Longing and Contradiction in (Re?)Creating Modern Paganism

Longing and Contradiction in (Re?)Creating Modern Paganism

The emergence of modern Paganism in the post-industrial West in the 20^th and 21^st centuries presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities for those engaged in critical reflection on the nature of this movement, on its defining qualities, and on the specific character of pagan spirituality. The difficulties and opportunities I will describe are very much those I have personally come to identify. In engaging what I see as “difficulties” within the modern Pagan movement, I am not intending to be dismissive or judgmental. I am speaking as a Pagan who cares deeply about the issues I intend to discuss. Clarifying these complexities helps me make sense of my own experience, and I hope, may offer something to others.

I approach this set of issues first and foremost as a scholar of religion. I have studied religion for almost eight years, two of those as a teacher of undergraduates. I inhabit that strange, middle space between insider and outsider that complicates both the study of religion and the practice of it. In order to be organized in my discussion, I want to introduce three Orders of Meaning in the study of religion that I find helpful and use with my First Years. They are:

1.   First Order: The immediate experience of individual religious people in the practice of their religion.
2.  Second Order: The sustained, critical reflection of religious insiders on their own experience, and their attempt to express that reflection in organized ways to both insiders and outsiders. (Sometimes simply called “Theology.”
3.  Third Order: The theoretical perspective of scholarly outsiders, seeking to describe and explain religious practices in non-religious (i.e. social-scientific) terms. 

Most pagans would agree that our First Order experiences (which later then come to be described as “pagan”) generally have some connection to a profound, transformative relationship with the world itself. Many modern Pagans have shifted our attentions from creedal religions of the dominant culture as a consequence of some kind of powerful encounter with the physical world around them, an appreciation for plants and animals, and a positive valuation of the material. It is these experiences that continue to fuel the reflective projects of pagans seeking to explain their experiences in ways that are clear, accessible, and engaging for both insiders and outsiders.

But religion is not simply “sheer experience.” Without symbolic systems, rituals, and cosmologies, these experiences could be characterized as “nature appreciation,” not “nature religion.” And so, recognizing this, modern Pagans look to pre-Christian, paleo-pagan sources for inspiration. We draw on ancient lifeways in order to express our experiences and structure our celebratory responses. We rightly recognize that the pre-Christian religions of our distant, European ancestors also shared this quality of radical engagement with, and positive valuation of, the world. In order to do this, we turn to historical scholarship in order to gather reliable information about what the paleo-pagans “actually did.”

Note that in speaking about modern Pagans, I am discussing the experiences of Euro-descended people who have little-to-no historically continuous connection to the ancient cultures to which they seek to connect. Primarily, these are the descendants of Christian European settler colonists who attempted to reproduce their home cultures in new land, but over time the culture of those colonies transformed and became something radically new. The situation is very different for those who inherited some form of cultural identity with nearly-continuous roots in the place where they still live - broadly, modern Europeans.

Difficulties

Here is where difficulty emerges. Historical scholarship is not a neutral guide to what paleo-pagans “really did,” nor can we totally grasp the complexity of paleo-pagan life and practice through historical scholarship alone. This is not only due to the problem of sources and the implicit biases of scholars, but also to the fact that, in most non-Christian, non-Islamic societies, religion is not a separable element one can detach from human life for its own, separate analysis. Religion, for much of human history, has been deeply interwoven with the other adaptive strategies humans have employed for responding to the realities of their environments. We might even go so far as to say that before Christianity and Islam, there was no such thing as religion; only lifeways which included various techniques for managing a community and structuring human and non-human encounters. Contrary to the creedal, abstract systems at the center of the monotheisms, these techniques would have no meaning apart from their relationship to other cultural modes of kinship, food production, power and prestige, etc. Not only can we not analyze paleo-Pagan religion, we cannot pull its wisdom (however profound) forward out of its context and imagine that it will fit neatly into our own. The wisdom of paleo-pagan religions (if we can call them that) was context-dependent.

