The Pagan Practice of Prayer

Last updated on: December 26, 2017 at 10:31 am By John Beckett

The questions for the first Conversations Under the Oaks included several on prayer. Here’s one that’s fairly typical.

What is your opinion on the importance of prayer in Paganism? What style of prayer do you use with your Gods – formal / recited, or more casual / conversational?

I’ve been wanting to integrate more prayer into my practice. But as someone who grew up Christian, I have a bit of a broken relationship with prayer itself.

Many – perhaps most – Pagans have a broken relationship with prayer. We were forced to pray as kids. We suffered through long and boring prayers in church and before meals. Some people tell us prayer is the answer to everything, while others tell us prayer accomplishes nothing. And we all know people (some Christian and some Pagan) whose prayers resemble a four-year-old’s Christmas list. It’s enough to turn us off on the practice of prayer.

And that’s a shame, because prayer is one of the most basic and most helpful spiritual practices in virtually every religion.

Here are some previous posts on prayer:

The Power of Prayer – the benefits of prayer.

Iamblichus on Prayer – the thoughts of the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, writing around 300 CE.

Pagan Prayer Beads – jealous of your Catholic friends’ rosaries? Need an aid for regular prayers? Prayer beads are used in many religions.

Prayer is talking to the Gods

For all the rules and mystery around prayer, it’s a very simple thing: prayer is talking to the Gods. Paganism is a religion (or religions, if you prefer) of relationships, and healthy relationships require constant communication. That’s why meditation (specifically, the kind of meditation that focuses on listening) is also important – we don’t want to monopolize the conversation.

The purpose of prayer is not persuade the Gods to give us stuff, and it’s not reinforce fragile egos with constant praise. The Gods know They’re Gods – They don’t need us to remind Them of that. We, on the other hand, often need to remind ourselves that while we are sacred beings of inherent value and worth, the Gods are Gods and we are not.

Like conversations with friends and family, our conversations with the Gods draw us closer to Them. It reminds us to listen for Their presence, and to keep Their virtues and values foremost in our lives.

Scripted or extemporaneous

Some prayers are very formal and carefully scripted. They often follow a prescribed formula, such as invocation – praise – request. If you come across ancient prayers they are almost certainly scripted, because unscripted prayers are rarely written down.

If you’re going to use a prayer over and over again, or if you’re going to use it in a public ritual, it makes good sense to write it carefully. Make sure it says exactly what you want it to say. Make sure it flows and that it’s grammatically correct. Or if it’s not, that you’re breaking grammar rules on purpose and not from ignorance or carelessness. Make sure it doesn’t mindlessly copy the language or format of the prayers of another religion.

If you’re speaking to your Gods on behalf of a gathering, make your prayer as good as you can get it.

Other prayers are more conversational – we speak to the Gods as we might speak to someone standing bodily in front of us. Perhaps we have a great need and so we describe it in detail. Perhaps we want to negotiate the terms of an agreement – we need to clearly delineate what we will do and what we won’t. Or perhaps we want to express the yearnings of our hearts. And so we just speak.

Of my four daily prayers, two are entirely scripted. The other two are partially scripted, with places for conversational prayer. My ritual prayers are always scripted.

Jason Mankey offers a prayer during the main ritual at Beyond the Gates - August 2017 — *Jason Mankey offers a prayer during the main ritual at Beyond the Gates – August 2017*

Content of prayers

What do you say in prayer?

Invocation is calling a God and asking Them to hear your prayer. It is common to address a deity by multiple epithets. Part of this is to make it perfectly clear who you’re talking to. But another part is so you remember who you’re talking to. They know They’re Gods. We sometimes forget, often aided by those who do not want to accept that humans are not the greatest power in the Universe.

Praise is recounting Their virtues and Their great deeds. Few if any of the Many Gods are insecure and need – or want – to be propped up by sycophants. But by praising the Gods we are reminded of what is truly praiseworthy, and thus how we can best live our lives.

Thanksgiving. If the Gods have been generous to you, say thank you. If They granted your request, say thank you. If They declined to grant your request and you realize They did you a big favor because you asked for something you didn’t really want, say thank you.

There are many things we enjoy that we did not earn. The least we can do is express our gratitude.

Devotion. This is one of the ways we build close relationships with deities – by talking to Them in prayer. Which of Their virtues do you most admire? Say it. What did They do for you that you really appreciate? Say it.

How would you talk to your grandmother or to a favorite uncle? What would you say if a social or political leader you admire came to visit you? The Gods are more than any of these things, and it is best to approach even familiar deities with reverence, but expressions of devotion and love are always appropriate.

Requests. The Gods are persons, not vending machines where you insert offerings and blessings fall out. I still see some Pagans who have no qualms about approaching a deity they’ve never met and asking for huge favors. That works about as well as when a stranger walks up to you and asks for a substantial gift.

Still, if you need something, ask for it. If you have a relationship with a deity, they’re more likely to help you out of a difficult situation – particularly if you need something to be able to accomplish a task they’ve set in front of you. It is always good to ask for healing for yourself and your loved ones.

Remember that the world runs on reciprocity. If a God grants your request, They may later ask you for something in return – that’s how my relationship with the Morrigan began.

The desires of your heart. While we all want to avoid sounding like a kid sitting on Santa Claus’s lap, there is nothing wrong with speaking the desires of your heart to the Gods. What is it you want most? What is it you value most? What calls to you, perhaps softly and perhaps with a screaming voice?

Say it. Tell the deities with whom you are acquainted how you feel.

