Varieties of Polytheism®

Last updated on: January 26, 2014 at 9:11 am By John Halstead

I don’t think that any one group owns the copyright on the word “polytheist”. While I don’t actually call myself a polytheist, I do believe there is such a thing as Jungian “polytheism” (quotation marks optional), and that it describes one aspect of my theology. I’ll write more about that in a future post.

TREE-INCARNATION-ssp — Tree Incarnation by Mark Henson

In the meantime, there are also other forms of polytheism, in addition to a Jungian “polytheism”, which don’t really fit in the narrow definition of “the belief in and veneration of multiple Deities as distinctly independent Beings external to the human mind.” Jordan Paper observes in his book, T he Deities Are Many: A Polytheistic Theology, that polytheistic traditions are invariably experiential and that the relationships with the deities are reciprocal. But beyond these two commonalities, Jordan says, the varieties of polytheism are immense.

Consider Alison Leigh Lilly’s “natural or ecological polytheism” which sees the gods as part of nature which (like our very own selves), rather than being made of distinct and separate things, is porous and flowing, like a river:

“In this natural theology, identity is responsive and creative, and divinity, like everything else in the sacred cosmos, is interwoven, connecting us all to all other aspects of being. We move through a world rife with gods and spirits, and a multitude of gods dwell within each of us. We show up to liminal places of communication — whether they be small altars tucked away in our homes, or the banks of a raging river carving serpentine paths through the wide, rolling landscape — and we open ourselves to experiences of connection in which we discover the porous, flexible natures of our own boundaries. We practice our spirituality through ritual and prayer, and discover that boundaries are not rigid constructs that separate us from the gods, but sacred points of contact, created and destroyed and re-created with every holy act. We rub up against divine being with every turn in the sacred dance, feeling the warm friction of our extremities, the very limits that define our beauty and direct our power.”

To put it simply, if the gods are individuals as we humans are, then we she founder how we humans aren’t as individual as we think we are. In a recent post, Alison explains, “For me, the hard polytheist definition of the gods as ‘separate, discrete and individual beings’ is simply too brittle, placing undue focus on exclusionary boundaries and either/or ontological experiences.” Alison’s gods defy rigid definition. They are not any one thing:

“There are gods who forever remain elusive, whose identities shift with the landscape, the seasons and the stars. And there are gods so intimate that they are never really absent at all, and meeting them is not a matter of inviting their presence but rather of quieting my own expectations and learning how to listen. There are gods whose presence looms like a mountain range on the horizon, and gods with(in) whom I walk with grace, my footsteps just one more melody in the great pattern of their being.”

Similarly, consider Glen Gordon’s post “I See Gods Everywhere”. Glen describes himself as an animist, a monist, and a “natural polytheist”. He attempts to bring together the insights of process theology and transpersonal psychology to articulate a view of the gods as ” complex overlapping evolutionary processes”. To put it another way, Glen describes the gods, not as nouns, but as verbs. Glen has written elsewhere, “Because I see them as processes doesn’t mean they are not persons. Quite the contrary, at the essence I think every person is a processes.” Whether Glen’s description of the gods resonates with you or not, I think he is to be applauded for drawing on other fields of inquiry to create a fluid and flexible interpretation of the gods.

Morpheus Ravenna also recently approached the question of the separateness of the gods from the perspective of ecology, observing that the degree of separateness is really a question of perspective:

“[…] the natural world is this matrix of beings and forces interacting at different scales. You can look at one scale and see individual creatures which appear to be separate and discrete, interacting with one another. Look at another scale and you see populations, separable from one another and interacting with other populations. Look at another scale and you see huge, global forces that subsume the individual into great ecologies of energy and life force.”

The same goes for the gods, who are part of nature. Much like Alison, the Morpheus gods exist on multiple levels, from “Local spirits-of-place Gods, like the tiny endemic population of this-kind-of-poppy-with-the-spot-on-its-petals which has only ever been found on one mountain in one county in one land” to “Gods who are nothing but the endless omnipotent life force endlessly taking shape in all things.”

Morpheus explains that she calls herself a polytheist, not because she claims to know what the objective nature of the gods is, but because she most readily encounters the gods on the personal level:

“I call myself a polytheist Pagan, and not a monist or archetypalist or anything else, not because I am sure that I know the nature of the Gods, and certainly not because I want to get stuck looking at Them at only one scale. I call myself a polytheist because what matters in religious practice is not the ultimate-cosmic-objective-truth which I have no way of ever verifiably knowing. What matters in religious practice is the level on which we as beings inhabiting bodies are able to sense and interact with all the worlds. Thus, while I acknowledge that it is possible that the Gods I know are merely reflections of some great unified cosmic God-force that is beyond identities, it is kind of irrelevant to me. Because when I do my ritual practice, They show up with faces (sometimes) and identities (usually) and They engage with me as persons.”

And while, for Morpheus, the word “polytheism” implies the personhood of the gods (i.e., theism), I think that can still be a broad definition, depending on how “personhood” is defined. For example, some animists recognize the personhood of trees and rocks; these are persons without faces. And that brings us back around to something like Alison’s natural polytheism.

A natural polytheism like Alison’s is one that I think would be countenanced by Julian Betkowski’s “Polytheist Manifesto”. Julian writes:

“I feel that Polytheism represents an incredibly useful and open-ended way of understanding our relationships not only with the Divine, but also with each other, other beings, and the world at large. […] Polytheism is capable of recognizing diverse and varied spiritual and religious potentials. […] Thus, I believe that Polytheism is capable of fostering an incredible tolerance and acceptance across various religious and spiritual understandings. It is not necessary for Polytheism to denounce one spiritual truth in order for another to be true. Polytheism can tolerate multiple truths simultaneously, even if those truths contain apparent contradictions.

Indeed, Julian acknowledges that “Polytheism is not necessarily contradictory to animism and the myriad forms of nature worship and reverence.” This is a polytheism that makes sense to me, a polytheism that is expansive, inclusive. A polytheism that recognizes that “the divine is multiple, fragmented and diverse” (David Waldron). A polytheism that is as focused on the poly- at least as much on the -theism.

Are there other forms of polytheism that go beyond “the belief in and veneration of multiple Deities as distinctly independent Beings external to the human mind”, other forms of polytheism “beyond the pale” (to borrow Alison’s phrase)? If you are a polytheist with an expansive understanding of polytheism, please share in the comments.

Why I Don’t Call Myself a Polytheist

Last updated on: January 25, 2014 at 10:35 am By John Halstead

In the recent debate over my alleged misappropriation of the term “polytheist”, I think something small, but significant got lost in the debate: I never actually called myself a polytheist. The offending post was entitled “(Neo-)Paganism is Paradox”, and it listed nine theological concepts which characterize my Neo-Paganism, including panentheism, polarity, process, and … yes, polytheism. I explained that, to a Neo-Pagan like me, polytheism does not mean a belief in separate and distinct gods, but more of a belief in the plurality of manifestations of divinity. I made a note that this is different from the beliefs of “hard” or devotional polytheists. But at no point did I actually describe myself a polytheist. Maybe I’m splitting hairs, but I think there is a difference between saying that there is an element of polytheism in your theology and labeling yourself a polytheist. Still this post upset some people, because they felt I was appropriating a term to which I had no right, like calling myself Jewish without actually converting to Judaism.

