(Guest post by Peg Aloi)

Brushwood Folklore Center

Sherman, NY

July 2009 (Sirius Rising and Starwood)

The origin of the witch’s cackle: people sitting in the woods at night around campfires, telling stories, and lobbing good-natured barbs at each other, laughing with loud, lusty abandon, their voices raspy with smoke and gravelly from drink, barley bread and wine, stones and water, bleating into the night among the mist-shrouded in dew-soaked copses. This laughter is in fact indistinguishable from the screams of witches burning on byres or twisting under thumbscrews, their knowing humor indistinguishable from their cunning spells or wily seductions, the disruption of forest silence indistinguishable from the shattering of families and homes, atunement with nature indistinguishable from communion with the devil. Comedy is tragedy plus time; neo-paganism is the witchcraft of antiquity plus mod cons. Persecution? It may still exist; but witch wars are worse. Our laughter is wiser now, but also meaner.

***

We retreat to the woods for rustic pleasures; but now the forest has wi-fi and cellular service. We compensate with archaic food and drink: home-brewed ale and mead, spit-roasted meats, potatoes baked in the embers. Likewise, we dress in anachronistic clothing. Someone oughta start an organization celebrating this spirit of inventive nostalgia, a society for creative anachron–oh, wait.

***

Jogging offsite today, I saw two birds I’ve never seen in this area, where I’ve been camping for a decade and a half: a scarlet tanager (which I at first mistook for a red-winged blackbird) and a bluebird (which I mistook for a bluejay). Buebirds, the state bird of New York, are in fact becoming quite rare. In this week’s event, Sirius Rising, daily elemental rituals are held. Today, Tuesday, is Fire day, so the red bird sighting is a thrill, followed by tomorrow’s color, blue for Water. I won’t see yellow birds, signifying Air, until Thursday, whn I spy two goldfinches. So far, a week later, no green Earth-appropriate birds have been sighted.

***

Decadent tastes, textures, scents and sounds abound at any pagan festival. Today (Wednesday) I tried Dickel Tennessee Bourbon: it has a sweet, sugary, syrupy burn to it, an aftertaste of an Appalachian Hades. Other firsts this week: legally-obtained absinthe, and bacon-infused chocolate.

***

I am always amazed at the sheer lack of preparation for the weather that is on display here. We’re camping, after all. People who have lived in the Northeast all their lives come here for a festival and don’t appear to know what wool is or what shoes are; thy wander around in a sarong when it’s a damp 50 degrees outside. I have thus formulated the following hypothesis, hereafter referred to as the  Wet Rayon Corrollary: The amount of clothing worn on a chilly night by certain pagan gathering attendees  is directly proportional to the temperature but inversely proportional to (fill in the blank with whatever you think is appropriate).

***

A chipmunk, upon discovering the nectarine pit covered in juicy pulp I threw onto the forest floor to compost and perhaps eventually sprout into a glorious fruit tree: OH NOM NOM NOM.

***

The mist is a carnival, enhancing and amplifying our meanderings through the night landscape. Lights are softened, facial features made fey, words and footsteps jumbled and rearranged with new meanings, new recognition. The memory of this night is now living in the mist, inaccessible in the parched heat of afternoon or the clearheaded consciousness of morning, or even at the sultry zenith of midday. The mist is dismembered by such heat and clarity. At dawn, at twilight, as the sun scatters it, as the encroacing night summons it, the mist remembers its place, and us, and we re-member ourselves.