And then listen for Their response.

Who do you pray to?

I speak of “the Gods” in this post, but as a polytheist I never pray to Them collectively. I am a priest of Cernunnos and Danu, a Druid of the Morrigan, and a devotee of Brighid and Lugh. I pray to all of Them daily. I pray to Cernunnos and to the Morrigan as part of the weekly devotions They have each requested of me.

I pray to Ma’at daily, both as a representative of the Neteru as a whole (with whom I have an unusual but longstanding relationship) and as a Goddess of Justice and Order.

I have looser relationships with numerous other deities. If the Gods listed above are family who live in my house or perhaps down the street, these are the relatives who live far away that I see once or twice a year. I pray to Them on occasion.

When Denton CUUPS is preparing a ritual, I will pray to the Deities of the Occasion whether I know Them or not. I occasionally pray to unknown deities on behalf of a friend who follows Them.

Having said all that, if you don’t know who to pray to, just pray. And then listen.

Prayer as a regular practice

A Methodist minister once told me most people he counseled treat prayer like a spare tire. They keep it locked in the trunk of their car and ignore it until they have an emergency. Then they dig it out and hope it has enough air in it to get them home.

Like all spiritual practices, prayer works best when you work at it on a regular basis. Write or find a prayer you can say every day at the same time. It doesn’t have to be long – in many ways it’s better if it isn’t. My morning prayers are extremely short, because getting up in the morning is hard enough as it is.

And then make a commitment to pray that prayer every day. If you forget one day, pick it up again the next day. If you need reminders or prompts, prayer beads work very well.

I will close with these words from Iamblichus:

It remains, therefore, at the end of this discourse, for me to pray to the gods to grant both to me and to you the unalterable preservation of true thoughts, to implant in us the truth of eternal things forever, and to grand to us a participation in the more perfect conceptions of the gods in which the most blessed end of good things is placed before us, along with the sanction of the harmonious friendship between us.

May it be so.

Spiritual Preparations For Leading Ritual

Last updated on: May 9, 2017 at 8:18 pm By John Beckett

If you’re going to lead or help lead a group ritual – especially if it’s a large public ritual – you need to be prepared. You need a solid plan for what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it. For me, that means a detailed script. Even if your tradition has used the same liturgy for so long you could do it in your sleep, you still need a checklist to make sure you don’t forget any necessary tools or supplies.

But leading a good ritual requires more than making all the necessary logistical preparations. Leading a good ritual requires spiritual preparation.

Hopefully you’re already doing daily spiritual practice of some kind. There is no substitute for regular meditation, prayer, offerings, study, and the many spiritual practices that keep us connected to our traditions and to our Gods and other spiritual allies. But none of us are leading Beltane or Summer Solstice rituals every week. We need spiritual preparations for them as well.

For last Saturday’s Cernunnos Ritual, everyone with a scripted part (speaking or non-speaking) participated in six nights of preparation. I’ve found six nights is an ideal number. That lets us start on Sunday night, when the weekend is over and thoughts of the coming week begin. It ends the following Friday night, with the ritual coming the next day. The first time we did this (for Summer Solstice 2004) we did nine nights, one for each of the Gods of the Egyptian Ennead. Pick the length that fits what you’re doing.

Build a foundation

What’s the focus of your ritual? Devotion to a deity? This is a good time to learn what you can about Them. A seasonal celebration? Find out how your ancestors celebrated this occasion, and how other Pagans are celebrating it today. A rite of passage? Learn about transitions and liminal periods; read about Masonic initiations or the Eleusinian Mysteries.

This research and study will provide the context you need to understand your ritual at a deep, spiritual level.

Strengthen your connections

If you were going to hold a ceremony to honor a community leader, you’d want to talk to them, hear their stories, and get to know them. That would help you know how to present them to an unfamiliar audience, and how to do it in a way that would be respectful to your guest of honor.

I’m a sworn priest of Cernunnos – I pray to Him every night. But I still got a boost out of adding six nights of special prayers and meditations on top of my normal routine. Several of those who aren’t so familiar with Him said that the preparations really helped them understand who and what He is.

If you’re doing an ancestor ritual, connect with your ancestors. If you’re doing a ritual to honor Nature or to protect Nature, connect with the spirits of the land. Strengthen your connections to your spiritual allies.

Open yourself to service

The first rule of leading public ritual is that it’s not about you. It’s about honoring the Gods and spirits, and it’s about facilitating an experience for everyone in attendance. That takes work.

If you’re going to facilitate an experience of a deity, you have to be willing to let that deity speak through you. Not necessarily through ecstatic possession (though that’s one way) – more frequently it’s through Them telling you what They want you do say and do, and then you doing it.

“It’s not about you” means the purpose of ritual isn’t to make you look important or powerful. At the same time, don’t downplay what you do well. Put your skills to work where they can do the most good.

Read

Each night’s spiritual preparation begins with a reading. These can be educational or devotional. For our Cernunnos Ritual, we used a blog post on what is known about Cernunnos, a recap of our 2013 Cernunnos ritual, and a post on the environment in which we work. We also used a personal account of someone’s experience of Him, a poem, and a video of a song dedicated to Him. The longest took about ten minutes to read – most took three or four. Length is less important than impact.

Make invocations and offerings

After your reading, make invocations and offerings to the Gods or spirits you’re honoring. You may want to use the prayers you’re planning to use in the ritual. You may come across something appropriate in your reading. This is a great time to revive ancient prayers, where they exist (easy for the Gods of Egypt – much harder for the Gods of Ireland). Or you may want to use extemporaneous prayers.

