I’m not always open and I rarely manage humility.

Those who read this blog on a regular basis will know that I don’t have any qualms about telling people I think they are wrong to believe as they do. While I’m not going to deny that anyone had an experience, I am entirely comfortable with criticizing other people’s interpretations of their experiences … and I welcome people to do the same for me. There is, I think, a critical difference between judging other people’s experiences and judging their interpretations of their experiences. I won’t tell another person that they didn’t feel what they felt, but I will question the meaning they have assigned to their experience. Admittedly, this can often feel like the same thing to the person whose interpretations are under scrutiny — especially those who don’t acknowledge the interpretive step. And it is precisely those experiences which seem to come with ready-made interpretations that we most need to examine critically if we are to lead authentic religious lives.

Rather than “Thou shalt not judge another’s experience,” I would rather see the First Commandment of Paganism be, “Thou shalt keep an open mind.” And this would be observed by both sides in any conversation. On the one hand, it would protect against groupthink and unconscious orthodoxies. And on the other hand, it would protect against destructive forms of criticism which are born of a need to be right about everything — something I’m prone to. I recognize that everyone needs safe spaces where they can talk about their experiences, and their tentative interpretations of those experiences, without fear of criticism, constructive or otherwise. But if that’s where we choose to stay, then those “safe spaces” become intellectual ghettos. And I am afraid that is what a lot of the Pagan community has turned into.

The Promise of Paganism

But, in spite of all of this, I believe in Paganism. More than any other contemporary religious movement I have encountered, I believe Paganism has the potential to reenchant the world. Morris Berman, the author of The Reenchantment of the World, writes that the story of the modern epoch is one of progressive disenchantment, a loss of the sense of our essential participation in the world. To facilitate a scientific understanding and control of the natural world, humankind sought to separate itself from nature, to step “outside” and become observers of the world, to see the world as an object. “Scientific consciousness is alienated consciousness,” writes Berman. This became not just a scientific method, but our ordinary, everyday consciousness. The result is individual neurosis, social alienation, and environmental degradation.

A reenchantment of the world, then, means the fostering of an expanded consciousness of the radically interconnected nature of our relationship to the world. “Change the prevailing mode of consciousness and you change the world,” wrote Theodore Roszak. A reenchanted consciousness runs counter to the social and spiritual alienation which is the inheritance of a positivistic science which reduces nature (including human beings) to mechanism and a consumeristic capitalism which reduces all of nature (including human beings) to resource and commodity. These two forces — positivistic science and consumer capitalism — level life down to only those things which can be measured and those things which can be bought and sold. Nothing else is considered real or meaningful. These two forces have such power over our minds, so deep rooted are their assumptions, that it becomes nearly impossible for us to imagine any other way of being. And so many treacherous parodies of freedom and joy are manufactured by our culture, that the only name we can think of for our gnawing sense of unfulfillment is “mental illness” — and for such “illness” copious amounts of pills are available.

Paganism holds out the promise of restoring our awareness of a dimension of reality that eludes the grasp of the scientist and the salesman. This is dimension of human experience which includes what might be called “magic” — not the disenchanted magic of the occultists for whom it is just another technology, a means of controlling nature, but magic as an expression of wonder and connection. It is what the atheist Richard Dawkins calls “the magic of reality“. This dimension also includes the sacred. “Magic” and “sacred” — the first is a byword to the positivist, the second is meaningless to the consumer, but they are I think two of the most human of experiences. There is nothing other-worldly about this dimension of experience. In the words of Paul Eluard, there is another world, but that it is this one. What Lester Mondale wrote of “The Practical Mysticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson” I think describes what I am after:

“far from being fogged behind seven veils of Rosicrucian obscurity and centered in the inmost sphere of taboo and sanctity – is rather a hardy energy, met externally and internally, as rugged as the Andrew Jacksonite woodsman and pioneer, as common and yet as enigmatical as a dandelion, available to all, and as essential to the chemistry of the mind as the gases of the atmosphere – like life itself, dangerous and delicate, oftener below the consciousness than above it.” Mysticism and the Modern Mind, ed. Alfred Stiernotte (1959)

This is what I seek in Pagan ritual — not fantasies and wishful thinking — but life, more life.

The Catch

But separating this promise of reenchantment from all the superstitiousness in Paganism is not simple. In fact, the two often seem intertwined.