***

Dream: I’m in a college photography/film class. Our assignment is to make a short film on the theme of “nature.” We only have a day to do this. I come up with some simple ideas: a rose in the sunlight, a tree with birds. I don’t finish my film on time but go to class anyway, where completed assignments are shown. One female student’s film stands out: a female scarecrow/goddess figure standing in a field, skirts made of cornhusks, waist wreathed in flowers, her face a giant sunflower. She appears to dance in the field, and then there is a circle of people standing in a pool of water, flowers floating all around them. I’m shaken by the beauty of this short visual feast, the power of its themes, its pagan simplicity and intricate colors. I feel jealous and awed, my own ideas so paltry compared to hers. I awaken from this dream, the images still fresh, and realize, in that odd hybrid state between dreaming and wakefulness, that the creative vision that inspired the film within my dream is actually my own. This reminds me of an ongoing discussion that’s been happening this week, about originality and creativity in the pagan community, and the irritating and demoralizing practice of stealing the ideas and words of others: plagiarizing workshop titles, book ideas, ritual texts, website code and images…is there really such a lack of ideas and ethics in our community? For such a creative and vibrant spiritual movement, this dishonesty and mediocrity is disheartening. I want more scarecrow goddesses, an endless array of them, lined up like acres of corn, but I want them all to have a separate persona and all the flora and colors of the known universe. I don’t think it’s too much to ask.

***

There’s been a great deal of rain. The last time it rained this much during festival the event became known as “Squishwood.” Three truckloads of gravel bought and delivered today to deal with the muddy roads. Many tents on the field are surrounded by water. The porto-potties are becoming, if not dangerous, horrifying to access. Still…pagans stay positive. Chanting the names of the sun gods at the cafe. Applauding when the sun finally poked out from behind the clouds. Last week at the labyrinth ritual during Sirius Rising, some kids started chanting that old classic, “Rain, Rain, go away, come again some other day.” Alas, it didn’t work. I am always amused at the degree to which pagans, witches and other magical types think they can control or influence the weather. Maybe they’re capable of picking up on weather vibes and display an uncanny knack for timing. But I think that may be the extent of it. Still, I’ll take the intermittent sunshine to dry out our duds and watch people cheer up as their living situations improve dramatically. I’ll even chalk it up to the chants for Chango, Ra, Apollo and Helios. Hail to the sun gods! Suns for us and rains for us and dry beds for us. A dry place to sleep; funny how little we really need to feel satisfied…and magically accomplished.

Hello, good readers of the Wild Hunt. I am Sannion, a Greco-Egyptian polytheist affiliated with the group Neos Alexandria, and a resident of the fine city of Eugene, Oregon where Jason will presently be making his home. In his absence he asked me to fill in as a guest blogger here, and as luck would have it the day that was allotted to me happens to be the Noumenia of the Makedonian month Gorpiaios (or Metageitnion if you’re going by the Athenian name.) Noumenia means the festival of the new moon, which the ancient Greeks considered to be the appearance of the first sliver, something that can take some getting used to if you’re more familiar with the astrological reckoning of new moons.

Hesiod (Works and Days 770) designated the Noumenia as the holiest of days, and it appears to have been among the oldest and most widespread of the Hellenic religious observances. Its antiquity is attested by the fact that Homer mentions it in the Odyssey (21.258) – a significant fact when we consider that he names only one other religious festival in his epics. Furthermore, the Noumenia continued to be observed well into the Christian period, since we find bishops in Byzantine Egypt during the 5^th century railing against those who continue to light lamps and burn incense in their homes for the ancestral gods and spirits on the new moon.

The sacred nature of the day can be seen in the fact that no other festival was allowed to fall on the date in Athens and no legislative assemblies of the ekklesia, boule, or tribal associations occurred at this time. In fact, all important business was suspended as we learn in Plutarch’s 25^th Roman Question – though it seems that the markets may have remained opened.

Generally, it was seen as a day to stay at home and celebrate with the family. Sacrifices were made to Apollon, Selene, Hera, Hekate, Hermes, Hestia and the household gods. The domestic shrines were cleaned and then wreathed with flower-garlands, and then incense, wine, and cakes were offered anew to the gods. (Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food, 2.16)

The Noumenia is perhaps just as popular and universal for contemporary Hellenic and Greco-Egyptian polytheists as it was for our cultural ancestors. Ours is a diverse community, and though we may have different festival calendars, honor different gods, and even employ different methods of worship – most of us still do at least something to mark the Noumenia. Here are some examples of how different people in the community celebrate this day:

Here is a Noumenia ritual from the group Neokoroi. Here’s another ritual, by Timothy Anderson. Here’s Miguel Oliveira’s thoughts on the Noumenia, and a lovely hymn he wrote for the occasion. Here’s another hymn written by Lykeia. Here is Allyson Szabo (author of Longing for Wisdom) talking about her Noumenia experiences. Here’s some more commentary from Gede Parma, and finally some from Kenn.