The culturally and ecologically context-dependent nature of religion is, I would hope, something all pagans would readily acknowledge. The difficulty comes when we (I think rightly) draw on ancient sources, but then lack ways of making them part of our own cultural experience. One danger is that, in our hunger for systems of meaning which speak to our experience of worldly integration, we may ultimately become consumed with mimicking ancient cultural forms, which become abstract “systems of belief” to which we direct our ultimate attention.

This is not mere speculation; I have experienced this for myself. I have grown increasingly focused on the trappings of pagan practice, and with which "hearth culture" I should choose to structure my personal practice. In doing so, I find myself studying the lifeways of the ancient Greeks and Norse, more than I spend developing my relationship to the world around me. And yet there is no ancient Indo-European culture whose Gods and lifeways "call" to me. I feel no connection to any of these ancient people through my inherited culture (White, Protestant American), nor through my "blood," which I find a difficult concept in and of itself.

The claim of many Pagans and Wiccans is that the mythologies of ancient peoples carry "universal" themes that can be embraced by anyone, and integrated into one's celebration of life and the depth experiences thereof. While I would agree in principle that story-telling communicates Truth in many profound ways, I cannot submit to the level of homogenizing these stories, which are expressions of unique cultures, tied to their specific histories and bioregions, for my own spiritual development. Nor do I find that the truth of their wisdom can be so neatly abstracted. If I could not integrate the abstracted and infinitely reinterpreted stories produced by ancient Israelites and early-first century Judeans into my life in meaningful ways, because of distance of time and space, how am I expected to do so in the case of the Norse, with whom I share no cultural connection? Perhaps it is the poverty of the White American Protestant culture of my upbringing that disconnects me from the wealth of folk traditions that still exist in many parts of the Christianized world. But while unfortunate, I cannot apologize for or change this fact. Nor can I "skip over" this part of my own identity to go hunt for connections to a past which is so distant as to be almost irrelevant.

Longing and Contradiction

The reason I spend so much time pondering this situation is because I feel it speaks to a deep and important longing among modern Pagans. We admire the non-creedal, integrated, world-affirming lifeways of ancient paleo-Pagans and hope to (re)create that form of religion for ourselves, working past centuries of religious alienation produced by religions which insist that any experience of “depth” must be “Not of this World.” But the societies in which ancient paleo-pagan religions were practiced no longer exist; if we celebrate paleo-paganisms because of their seamless integration with daily life, natural systems, and cultural milieu, then the fact that we live in entirely different circumstances means that, even if we could recover these systems, we could not successfully integrate them into our own lives, which is the goal in the first place.

We cannot do as they did and expect to reproduce the same qualities that we uphold as admirable. Simply practicing as they practiced can create a new form of practical dogmatism: the symbols and practices themselves become the priority, rather than the orientation they are meant to produce and reinforce. Also, there is the problem that religion in ancient paleo-pagan cultures (as in many modern indigenous cultures) serves to reinforce socio-cultural systems and their norms; norms to which we may, as moderns, reject out of hand, e.g. patriarchy, execution of prisoners, veneration of the State, etc.

            But neither can modern Pagans build uncritically within our own, modern, post-industrial Western culture. We recognize that paleo-pagan religion was part and parcel of the social order, and served to reinforce socio-cultural systems and their norms; this is still the case in many indigenous religions today. We acknowledge that we do not want religion to serve this function for our own culture, as we’ve seen the dangerous ways in which extremist forms of Protestant Christianity have done so in American society and politics. There are also aspects of American culture, apart from Christianity, which most pagans find distasteful. So in our attempt to (re)create a form of religion that is integrated into life in the way of non-creedal, indigenous lifeways, we run into the problem of producing a system that emerges out of a cultural experience to which we may hold strident objections. We must start from where we are, but the reality of a pluralistic society historically dominated by Christianity means that we already exist in a complex (and often tense) relationship with the signs and systems that were here before us. 