Conclude your prayers with an appropriate offering. Do a bit of research to find something appropriate – show Them it matters to you. This is a time for sacrifice – for putting more time and money into an offering than you normally would. But if you simply cannot offer a special food or drink or song, offer what you have.

Listen

Stand or sit quietly and listen. This isn’t the time for Buddhist-style breath-focused meditation. You’re not trying to empty your mind – you’re trying hear what’s going on around you.

Close your eyes and listen with your physical ears. What do you hear? The usual background noise? The wind in the trees? Perhaps an unusual bird? Listen.

Then listen with your other ears. Have your offerings been accepted? Does the God, ancestor, or spirit you invoked have something to tell you? Maybe something they want you to do? Perhaps someone you weren’t expecting has something to say? Listen.

Give thanks

Be grateful for whatever you’ve received, even if it’s only the opportunity to pray and make offerings in peace. If you’ve received more, the best thanks is to make good use of what the Gods have given you.

How long should all this take? That depends on what you’re trying to do, but in general I’d say each evening’s work should take more than five minutes but less than thirty.

I can hear some of my polytheist friends laughing – their preparations take hours and hours… sometimes days and days. Perhaps someday yours will too. But don’t let that scare you off. Start here, with a week’s worth of special devotions.

I’ve been leading public rituals for a while now. I love doing it and it still hasn’t gotten old. But I have to admit: sometimes I get busy and feel like “let’s just do this” – particularly if I’m not the ritual coordinator and I have a smaller part. That’s not a good thing.

If a ritual is worth doing, it’s worth putting the time and effort into planning something pleasing to our Guests of Honor, whether those guests are Gods, ancestors, or spirits of Nature. It’s also worth putting an appropriate amount of time into spiritual preparation, so we can be ready to facilitate a religious experience for everyone in attendance.

Spiritual Treatment Is No Substitute For Mental Health Care

Last updated on: March 11, 2017 at 1:36 pm By John Beckett

In a comment to a recent blog post, someone I won’t name said:

“Mental health issues” is another way of saying spiritual issues

No.

Just no.

This isn’t a difference of opinion. This isn’t a case of “agree to disagree.” This is a wrong and dangerous belief that I see too often in Pagan and alternative spirituality circles.

It was bad enough when one of the Baptist preachers of my youth screamed from the pulpit “people don’t need psychotherapy, they need to get right with God.” I was only 9 or 10 at the time, but I remember thinking to myself “I think you need psychotherapy.” Later events would prove me right, though that had nothing to do with his fundamentalist beliefs.

I would expect better from Pagans, polytheists, and the spiritual-but-not-religious. We like to think of ourselves as better educated, more open minded, and less judgmental. But too many of us jump to wrong conclusions because they’re nice and easy, or we reject mainstream treatments because they’re part of the mainstream and we want to be countercultural. So we suffer needlessly and – as in the case of the commenter above – we commit spiritual malpractice and encourage others to avoid necessary treatment.

If you suffer from depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder, if you have a problem with substance abuse or an eating disorder, or if you have any other mental illness, you have a mental health problem and you need mental health treatment, not spiritual treatment.

This is true whether you’re a Pagan, a Christian, a Buddhist, or an atheist. If you need mental health treatment, then get mental health treatment. If you don’t have access to proper treatment (it’s not cheap and it’s often poorly covered by insurance) then look for no-cost and low-cost options in your area. Some care is better than no care.

But make sure you understand what mental illness is, and what it isn’t.

Feeling bad – even for an extended time – does not mean you have mental health issues

There is a quote of uncertain origins that says

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.

Physical pain is your body’s way of telling you something’s wrong and needs to change. Pain in my upper gastro-intestinal region tells me I need to consume less caffeine, chocolate, and citrus. Vague pain in the back of my head tells me I need more sleep. Sore quadriceps remind me I’m not young anymore and I need to deal with the aging process.

Emotional pain – especially stress – is also telling you that something’s wrong and needs to change. In the mid-1990s I spent over two years working 50 to 80 hours a week, every week. I was miserable. I wasn’t depressed and I didn’t need antidepressants – I needed a new job! When I found one, my life improved immensely.

Have you recently suffered a loss due to death, disease, or divorce? The fact that you’re hurting means you’re human – this is how you’re supposed to feel. We’re told we should “get over it” in a couple of days, mainly so we don’t disturb the illusions of invulnerability of those around us. Grief is normal and necessary. Now, if it goes on indefinitely you may need help, but the idea we should always be happy is unrealistic and harmful.

Our mainstream society makes it hard for us to avoid stress. We’re expected to work 8 to 10 hours a day, take care of our families, cook and clean, exercise, consume a suitable amount of vapid entertainment products, and still have time to “follow your bliss.” I don’t know anyone who can do all that, even those who have the financial resources to substitute money for time. The inability to live up to these ridiculous expectations is not a sign of mental illness.

Every body is different – so is every brain

Look around you – what do you see? People are different: different heights, weights, and body types, different hair colors and skin tones, different sexes and gender expressions. Everybody – every body – is different.

If our bodies are so different, why would you expect our brains to all be the same?

Or, as the saying goes “normal is a setting on the dryer.”

In our noble desire to eliminate mental illness – and in our ignoble attempts to enforce conformity – we often end up trying to eliminate mental divergence. We try to get rid of our freaks – for their own good, of course…

I have a friend who is bipolar. They tell me their emotions run from 1 to 10. With medication, they run from 4 to 7. Medication makes it possible for them to consistently function in the mainstream world, and they don’t miss the bad days when they feel like a 1 or a 2. But they miss the good days when they feel like a 9 or 10.

