So Who Should Step Forward?

Should anyone?

There’s a movement afoot among the pagan community, in dribs and drabs currently, but it seems to me to be picking up momentum. I read this post from magickfortherealworld, in which there seems to be a call for some kind or organisation, some sort of concerted outreach for new members. The poster regrets the fact that paganism has no mechanism for promoting recruitment and inclusiveness. The reason Christianity has this mechanism is precisely because it was given as a Christian duty by the man himself. No-one can give pagans that duty or that right, in my opinion.

The Pagan community prides itself on allowing anyone to believe their own beliefs without judgement, and while this may be good, there seems to a lot more difficulty in creating a community because of it. 

If we’re to move forward, we have to preserve that which makes us unique. There cannot be any merit in making us into a pop-lite version of the very religions we seek to be different from. Not fighting fire with fire takes guts; more, it takes an acceptance of the long game and the effort required to push the battle beyond our individual lifetimes.

Our lack of judgement of other religious paths cannot be seen as a lack of moral effort; to allow the person next to you to express their views when their views make your blood boil, and vice versa, is the essence of tolerance and free thought. This is the battle we have to fight and win, not the numbers game.

There are obvious problems with paganism; its fractured nature, its difference, its lack of a concerted effort; in short, a lack of a unified message. Not easy to spin, nor to easily explain, or explain away. 

Pagans are taught not to push their religion/spirituality on anyone else and this keeps our communities small and isolated.

This equation doesn’t balance. We are not concerted, because we aren’t all going the same way. If we were, Goddess knows, we might just be unstoppable. But life is full of conflicts, and we’re just as conflicted as the next human and fallible religious group, and we know it. This is actually a strength.

Paganism seems difficult to the modern world because it makes you think and it isn’t easy to explain. All you pagans out there know how hard it is to lucidly describe, in words the layperson can easily grasp, what it is you do and believe. This is a threatening thing to be faced with. Once you have a name and a description, you can categorise and compartmentalise that which threatens you and file it away. 

I can’t agree with what is proposed in the post, for the simple reason that it is not that we are ‘pushed’ not to proselytise, but that there isn’t anyone to push us in the first place - and thank the Goddess for that. If we seek to emulate the world faiths that do have a positive mandate to ’spread the word’, who’s going to take the lead? Who has the authority? Surely, one of the defining characteristics of paganism is its plurality. There is no one true way… and so how do we shepherd seekers along it, if it is not defined?

The lack of a formal path, the lack of teachers, the lack of an accepted face of paganism is not a weakness, but a strength. It keeps us searching. It keeps us asking questions. It stops the ‘we’re holier than you’ argument. Finally, and I can’t believe it would ever get that far, but I bet that’s what Jesus thought too - it stops humans uniting in the name of the God / Goddess and going to war. If we need places to go, to meet, then we can find them. If we feel that it isn’t easy enough to bring our kind together, well, we need to effect long-lasting and slow-moving paradigmatic change, within our own individual societies. Witchcraft has only been a recognised faith path for 50 years in the modern world, and I don’t believe anyone seriously tries to include any of the preceding centuries in the pot for the purposes of census-taking. Fifty years isn’t long enough to form a coherent strategy in a religious movement unless you’re Scientology. And I don’t think, respect to them, that Scientology is an acceptable model for paganism to follow.

Without the doubt, the effort, the different paths, what are we? Children trying on their parents’ shoes. We’re better than this.

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This just seen on The Wild Hunt, discussing the internal construction of pagan religions and their perceived grouping. Very interesting indeed, in the light of the above posts, the discussion happening over at magickfortherealworld’s blog and comments here.

Embodied, Embedded Mysticism

We’ve all been discussing recently, both here, on other blogs and on several forums, how to reach the Divine, how to approach it. How do you seek to be closer to your Gods and Goddesses? I’ve managed to answer this question, but not well; and I feel the people who asked for an answer on this cannot have gone away wholly satisfied with the ideas I shared.

Some do it through ritual, some by complex mantras, some by theatre and music, some by throwing off the robes and dancing, some by fasting and asceticism. Some do it by going apart from the race of man and being still, being quiet.

My idea has always been that the divine is all around, that by seeking to calm oneself and still the internal monologue one can always tap into the constant rill of power that courses through every part of everyone’s life. So the hermitry I joked about several posts ago isn’t as funny as I thought! Of course, there’s no requirement for us to relinquish the world at large; all that is needed is an ability to let it go when required.

This idea has been given a name by Carol P Christ in this post; I think a great many pagans and people of other faith feel this way about the world around us; perhaps it will become a legitimate means by which we seek to align ourselves with the Divine, if it isn’t already. My humble attempts at communication find a label!

Goddess, God; You are everywhere, but I worship You here.

Experience beats study?

This posted by Cat Chapin-Bishop on The Wild Hunt. Saying, more eloquently and concisely than I could ever dream of doing, precisely what it’s all about.

We can theorise and make theory our God, or we can experience and learn and be. I know which I’d rather.

Andy talked recently on Somerset Pagan about simplification, going back to the roots, and about releasing ourselves from ourselves, relinquishing the ego. How right he was, and how clear it is that the simplest experience can be utterly revelatory, can remove the self, can be worth a thousand words printed on paper. Especially, I might say, as 90% of the words on paper extant are absolute drivel!

I’ll have a rant-a-thon about what I perceive to be the poor quality of many Wicca publications another day. Suffice to say, for now, that we need more educated, well-researched and thoughtful commentaries. If we are going to read, and we should, because we cannot do it all by ourselves - at least let the books be brilliant!

Witches - an ‘unreached people group’

Forgive the nauseating marketing-speke for a minute and try and get the old noggins around this for an impressive show of unity. I’m seeing centurions marching out, looking for little unreached groups to over-run and hegemonise. What a picture.

If the Christian right are seeking to subvert inter-faith discussion in order to profile the alternative religions for a marketing hit, then all we can do it shake our heads and leave them to it. We can learn a good lesson, however, about the breathtaking presumption of faith - mine’s better than yours, I was told by a book and some guys who were told by some other guys; they must be right as they’ve been talking about this for 2000 years! Everyone agrees they’re right! Oh, and the Guy in the Sky is on our side, so sorry, you’re off to a burny place. Or you can get on the bus with us!

This is the central point. A great deal of the legitimisation for the worst excesses of evangelical Christianity, and for other faiths of a totalitarian bent, comes not from our present era, but from the past. I was discussing the Bible with an evangelical Christian during the week, which was a sobering experience. The history seems to be the mandate to act. The history, perhaps this isn’t going too far, is the means by which justification is made for things done today.

If there was ever a good reason to claim no lineage at all, then this seems to be it.

I look at modern witchcraft and I see a free faith, untrammeled by the constraints of historical practice. We don’t have any marks to hit simply because it’s always been done this way. We can innovate, choose best practice, take note of mistakes made in the past and work past them.

Validation through the historical record can only ever be in the favour of the winning team, in this case Evangelical Christianity. If you control the presses, the News will always be ‘Good’.