Opportunities: Back to the Orders

So what is the solution? Create a protest driven sub-culture? This can compound on the problems above. How does this sub-culture interact with the dominant culture? How does it respond? How does it avoid the pitfalls of isolationism and escapism? How can modern Pagans integrate their “pagan lives” with their “regular lives” if the sub-culture stands insistently apart?

I am not sure how to answer any of the questions above. But if we are to look for resources to help us generate creative visions of modern Paganism that critically engage the issues above, we need look no farther than our own, modern context.

            The profound opportunity of modern paganism, especially humanistic, scholarly-engaged paganism, is that this movement is creating a conversation among religious "insiders" that spans all of the Orders of Meaning mentioned at the beginning of this post. We are self-consciously engaged in creating religion; and as much as we may want that to happen "naturally," in the way of all other religions of the past, our historical situation makes that approach highly unlikely. The very existence of the comparative study of religion as a field has made modern Paganism possible. The existence of modern Paganism as a site of resistance to prevailing cultural and moral norms gives it a critical stance that members would be wise to embrace. Even the rise of modern science, which has carved out an imaginative space in which moderns can reflect on their lives and world in non-Christian ways, has had a role to play.

Those engaged in reflecting on modern Pagan experiences (2nd Order work) would benefit from engagement with the 3rd Order scholarship in religion, because that scholarship allows for a broader view of the modern pagan project. It roots this project in the wider context of religion as a human activity. In understanding religion as human activity, we come to see better the ways in which it speaks to all parts of the human self, integrates into the fabric of human life, and gives voice to the full range of human experiences. By working consistently within this wider field of vision, we may hopefully avoid a tendency toward parochialism - not because our goal is a kind of Universalism, but because we refuse to focus on the details of localized symbol systems rather than the human-world relationship itself, which is at the core of our 1^st Order experiences.  

Michael York writes, "Paganism is an affirmation of interactive and polymorphic sacred relationship by individual or community with the tangible, sentient, and nonempirical" (Pagan Theology, 161). By "polymorphic," he means "multiple forms." Any form a Pagan chooses to use to affirm this relationship, as long as it works for that person and helps to build community, is, I argue, a valid form of Paganism. I am not interested in arguing which forms/models/symbolic systems individual Pagans ought to use in order to do this. But I do argue that serious, 2nd Order work on the part of scholars like myself ought to consider the relationship to be our primary concern, and ought to ask whether our forms of expression are enabling or hindering that primary relationship.

For those engaged in 2^nd Order work like myself, I would argue that we ought to ask ourselves not "What is the content of our religion?" (Polytheism? Animism? Pantheism?) but rather, "What kind of religion are we building?" "What orientation toward the world are we seeking to give shape and expression?"  For it is not the symbolic content that makes a practice pagan. For me, and I would think for many humanistic Pagans, paganism cannot only be the attempt to revive ancient paleo-pagan practice for modern people. As much as I honor that goal, it is not enough. I say this as a person who has done serious scholarly work in the past, and considers themselves a historian. For me, in order for Paganism to be a religion I can live, I must resist the temptation to turn it into yet one more historical pet-project. Historical and sociological research have dominated my academic life up unto this point; however, now that I am seriously pursuing 2nd Order work as a self-identified Pagan, I know that I have to shift gears. This is difficult for me, and represents a serious level of dedication. I once promised myself and others that I would never do theology, and here I am, about to enter a Philosophy and Theology program in order to engage these questions in a sustained and critical way. My hope is to engage emerging modern philosophies – like ecstatic naturalism and process philosophy – from a Pagan perspective, in order to see how these might help frame Pagan experience in ways that speak to the modern heart and mind.

As much as I value 2^nd Order activity and intend to pursue it as an academic, it is important to note that this work is supplemental; it is not an exchange for the actual being and doing of Paganism. My speculative engagement with these philosophies ought to support that being and doing, not replace it. The problem with the abstract is not that it is abstract, but that it is divorced from lived experience. By engaging critical issues, we challenge ourselves to live more deeply, more authentically, and more thoughtfully as a consequence. Whether we honor the Aesir or the Goddess, meditate silently or pour out offerings, let our practice affirm our sacred relationship to this world and its many Beings – however we envision them.