Many brilliant artists struggle with mental illness – how much would we lose if we medicated them out of existence? If there was no variation in mental states, would we have any mystics, shamans, or spirit workers?

Instead, what if our society was set up to accommodate people on their bad days as well as their good days? What if we didn’t demand every person be “on” every day? What if we allowed people to be fully human and to express the full range of their humanity?

Daily spiritual practice helps you be you

Regular spiritual practice is the best way to help you deal with the things you need to deal with. It helps you recognize when you’re surrounded by assholes and helps you build the strength to move to a better place.

Meditation, prayer, offerings, following the sky, communion with the natural world, devotional reading and study – pick a practice and get started. Over time, add something to it. It can be grounded in polytheism, monotheism, or nontheism. Regular spiritual practice helps identify what’s important to you and keeps you connected to it despite the constant barrage of advertising insisting you must buy what they’re selling if you ever want to be happy.

Spiritual practice helps you accept yourself for who and what you are, even if that’s not what the mainstream society tells you you’re supposed to be. That acceptance helps you to follow the path you’re called to follow.

But spiritual practice is no substitute for proper mental health care. Again, if you suffer from depression, anxiety, or any other mental illness, you have a mental health problem and you need mental health treatment, not spiritual treatment.

Don’t commit malpractice, even on yourself

At least a couple times a year, there’s a news story about a child who dies or almost dies because their parents try to substitute prayer for proper medical care. In recent years, states have started prosecuting these parents and sending them to jail, which is where they belong. You cannot deny your child proper medical care just because your beliefs about medicine fly in the face of the facts.

You have the legal right to deny yourself proper treatment, but why would you?

It is true that spiritual issues and mental health issues are often intertwined. But that’s no reason to ignore one part of the problem and only concentrate on the other part. If you’re physically ill, work your healing spells, but also see a doctor. If you’re mentally ill, draw on the power of your spiritual and magical traditions, but also see a mental health professional.

Spiritual treatment is no substitute for proper mental health care.

Mystical Experiences Through Deep Practice

Last updated on: December 5, 2016 at 8:11 pm By John Beckett

Mystical experiences are found in every religion and many happen spontaneously. These are experiences of mystery and wonder – beauty and power that overwhelms us. They are first hand experiences of spiritual beings and knowing things we had no way of knowing. Many are ineffable – impossible to describe in words.

For the most part, these experiences are not harmful, but they can be dangerous. They can turn your life upside down, show you Life as it really is, and cause you to re-evaluate your priorities. Many people who have mystical experiences rationalize them away, some because their worldview says they don’t exist and some because they don’t want to deal with their implications.

But mystical experiences are very real. It’s important to talk about them, to support each other and start building a new consensus reality that has room for these most meaningful and powerful religious, spiritual, and magical experiences.

Mystical experiences happen in their own time. We can invite Gods and ancestors to speak to us, but they are sovereign beings just as we are. They may choose to come, or they may not. Even beings who are traditionally summoned (i.e. – demons) don’t always show up on demand. Natural forces can have great impact on us, but they’re even more difficult to predict.

One of the simplest things to do to promote a mystical experience is simply to stand outside under the full moon. That’s easy, but the moon is only full three days out of the month. If the sky is overcast during those three days, you can’t see it. It’s still there and you can still do full moon magic, but without that beautiful bright light in the sky, experiences of mystery and wonder are far less likely to occur.

On the other hand, if you never go outside at night, you’re guaranteed to never see the full moon. All you can control are your actions – the results come in their own time.

Build a foundation of regular devotion. If you want Gods and spirits to talk to you, start by talking to them. Earlier this year I wrote about Beginning a Devotional Practice: create an altar, pray, meditate, and make offerings. Read, study, and talk with more experienced practitioners. Above all, be consistent. Lots of people call on Gods when they’re in trouble or when they’re curious – far fewer demonstrate the consistent dedication that shows they’re looking for a relationship and not a parlor trick.

Do the prep work. We cannot command mystical experiences, but we can facilitate them – we can make them more likely to occur. Put yourself in the right frame of mind: grounding and centering will help you let go of the stress of ordinary life, if only for a short time. Light candles and incense, wear your magical jewelry. Do whatever preparatory ritual you do: cast a circle, call the spirits of the directions and elements, invoke the land, sky, and sea. Find some good devotional readings and read them out loud, even if you’re the only one present… especially if you’re the only one present. Make offerings – put some effort into researching traditional offerings or offerings that contemporary practitioners have found to be favorably received.

Does this preparatory work increase the odds a spiritual being will speak to you or does it increase the odds you’ll hear them if they do speak? A little of both, I think. All I know is that it helps.

In wild places. The Gods can speak to you anywhere, but Nature spirits are far more likely to speak to you in the wild – because that’s where they are. Powerful experiences of wonder and awe can happen in the woods or desert or oceanside, but they’re not going to happen in your living room. There is magic in wild places – if you want to have a mystical experience, visiting wild places greatly increases your chances.

There is nothing like spending time in true wilderness. But most of us don’t live that far away from civilization. Visiting accessible natural places is the next best thing: parks and rural areas work well; even your back yard will do. Maybe you can only visit true wilderness once a year. But you can visit a local park once a week or so, and you can spend time in your back yard every night. If you don’t have a back yard, put some plants in your kitchen window. Making use of what you have is far more effective than doing nothing because you don’t have access to a perfect environment.

