Via Tom Murphy VII via Wikimedia CC license<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nFirst, you imply an elitism that comes with intellectualism. Then, you seem to imply that intellectualism is bad, being \u201can attack,\u201d and \u201ca cold dissection.\u201d So too, then, elitism is bad, yes? And yet, instead of arguing against intellectualism and championing a more intuitive approach, which I would have thought (given your introduction) was the direction you were going to take, you say that pagans need more access to books, even going so far to as to suggest that the aim of pagan education should be to create scholars. So, which is it? Are you asking for less intellectualism (= less elitism) or are you saying that pagans in general should seek to become an intellectual elite?<\/p>\n
On the subject of books, I agree that there is a lack of material concerning certain theological concepts like \u201cpolytheology,\u201d especially in a neopagan context, but I disagree that this is synonymous with a lack of access. On the contrary, I think that the problem is that such works haven\u2019t been written yet! In my academic life, I find myself deep within the bowels of one of the country\u2019s largest research libraries every single day, and I can tell you that I\u2019ve scoured the bookshelves (and ILL) and a large corpus of books on contemporary pagan theology, especially written by-and-for pagan audiences, doesn\u2019t exist. There are plenty of works by historians, religion scholars, NRM scholars, sociologists, etc., but those are about paganism, not from within paganism. It\u2019s etic scholarship, not emic theology. What we do have from within paganism is, I think you\u2019re right, too often aimed at \u201cbeginner\u201d levels; this makes it frustrating for those of us who have been at all this for a while!<\/p>\n
But even this talk of \u201clevels\u201d points back toward the broad topic of over-intellectualism in paganism. Don\u2019t we often talk about ourselves in terms of \u201clevels\u201d, Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced? This seems me to be a typology foreign to other traditions, or at least foreign the lay members of other traditions. (Have you ever heard of an \u201cIntermediate\u201d lay Muslim?) Why do we organize ourselves in this way, and, if we\u2019d like to lessen intellectual elitism, wouldn\u2019t it be best to rethink this organizational structure?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I think the answer to the question \u201cwhy\u201d we organize ourselves hierarchically in such a way is a vestige of the degree-oriented, esoterically-minded European Christian mystery traditions of which Wicca (and thus much of paganism in general) is a descendant. Let\u2019s not forget that Wicca started out essentially as a training ground for esoteric philosophers: At Third Degree, you\u2019d have been exposed to the philosophical concepts, states of consciousness, etc., that would allow you to comprehend the mysteries of the entire Western Mystery Tradition. So, now, all of us are left with the (tacit) expectation of undergoing a lot of training\u2014esoteric education\u2014in our religious pursuits. This takes the form of all the correspondence charts, Kabbalistic material, and talk about \u201cWill\u201d that I\u2019m sure is familiar to all of us.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m getting at is that, in the main, most of us have imposed upon ourselves a pretty steep and long learning curve that leads to bookishness and, perhaps, elitism. The reason pedagogy is so hard in such a situation is because Wicca\/paganism\u2019s religious language is a highly developed philosophical language meant to be understood by would-be philosophers and esotericists, not our pagan-festival-roaming nine year-olds or those of us who (you\u2019re right) don\u2019t have access to De Occult Philosophia<\/em> or The Theology of Aristotle<\/em>. And yes, today\u2019s family-style American Wicca is not Gardner\u2019s Wicca, that\u2019s true, but in my opinion the Wiccans among us have not yet successfully translated Wiccan teachings for young and, let\u2019s not forget, uninitiated, audiences.<\/p>\nRecons have got it a little different, though on the ground running a lot of the same historical tangles apply. Let\u2019s keep in mind that \u201cThe Recons\u201d aren\u2019t a single coherent community, and that, rather, reconstructionism is essentially a methodological stance. Therefore, my point is that those attempting reconstruction of ancient practices have set before themselves an essentially\u2014at its outset\u2014academic task, since reconstruction by its nature requires historical materials. Reconstructionist parents, then, won\u2019t be teaching their children all the ins and outs of reconstruction (i.e., their methodology), but instead the traditions that they (the parents) have already reconstructed. I think we\u2019ll see the trend of folks who practice reconstructed traditions being perceived as (overly?) academic ending with time, since the reconstructionist projects will come to a close and the traditions will enter \u201cPhase II: Revived Living Tradition,\u201d if you will. (Of course these practices will be modified by children brought up in \u201cRecon\u201d families, should they stay within the faiths, but later!)<\/p>\n
And so paganism at its various \u201ccores\u201d has a tendency toward intellectualism, and it\u2019s up to us to decide how we want to deal with that. We can choose, on the one hand, to think that philosophizing is still the heart of our religious practices, maintaining the primacy of \u201cteachings\u201d, and then we\u2019ll have to deal with the elitism that that would potentially breed. Or, on the other hand, we can choose to forgo esotericism and work toward building a religious culture that is more\u2026 and I struggle to find the word here\u2026 experiential? embodied? pious? communal? We\u2019d have to work out what to call it once we\u2019d developed it! In either case, contemporary paganism has a long way to go before any of this becomes routine. Until then, let\u2019s keep up this conversation about the role (and nature) of pagan education!<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The following started out as a comment to be made on Star\u2019s Nov. 9th post, \u201cElitism: The Intellectual Path in Paganism.\u201d Because what I was writing grew and grew into a pretty wide-ranging little article, I thought I\u2019d go ahead and publish it as its own blog post. So, the references to \u201cyou\u201d below are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,12,13,22,26,31,35,44,45,47,48,59,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-classics","category-community","category-family","category-gardnerian","category-history","category-magick","category-pagan-101","category-paganism","category-polytheology","category-praxis","category-values","category-wicca"],"yoast_head":"\n
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