At some point in the ensuing discussion, someone wrote that I was calling myself a “Jungian polytheist”. And many of the comments seemed focused on whether I had the right to call myself a polytheist. Again, this seemed a little strange, because I’ve never really considered myself a polytheist. My belief system does include elements of a kind of polytheism, but it also includes elements of animism, and I’ve never really called myself an animist either. (Interestingly, it seems that there is much less contention over the “animist” label. For example, consider how the Animist Blog Carnival is open to “pantheists, monists, naturalists, mystics, wildcrafters, foragers, eco-pagans, traditional indigenous lifeway keepers, sacred materialists, nature intuitives” including those “having other beliefs, like Vodou[n], Judaism, polytheism, atheism, Heathenry, astrology, etc. at the same time”.)

The commenter who said I was calling myself a “Jungian Polytheist” also linked to this post of mine at PaganSquare entitled “Polytheistic experience and Jung’s experience of the archetypes” in which I had tried to show that Carl Jung’s personal experience of archetypal images was similar in kind to how some polytheists have described their experiences of the gods. But nowhere in that post did I describe myself as a polytheist, or even a Jungian polytheist. If I were a polytheist, it would be of a Jungian variety, but I couldn’t recall actually describing myself this way.

So then I did a Google search for “Jungian polytheism” and “Jungian polytheist”, because I figured I must be missing something. And it turns out there was one post that I wrote back in January 2012 entitled “Spiritually, but not religiously, pagan”, in which (ironically) I discussed how I felt the Pagan community was moving away from my sense of what “Pagan” means. And while I did not actually refer to myself as a Jungian polytheist, in that post, I did refer to “Jungian ‘polytheism’ (a la David Miller)”, but “polytheism” was in quotes, indicating a polytheism only in a special sense.

There are a lot of terms I would use to label my religiosity first. Polytheism is in there somewhere, but probably at the end of a long list. More important to me are terms like “Pagan”, “Neo-Pagan”, “Jungian Neo-Pagan”, “Humanistic Pagan”, “Naturalistic Pagan”, “Pantheist”, “Spiritual Naturalist”, and “non-theist”.

On a side note, it’s kind of interesting that pantheism and non-theism (both terms I identify with) are not generally considered mutually exclusive categories, even though the word “pantheism” includes the word “theism”. See, for example, Michael Levine’s book, Pantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept of Divinity, as well as the Wikipedia entry for non-theism and Paul Harrison’s “Varieties of Pantheism”. If there can be a non-theistic pantheism, I wonder why there can’t be a “non-theistic polytheism”? (I found only a few references to “non-theistic polytheism” and “atheistic polytheism” through Google searches.) I suppose one good reason why you don’t see the term “non-theistic polytheism” much is because it’s confusing as hell — which, incidentally, is why I would not call myself a polytheist unless I either (1) was trying to confuse someone or (2) had a sufficient time to explain what that really means to me.

Anyway, I then came across this quote on another blog from Sannion, referring to me: “It doesn’t matter how clearly or reasonably we articulate our positions – he’s decided he’s one of us, definitions be damned, and anyone who doesn’t agree with him will suffer his allergic ire” (emphasis added).* That really shocked me! Not only have I never called myself a polytheist, but I really never said I was a hard polytheist or devotional polytheist or deity-centered or anything like the kind of polytheist that Galina Krasskova, Sannion, Anomalous Thracian, Sarenth, et al, are. I get that they believe that if you are not their kind of polytheist, then you are not any kind of polytheist. (We’ll just have to disagree about that.) But, in any case, I certainly never said I was part of their community.

So, just for the record, I don’t actually call myself a polytheist, hard or otherwise. Yes, I do think there is such a thing as Jungian polytheism, but for clarity’s sake, I think it’s probably a good idea to put “polytheism” in quotes when talking about it in that sense. And yes, there is an element of polytheism in my theology, in the sense that I believe the archetypes are gods and the psyche is the size of the earth. But don’t worry, I won’t be changing the name of my blog to “The Allergic Polytheist” anytime soon.

Having said that, I’m not ready to say that any one group owns the copyright on the word “polytheist”, which will be the subject of my next post.

*Note: Incidentally, Sannion went on to say that I chose my religious identity as a form of “adolescent rebellion” and proceeded to take a quote from my blog out of context, even going so far as to leave off the beginning of the sentence he quotes. I would have commented on his blog, but he has the comments turned off (not that I blame him). If you care, here is the context:

“And I call myself a (Neo-)Pagan, because the image of the maypole-dancing, idol-worshiping, and fornicating-in-the-forest non-Christian calls to me. While others are called by the image of the Witch, the powerful woman on the margins of society, the healer and visionary. Of course, the Pagan and (even more so) the Witch archetypes are different from the Druid, in that they have strong negative connotations in our society. (I have never known someone to be called a Druid in a pejoritive sense.) But for some of us, it is precisely because these terms carry negative connotations that we embrace them and seek to reclaim them. Part of the reason I identify as (Neo-)Pagan is actually because the term is synonymous with irrelegion and hedonism for many Christians, and because my religion is so different from Christianity that some Christians don’t even recognize it as a religion. […] I like the challenge that the name ‘Pagan’ presents to others. And I suspect that many who identify as Witch feel the same.”

If that’s adolescent rebellion, well so be it.

(Neo-)Paganism is Paradox

Last updated on: January 21, 2014 at 4:39 pm By John Halstead

In writing about the apparent contradiction of a monist and pluralistic view of divinity, Starhawk explains, “Witchcraft holds to the truth of paradox and sees each view as equally valid.” (The Spiral Dance). The same could be said of much of Neo-Paganism more generally. In my own understanding of it, Neo-Paganism is a paradoxical religion which holds that the complexity of divinity cannot be contained in any one creed or any single image of divinity. Therefore, my Neo-Paganism embraces paradox. Below is a primer on my Neo-Pagan theology encapsulated in nine paradoxes (all starting with “P”):

1. Panentheism – immanence and transcendence

Paradox: God/dess and the world are the same … but different.

In his book Sacred Interconnections, David Ray Griffen explains that panentheism means that “God is not remote and separate from nature, but immanent within it. Yet at the same time God is the unity which transcends it.” Like pantheism, pan-en-theism holds that God/dess is “in” the world. But panentheism also holds that God/dess is “bigger” than the world. From my Neo-Pagan perspective, God/dess is present in the manifest world, but is also the unmanifest potentiality that is “present” in every moment: the tree that is present in the seed, the winter that is present in the summer day, the death that is present in every life.