            

Walking the Path: Am I Called? Live the Questions.

I've been digging through dozens of blog posts over at Patheos' Pagan Channel. There are so many different perspectives within the neopagan community (which, if you want to use the "large umbrella" sense of the term, includes Wiccans, Goddess devotees, and others). I find it exciting to encounter all of these points of view, and to consider them seriously and thoughtfully as I work out my own sense of the path I'm on, why I'm on it, etc.

Over at Heathen At Heart on Patheos, Molly Khan's recent post spoke to a concern that I've been muddling over for a while. One of the prevailing ideas that I've encountered among explicitly polytheist neopagans is the notion that we don't choose to worship the Gods, they choose us, call us, or pester us until we recognize them. One of my first blog posts on this subject jokingly used the metaphor of Eris "tailgating me" until I "switched lanes," but that's all it was - a metaphor. I consider myself spiritually tone-deaf, for the most part. Switching to the pagan path for me is a choice; the symbol system fits, the cosmology and ritual gives form to a set of existential and philosophical principles that I (more or less) consider to be valid.

Khan's blog post, while pushing back against the growing normative model of a "call" from the Gods, still spoke of a sense of connection, an implicit feeling of a numinous/sacred sense that only later in her life she came to recognize as Nerthus, the Norse goddess of the Earth. She ends the post with the suggestion to "Honor who you will, and don’t wait for deities to come knocking down your door – the choice is yours."

While I really appreciate the suggestion that it's ok to seek out a Deity and start seeking a relationship with Them, I still have this niggling feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Modern (and probably Paleo-) Paganism is very much about experience. In Jordan Paper's Polytheological work, The Deities Are Many, he points out the much-echoed sentiment among other Pagans that "Faith is both meaningless and irrelevant. We know what we experience; it takes no leap of faith to assume the reality of deities we have directly encountered. [...] Arising from encounters in rituals, visions, and so forth, our acceptance of the validity of the experienced deities is absolutely no different, except more certain, than knowledge gained from sensory experiences." (p. 13-14)

Remember when I said I consider myself spiritually tone-deaf? Perhaps it's my Protestant upbringing, but I don't think I've ever had a "sacred experience." Perhaps once or twice while singing lyrics that felt profoundly true, but they were very difficult to interpret. I've spent so long studying the sacred experiences of others, I think I may have stunted the growth of my own ability to have those experiences myself!

While reading Khan's post, I found myself thinking back to my childhood. (Queue future post about memory dynamics and their importance to identity - until I write it, you should check out this fine post over at Aedicula Antinoi.) I don't often think back that far. My mental space is generally filled to capacity by a number of simultaneously running "programs," most of which inevitably end up slowing down my processing speed. Inevitable result: Absent-Minded Professor Syndrome. (I actually dislike computational metaphors for the brain, but this seems to work. But I digress!)

I thought back to my early teens, when I would spend hours hiking alone in the scrub-brush-covered hills of my hometown, climbing rocks and letting myself wander. I'd let myself get lost, or "pixie-led" as I used to call it. (Thanks Ari Berk and Brian Froud.)  When I got old enough, I'd ride my horse alone over the hills, through the washes, and over fields. My horse was old - nearly 30 and well-retired from his previous life as an endurance racer - but he and I had adventures like you wouldn't believe. I was in-tune with the natural world in ways that I can't even fathom anymore. One day, when my father and sister went out for a ride and didn't return home at the expected time, I attempted to track them, with a fairly decent degree of success (they returned home before I caught up with them).

All that changed when I went to college. I spent so much time in my head and indoors, that I lost touch with that world-sense, that connection to other beings beyond my human community. Even though I started studying religion, I now believe that I actually lost my capacity for religion. I assumed that religion required belief, and that this faith thing was about assent to doctrines on the basis of revealed scripture. (Protestant baggage) I never learned, in the first place, that spirituality and religion were (or should be) primarily rooted in one's experience of the Sacred. As I lost my sense for connection to the world around me, I didn't realize that I was, in fact, losing my religion. What I mistook for a failure in belief was really an experience of belief that failed to correlate with any meaningful experience.