75178_142736445775734_142712235778155_209821_7562844_n1-300x206 — Ken Wilber’s “Pre/Trans Fallacy”

Ken Wilber talks about what he calls the “pre/trans” fallacy. I’m not going to do Wilber justice here, but part of the idea is that human psychological development moves through stages from pre-rational magical thinking to the rationality of scientific thought to trans-rational consciousness. The trans-rational stage transcends the limitations of positivistic rationality, with its egocentrism and logocentrism, but without loosing its insights and falling back into superstitious magical thinking. The difficulty is that the pre-rational and the trans-rational sometimes look a lot alike, and it is easy to confuse them. So a person who thinks they have transcended the the limitations of rationalistic consciousness may simply have reverted to a pre-rational mode of thought. And this, according to Wilber is exactly what a lot of Pagans have done. (Incidentally, some folks on the other end of the belief spectrum make the same mistake: failing to see any distinction between the pre- and trans-rational, they condemn it all as ir-rational.)

So how do we distinguish the pre-rational from the trans-rational in Paganism? How do we regain the sense of “magic” and without resorting to superstition? How do we incorporate the wisdom of pre-scientific cultures without loosing the rigor of the scientific method? How do we restore a sense of life and even personhood to our experience of the world around us without projecting our own imaginings onto nature? How do we awaken to other modes of consciousness without regressing into psychological infantalism?

I don’t have the answers. This blog can be understood as an attempt to work out an answer to that question.

For now I will say that, in spite of the tendency of many Pagans to confuse the pre-rational with the trans-rational, in spite of the uncritical attitudes and superstitious ideas that haunt a lot of Paganism, I still call myself a Pagan. I am still a Pagan because I believe that Paganism is a door to the trans-rational. I believe that Paganism has the potential to bring together the wisdom of our animistic forebearers and the discoveries of contemporary science in a way that has the power to reenchant the world.

If I can quote what one of my favorite authors, Theodore Roszak, said about the Counterculture, I think it applies well to contemporary Paganism (which not coincidentally arose out of the Counterculture):

“… I am at a loss to know where, besides among these dissenting young [and old] people and their heirs of the next few generations, the radical discontent and innovation can be found that might transform this disoriented civilization of ours into something a human being can identify as home. They are the matrix in which an alternative, but still excessively fragile future is taking shape. Granted that alternative comes dressed in a garish motley, its costume borrowed from many and exotic sources—from depth psychiatry, from the mellowed remnants of left-wing ideology, from the oriental religions, from Romantic Weltschmerz, from anarchist social theory, from Dada and American Indian lore, and, I suppose, the perennial wisdom. Still it looks to me like all we have to hold against the final consolidation of a technocratic totalitarianism in which we shall find ourselves ingeniously adapted to an existence wholly estranged from everything that has ever made the life of man an interesting adventure.“

Sources

Berman, Morris. The Reenchantment of the World (1984)

Greenwood, Susan. The Nature of Magic (2005)

Frisk, Trudy. “Paganism, Magic, and the Control Of Nature,” Trumpeter, Vol. 14, No. 4 (1997)

Harryman, William. “Can Paganism Ever Be Post-Personal?” Integral Options Cafe (May 17, 2006)

Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture (1969)

Rowan, John. “Paganism and the Pre/Trans Fallacy,” Pagan Dawn, Imbolc-Spring Equinox No. 186 (2013)

Wilber, Ken. Up from Eden: A Transpersonal View of Human Evolution Paperback (1981)

Beyond Female Role Models: The Triple Goddess as Nature

Last updated on: July 19, 2015 at 7:49 am By John Halstead

The Evolution of the Androcentric Triple Goddess

Probably no motif is more ubiquitous in the Neo-Pagan culture than that of the Triple Goddess in her threefold aspects: Maiden, Mother, and Crone. While there are some historical antecedents for the Neo-Pagan Triple Goddess, she is really a 20th century creation of the author and poet, Robert Graves. Graves’ conception of the Triple Goddess evolved over several years. One of the earlier incarnations, in his book The Golden Fleece, took the form of “Maiden, Nymph, and Mother” which corresponded to the “New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon”. (“Nymph” is the Greek word for bride.) Absent from this description of the Triple Goddess was the dark “phase” of the Goddess, the “Crone”. In his next book, King Jesus Graves described her as the triform goddess of birth, love, and death, and associated her with the figures of mother, consort, and witch.

Many Neo-Pagans will be familiar with Graves’ next book, The White Goddess, as the origin of the Maiden-Mother-Crone trinity. But those who have not actually read the book may not know that Goddess actually describes the Triple Goddess in three different ways in the book:

Mother-Bride-Layer-out
Maiden-Nymph-Hag
Maiden-Mother-Crone

And Graves did not even limit himself to the three aspects, but described a Quintuple Goddess, whose stations were: “Birth, Initiation, Consummation, Repose and Death”.