Quotes:

“Immortal is Isis, mortal her husband, like the earthly creation he represents.” — Bachofen, quoted in Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

“She [the Great Goddess] was […] the arch personification of the power of Space, Time, and Matter, within whose bound all beings arise and die: the substance of their bodies, configurator of their lives and thoughts, and receiver of their dead. And everything having form or name—including God personified as good or evil, merciful or wrathful—was her child, within her womb.” — Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. 3

“The Goddess is the Encircler, the Ground of Being; the God is That-Which-Is-Brought-Forth, her mirror image, her other pole. She is the earth; He is the grain. She is the all encompassing sky; He is the sun, her fireball. She is the Wheel; He is the traveler. He is the sacrifice of life to death that life may go on. She is the Mother and Destroyer; He is all that is born and is destroyed.” — Starhawk, The Spiral Dance

2. Polytheism* – pluralism

Paradox: The gods are many … but one.*

“From a neo-Pagan perspective polytheism is not the belief in a world of separate and distinct Gods but is rather an acceptance of the principle that reality and the divine is multiple, fragmented and diverse.” (Waldron, The Sign of the Witch). “It is the reality experienced by men and women when Truth with a capital ‘T’ cannot be articulated according to a single grammar, a single logic or a single symbol system.” (David Miller, The New Polytheism). According to the theologian, William Hamilton, the gods of Neo-Pagan polytheism are not to be believed in, but are “to be used to give shape to an increasingly complex and variegated experience of life.” (quoted by Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon). My Neo-Pagan polytheism is a recognition of “the radical plurality of the self.” (Miller).

Quotes:

“All gods are one god. All goddesses are one goddess. And there is one Initiator. She is called by many names by many men, but to all she is the Great Goddess, space and earth and water.” — Dion Fortune, Aspects of Occultism

“In varying degrees and and upon different levels all gods and goddesses represent aspects of One God Which is both ‘male’ and ‘female’.” — Dion Fortune, Applied Magic

“‘All the gods are one god and all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator.’ The one initiator is one’s own high self, with which the personality becomes more and more integrated as the path of spiritual evolution is followed.” — Doreen Valiente, Witchcraft for Tomorrow

3. Polarity – complementary opposition

Paradox: God is male … and God is female. (i.e., the phallic and yonic cosmic principles are complementary opposites.)

Paradox: The gods are light (Ouranian) … and the gods are dark (Chthonian).

While this kind of dualism unfortunately has been used to support gender and racial oppression, at its core it just means that opposition in nature and the psyche can be creative. Either pole of this opposition may be manifested or symbolized by any gender or none.

Quotes:

“For two are the mystical pillars, that stand at the gate of the shrine, And two are the powers of Nature, the forms and the forces divine.” — Doreen Valiente, The Witches Creed

Pagans “see the universe as fluidly moving between two equal and opposite poles: the female principle, the Goddess, and the male principle, the God. […] The two interactive principles operate in all areas of existence, as in Chinese Taoism, with its principles of Yin and Yang, or perhaps as in the Empedoclean world-view, with its erotic/argumentative metaphor of the twin principles of Love and Strife. This gives a creative universe based on encounter and transformation, rather than a hierarchical one based on dominance and control.” — Prudence Jones, “Pagan Theologies”

4. Process – process theology

Paradox: God/dess is a verb. That is, God/dess (a subject) is a verb (a predicate). God/dess is the Dancer and the Dance.

The fundamental insight of process theology is that reality is change. Change, motion, flux: these are the fundamental realities. Objects, things, moments in time: these are abstractions and unreal. This is true of all reality, including God/dess and ourselves.

Quotes:

“She changes everything she touches. And everything she touches changes.” — Starhawk (chant)

“[T]he shape-shifiting, all-encompassing Goddess is a personification of the unending, unbroken sacred cycle of Birth-Death-Rebirth found throughout the cosmos. Nature is experienced as the Goddess’s ever-changing, cycling, divine Body-Self-Wisdom.” — Donna Wilshire, Virgin Mother Crone

“While life is in us, we must live in the world, where the Dance is, and to live truly, we must join the Dance. There is no reason for this. There is no reason for the world, only the rhyme and the rhythm of the days and nights and the four seasons, without us and within. Life is a Dance and the beginning and end of our lives are steps only; the Dance goes on with us and without us. In time and space, we, as all things, arise and dance and in due time slow and cease to be. But the Dance continues. The Dance is; it always is.” — Michael Adam, Wandering in Eden: Three Ways to the East Within Us

5. Palingenesis – the eternal recurrence of birth

Paradox: The beginning is the end and the end is the beginning.

One of the most important insights of the Neo-Pagan metaphysic for me is the recognition that new life depends on death and that death can only be conquered by accepting it and being reborn. This is how I understand Joseph Campbell’s statement that all truly creative acts derive from some sort of dying. The power of the the Goddess and her Consort is both creative and destructive, the one necessitating the other. Hence the myriad stories of the dying-and-reviving god. This is manifest on both the cosmic and personal levels. On the cosmic level, it is reflected in the biological “circle of life” and the seasons. On the personal level, it is reflected in both the biological life-cycle as well as the psychological ‘deaths’ that we must endure in order to be reborn to a fuller life.

Quotes:

“If life does not change, it dies, and yet paradoxically we are so frightened of death that we try to hold back the flow of life. Without knowing it, we are caught in a masculine idealized image, a longing for perfection that denies the feminine with its understanding of darkness, decay, and destruction. Without darkness there can be no birth; nothing creative can take place. Without destruction there can be no cycle of life, only a sterile environment in which nothing grows. If we do not accept the darkness, life will lose whatever meaning it has left.” — Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Working With Oneness

“All mortal things, by necessity of Nature, revolve in a wheel of changes. […] When they are born they grow, and when they are grown they reach their height, and after that they grow old, and at last perish. At one time Nature causes them to come to their goal in her region of darkness, and then again out of the darkness they come back into mortal form, by alternation of birth and repayment of death, in the cycle wherein Nature returns upon herself.” — Hippodamus the Pythagorean, quoted in Stobaeus, Florilegium (transl. Francis Cornford)

6. Parthenogenesis – virgin birth

Paradox: God is male and female … but God is female first.

While my Neo-Pagans honors deities of all genders, I understand the Goddess as ontologically prior.

Quotes:

“Mother Earth, unbegotten and self-delivered.” — Nonnus, Dionysiaca

“To Witches, the cosmos is the living body of the Goddess, in whose being we all partake, who encompasses us and is immanent within us. We call her Goddess not to narrowly define her gender, but as a continual reminder that what we value is life brought into the world […] She has infinite names and guises, many of them male.” — Starhawk, Truth or Dare

7. Pansacramentalism

Paradox: Everything is sacred … but we have to work to make it sacred.

Neo-Pagans see the world as sacred. But it seems to be a consequence of the modern human condition that we can become alienated from that sacred quality. Many Neo-Pagans call this “disenchantment”. Our challenge then is to “resacralize” the world, to make manifest existentially the essential sacredness of the world which is always already present.

Quotes:

“Stay away from anything that obscures the place it is in. There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places.” — Wendell Berry, “How to Be a Poet”

“The salvation of man does not lie in his holding himself far removed from the worldly, but in consecrating it to holy, to divine meaning.” — Martin Buber, Hasidism and Modern Man

“Everything is full of sacramental substance, everything. Each thing and each function is ever ready to light up into a sacrament.” — Martin Buber

8. Panzoism

Paradox: Everything is alive … even dead stuff.

