Pagan Soup: What Pagans Can Accomplish & Goddessy Gaga

Pagans Supporting Japan

It’s a good time to be Pagan. I’m very proud of our community. Peter Dybing’s fundraising efforts for Doctors Without Borders have raised over $23,000 and this week is the home stretch to reach the $30,000 goal. I wouldn’t have thought it possible that we could have raised so much so quickly. It’s a beacon shining forth of what Pagans, Wiccans, Heathens, Recons and all the other fabulous folks who make up our communities can accomplish together. Please contribute what you can, whether it’s $5 or $500 it inches us closer to our goal.

Building Infrastructure

Cara Schulz at PNC-Minnesota has created a series focusing on Pagans creating Sacred Spaces. Part 4 is up and features on the Sacred Paths Center in St. Paul. You can find the story here and the first video below.

This series is a great resource for Pagans seeking to create or maintain infrastructure for our communities. I’ve found this series fascinating as many of my friends are seriously tackling the infrastructure issue in their communities.

Is Gaga Promoting Goddess Spirituality?

That’s what LA Times’ Ann Powers wants to know but remains a firm skeptic:

Turning goddess culture dystopian and sexy — and focusing not on the often militantly uncool women’s movement that (pun avoidable) birthed it, but on the queer community that, lately, has been making remarkable inroads in the Glee-ful mainstream  — Gaga has found a way to place female empowerment at the center of her vision without sacrificing the gains she makes by being a daddy’s girl or a “boy toy.”

I am admittedly a Gaga fan, albeit not a rabid one. I find the sci-fi theology expounded at the begin of the video awkward and uninspiring, but I find the Mother Monster concept unique. Gaga is going beyond diva and setting herself up as the living goddess and “Bona Dea” of her people. It’s a powerful thing and I have to respect her savvyness. She’s not creating music but a movement, and it will be fascinating to chart her success.

One thing I have to take Ms. Powers to task on is her seeming sneer at “flowing Wiccan skirts” in the same article she criticizes “Gaga dancing in a scant bikini.” Just what are the aesthetic requirements to be a proper feminist? A Hillary-esque pantsuit? Organic cotton macrame halter top? A burka? A corset?

I think feminism is what you do, not how you look. As a semi-granola Wiccan with both flowing skirts and corsets in my wardrobe, I believe embracing Goddess spirituality is about embracing empowerment. As the late great Eleanor Rossevelt said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Whether in a bikini or a burka I know “the Goddess speaks with certainty” and that it is by your deeds you are known. If Gaga is building a Goddess-inspired cult of acceptance for disco baby/club kid culture, then good for her. She could be writing derivative, insipid and uninspired music about being a desperate sex-kitten who embraces sexual escapism and needing a man to feel whole and at peace.

What do you think? Is Gaga a good representative of Goddess spirituality?