It didn't help that I started to struggle with anxiety and depression as an undergraduate, which inhibited my ability (or even desire) to feel anything at all. I retreated into intellectual hyper-space and rode a knowledge-high all the way through graduate school, where I continued to study religion! It was in graduate school that I came into contact with Process theology/philosophy, with my first queer friends, and with parts of myself that I didn't know existed. The inner landscape of my own being terrified me; I stuck to "eh, I do what I do, I don't need to know who I really am" for some time. But the intellect-high was becoming unsustainable, and by the time I finished my M.A., that constant chasing of the "high" had failed to produce any of the expected results or benefits. I failed to get into any PhD programs. I floundered. My "Self" was entirely a product of my intellectual pursuits and capacities. If those pursuits and capacities failed to meet the (arbitrary, commercialized, socially-determined) markers of worthiness and value, then what value did I have? Zip. None. Zilch.

I got as low as I've ever been.

I started teaching, floundering still, and doubly-smacked by my former failings and my ongoing incompetence as a new teacher. Let's just say, it's taken a LOT of work to claw my way out of that hole. I think I've escaped (for the most part), but there's a difference between recognizing that you've stunted your emotional/spiritual growth and actually growing emotionally and spiritually.

I tried to pick up on Christian practices again, hoping that some of those flashes of feeling and connection I had previously experienced would start to fill the void.

They didn't. It isn't that the Christian symbol-system isn't "true" enough, or beautiful enough, or meaningful enough. That's what makes it all so frustrating; I understand Christianity extraordinarily well. It IS beautiful, meaningful, and "true" (in a sense). But now that I'm letting stunted parts of me grow, I find that the framework, the trellis, offered by Christianity (of various brands and flavors) no longer supports me. As a child, I thought I was a tomato. As it turns out, I'm climbing jasmine! (Or vice versa. This metaphor is extraordinarily superficial. Gardening metaphors are not my strong suit.)

But what is the right framework? How do I know which system "fits" best? My intellect keeps trying to form a logical argument, some kind of justification for why one is better than another. But now I know, or at least have a sense of, the fact that you don't "choose" a symbol system purely by intellect alone. You've got to let your vines reach out and grab onto those frames which best support them. It's a blind reach, but once you've got a firm hold, you know whether it will support you or not. The system I'm currently investigating (best described by the articles on the Ar nDraoicht Fein website) feels right. It doesn't just conform to certain intellectual positions (Process Philosophy being the strongest one). It clicks with deep needs and sensibilities, for reasons I can't quite articulate.

Is that the same as a "call"? I'm not sure. I'm not very good at this "heeding experience" thing. "Feeling" itself is difficult for me. But I know, deep down, that seeking to answer this question is worthwhile. The Pagan path has offered me the best tools I have encountered for doing so. Of course, it can't all be about the "answers." As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote,

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Walking the Path: Scavenger Hunt!

So I don't consider myself to be a Jungian in any sense of the term (I shudder at the gross over-generalizations of archetypes); however, today was filled with some rather interesting correspondences that may or may not be meaningful.

Despite having only just brushed the surface of my ADF Introduction to the Druid Path, and having spent only about 12 total minutes doing visualization work, and even though I have barely even begun to do the research and study required to truly understand my hearth culture, I decided that I really, really wanted to establish my home altar/shrine. I tend to jump the gun on things like this. Maybe I am just ready to stop thinking and start doing. Over-thinking has had a paralyzing effect on me in the past, and was one of the main reasons why I stopped practicing any path altogether. I have also been impressed by the commonly repeated notion in the ADF that paganism and druidry are far more about "doing than believing." I'm down with that!