One expression of this belief is the Gaia hypothesis, that the Earth as a whole is a living organism. It may also refers to the belief in an immanent or indwelling life principle which permeates all matter, or the belief that matter is oriented towards life, that life is latent in matter.

Quotes:

“This world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence […] a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.” — Plato, Timaeus

“To the Etruscan all was alive; the whole universe lived; and the business of man was himself to live amid it all. He had to draw life into himself, out of the wandering huge vitalities of the world. The cosmos was alive, like a vast creature. The whole thing breathed and stirred. […] The whole thing was alive, and had a great soul, or anima : and in spite of one great soul, there were myriad roving, lesser souls; every man, every creature and tree and lake and mountain and stream, was animate, had its own peculiar consciousness. And has it to-day.” — D.H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places

9. Psychologization of religion and sacralization of psychology

Paradox: The gods are archetypes … but they are not just archetypes.

Wouter Hanegraaff describes a phenomenon in the New Age (including Neo-Paganism) toward a “psychologizing of religion combined with a sacralization of psychology.”

“In Jungian fashion, the ‘gods’ of traditional pantheons are often interpreted as archetypes, and reversely the archetypes of the collective unconscious are seen as powerful numinous realities. In other words, traditional religious concepts are reinterpreted in psychological terms; but because psychology itself is embedded in an encompassing religious framework New Age authors can avoid the traditional reductionist conclusion that the gods are unreal because they exist only ‘in the mind.'”

The psychologization of religion and sacralization of psychology in Neo-Paganism and the New Age can be traced back to Emerson, William James, Jung and transpersonal psychology. According to Robert Fuller,

“When William James interpreted the unconscious as humankind’s link with a spiritual ‘more’, he gave shape to a peculiarly modern spirituality. James’ vision of the unconscious depths of human personality as at once psychological and spiritual made it possible for modern Americans to view self-exploration as spiritually significant and religious experience as psychologically profound. […] The ‘fact’ that God can be approached through our own unconscious minds suggests that only a self-imposed, psychological barrier separates us from an immanent divinity. The cultivation of receptivity to the unconscious is thus a spiritually as well as psychologically regenerative act of the whole personality.”

According to Hanegraaff, Jung’s theories “enabled people to talk about God while really meaning their own psyche, and about their own psyche while really meaning the divine.”

Quotes:

“[…] the age-old question, ‘Are the Gods real?’ […] From the point of view of the psychic value of myth, ritual and symbolism, the somewhat surprising answer to the question is, ‘It doesn’t matter’. […] their importance to the human psyche is beyond doubt in either case, and the techniques for coming to healthy and fruitful terms with them can be used by believers and non-believers alike. […] ‘Whether the archetypal God-forms are cosmically divine, or merely the living foundation-stones of the human psyche, we would be wise to seek intercourse with them as though they were divine’. Myth and ritual bring about nourishing communication with the Archetypes, and because of the nature and evolution of the human psyche, the symbolism or myth or ritual—their only effective vocabulary—is basically religious.” — Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches Way

“The purpose of Wicca, as a religion, is to integrate conflicting aspects of the human psyche with each other, and the whole with the Cosmic Psyche.” — Janet and Stewart Farrar, The Witches’ Way

“The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human.” — Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

“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 unconscious, the many lives, the divine eternal parts, the senses and parts of the brain that have been ignored.” — Z. Budapest, quoted in Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon

* Note: There are those within and without the Pagan community who identify as polytheists who adamantly reject any hint of monism or of psychologism, including many “hard” polytheists, devotional polytheists, and reconstructionists. While some of these individuals identify as “Pagan”, most distinguish themselves from “Neo-Pagans” like myself. As has been noted in the comments, however, even this is not a hard and fast rule. There are many forms of polytheism. The kind described here is just one kind.

A Neopagan Celebrity Tarot (Part 2)

Last updated on: September 7, 2013 at 2:08 pm By John Halstead

This is Part 2 of a 2-part series where I nominate people from among Pagan celebrities living and dead who represent for me the 22 trump cards of the Tarot. You can read Part 1 here.

11. Justice (fairness, balance, proportion)

2-way Tie: Selena Fox (1949-present): advocate for Pagan rights; and Starhawk (1951-present): feminist and environmental activist. I know I’ve used both of these ladies for other cards in Part 1 (Selena was Strength and Starhawk was Empress), but I don’t think anyone will begrudge me overemphasizing either of these amazing women. Selena is nominated for the Justice card because of her work with the Lady Liberty League which works to fight discrimination against Pagans. Among other legal victories, the League won approval to place pentacles on the memorial markers for Wiccan soldiers killed in the line of duty.

Starhawk is nominated for her work. No, I didn’t leave the end of that sentence off. Starhawk’s name is synonymous with action. She has consistently pushed for a vision of Paganism as practical and spirituality as political. She has led protests seeking peace and justice for the environment and for women and sees these as an expression of her spirituality. In addition to her more well known book, The Spiral Dance, Starhawk is the author of Dreaming the Dark (1982) and Truth or Dare (1988), both of which bridge Paganism and political action. Pagans can be sometimes be prone to narcissism, so Starhawk’s practicality is a needed corrective.

Runner-up: Patrick McCollum (1950-present): Wiccan chaplain and advocate for rights of Pagan inmates.

12. Hanged Man (sacrifice, ordeal, Prometheus)

James Frazer (1854-1941): social anthropologist. In 1890, Frazer published the first edition of his masterpiece, The Golden Bough. The second edition (3 vols.) was published in 1900. The third 12-volume edition was published between 1906 and 1915. Finally, a single-volume abridged edition was published in 1922, making it more accessible to the general public. The Golden Bough posits that ancient peoples believed in a dying and reviving god representing the animating spirit of vegetation, and represented in human form as sacral kings who are (sometimes voluntarily) sacrificed after a term or when their power of mind or body failed, in order to ensure the cyclical renewal of life. The extent of the influence of James Frazer on Neopaganism specifically can hardly be overstated. This is highly ironic, because Frazer himself was a modernist who saw all religion as superstition which should be overcome through reason. Inspired by Frazer, members of the Cambridge “Myth and Ritual School” “reconstructed a set of rites synchronized to the seasonal cycle of planting and harvesting in which the king was killed, descended to the underworld, fought against the force of darkness, then resurrected to celebrate a divine marriage with the temple priestess / sacred concubine” (Magliocco). Robert Graves drew on on Frazer’s Dying God archetype when he created his myth about the cyclical relationship between the Goddess and her consort, which became the mythos behind the Neopagan Wheel of the Year; but Graves split Frazer’s dying and resurrecting god into the gods of the waxing and waning year. I chose Frazer for the Hanged Man card because the imagery of the card can be interpreted as a voluntary sacrifice such as the type described by Frazer.