In dark places. Spontaneous mystical experiences can happen at any time of the day – one of my strongest was in the middle of the afternoon. But if you’re trying to encourage one, it helps to work with as little light as possible – whether you’re practicing indoors or outdoors. Darkness blocks out distractions and focuses our concentration on our immediate surroundings.

And let’s be honest – most of us associate magic and mystery with the dark. That’s one more thing to put us in the right frame of mind.

Patience and persistence. You can do all these things with perfect intention and perfect execution and still get nothing. Mystical experiences cannot be commanded.

Sitting outside for 15 minutes didn’t produce anything? Next time try 30 minutes. Or two hours. Or from dusk till dawn. Or try an hour every night for a month.

Does that sound excessive? It may very well be, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Spiritual experiences happen on their own timetable. Gods and spirits speak to us when they choose, but I have found that persistence will often get their attention when hit-or-miss practice will not.

About entheogens. Entheogens are chemicals (mostly from plants) that produce a change in consciousness that make it more likely that a mystical experience will occur. Most of them are illegal, and with good reason: the wrong dosage can kill you, and you’ll hurt a lot while you’re dying. But people have used herbs, mushrooms, and other psychoactive substances in rituals of thousands of years – used properly, they work. If you feel this is for you, find an experienced practitioner to guide you through it… and that probably means leaving the country to do it.

The only entheogen I’ve ever used is alcohol. I won’t touch it before a public ritual, but I’ve found it to be helpful in certain private rituals. For me, the “goldilocks zone” is when I’m still legal to drive but not safe to drive. I’m still able to focus on what I’m doing, but my filters are lower: I’m more open to unusual inputs and experiences, and I’m less likely to judge them while they’re happening.

This can be addictive – handle with reverence. There is nothing that can compare to a mystical or ecstatic experience, whether it’s a message from a God or the vision of a spirit or the loss of self and sense of unity that comes with natural experiences of wonder and awe. When you have one, you’ll want to have another and another and another.

Mystical experiences aren’t cookies and they don’t happen for your enjoyment. And sometimes they aren’t enjoyable at all – sometimes they’re painful, sometimes they’re hard, and sometimes they call us to do something that itself is painful and hard.

More importantly, they’re sacred. And because they’re sacred they must be handled with reverence – with the appreciation that they have a sacred source and a sacred purpose and they connect you to something bigger than yourself. Show these experiences the respect they deserve.

Mystical experiences take many forms, but they happen in every culture, including our mainstream culture. Most people ignore them or rationalize them away, but for those of us who understand and appreciate them, they can be the deepest, most meaningful experiences in our lives. We cannot control them and we cannot command them, but through deep practice we can make them more likely to appear in our lives.

4 Steps to a Deeper Pagan Practice

Last updated on: January 3, 2016 at 8:20 am By John Beckett

Tomorrow morning I go back to work, ending this year’s 11 Days of Solstice. It was supposed to be 12 Days of Solstice, but while my paying job usually accommodates my vacation requests, this year there was something that had to be finished before I could leave, so I ended up working the 23^rd. Gordon White at Rune Soup calls this an intercalendary period. It is for those of us who work in some industries, but for those in retail and hospitality, it’s a busy time.

While much of life returns to normal starting tomorrow, there’s still something not-quite-ordinary about the month or so in between Go Back To Work Or School Day and Imbolc on February 1^st (or whenever you celebrate it – Denton CUUPS’ Imbolc Circle is January 30). The gym will be packed with people starting New Year’s resolutions. The worst of winter starts this month: most outdoor activities are curtailed, construction stops in some parts of the country and slows in others, and commerce is generally down.

I’ve often suggested the Pagan community use this period as a contemplative season. Rather than some ill-conceived New Year’s resolutions, simply bring a new emphasis to your daily spiritual practice. The longest night has passed, but the days are still short, and the cold will keep us indoors. Most of the Pagan conventions don’t get started till February (and let’s face it: far more of us don’t attend them than do, though I have three between Imbolc and the Spring Equinox). For most of us, this is an auspicious time to commit to deeper religious and spiritual practice.

I say something along these lines most every year, but this year it feels different. It seems like there’s something in the air, or something in the æther. Since the week before the Solstice, I’ve had more people contact me about starting or re-starting a Pagan practice than I have in the previous six months. It’s like people are telling themselves “the new year is coming – I need to do something with this call / obligation / God in my ear.”

The details of these situations are of course confidential, and in any case their value to blog readers is not in their specifics but in their commonalities. Several of my better college professors said something along the lines of “if you have a question, ask – there’s probably someone else with the same question who won’t ask.” So in that spirit, here are four steps to starting or strengthening a Pagan practice in 2016.

1. Make a choice. When it comes to religion, the only thing we can be certain about is that there is no such thing as certainty. If you insist on certainty you’ll either be waiting till you’re dead or you’ll latch onto some fundamentalist who claims to have certainty when in fact he has no such thing. It’s not all the same – different religions and different traditions have different beliefs, practices, and foundational stories, and different ideas about the core questions that religion should address. So choose something.

What does your heart and your brain tell you is true? What whispers that there’s more? What calls to you? Who calls to you? Here’s a hint – you’re reading a Pagan blog. Something brought you here, and whether that something is internal or external, perhaps you should pay attention to it.

If you’ve been wanting to explore Paganism, or if you’ve been exploring and now it’s time to get serious, then make a choice to start now. Or if this isn’t for you, then make a choice to be a Buddhist or a liberal Christian or whatever seems like a good fit. But make a choice and commit to something.