In keeping with that, I would like to share some of my own thoughts about this day and how I celebrate it.

To me the Noumenia is a time of new beginnings, of renewal. Each month we are given a chance to start over, to get it right. Living in this fast-paced, hectic world with endless distractions, frustrations, and demands on our time and attention, it is easy to lose our way, to forget the things that are important to us and sometimes we may even become estranged from our gods. We may have set out to maintain a regular religious routine, or to make important life changes like eating better, exercising more, watching less television and the like – only to have life get in the way. It is easy to feel discouraged, to see all the missed opportunities and our life slipping away from us. But the Noumenia provides us with an opportunity to stop, get our bearings, connect with the divine, recharge our spiritual batteries, and renew our commitment to living the sort of life that, deep down, we have always wanted to. It is a time to clear away the old and outmoded, all the things that are cluttering our lives and holding us back, so that we can make room for new and wonderful blessings to enter them.

That is why the first thing that I do on the Noumenia (if I have not already done it on the previous evening, which is the deipnon or dinner of Hekate) is a thorough cleaning of my apartment, from top to bottom. Admittedly, this may not strike some as a particularly spiritual act – but it has taken on great significance for me. There is something deeply rewarding about all of that physical labor, especially when I use the time to think about all of the mental and spiritual “junk” that I need to remove from life as well. It is also a devotional act since by filling my home with numerous shrines to my gods, I have invited them into my life and agreed to share my space with them. The gods should not be subjected to dirty laundry, stacks of dishes, clutter and dust – and in truth, neither should I. By making my home neat and orderly, a fitting place to receive my gods – I am making over my life in a similar fashion, for one’s home is, after all, a reflection of one’s own being. I have noticed, in fact, a strong correlation between my mood and my surroundings. When the place is messy and disgusting I tend to feel stressed, anxious, and sullen – but when it is sparklingly clean and well-ordered (or as close as it gets to that, because come on, I am a guy and a bachelor after all) my heart is light and my mind soars more freely. After I have cleaned my apartment, paying special attention to my shrines and the clearing away of any offerings I may have left on the altars – I begin a series of devotions that can last anywhere from an hour to the remainder of the day.

I begin by lighting candles and incense and pouring libations for each of my household gods. I spend a little time at each of their shrines, reciting poetry and hymns, praying aloud from the heart, or just talking to them in a casual manner. Then I just bask in their presence for a bit, enjoying the beautiful sight of an active shrine full of offerings, thinking about my gods and spirits and what they mean to me, going over past encounters I’ve had with them, and what I hope to do for them in the future. If I have an ongoing oath to them, I will renew my commitment to it and think of ways that I can live up to it over the month to come.

After I have done this for each of my household divinities I next turn to the remaining gods of my rather large multicultural Greco-Egyptian pantheon. This is actually one of the most important things about the Noumenia for me, the opportunity to touch base with all of the other deities. Over the years I’ve managed to collect a smallish pantheon of gods and spirits who receive the bulk of my attention and devotional practice. These are very important gods to me, and I deeply enjoy the intense and personal nature of our relationships. But the other gods are important too, and worthy of my honor even if they haven’t made their presence as strongly felt in my life as the core group that forms my personal pantheon. So on the Noumenia I take some time to honor them as well, making collective offerings to the bunch of them, reciting brief prayers to individual gods, and generally I pause to think about them for a while and all the amazing things they have done and continue to do in our world.