So of course I read up on and refreshed my understandings of the basics. I knew I'd need a "cauldron," a "fire," and a "tree," or symbols thereof. Ok, cool. Gotchya. I tried to hunt down two of what I affectionately call "Woo Woo Stores" in my area, only to find that both were closed. Alright then. I decided to settle for Pier 1 and Home Goods. Who cares if said "cauldron" was originally intended as the centerpiece for a soccer mom's outdoor patio table? What matters is intent, not origin*.

So I gathered the raw materials, excited as much by the steps I was taking as by the opportunity to do some shopping and gather "pretty things." (I'm a red-blooded American. Capitalism is as much my religion as Christianity ever was, I'm sorry to say.)

I brought my items home and set them up on the plastic set of drawers currently set in front of my window, for lack of a better space. This is the time to mention that I rent a room in someone else's house, and my room is small. I'd love to use her fabulous backyard setting (complete with an area that would be perfect for ADF ritual), but I doubt she'd appreciate that use of her space. Or, maybe I'm just to nervous to ask!

I checked back in with the ADF guide about how to go about making this sucker (said altar) sacred. (Did I mention I'm sometimes just a little spiritually tone deaf?) Where should the water for the cauldron come from? What kind of "Tree" should I use? The guide suggested I gather the water from three different sources - preferably all from natural, running streams.

Ok. Whoah. Time out. I live in Southern California. There is no running water. If I tried to gather "free water" from three different sources, I'm afraid someone would come up and try to tax me for it. Thankfully, I happen to live in a town with a watershed running through it. There's a pleasant little stream in a little gully that bisects a local park. It was getting close to sunset, but I figured that this was magic time, and I could make it a kind of pilgrimage to gather water from the stream. I haven't gone out to walk in a while, being both out of shape and depressed, so I appreciated the challenge to get outside my comfort zone.

As soon as I stepped out of the house, things started to correspond. Two ravens cried at me as I walked out onto the sidewalk. Now it's Southern California. There are always ravens. But it seemed opportune, considering the grove I joined is called Raven's Cry, and I have  started to form a connection with Odin, whose familiars, Hugin and Munin, were both ravens.

I walked through the neighborhood, happy for once to have my headphones out and my eyes open to the natural beauty around me. Then, in the midst of my path, a freshly dead raven. The ants had just started to get to it. I wondered what it could mean. It didn't shock me, and I didn't immediately take it as a "Bad Omen." *Lightning Crashes in the Background* Rather, I was reminded of the reality of death and change. According to Norse myth, even Odin will die one day, at the Ragnarok. I didn't know why the raven had died, but I was also reminded that most animals in urban and suburban areas die as a result of human impact. If non-human animals are also our Kindreds, then this could have served as a reminder of our responsibility to them, and our failures.

I walked on, and reached the park. The sign stood out to me as another correspondence. Norwegians.

Now, the first Norwegian settlers in the area, whose descendants founded my alma mater and current place of employment, were primarily Lutheran Christians. I started out as a Lutheran Christian. It was one of the reasons I attended that school (just down the road from the park) in the first place. But before that, the ancestors of these settlers (and my own!) worshiped many Gods, acknowledged many Realms, and honored the relationships between them all connected by the great World Tree, Yggdrasil, nourished by the Well of Urd, or Fate.

I passed the sign into the park and down into the gully, where I found a shady spot, not to be interrupted. Of course, the nice man watching his daughter play on the swings on level ground above wanted to say hello and chat. I had to stop and remind myself that humans are my Kin too. I must make space for them and offer hospitality. I opened the bottle I had and prepared to gather the waters.

Earth Mother, you offer up your waters to nourish us all.
Forgive us humans for taking more than our share. 
Let these waters cleanse, sanctify, and nourish me 
As they cleansed, sanctified, and nourished our ancestors. 
Let these waters be for me as the Well of Wyrd.
In them let me see my fate unfold, 
Let me see the unfolding Wyrd and shape my life accordingly.

I placed my bottle under a tiny fall created by a lifted root, and filled it with the surprisingly clear water. Then I braced myself against a tree, whose tangled roots were visible and which was nourished by the stream.

World Tree, Yggdrasil, you connect all the realms.
You shade, support, and center all creatures.
Offer us a path between the realms, 
That we might have fellowship with all the Kindreds.