2. Build your foundation. We live in a society that is nominally Christian but that is thoroughly materialist at heart. Nature is valued only for how its “resources” can enrich humans. The only God anyone knows is the God of Abraham… or perhaps all Gods are made up. Magic is fantasy for children. These assumptions – and that’s all they are, unproven assumptions – are embedded in our wider society and in our lives. Mainstream Western society has made us blind and deaf to mystery, to the Gods and spirits, and to everything else that doesn’t involve buying and selling.

We need to build a foundation for our Pagan practices based on our experiences of Gods and of Nature, and on the results of our dedicated spiritual practice. We need to read: the stories of our ancient ancestors, the great works of Pagan philosophy, and the wisdom and experience of contemporary Pagans and polytheists. Paganism is as reasonable as any other religion or no religion at all. But we have to get past the unstated assumptions of the mainstream society.

3. Begin a devotional practice. If there is a God or Goddess who is making Their presence known in your life, then begin a devotional practice to Them. If not, then what deity seems like a good match for you? Whose myths always struck you as more than stories? Relationships can be initiated by either party – pursuing the Gods is a good thing!

Read Their stories and read the scholarly work about the cultures in which They were originally worshipped. Talk to Their priests and see how They’re being worshipped today. Tell Their stories and invoke Them in ritual. Speak to Them in prayer and listen for Them in meditation. Build a shrine. Make offerings. Do Their work in this world. Pick one or two things to get started, then add others as you go.

It’s always good to honor the Gods.

4. Keep it up. Don’t be the Pagan equivalent of the January gym goers! Commit to practice every day between now and Imbolc – it’s only four weeks. The best way to insure that you do is to start small. Start with once-daily prayers and once-weekly offerings. Or once-daily meditations and twice-weekly study sessions. This will require some discipline and may require some tricks – schedule your practice time on your phone, or set an offering bowl on your kitchen table.

Do the easy stuff first – whatever is easy for you. You’ll get into the habit of practicing every day, and that will make it easier to keep it up when you start to add practices that are harder and less fun, but still necessary.

The holidays are over and the new year is here. The season of Imbolc calls us to deeper practice. Something is in the air, or in the æther.

What will you make of this opportunity?

Life Coaching, Spiritual Direction, and Holy Work

Last updated on: September 7, 2015 at 9:00 pm By John Beckett

In a post last week I talked about how the first step to re-enchant the world is understanding that disenchantment is real – the feeling that something’s wrong with the world is an accurate assessment of the way things are, even if we can’t quite articulate the way things should be instead. Our mainstream society (and especially the sorcerers of advertising) see our disenchantment, but their recommendations only make things worse.

Make no mistake, disenchantment is suffering… suffering our mainstream culture says we should treat by buying more stuff. Or losing weight, or finding a new partner, or hiring a life coach.

What, you don’t have the money for that? Work harder! Are you lazy or something?

And so we treat our suffering with the wrong remedy. We double down with more of the same and our disenchantment only grows.

Shortly after that post went up I had a private message from Jessica Minah, which she has given me permission to share. Jessica took issue with my inclusion of life coaching in this list. She said (in part – I have edited for length but hopefully not for content):

I will admit that there are a lot of life coaches out there who are … promoting the concept of following your bliss as a way to rid your life of all uncertainty and anxiety. But there are many of us doing much deeper work. Work that is about stepping directly into this sense that something is wrong with the way we are living…

We work with them to cultivate the resilience and courage needed to ask questions like: What am I living my life for? What does the world want from me? For the sake of what is all this for?

When they have found something resembling answers to the questions, we help them cultivate the skills and competencies needed to go do those things, and to achieve long-term excellence, to be self-correcting, and self-generating…

I really consider it Priestessing work, and part of my sacred contract with the world.

What Jessica describes is honorable work. I thought about these things before I added “life coach” to that blog post. I decided to leave it in because there are a lot of life coaches who spout nothing but New Age garbage to privileged suburbanites and get paid a lot of money to do it. They are more symptom than problem, but they are part of the problem.

That doesn’t mean this kind of work is unnecessary, unhelpful, or unworthy of compensation.

In a religious setting, this work is often called spiritual direction. A person will engage the services of a knowledgeable elder in their tradition: maybe a clergy person or maybe an experienced peer (just not someone who’s so close a friend they can’t give hard advice). They meet, the client describes their spiritual life and goals, the spiritual director listens and then offers recommendations in accordance with the ideals and boundaries of their shared religious tradition. At the next meeting, they discuss progress, or the lack thereof – spiritual direction provides accountability. Some meet frequently, some meet occasionally, some meet only as needed.

Anyone can benefit from the counsel of an experienced co-religionist, even the most senior priests and founders of traditions. In the words of Thorn Coyle “beware teachers who only have students.” I engaged Thorn for spiritual direction in 2011 when I was on a stuck on a plateau and needed help to get moving again. She didn’t do anything dramatic, but by working through the process things picked up and they haven’t slowed down since.

I don’t have a regular spiritual director right now, but there are two people I consult on a fairly regular basis, and several others I call on if I have an issue in their area of expertise.

I also do spiritual direction as part of my service as a priest. Some arrangements are informal, others are structured – it all depends on what the client wants, needs, and is willing to do.