After this I go into a quiet, meditative state, just sort of letting myself be in the presence of the divine. I often come away from this feeling peaceful, calm, collected – ready to face the challenges of life, grounded in an awareness of the all-pervading presence of the my gods and spirits. It doesn’t matter what else is going on in my life – all the anxieties, fears, frustrations and doubts just melt away in the face of the gods.

After that I will sit with my calendar and make plans for the upcoming month. I look at the festivals that are approaching and think about what I would like to do for them and the supplies I’ll have to gather to celebrate them properly. I go over my writing and creative projects, and any other plans I may have either percolating in my brain or carried over from the previous month. I think about my life and what I need to do to make it better. In short, I plot out the rest of the month, making concrete plans of action, because honestly, I’d never get anything done otherwise.

At that point, it’s usually pretty late and so I make myself a lavish dinner, feasting in the company of my gods and sharing a portion of the meal with them. Then I make a final offering and go out for a walk, usually going on a long, circuitous route that ends up at one of the nearby parks where I do a lot of my outdoors worship. As I stroll through the dark city streets I let my gaze drift up to the heavens and note the lovely sliver of moon, just barely visible through the darkness – yet full of such promise and potential.

This is one of my favorite parts of the Noumenia – and in many ways, one of the most important. By anchoring my religious calendar to the phases of the moon it helps me connect with the cyclic powers she contains as well as the rhythms of nature which are all around me. It’s so easy to lose sight of this, to get caught up in the manic intensity of our modern lives. So much is going on all the time, a thousand tiny things constantly clamoring for our attention, that we’re often not aware of anything outside of our own heads. Weeks can pass by in a blur, and half the time we wouldn’t even know what day it was without the anchors of what show’s on television or what trivial thing is happening at work. The earth and the moon, however, run at a slower pace, possess a deeper and more sacred wisdom, and I have found that pausing to take note of that, slowing myself down enough that I am then able to attune myself to that more divine motion is an incredibly rewarding thing. Many people find it hard to follow the lunar Hellenic calendar, especially at first. But I find it well worth the effort. These energies are real and powerful, and life runs much more smoothly when we slow down enough to be aware of them, open ourselves enough to be conscious of their influence in the world around us – and the world within us as well.

And that, dear friends, is how I celebrate the Noumenia. Often we talk about the more theoretical aspects of our faith – our conceptions of the divine, the importance of ethics and building up community, the interpretation of ancient texts, and the assorted controversies that plague our diverse communities – but I think that it is also important to discuss what we actually do for the gods, how this feels and what all this means to us today as modern practitioners of ancient faiths. Hopefully I have provided some small glimpse into the religious life of a Greco-Egyptian polytheist here in the hinterlands of Oregon. At the very least I suspect y’all won’t be complaining that my entry was too short.

(T. Thorn Coyle, filling in for Jason Pitzl-Waters)

Many Pagans and magic workers will attend the Parliament of World Religions in Melbourne this December. As an official Ambassador to the Parliament, I and other representatives of Solar Cross shall be among those attending.

The Parliament first convened in 1893 in Chicago, as an ancillary meeting to the World Columbian Exposition, and leaders from many spiritual and religious traditions met and talked for the first time. Swami Vivekananda addressed the gathering:

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilization and sent whole nations to despair. Had it not been for these horrible demons, human society would be far more advanced than it is now. But their time is come; and I fervently hope that the bell that tolled this morning in honor of this convention may be the death-knell of all fanaticism, of all persecutions with the sword or with the pen, and of all uncharitable feelings between persons wending their way to the same goal.

If you wish to hear this speech, click on the link above.

The Parliament did not reconvene for 100 years, when a reprise was organized for the anniversary of this first, historic meeting. It has met every five or six years since, including many of the religions not in attendance at that first gathering, expanding Swami Vivikenanda’s dream. Baha’is, Sikhs, Earth religions, and Indiginous religions are all now active participants.