Honorable Mention: Robert Cochrane (1931-1966): witch. Robert Cochrane was the founder of the Clan of Tubal Cain, a contender with Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca for the elusive title of a genuine witchcraft survival. Cochrane died after ingesting belladonna on Midsummer’s Eve in 1966. In some interpretations of the Wheel of the Year, Midsummer’s Eve is when the consort of the Goddess is sacrificed. Other witchcraft traditions were influenced by Cochrane, including Joseph Wilson’s 1734 Tradition and the Roebuck Tradition. Doreen Valiente was also a member of Cochrane’s coven for two years until shortly before Cochrane’s death. Cochrane’s wife burned many of his papers after his dead, so he remains a mysterious figure in Neopagan history. I chose him for the Hanged Man card not only because of the circumstances of his death, but because of his ambiguous character as both fraud and genuine mystic.

13. Death (ending, change)

Gwydion Pendderwen (1946-1982): musician, witch. Gwydion died in a car accident in 1982. He was Paganism’s first bard. Gwydion recorded “We Won’t Wait Any Longer” and a Pagan version of “Lord of the Dance”. He released his first album, Songs for the Old Religion, in 1975. Gwydion was initiated by Victor Anderson into the Feri tradition. He founded Nemeton, which was intended to serve as the West Coast sister organization to the Pagan Way. Nemeton became a part of the Church of All Worlds.

Gwydion’s untimely death was the one of the Neopagan community’s first confrontations with death. Below are two of Gwydion’s poems about death and life, the second one written from a first-person posthumous perspective:

I doubt all, save the survival
Of some unquenchable fire within me;
I seek no immortality,
For it comes without search.
I live with the joy of my senses,
Knowing that this part will surely perish,
Leaving only that which came before.
To live here and now, without that certainty,
Without the acceptance of Death as the unveiling of the One,
Is to forget,
Forever,
The secret name that is whispered at birth
Beyond the hidden gates.

— “Metempsychosis” by Gwydion Pendderwen

The poem below was read at his memorial:

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush
of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there. I did not die.

— “Goodbye” by Mary Elizabeth Frye

14. Temperance (equilibrium, self-mastery, restraint of appetite)

Teo Bishop (1979-present): bard, musician, blogger. Teo is also the popular musician Matt Morris. None of my other nominations thus far have been from among my contemporaries and none have been bloggers. But in the Internet age, when so many people are discovering Paganism on the Internet, it seems only right to include such an exceptional internet personality as Teo here. Anyone who has spent anytime online knows how anonymity drives down the level of discourse. Teo has consistently raised the level of discourse in the Pagan community. No matter what controversy is brewing in the blogosphere, Teo has always brought a measure of compassion, spiritual equilibrium, and genuine insight to the discussion. Anyone who follows his blog knows what I am talking about.

Runner-up: Christine Hoff Kraemer, editor of the Patheos Pagan channel. Anyone who so marvelously maintains order in this Pagan internet community, while simultaneously allowing the free exchange of ideas and feelings, deserves the nomination for the card depicting an angelic figure strategically placed between Death and the Devil.

Honorable Mention: Thalassa for her Etiquette Guidelines for Interfaith Discussions, which apply equally well to intra-faith discussions.

15. Devil (matter, sexual desire, Pan)

Margaret Murray (1863-1963): anthropologist, author. Murray is nominated for the Devil card because of the influence of her book, The God of the Witches (1933), on the contemporary Pagan conception of the Horned God. While Neopagans do not worship the Christian Satan, the Horned God is arguably both historically and conceptually related to, if not derivative of, Satan. Ronald Hutton has convincingly demonstrated that the Neopagan Horned God has its origin in a modern re-paganization of medieval Christian devil imagery employed Jules Michelet and Margaret Murray. In addition, the Horned God may be understood as a valorization of our animal or sexual nature, which has been demonized in the form of the Christian Satan.

Runner up: Aleister Crowley, “The Great Beast”, “The Most Wicked Man in the World”, and the nominee for the Fool card in Part 1.

Second tunner-up: Anton LaVey (1930-1997), founder of the Church of Satan and author of The Satanic Bible. Most contemporary Pagans would distance themselves from Satanism of any form. LaVey’s philosophical Satanism was a mixture of Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, and a flair for the dramatic. While his ethics differed from those of most Pagans today, LaVey’s metaphorical reclaiming of Christian symbols and his penchant for cathartic ritual has a lot in common with Neopaganism.

Honorable Mention: Jason Mankey: witch, blogger, devotee of the Horned God, and rock and roll and drinking enthusiast. Just ’cause it seemed like a shame to bring up the Horned God without mentioning Jason, and ’cause Jason is awesome.

16. Tower (ruin, hubris, wrath)

“Lightning is the source of your pain and liberation.” — T. Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle (1965-present): author, teacher. Thorn was trained in the Feri and Reclaiming traditions, and she now leads her own mystery school. She is athe author of Evolutionary Witchcraft and Kissing the Limitless. I associate Thorn, not with the Tower, but with the lightning striking the tower. Neopaganism tends to be eclectic and eschew tradition. As a result, it can sometimes be spiritually shallow. Thorn is a bolt of divine lightning sent from the gods to destroy our pretensions to spiritual sophistication. And for slackers like myself, her message is as serious as a bolt of lightning. I participated in a ritual led by Thorn at Pantheacon and it indeed felt like being in the middle of a thunderstorm.

17. Star (hope)

Victor and Cora Anderson (1917-2001/1915-2008): founders of the Feri (Faery) tradition, Huna priest. The Andersons’ Feri tradition was influenced by, but distinguishable from, Wicca. Victor Anderson was also influenced by Hawaiian Huna, and the Feri tradition emphasizes ecstatic experience. In 1971, Victor Anderson and Gwydion Pendderwen created a Feri coven with Alison Harlow. (Harlow went on to become the first President of the Covenant of the Goddess.) Anderson also initiated Starhawk, who published her feminist version of Feri witchcraft in The Spiral Dance. In addition, in 1974, Feri and Aidan Kelly’s NGROOD came into contact and cross-fertilized. I associate the Andersons with the Star card because the “Star Goddess” is the central deity of the Feri tradition, called “God Herself” and the Womb of the Universe.

18. Moon (duality, fluctuation, illusion, the primal, the animal)

3-Way Tie: Dion Fortune (1890-1946): occultist, mystic, psychologist; and Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928): classicist and proto-feminist; and Janet Farrar (1950-present), witch and author.

Dion Fortune was a well-known occultist of the early 20th century. Her biographer, Alan Richardson, has called her “Womanhood’s answer to Aleister Crowley” and “the Shakti of the Age”. She belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and founded her own occult order, the Society of Inner Light. The influence of Fortune on Paganism has been well documented by Ronald Hutton in his Triumph of the Moon. Hutton describes her greatest single legacy to modern Pagan witchcraft to be her idea of magical polarity, the notion that erotic attraction between the sexes could be channeled into magical operations. Fortune worked this notion into her fiction, like The Sea Priestess (1938) and The Goat Foot God (1936), which later inspired the Neopagan Goddess and Horned God. Fortune coined the phrase, “A religion without a goddess is halfway to atheism”, and Fortune’s writings inspired Doreen Valiente to introduced a larger role for the Goddess (and hence the High Priestess) into Gardnerian witchcraft. Without Fortune’s (and Valiente’s) influence, it is likely that the women’s spirituality movement of the 1970s would never have embraced Neopagan witchcraft, and witchcraft would have remained an obscure esoteric tradition.