Further on my walk, I gathered plants and flowers I knew I'd offer to the Nature Spirits later. Two different kinds of lavender, some red seeds from a tree I don't know the name of, a pine cone, a sprig of ivy, and, go figure, a raven's feather.

But it was starting to get dark and I had a long walk home. I started to worry, "What the heck am I going to use as a World Tree?" Well, it was a good thing there was a Trader Joe's on the way home! I bought a tiny potted rosemary plant (small space, remember?). It was no "World Tree," nor was it a stately pole with the face of a God carved into it, but it was green, alive, and fragrant. Good enough for me!

I returned home to assemble my pieces. I have decided to wait until tomorrow to continue, as the ADF has an extensive hallowing rite that I want to be able to complete when my mind is fresh. It looks fairly good, if I might say so. Of course, intention and work are what matter, not flashiness or aesthetics. Michael J. Dangler of the ADF wrote about his first home shrine, constructed in his college dorm room, out of "three bowls and a stick." I am sure that the quality of Michael's devotions more than made up for the simplicity of his altar; perhaps his Gods admired his frugality! I don't know whether my own devotions and meditations will be pleasing to whatever Gods and/or Spirits are out there, Odin, Frigga, Baldur, Eris, Athena, Dionysus, or whoever else wants to show up. I only hope that it can serve as a space in which I can learn to kindle in my own heart a true fire of hospitality.

*Notes: Edited. I flipped the two! Fixed!

Walking the Path

Now that I've decided to embrace an Order, future posts here at Shrewd Speculations will tend to focus on my observations and reflections on the Dedicant Path. The path ahead is long (I definitely can't see the end of it from here, nor the stumbling blocks!) so I anticipate quite a few posts on this topic.

Stay Tuned!

(I promise not to disappear this time.)

A New Year, a New Path (Or how the Goddess of Chaos tailgated me until I moved over into the right lane.)

Wow. Why did I abandon this blog? Possibly because I had Tumblr for a while, then I fucked up so badly that I left under a cloud of ignominy. I felt thrashed by the unfortunate situation that caused me to leave, and spent a lot of time agonizing over it. I did not then realize that those events, which I could only see as disastrous at the time, were in fact important omens of things to come.

During graduate school, I had been introduced to the Mysteries of Eris by a good friend. The Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (or POEE) and the Principia Discordia seemed at the time to be silly and just for fun, even if they also offered up a particularly apt and helpful way of understanding Reality. I found appeals to Eris and Discordian philosophy to be helpful as I made sense of the challenges of graduate school, the collapse of my ego after PhD program rejections, and the unique, exquisitely painful realities of adjunct teaching.

I've been teaching undergraduates as an adjunct lecturer for one and a half years now. During that time, the seeds of doubt and confusion planted in me during graduate school began to blossom. I've studied religion for eight years, I told my students, but I still don't a) really know what it is, nor do I b) actually know what I believe. I started out as a Lutheran Protestant. Then, through an academic exposure to Greek & Coptic Orthodoxy, I fancied myself a mystic with a deep appreciation for High Liturgy. (I mean, hey, who doesn't appreciate High Church liturgy?) Discordianism, Existentialism, Process philosophy/theology, and a few attempts at teaching World Religions then spun me around so fast I hardly knew which way was up.

While I taught, many things changed: I had to stop and actually check in with myself, rather than flutter about in the realm of intellectual potentiality. I finally figured out my sexuality. (Asexual!) By extension, my gender-identity came into question. (Agender? Gender-Queer? IDFK.) I suppose the religion question was due to come back around eventually.

Enter Eris.

A few days ago, I made use of Discordian metaphors in a comical, cultural-critique performed at an eclectic artists' salon in Los Angeles, put on by San Peña Producciones. According to the feedback I got after the show, it worked. It worked really well. Not only was I actually funny (go figure!), but they got it. I started to feel that Eris' chaos-power was a useful way to think and talk about the absurdity of claims to the objective truth-value of particular models of the Order of Reality. Orders (or paradigms, or models, etc.) are never objectively verifiable or "True," but they can be evaluated - by their effects. Some Orders are more beautiful than others. Some are more likely to lead humans to responsible, ethical behavior than other models.