At a recent pre-Parliamentary event in San Francisco, I attended a meeting with Buddhists, Christians, Metaphysicians, Hindus, and Jews and spoke about what I hope to bring to the Parliament. Pagans, I feel, have something very important to add to the discussion, particularly addressing this year’s theme which is “Make a World of Difference: Hearing Each Other, Healing the Earth”. We experience the sacred within and around us. We believe that matter is not fallen and strive – at least in theory – to live in harmony with this great body Gaia we are all part of. We also have a chance to be good listeners, because, even if we are Monists or non-dualists, most of us are also Pantheists and Polytheists: there is no end to diversity and we dance with that, the sacred is ever with us, in myriad forms. In my direct experience and perception – which are so important to Pagans and magic workers – God Herself forms the fabric of all, and we weave our lives into this fabric, changing texture and color, adding to the glorious blend. Our Gods and Goddesses, too, weave in their sparks of light, their watery or earthy natures, as do animals, stars, trees, molecules and atoms. When we are at our best, our very lives and ways of worship open us to tolerance and deep listening.

We have the ability to carry this sense of connection, immanence, and wonder with us everywhere we go. I recently carried that sense to the chapel podium of the Interfaith Center at the Presidio and spoke of our deep need to connect with all of our parts – animal, human, and divine – to align our own soul in order to come into alignment with the soul of the world. I spoke of the sacred being among us, and how acts of social justice become as acts of prayer and meditation. I spoke of dancing the primal elements of air, fire, water, earth, and spirit. Each of us knows this dance, for it is as familiar to us as breathing.

All of these, I firmly believe, give Pagans and magic workers a distinct voice in inter-religious dialogue. We do not have to reach at all to come to a sense of the Divine within and among us. We do not have to reach at all to acknowledge that multiplicity is as sacred as unity. We do not have to reach at all to sense that every action, every thought and breath we take, affects and remakes the world. We do not always recall each tenet in every moment  but we don’t have far to go to reconnect. Despite our states of disconnection, the reality of reconnection is right here, right now, and something in our blood and bones knows this and responds. We carry these possibilities of connection with us everywhere we go. My friends and compatriots will carry this with us to the Parliament in Melbourne. We will talk, make ritual, shake hands, bow, and pass along our relationship with the sacred. Our Gods will walk the halls with us, as will the sense of our own divinities, and a sense of divine Nature. We shall seek the divinity in the eyes and in the words of every other participant. This is our practice. Thou art Goddess. Thou art God.

For all of you not attending the Parliament in Melbourne, I encourage you to think about going. I encourage local groups to raise funds to send representatives, who will then come back and share the experience at home. I ask that you seek out local pre-Parliamentary events to attend and talk about your practices there. And I encourage each of us, every day, to bring our sense of Divine connection with us as we work, play, dance, toil, and make love. If you do decide to attend, please let me know, for we are organizing so as to form a cohesive, though diverse presence. Walk the halls with us. Listen to the Dalai Lama, Sr. Joan Chittister, Cheif Oren Lyons and Margot Adler. Make ritual with us, and walk in the Australian summer sun.

I end with more words from Swami Vivekananda, spoken at the closing ceremony of the first Parliament:

Much has been said of the common ground of religious unity. I am not going just now to venture my own theory. But if any one here hopes that this unity will come by the triumph of any one of the religions and the destruction of the others, to him I say, “Brother, yours is an impossible hope.” Do I wish that the Christian would become Hindu? God forbid. Do I wish that the Hindu or Buddhist would become Christian? God forbid.

The seed is put in the ground, and earth and air and water are placed around it. Does the seed become the earth; or the air, or the water? No. It becomes a plant, it develops after the law of its own growth, assimilates the air, the earth, and the water, converts them into plant substance, and grows into a plant.

Similar is the case with religion. The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve his individuality and grow according to his own law of growth.

Blessed be.

——–
T. Thorn Coyle is a Pagan, mystic, magic worker, spiritual director, activist, and founder of Solar Cross and the Morningstar Mystery School. Author of “Kissing the Limitless” and “Evolutionary Witchcraft” she makes her home near the San Francisco Bay.