Fortune studied psychology and actually practiced as a psychoanalyst for a time. In the course of her studies, she was influenced most strongly by the writings of Freud and Jung. She is credited by Chas Clifton with being the first occult author to approach magic from a Jungian perspective. Fortune’s most famous quotation for Pagans is “All the gods are one god, and all the goddesses are one goddess, and there is one initiator”.

In her Sea Priestess the Goddess is frequently manifest in the Moon. And the sequel is called Moon Magic (1956, published posthumously). I associate Fortune with the Moon card because of the importance of her writings to the Neopagan conception of the Moon Goddess, and also because of the variable nature of her attitude toward paganism (as documented by Ronald Hutton in Triumph of the Moon).

Jane Ellen Harrison was Britain’s first female career academic. Her major works included Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (1903) and Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (1927). Harrison was a student of James Frazer and the most influential member of the Cambridge “Myth and Ritual” school. She was a major influence on Arthur Evans, who discovered the ancient civilization on Crete, Ernest Westlake, founder of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, Robert Graves, author of The White Goddess, and Zsuzsanna Budapest, founder of the Dianic witchcraft tradition.

While it is fairly said that Robert Graves’ god derives from James Frazer’s dying god, it is equally true that Graves’ goddess derives from Harrison’s goddess. Frazer himself did discuss goddesses, but in his pursuit of the dying god, he failed to fully realize that at the heart of the fertility cults stood the Mother Goddess. As Martha Carpentier explains in Ritual, Myth, and the Modernist Text (1998): “Frazer’s primary interest was in the male archetype of Dying God, which could be said to be the unifying theme of the entire Golden Bough. But this male archetype is invariable in the service of a more powerful goddess; he is ritually slain in order to engender her fertility.”

One theme of Harrison’s writing to have a profound impact on Neopaganism is the conception of a chthonic matriarchal (Greek) religion which predated the Olympian patriarchal cult. According to Harrison, the goddesses in matriarchal religion were husband-less. They were accompanied by a son (sometime lover), but this male figure was always subordinate to the goddess. He was defined by his relation to the Goddess, not vice versa. It is this relationship which is taken up later by Robert Graves and then adopted by Neopaganism. With the coming of Olympian theology, the relationship was reversed, and the goddesses were “sequestered to servile domesticity” and became abject and amorous”. As Harrison describes it,

“Zeus the Father will have no great Earth-goddess, Mother and Maid in one, in his man-fashioned Olympus, but her figure is from the beginning, so he re-makes it; woman, who was the inspirer, becomes the temptress; she who made all things, gods and mortals alike, is become their plaything, their slave, dowered only with physical beauty.”

It’s no wonder that Harrison appealed to feminists like Zsuzsanna Budapest.

Harrison was exclusively interested in the Maiden and Mother archetypes and never explored the Crone aspect at all. (That was Robert Graves’ contribution.) But she is responsible for describing the goddesses Demeter and Kore as the Mother and Maiden aspects of a single goddess. “The Mother and the Maid are two persons, but one god,” she wrote, “the young and old form of a divinity always waxing and waning.” In Themis, Harrison associates both the three Horae (Seasons) and the three Moirae (Fates) with the three phases of the moon. While it was left to Robert Graves to develop Harrison’s dual-aspect goddess into the Neopagan Triple Goddess, it is fair to say that that Harrison gave to Graves all of the elements he needed to articulate the motif: the notion of a single goddess with multiple aspects (unity within multiplicity), the association of the aspects of goddess with different phases of a woman’s life, and the association with the moon’s phases. Like Fortune, I associate Harrison with the Moon card because of the importance of her writings to the Neopagan conception of the Moon Goddess.

Janet Farrar and her husband Stewart were initiates of Alex Sanders. In 1971, Janet and Stewart left Sanders’ coven to found their own. They met Doreen Valiente and became two of the most influential Wiccan authors, starting with The Witches Way (1984) which fleshes out some of the philosophy of Wicca. The Farrars went on to publish The Witches’ Goddess (1987) and The Witches’ God (1989), which describe various feminine and masculine archetypal principles such as the “Earth Mother”, the “Bright and Dark Mother”, and the “Triple Goddess”, and the “Son/Lover”, the “Vegetation God”, and the “Horned God”. Janet’s husband, Stewart, died in 2000, and she married Gavin Bone in 2001. Together they published Progressive Witchcraft in 2004. The book was a significant departure from Janet’s earlier work. Previously, the Farrars’ books showed a strong influence of Jung’s archetypal psychology. However, in Progressive Witchcraft, Janet and Gavin adopted a new approach to polytheism which they called “deity-centered” witchcraft. The book marked a significant shift in the wider Pagan community toward hard polytheism. I associate Janet with the Moon card because of the importance of her writings to the Neopagan conception of the Moon Goddess, and also because of how the change in her view of deity has reflected changes within the larger Pagan community.

19. Sun (innocence, joy, child, Apollo)

YOU. That’s right! The golden boy/girl/other of Paganism is you. And me. And everyone else. We are the future of Paganism. Well, not me really. And not you if you’re over 35. But to anyone who is reading this who is under 35: YOU.

20. Judgment (resurrection, renewal)

Ronald Hutton (1950-present): historian, Wiccan. Hutton is the author of the seminal work on the history of British Neopagan Witchcraft, The Triumph of the Moon, in which he locates the origins of Neopagan witchcraft, not in matriarchal prehistory or medieval witchcraft, but in the Romantic movement. Hutton has been called a “gentle iconoclast”. He is viewed by many as debunking Wiccca’s origin myths: witchcraft as a pagan survival, the Burning Times, and matriarchal prehistory. But Hutton prefers to emphasize what he gave to contemporary Paganism, rather than what he took away. In the place of a historically untrue myths (which had already been debunked by others), Hutton gave us the historically true myth of Wicca as “the only religion that England has ever given the world.” Triumph of the Moon was one of the first Pagan books I ever read, and I was inspired by his vision of Neopaganism as a Neo-Romantic revival to become Pagan myself.

Runner-up: Aidan Kelly (1940-present) for his book, Crafting the Art of Magic (1991) which analyzed the text of Gardner’s Book of Shadows, casting serious doubt on the legitimacy of Gardner’s claims to have been initiated into a survival of an ancient witchcraft religion. Kelly’s book represented one of the first academic studies into the origins of Wicca. Kelly could also be associated with the Judgment card, which symbolized rebirth, due to the cyclical nature of his religious affiliation: Kelly co-founded the New Reformed Order of the Golden Dawn in 1967, which Sarah Pike marks as the beginning of Neopaganism, together with the founding of Feraferia the same year. In 1977, Kelly returned to the Catholicism of his youth and reported his belief that the Neopagan Goddess was derivative from the Christian Mary. Later, in 1987, he returned to Paganism.