While the Maiden-Mother-Crone trinity ultimately became the most popular form of the Triple Goddess among Neo-Pagans, it was actually the Mother-Bride-Layer-out which primarily concerned Graves in The White Goddess. This is the version of the Triple Goddess as seen from the perspective of her male counterpart. The trinity begins with the Mother, because that is how men first encounter women. More than the Triple Goddess herself, Graves was concerned with the interaction of the Triple Goddess with her male counterpart. For each of the aspects of the Triple Goddess, there is a corresponding aspect of the man or the god who is her son (corresponding to Mother), lover/consort (corresponding to Nymph/Bride), and victim/sacrifice (corresponding to Crone/Layer-out). As Mother, the Goddess gives birth to the god of the year. As Bride, the Goddess takes the god as her lover, and in her womb he sows the seeds of his own rebirth. As “Layer-out” or Slayer, the Goddess inspires the god’s twin-rival to slay him, his death becoming a sacrifice to the goddess, a sacrifice which fertilizes the earth and makes possible his subsequent rebirth.

The Limitations of the Feminist Triple Goddess

The image of the Triple Goddess was seized upon by feminist Neo-Pagans and Witches in the 1970’s as a new vision of femininity. The Goddess in her multiple forms was seen as a revaluation of aspects of femininity which have been denigrated historically, including menstruation (Maiden), childbirth (Mother), sexuality (Lover/Bride), and menopause (Crone). Most significant was the feminist reclamation of the word “Crone” to mean a wise woman. There is a certain irony in this, since Graves’ vision of the Triple Goddess was at all not feminist, but androcentric and even somewhat misogynistic.

The Maiden-Mother-Crone trinity later came under attack by feminists who criticized its over-emphasis on women’s fertility and sexual desirability to men. They pointed out that not all women become (or even want to become) mothers. In addition, there are feminine archetypes which are not encompassed in the Maiden-Mother-Crone trinity, like the Amazon or the Priestess. And women may manifest different “aspects” of the Goddess at any point in lives, and that aspect may or may not correspond to their chronological age or the state of their wombs.

The Triple Goddess of Nature

Rather than seeing the Triple Goddess primarily a role model for women, we might rather understand her as a form of the Great Goddess (sometimes just called “Goddess”) who many Neo-Pagans identify with Nature or the Universe. If the Goddess is Nature, then the idea that the Goddess has a life cycle reminds us that change is a fundamental quality of Nature. We see this in the both phase of the moon and the seasons, which Robert Graves associated with the stages of the female life cycle. Likewise, the suggestion that the Triple Goddess ages, but does not die, and that she is perpetually renewed, reminds us that change in Nature is often cyclical, rather than linear. As Paul Reid-Bowen explains in Goddess as Nature: Towards a Philosophical Theaology: “Thus, the triplicity of the Triple Goddess evokes a notion of diversity and difference within nature, while the unity of the Triple Goddess symbolizes the Sacred Whole, the unity of nature, expressed in the cycle of birth-growth-decay-regeneration.”

Many Neo-Pagans have a tendency to focus on the triplicate nature of the Triple Goddess. But, if the Goddess is Nature, then it is not the number of her aspects that is most significant. She may have four or five aspects, as Robert Graves suggested, or even more. What is unique about the Triple Goddess then is the relationship among her aspects. That relationship suggests movement among the different aspects, specifically, a cycle that returns upon itself. The significance of the Triple Goddess then is to be found, not the specific aspects of Maiden-Mother-Crone, or even the number three, but in the perpetual cyclical movement among the aspects, whatever their number and however they are named.

Paul Reid-Bowen explores this understanding of the Triple Goddess:

“[T]he three aspects of the Goddess, Maiden-Mother-Crone, are theaologically understood not only to be pre- and post-patriarchal models of female identity, but also a dynamic whole: three aspects of a unity. And, while extensive thealogical energy has been invested into charting the character and meaning of each of these different aspects of the Triple Goddess, I am concerned with how the model functions as a dynamic whole. Notably, the model of the Triple Goddess is understood to have metaphysical significance because it is thealogically understood to illuminate broader patterns occurring within the whole construed as nature. The Triple Goddess emphasizes not only changes, cycles and transitions in terms of a female life-pattern, but also with respect to cosmology and ecology (lunar and seasonal cycles) and existential and metaphysical processes and states (birth/emergency, growth/generation, decay/degeneration and rebirth/regeneration).”

