If everything is holy—imbued with divine power—how do we relate to that holiness? We pay attention. We find connection. We give back. One definition of sacred is "set apart and dedicated to a deity." How do Heathens act in ways that are dedicated to Thor or Ing? How do Thelemites act in concert with the energy of Nuit? How do Celtic Reconstructionists honor the ever-abundant cauldron of the Dagda? I could go on, but the implications of these questions should be clear: we bring everything in our lives into alignment with our worship and our practice. We can give food to the hungry as an act of devotion to the Dagda. We can offer protection to the weak, in Thor's honor. And we can remember: Nuit is everywhere, the circumference of all that lives.
Many Pagans connect—or say we do, or try—with the earth. Other magick workers connect—or say we do, or try—with the sun and stars and limitless divine. My personal call is to bring these two visions and ways of being together again. I want to repair my shattered thinking and fragmented action into as seamless a whole as possible. I want to be like Isis, repairing Osiris. I want to be like Freyja, standing boldly for what I love. I want to remember that the Glastonbury Thorn, having been brutally decimated, is once again sprouting green shoots this Spring.
Life is a generous thing, and generosity is a key ingredient to magick and the manifestation of desire. Without it, energy becomes constricted, scarce, and we retreat more and more into fear and isolation; our separate clans take precedence over the whole, and we devolve into clannishness and fear, rather than coming together from our divergent places, offering the gifts unique to our separate cultures, practices, and to each individual. Generosity brings us back into the flow of love and justice, back toward health, and the formation of alliances of mutual aid, in all the worlds seen and unseen.
In what ways do our lives not reflect our spiritual tenets? In what ways do our rituals not touch the day to day? How are we still compartmentalizing aspects of our lives? How do we separate our communities from larger human society, from Gaia, and from the great, primordial process of creation?
Can we commit to asking ourselves these questions and to bringing our lives and communities back toward wholeness?
As magick workers and Pagans, we come from spiritual and religious convictions that will give rise to actions that look different from those of my Catholic compatriots, but we can act nonetheless. In his recent campaign to raise money for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, Peter Dybing showed that we can also work together. I pray that we will continue to do so. We can live from (poly)theologies of justice and connection. Therein lies hope.
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