21. World (completeness, wholeness, totality)

Jason Pitzl-Waters: religion-beat journalist, blogger, and Pagan music enthusiast. Jason blogs at The Wild Hunt. The Wild Hunt is the primary destination for anyone interested in following news relating to or of interest to modern Pagans. Founded in 2004, The Wild Hunt has become one of the most-visited and popular Pagan internet sites. Jason is the nominee for the World card because he has, almost single-handedly, connected contemporary Paganism with the rest of the world. Pagans can be very insular by nature. Jason’s journalism consistently and competently puts our parochial interests in the context of other minority faiths and broader world events.

Runners-up: Wren Walker and Fritz Jung, founders of The Witches’ Voice internet community. I want to thank Peg Aloi for educating me about the significance of The Witches’ Voice. As Peg explains in the comments below, “Wren and Fritz were the standard bearers for developing pagan networking on a worldwide basis via the internet (Fritz’s design work in this regard was absolutely visionary), and were also the first pagan website to devote pages to consistent pagan-oriented news coverage.”

A Neopagan Celebrity Tarot (Part 1)

Last updated on: September 1, 2013 at 6:32 am By John Halstead

Recently P. Sufenas Virius Lupus did a series of posts associating Pagan notables with Tarot cards. As a lover of Tarot myself, this seemed like a fun exercise, so I thought I’d try it. Of course, this exercise really says more about the people doing the associations than about the people being associated. Here’s my nominations for the Major Arcana. Many of the nominations come from Jason Mankey’s 3-part series, “25 Most Influential People in the Birth of Modern Paganism” and Jason Pitzl-Water’s 2009 article, ““The Brightest Lights in Our Sky: Today’s Most Influential Pagans”, in PanGaia #50.

A few notes: 1. As I said above, these associations really say more about the influence of these individuals on me than anything else. So don’t take it too seriously. (2) None of these associations are meant to be negative. Several of the cards in the Major Arcana are what you might call “dark” cards — i.e., Death — but all of them can have positive meanings. (3) The gender of the persons associated need not necessarily correspond to the “gender” of the card. In other words, a man can be the “High Priestess”. (4) This is a work in progress. I’d love to hear what you think.

0. The Fool (wild card, holy fool, madness, irony, outside the social order, Dionysus)

Aleister Crowley (1875-1947): occultist, ceremonial magician, founder of Thelema. Although not a Neopagan per se, Crowley’s influence is always dancing around the edges of Neopaganism. His influence on Gerald Gardner has been well documented. In 1915 Crowley urged on of his followers to found a new Pagan cult. He described what was to become Neopaganism quite accurately:

“I hope you will arrange to repeat this [a lunar ritual] all the time, say every full or new moon so as to build up a regular force. You should also have a Solar ritual to balance it, to be done each time the sun enters a new sign, with special festivities at the Equinoxes and the Solstices. In this way you can establish a regular cult; […] The time is ripe for a natural religion. People like rites and ceremonies, and they are tired of hypothetical gods. Insist on the real benefits of the Sun and Moon, the Mother-Force, the Father-Force and so on; and show that by celebrating these benefits worthily the worshipers unite themselves more fully with the current of life. Let the religion be Joy, with but a worthy and dignified sorrow in death itself; and treat death as an ordeal, an initiation. […] In short be the founder of a new and greater Pagan cult in the beautiful land which you have made your home. As you go on you can add new festivals of corn and wine, and all things useful and noble and inspiring.”

If you know anything about Crowley, I think it should be clear why I associate him with the Fool. Crowley’s writing might be compared to Nietzsche’s. Both writers were highly idiosyncratic, osbcure, and demonstrative. (Crowley is runner-up for the Devil card too.)

Runner-up: Harry (“Dion”) Byngham. Byngham was Pagan before Pagan was cool. He assumed control of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry — a British proto-Pagan group — in 1922 and introduced phallic worship and naturism (nudity) to the Order. Byngham was influenced by Aleister Crowley. His order worked in same forest as Gardner’s alleged New Forest coven (although earlier). It also included ritual circle with four quarters corresponding to elements; three degrees of initiation; a horned god and moon goddess; and practiced ritual nudity. Members also referred to it as Witancraft (“Craft of the Wise”) (i.e., “craft” = woodcraft). Byngham reportedly read the poetry of Victor Neuburg (a disciple of Crowley) to invoke pagan deities. Byngham scandalized the Order by published naked photographs of himself and his girlfriend in the Order’s newsletter, The Pinecone. It is difficult to imagine a more Dionysian personality that Byngham.

1. The Magician (skill, production, creation, will, ambition, Hermes)

Israel Regardie (1907-1985): occultist, author, member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Israel Regardie is probably best known for publishing the (until then) secret ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in his book The Golden Dawn (1937). Gerald Gardner built his Neo-Pagan witchcraft cult on the framework of the Golden Dawn system. Israel Regardie was one of the first authors (after Dion Fortune) to explain esotericism and magic in terms of psychology. In 1938, Regardie published The Middle Pillar, which was subtitled, “a co-relation of the principles of analytical psychology and the elementary techniques of magic.” The psychological explanation of ritual magic has been widely adopted by Neopagans.

Runner-up: Alex Sanders (1926-1988): founder of Alexandrian Wicca. His place as the founder of one of the three main branches of British Traditional Wicca and his influence on Stewart and Janet Farrar merits him a prominent place in the history of Neopaganism. I thought the Magician card was appropriate because of the greater influence of ceremonial magic in Alexandrian Wicca, as compared with Gardnerian Wicca.

2. The High Priestess (feminine face of religion, heterodoxy, mysticism, Queen of Heaven/Diana)

Doreen Valiente (1922-1999): Gardnerian High Priestess. Valiente’s influence on modern is hard to over-estimate. Valiente was initiated by Gardner and became his High Priestess. She worked to revise Gardner’s Book of Shadows and is the author of the most well-known piece of Neopagan liturgy, The Charge of the Goddess. She is credited with expanding role of the Goddess in Wiccan liturgy and of the High Priestess in Wiccan organization. Without Valiente’s influence, it is likely that the women’s spirituality movement of the 1970s would never have embraced Neopagan witchcraft and witchcraft would have remained an obscure esoteric tradition. She was also part of Robert Cochrane’s coven for a while and was an important influence of Janet and Stewart Farrar. It is hard to imagine anyone coming close to Valiente’s qualifications for the High Priestess card.

3. The Empress (mother, female sexuality, fertility, nurturing love, life, Demeter/Gaia)

Starhawk (1951-present): eco-feminist, activist, Neopagan witch, author. Starhawk’s book, The Spiral Dance, has probably introduced more people to Paganism than any other book, with the possible exception of Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon. In the book, she brought together Robert Graves’ mythos, with eco-feminism, Jungian psychology, and Neopagan witchcraft. Neopaganism had been around for a decade before The Spiral Dance, but it brought together many of its disparate parts and defined the course of Neopaganism for the next two decades. Her activist spirit and poetic style earns her the place as the “Mother” of contemporary Neopaganism.

Runner-up: Robert Graves for his influence on the contemporary Pagan conception of the Goddess (see below).