Some of this work – from both sides – has been on a fee-for-service basis and some has been pro bono. If you ask someone to work for you, you should expect to compensate them for their time and effort, including the time and effort that went into learning the skills necessary to do that work. I field a lot of questions from Pagan seekers and I’m happy to listen and make recommendations – I neither need nor want to be paid for this. But eventually, such conversations reach the point where either they’re complete or they need to become something more formal. A spiritual direction arrangement allows the director/client, teacher/student, mentor/mentee relationship to develop the structure and accountability necessary to stimulate spiritual growth.

[For the record, I don’t chat and I don’t carry on informal conversations via social media or e-mail. I don’t do it with my close friends and I don’t do it with casual acquaintances. If I decline your offer for such communication, it’s not because I don’t like you and it’s not because I’m a snob, it’s because I find small talk annoying and unproductive.]

Spiritual direction – both paid and unpaid – is honorable and holy work. But although this work can be done and done well in a secular setting, when it is removed from its context in a shared religious tradition, the opportunity for exploitation (of both the process and the client) grows exponentially.

Many people who in another era would look for a spiritual director are not part of any religious community, or they’re in a church where spiritual direction isn’t widely practiced. Or perhaps they don’t see any power in their religion and they figure if they want to change their life they need to look elsewhere. They’ve heard about this thing called life coaching and so that’s what they look for.

That means if someone wants to offer their spiritual direction services to a wide audience (which is pretty much required if you want to make a living doing it) they’re going to have to promote themselves as a life coach, even though there are life coaches out there (I have no idea how many) who are pushing narcissism, mindless consumption, and faux spirituality.

In the background I hear some very Christ-like Christian ministers saying “tell me about it.”

Helping others find their true calling and develop the skills necessary to carry it out is holy work, whether it’s done in a religious context or in a secular one. If you feel you can benefit from this I encourage you to explore it, whether you look for a spiritual director or a life coach or a knowledgeable, compassionate elder who works under some completely different name. Many use a sliding scale so as not to turn away those with limited financial resources.

Re-enchanting the world is glorious work, but it is also hard work. Just remember you don’t have to do it alone.

You Can’t Practice Paganism While You Look Down Your Nose At It

Last updated on: December 19, 2015 at 3:26 pm By John Beckett

“You can’t practice witchcraft while you look down your nose at it” – Aunt Jet, Practical Magic

On a warm night in June, a dozen or so Pagans gathered in a back yard in Denton, Texas to pay honor to Ma’at, Auset, and Nuit. We cast a circle and made offerings to the land spirits and ancestors. We invoked the Deities of the Occasion with prayers and offerings. We listened for Their response… and They answered.

In that group were several people who are devotional polytheists, who see the Gods as real, distinct, individual beings. One believes all Gods are one God. A couple are relatively new to Paganism and are still trying to figure out what they think. And one doesn’t talk about the Gods very much – I don’t know what they think.

But for that evening, none of that mattered. We gathered, we honored the Gods, and we received Their blessings. The devotions and the blessings were real – the magic worked.

Distinctions matter – all these different ways of thinking about the Gods aren’t equally true or even equally helpful. But the distinctions aren’t the only things that matter, and they matter less in some situations than in others. This is what we mean when we say “orthopraxy not orthodoxy” – doing the right thing is more important than believing the right thing.

Patheos Pagan chief gadfly John Halstead has posted his entry in the “Why I Am Still a Pagan” series with an essay that emphasizes his disbelief in Gods, spirits, and magic. Promoting that disbelief is very important to him:

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.

Now, certainly, John (the other John) is entitled to believe what he thinks is true. And he’s entitled to advocate for his beliefs. Freedom of religion and freedom of speech aren’t just the law of the land, they’re good and virtuous ideas. Except for content that is obscene or libelous, neither Pagan Channel editor Jason Mankey nor Patheos management edit blog posts, and that’s another good thing.

But is that loud and vociferous atheism actually helpful?

John says he is still a Pagan because he believes “Paganism has the potential to re-enchant the world.” Like much of his work, this section of his post is brilliant. He describes how modern society’s over-reliance on the scientific process has led to “individual neurosis, social alienation, and environmental degradation.” He rightly rants against “positivistic science and consumer capitalism” and says “Paganism holds out the promise of restoring our awareness of a dimension of reality that eludes the grasp of the scientist and the salesman.” John clearly understands the need to re-enchant the world, and some part of him wants to re-enchant it, or he’d be writing for the Atheist channel.

But you can’t practice Paganism while you look down your nose at it.

John attempts to bridge the gap between atheism and re-enchantment with the work of Ken Wilber and his “pre/trans fallacy.” Basically, this says that interpreting our religious experiences theistically is pre-rational (i.e. – primitive and unsophisticated) while interpreting them nontheistically is trans-rational (i.e. – enlightened and spiritual). One problem with this approach, as John describes, is that “the pre-rational and the trans-rational sometimes look a lot alike.”

The other problem is that it’s ethnocentric bullshit, reeking of colonizers and missionaries severing conquered peoples from their Gods and ancestors for fun and profit.

John admits he doesn’t know how to re-enchant the world while remaining staunchly non-theistic. I would argue that’s because it’s not possible. Not because belief in Gods, spirits, and the efficacy of magic is necessary (it isn’t) but because being open to their possibility is essential. The stark objectivity and lust for control that separate us from each other and the natural world are the same forces that insist there can be no Gods, spirits, or magic.

For all our deep and very meaningful religious experiences, and for all our educated and reasoned thinking about them, the Gods remain a mystery. If there is such a thing as heresy in contemporary Paganism, it is thinking that we know all there is to know about the Gods. It is in the mystery that we find enchantment. We know just enough to recognize that our experiences are meaningful and helpful, but the mystery points us toward something deeper, something magical, something holy.