Suddenly, I didn't feel so anxious about picking a model.

Sometimes, it takes an experience of Chaos to push (poke, prod, provoke, prick, etc.) us into adopting more authentic, more genuine, more beautiful models of Order. Sometimes, Chaos bites us in the ass if we linger too long between Orders, refusing (out of laziness) to adopt one. Refusing to adopt an Order doesn't make you more "tolerant" or more "enlightened" than anyone else; it casts you adrift; it removes you from a context; it leads you into apathy; it disorders your relationships with others an the world. Order is as necessary as Chaos. Chaos isn't evil, nor is Order. I tend to value Chaos over Order, generally because I associate Order with domination or control. But this doesn't need to be the case. Only shitty and ill-conceived Orders/Frameworks/Paradigms lead to Domination. The trick is to recognize that Order and Chaos are not separate "things," but potentialities inhering in all human beings. We are the bridges between Chaos and Order, and with those two powers we can make the world. But we most do so carefully, with a deep sense of responsibility for the consequences of that Order, for ourselves as well as for others - human and non-human, as well as for the planet.

....

So what is the Order for me? What Framework will I adopt as I step out onto a new Path, one hopefully characterized by careful, well-intentioned steps, a clear goal, and a sense of responsibility?
I love Christianity. Truly. If this seems in doubt, realize that I've spent the last 8 years studying it, and four of those were spent almost exclusively obsessed with MONKS. Really. I learned two dead languages to try to better understand these amazing people from the past.

But as I've been kicked about by Chaos and its many minions, as I have started to integrate the vast amount of data I have accumulated about religion over the years (that's going to take a while!), I have found that the monotheistic, creedal paradigm just doesn't work for me anymore. I don't know if it ever really did, or if I was just fooling myself. (As a counterpoint, Eris would fart in my face and chortle: "You're ALL just fooling yourselves!")

I had the great pleasure to attend two rituals held by my local Druid grove, affiliated with Ar nDraiocht Fein, or ADF. I went out of sheer academic curiosity during Imbolc and had a ball. The second time was for their Skirophoria ritual, a Greek "first-fruits" celebration. This second ritual happened the day AFTER my Discordian-themed rant at the San Peña salon. A friend of mine from graduate school and her BF were there as well. Unlike me, they have long identified with neo-pagans.

In the midst of the dance offering, one of the offering bowls to the omphalos (axis mundi/World Tree) was overturned. An apple was kicked aside, and I swear, when that apple rolled, it was like a flash bang. It knocked me back, blinded me, deafened me; but in that dark silence there was a ringing in my ears then a faint laughter. Gotchya Bitch! ... Thanks, Eris.

If you know anything about the myth of the Apple of Discord, the apple was the equivalent of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand for the ancient Greek world. It helped kick off the Trojan War. The instant I picked up the apple, I shared a horrified look with my friend. HOLY SHIT. Was this a sign?

Now, if you know me, you know that I don't put much stock in "woo woo" stuff. Really. I'm pretty skeptical. I also happen to be spiritually tone deaf. But in this moment, when the Gates were open and the Sacred Space centered us all within a truly meaningful Cosmos ... I felt connected.

So you know what? Maybe Gods and Goddesses do exist. Maybe they don't. But what I do know is that in my initial studies into the cosmology and assumptions held by the ADF, I finally feel like I've found an Order that centers me. So I'm going to read my ADF guide. I'm going to work with and support my local Grove. I'm going to pray, which is something I haven't done in nearly a year. Not just that, but I'm going to follow the ADF's Order of Ritual for the Solitary as I pray. This former-Protestant is going full Catholic Pagan!

You know what? I'm actually excited. For the first time in a while, I've got a path. Why not walk for a while, enjoy the scenery, and see where it goes?