Honorable Mention: Carol Christ (1945-present), feminist thealogian, author of “Why Women Need the Goddess”, Rebirth of the Goddess, and She Who Changes, for deepening the Pagan understanding of the Goddess.

Disonorable Mention: Jessie Wicker Bell/Lady Sheba, self-styled “American Witch Queen”

4. The Emperor (father, hierarchy, continence, law, order, enforcing distinctions, civilization, stability, Zeus/Yahweh)

Margot Adler (1946-present): Wiccan priestess, author. My choice of Adler for the Emperor card is not because of her personally, but because of her book, Drawing Down the Moon. Adler is an NPR correspondent and her book is a journalist’s account of the Neopagan community, the breadth of which is only matched by the appeal of its style. The book has gone through several revisions, and until Chas Clifton published Her Hidden Children in 2006, was really the only book on the subject. Adler’s book was published on same day as Starhawk’s book, October 31, 1979. The two books are very different: where Starhawk’s book is visionary and poetic, Alder’s is factual and journalistic. But the two books are often cited together as the books having the most influence on the growth of contemporary Neopaganism. And for that reason, I pair their authors together here with the Empress and Emperor cards.

Runner-up: Margaret Murray (1863-1963), author of The God of the Witches (1933), for her influence on the contemporary Pagan conception of the Horned God.

Dishonorable Mention: Alex Sanders, self-styled “King of the Witches”

5. The Hierophant (conventional religion, orthodox spirituality, tradition, dogma)

Gerald Gardner (1884-1964): founder of Gardnerian Wicca. Only one person could really be the Hierophant of Neopaganism, and that’s Gerald Gardner. Gardner needs no introduction here. Suffice it to say that he earned the Hierophant card both by virtue of being the first Wiccan High Priest and also because of his dictatorial personality (as documented by Doreen Valiente).

6. The Lovers (choice, indulgence, lust, appetite)

Oberon Zell (1942-present) and Morging Glory Zell (1948-present): founders of the Church of All Worlds. In 1967, the Church of All Worlds was incorporated by the Zells as the first Neopagan state-recognized “church”. Oberon is credited with anticipating James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis by several years. The Church of All Worlds published the Green Egg newsletter, which becames the most important Neopagan forum for many years, and was instrumental in the formation of a emerging identity around the word “Neopagan”. A 1971 talk given by Morning Glory to a women’s group at the WorldCon science-fiction convention in Los Angeles is credited with initiating the Goddess movement. Oberon and Morning Glory earn the Lovers card for their open advocacy of polyamory and for their long commitment to one another.

Runners-up: Fred and Svetlana Adams founders of Feraferia, a “love culture for wilderness” dedicated to wild nature and its Goddess. Sarah Pike marks the founding of Feraferia in 1967, together with the founding of NROOGD, as the beginning of the Neopagan movement.

7. The Chariot (war, triumph, dominion, mastery, will, impetuosity, hubris, Ares)

Zsuzsanna Budapest (1940-present): founder of feminist witchcraft. Budapest earns the Chariot card because of her “militantly” exclusivist position on ritual. In the 1970s, she was controversial as the founder of the first women-only tradition of feminist “Dianic” witchcraft. In recent years, she has become controversial again because of her cis-women exclusivism.

8. Strength (fortitude, gentle persuasion, spirit controlling passion)

Selena Fox (1949-present): Wiccan priestess, leader in Pagan rights movement. Selena is the founder of Circle Sanctuary. Selena is the founder of the Pagan Spirit Gathering, one of the largest and oldest outdoor Pagan festivals. Selena is a model of gentle persuasion, leadership without domination, which the Strength card represents. (Selena is also tied with Starhawk for the Justice card.)

9. Hermit (wisdom, prudence, psychopomp, enlightenment)

Isaac Bonewits (1949-2010): Druid. Bonewits participated in many Neopagan traditions, not all of them druidic, including OTO, NROOGD, and Gardnerian Wicca. He was a leader in the early Neo-Druidry (RDNA) movement and was the founder of Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF) which became the largest Neo-Druidic organization in North America. He founded the (short-lived) Aquarian Anti-Defamation League and developed a “Cult Danger Evaluation Frame”. He is credited with coining the term “thealogy” and the phrase “Never Again the Burning Times”. He also developed a unique classification of the Pagan community consisting of three categories: Paleo-, Meso-, and Neo-. The Hermit card is appropriate, I think, because Bonewits led the way in helping non-Pagans understand Pagans and helping Pagans understand themselves. In addition, the imagery corresponds in some ways to the archetypal druid.

Runners-up: Ross Nichols, Phillip Comm-Garr, and John Michael Greer

10. Wheel (fortune, rebirth, motion, chance)

Robert Graves (1895-1985): poet, author, classicist. Graves was not a Pagan himself, but he supplied Neopaganism with much of its mythos. What Graves called his “Theme” was “the birth, life, death and resurrection of the God of thee Waxing Year; the central chapters concern the God’s losing battle with the God of the Waning Year for love of the capricious and all-powerful Threefold Goddess, their mother, bride and layer-out.” This was the source of what became Neopaganism’s seasonal festival cycle, The Wheel of the Year.

Graves’ book, The White Goddess (1948), was the single most influential source of Goddess imagery for the modern Pagan revival. It is from Graves that Pagans get their concept of the Triple Moon Goddess which was adopted by the feminist Goddess movement. Graves’ Goddess influenced Gardnerian Wicca through Doreen Valiente. The White Goddess was also a significant influence on many other prominent Neopagans, including Robert Cochrane, the founder of the Clan of Tubal Cain, Fred Adams, the founder of Feraferia, Aidan Kelly, the founder of the New Reformed Order of the Golden Dawn (NROOGD), Z. Budapest, and Starhawk.

I see Graves, not Gerald Gardner, as the (unwitting) father of Neopaganism. In 1969, in an interview with The Paris Review, Graves observed that a “curious result” of the publication of The White Goddess was that “various White Goddess religions started in New York State and California. I’m today’s hero of the love-and-flowers cult out in the Screwy State, so they tell me”. Graves’ use of the term “White Goddess religions” to describe Neopaganism may not have been hyperbole or self-aggrandizement. In fact, Richard Perceval Graves reports that Elizabeth Gould-Davis, the author of The First Sex, corresponded with Graves for several years, and in 1973, she told him:

“I suppose you know that you are the God of the new Movement here, the newest of the new women’s movements, and you are the only male creature who is admitted to godhead in the movement. It has all sorts of names because it is not yet co-ordinated. Small groups from California to New York have formed to defy Christianity and all organized religion, to worship the female principle, and to bring back the Great Goddess.”

I associate Graves with the Wheel card because of the influence of his Theme of the seasonal cycle of the Goddess and her consort on the Neopagan mythos. (Graves is also a runner-up for the Empress card, because of the importance of his influence on the contemporary Pagan conception of the Goddess.)

Coming up: The nominees for the remaining 11 cards will be the subject of the next post.

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Last updated on: June 25, 2013 at 5:13 pm By John Halstead

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