It’s been a long time since someone tried to convince me they were a priestess in Atlantis – distancing myself from people like that isn’t very high on my list of priorities. When we try to make Paganism respectable we suck the magic and the life out of it. As Peter Grey said, “In our desire to harm none we have become harmless.”

Paganism is not Christianity – we are not divided into believers and non-believers. If you come to a devotional ritual I’m not going to ask if you think the Gods are individuals or aspects or metaphors. I’m just going to ask you to respectfully pour an offering. I wouldn’t begin to tell you how to interpret your experience. I would just encourage you to be humble enough to accept that you will never fully understand the mystery.

John Halstead is right: Paganism can re-enchant the world. It can restore our connections with the natural world. It can rebuild our ties with our families and communities. It can deepen our understanding of ourselves. It can renew our relationships with the Gods – however we conceive of Them – and help us embody Their virtues.

But it can do none of these things if we are more interested in being rational and looking respectable than in re-enchanting the world.

Spiritual Buffets and the Value of Traditions

Last updated on: July 7, 2015 at 5:26 pm By John Beckett

Imagine, if you will, a grand buffet of the world’s finest foods. Not a $7.99 feeding trough but a spectacular culinary offering that puts the high-end Las Vegas casinos to shame. You’re hungry, so you grab a plate and start filling it. You really like baked potatoes so you grab one. Haven’t had rice pilaf in a while, get some of that too. Don’t know what this pasta dish is but it looks really good. Um, pizza! Oh, and there’s an amazing chocolate cake – gotta have some dessert. Need something to drink – they’ve got a wheat beer that you’ve been wanting to try.

Would this be a tasty dinner? I suppose – I’ve had worse. Would it be a healthy meal? Not at all.

We all recognize that picking dishes at random (“hey this looks good!”) usually results in a mediocre dinner, much less a healthy long-term diet. So why do many people insist on doing the same thing with their spiritual practices?

Last week’s post 5 Reasons You Can’t Find the Right Spiritual Path generated a lot of comments around the proposition that creating your own path is better than immersing yourself in an established path. I don’t intend to recap or rebut that conversation – as I write this, it’s still going on. Instead, I want to explore the value of religious traditions in the context of a religiously plural society.

Merriam-Webster’s on-line dictionary has a four-part definition of tradition. Go read it if you like – their summary says tradition is “a way of thinking, behaving, or doing something that has been used by the people in a particular group, family, society, etc., for a long time.” It’s not things that were randomly thrown together, but things that have been found to be meaningful and helpful over a long period of time. It’s true that after a few generations people can forget why they maintain a tradition, but – particularly in our contemporary society – if it doesn’t remain meaningful and helpful people will stop doing it.

When you follow a religious or spiritual tradition, you’re following a roadmap left by the ancestors of that tradition. I didn’t have to figure out how to be a Druid – I followed the OBOD roadmap. Alternatively, I could have followed the ADF roadmap, or the AODA, or the RDNA. I still had to do the work, and I still had to figure out how to make Druidry my own, but I didn’t have to reinvent the Druid wheel.

The various courses of a good meal all are part of the same cuisine – they support a culinary theme. Likewise, the elements of a religious tradition support a spiritual theme. All religions are not the same: my polytheistic Druidry has very different assumptions, goals, and methods from the Evangelical Christianity of my childhood. Both have different assumptions, goals, and methods from Tibetan Buddhism. Further, the same element will be done differently in different traditions – Buddhist meditation is different from Catholic meditation is different from Druid meditation. Take the practices out of their context and you lose the connection to the overall theme.

Of course, there is the culinary practice of fusion – taking tastes and dishes from different cuisines and remixing them to create something new. Done right, this can be very good, as any fan of Tex-Mex knows. This can be done spiritually as well – I once had a very senior Druid call what I do Druid fusion.

But by the time I was doing Druid fusion I had completed the OBOD course, read extensively from Isaac Bonewits and other ADF sources, and read enough history to understand the Druid Revival. If I had tried to create my own Druidry from the beginning – much less mix it with, say, Buddhism and Wicca – it’s highly likely I’d still be struggling at the beginning.

Doing fusion well – with food or with spirituality – requires a deep understanding of elements and themes, not just picking things at random because they look appetizing.

Without a tradition it’s hard to get started. Without a tradition it’s even harder to move beyond the basics. If there’s nothing to tell you that crab legs are delicious, you’re not likely to ever try to eat them. They look creepy and eating them is a lot of work!

Good religion is a lot of work.

As others have pointed out, your task is to find the right spiritual path for you – which may not be the right path for those around you. There’s no good reason why diving deeply into one tradition should lead to insisting your favored tradition is the One True Way. The problem isn’t with diving deeply into a tradition – the problem is with fundamentalism in general and aggressive monotheistic fundamentalism in particular. Practice deeply but hold your beliefs loosely.

If you’ve spent your whole life subsisting on beans and rice, it’s understandable and even desirable to sample from many sections of the buffet. See what’s out there, see what appeals to you, and most importantly, see what nourishes your body and your soul.

But at some point, pick a cuisine. Pick a spiritual tradition and start diving deeply into it. If after a year or three or five it isn’t nourishing your soul, try something else. But before you rush back to the spiritual buffet, make sure you’ve practiced your chosen tradition long enough and deeply enough to understand why it didn’t work for you, and what might be a better choice next time.