In this view, the Triple Goddess is not a role model for women. Rather, she represents Nature. And the relationship between the Triple Goddess and us reflects our relationship with Nature. To us, she is Mother, Lover, and ultimately, Slayer. We are her children, all of us, male and female. And we are, all of us, also her lovers and victims.

Mother

The image of the Goddess as Mother reminds us that we were not created by Nature, in the sense of an artifice fashioned by the Abrahamic creator. Rather we grew up as part of Nature, organically. The Greek historian Plutarch recognized this truth (although he used masculine language instead of feminine language, which has been changed below):

“The work of a maker — as of a builder, a weaver, a musical-instrument maker, or a statuary — is altogether distinct and separate from its author; but the principle and power of the procreator is implanted in the progeny, and contains his nature, the progeny being a piece pulled off the procreator. Since therefore the world is neither like a piece of potter’s work nor joiner’s work, but there is a great share of life and divinity in it, which God from [her]self communicated to and mixed with matter, God may properly be called [Mother] of the world — since it has life in it.”

Nor are we separate from Nature even now. In that sense, we are still in the womb of the Goddess.

Lover

The image of the Goddess as Lover reminds us that we can find a degree of (re-)union with the Nature while yet living. We experience this as we remember our essential oneness with Nature, something which we humans have a unique ability to become alienated from. This reconnection is, I think, one of the functions of Neo-Pagan ritual. But even something as simple as taking a walk in the woods has the potential to dissolve the existential boundary between our sense of self and the world. As fellow Patheos blogger, Karen Clark, explains:

“While our collective humanity has lost sight of the ways of the green world, pagans hunger to touch and be touched by the powers and splendor of nature. And in this sensual, embodied exchange, we awaken to the living world.

“Hang out in your favorite green space with your senses on high. Attune to your exchange of breath with the trees: their green breath of oxygen with your red breath of carbon dioxide. Open your flat palms toward whatever wild thing catches your fancy and sense the tingling meeting of your energies. Peer into the microcosm of a rotting log, with its teeming collective of interdependent inhabitants.

“The Earth is alive. One web of life connects us all, breath to breath, and essence to essence. What your mind has forgotten, your body remembers.”

Reading this makes me think of reconnection with nature as a kind of lovemaking. (See Trebbe Johnson’s The World is a Waiting Lover.) Harry “Dion” Byngham (of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry fame) expresses this idea poetically:

“life springs out of the star-tissued womb of Nature as the virile son of the All-Mother. Life seeks reunion or religion with Nature, his mother, not however, by falling back into her arms and surrendering once more to some primordial slumber and dream, but by striving away from and with her, searching her, playing with her, dancing before her, wooing her, overcoming her, until she, who is eternally young as well as eternally old, responds like a maiden to his life and will and power, and, in the transfiguring ecstasy of union a new cosmic consciousness is conceived.”

In spite of the patriarchal and dominating language in this quote, I still like the imagery of striving, searching, playing, dancing, and wooing to express our relationship with Nature.

Slayer

Finally, the Goddess as Slayer reminds us that every experience has an end and no joy lasts forever. But also that every sacrifice promises new life, and nothing dies in vain. There is no true end, only transformation. The Triple Goddess reminds us that, throughout all of these successive births and death, there is something which transcends it all, the eternal cycle itself. As Jules Cashford and Anne Baring explain in The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image:

“The great myth of the Bronze Age is structured upon the distinction between the ‘whole’, personified as the Great Mother Goddess, and ‘the part’, personified as her son-lover or her daughter. […] the Goddess may be understood as the eternal cycle of the whole: the unity of life and death as a single process. The young goddess or god is her mortal form in time, which, as manifested life […] is subject to a cyclical process of birth, flowering, decay, death and rebirth.”

“[…] the son-lover [or daughter] must accept death – as the image of incarnate being that falls back, like the seed, into the source – while the goddess, here the continuous principle of life, endures to bring forth new forms from the inexhaustible store.”

Knowing this allows us to accept the fact of our annihilation, knowing that there is something greater which transcends our individual selves. And in so doing, we become free to truly live. As Joseph Campbell explains, this is the function of certain religious rituals:

“When the will of the individual to his own immortality has been extinguished—as it is in rites such as these—through an effective realization of the immortality of being itself and of its play through all things, he is united with that being, in experience, in a stunning crisis of release from the psychology of guilt and mortality.”

This cosmic vision of the Triple Goddess avoids the sexism that results from treating the aspects of the Goddess as role models for women, at the same time it offers insight into the mystery of the relationship between ourselves — whatever our gender — and Nature.