(By James French)

The discussions around the idea of “sustainability” can easily degenerate into noise. This is because, while quite a number of different perspectives agree that the current manner in which our civilization operates cannot be sustained, the reasons for this and the ways in which we can correct the problem are by no means settled issues. The problem is obvious, the solution, if there is one, is not.

Personally, I have found much food for thought in the ideas of John Michael Greer. His explorations of Peak Oil and its ramifications are very thorough. Particularly, I find his call to see our current situation as a “predicament” or a situation we must deal with rather than a problem to be solved, to be useful in thinking about the current crisis.

As Greer says, our current industrial civilization was basically designed to “convert resources into waste in the most efficient way possible.” Obviously this is a drastic shift from the “progressive” narratives that we’ve grown up with. The problem with those narratives is that they are built on the assumption that natural resources will always be with us in abundance. This is simply not the case, and the transition to other forms of energy production would appear to be twenty-five years late and only part of the picture.

There are also sociological implications to this. The sort of civilization that requires vast reserves of finite resources to operate is one that will find itself involved in constant warfare to secure them. This has already happened with oil, and is likely to expand into wars over water in the coming decades. With this will come civil wars and other sorts of social disintegration beyond the scope of this current discussion.

It is safe to say that most people push these rather ugly realities into the background of their daily thoughts. I don’t think it’s fair to make a charge of apathy or callous disregard in most cases. When these are expressed, I suspect discomfort more than actual lack of compassion. It is difficult to just get by. The big picture is often too big to deal with for people who are simply struggling with the every day dramas and traumas of modern life.

Among these are the Modern Pagans, some of whom contemplate, on occasion, the performance of a prosperity spell. A fair percentage of the time, someone will bring up the question of whether such an action is appropriately spiritual. Usually the argument will be settled by saying that Pagans do not reject the material world, and so doing work for prosperity is not somehow offensive to our beliefs.

Given the situation, economic, ecological, and social, I think this is quite the wrong place to start thinking from. It assumes the ubiquitous “all things being equal” clause, and all things are demonstrably not equal. What does “prosperity” mean when we, as a civilization, are engaged in what can only be seen as a sustained effort to destroy ourselves and our habitat? That is the question I think needs to be asked.

While there are no easy answers to this, and any attempt to formulate a plan on my part would be partial and based on my own ideological pre-dispositions, I think it is possible to suggest a direction, a tendency that, like a celebration of the material world, is fully compatible with Paganism, and indeed gives it a bit more depth. We already have a piece of it in the concept of interconnection. But interconnection alone tends to focus, in practice, on very intimate, individual relationships. This is because broader, more inclusive concepts of interconnection are generally too abstract to be personally meaningful. You don’t feel the connection between yourself and the migrant worker who picked the strawberries on your pancakes this morning, or the large and increasingly militarized police force and your quiet Sunday morning. Your intellect may be aware of these things, but the guts don’t buy it.

Slovak theorist Slavoj Zizek is fond of saying that, in order to solve the ecological problems of the day, we need to become less connected with nature. Our embeddedness in the Web of Life, says Zizek, actually distorts our perspective. We may know intellectually that the carbon dioxide coming from our cars and our power plants is slowly making the planet less and less habitable for our kind of life-form. But, again, the gut level of experience doesn’t really lead us to believe it deep down. He suggests taking our relationship with nature to an almost gnostic level of abstraction in order to restore ecological balance.

While I find this more than a little extreme, and suspect the “Madman of Theory” is being more than slightly facetious in order to make a point, I do think he might be on to something. It’s the forest/tree problem. In order to get to some sort of resting point in terms of a view of prosperity that honors both intimate interconnection and abstract whole, a look at a key doctrine from another Tradition may be in order.

In the Mahayana Tradition of Buddhism one encounters two important concepts. The first is lovingkindness. (I’m not sure why they always scrunch the two words together like that. It probably has to do with trying to distinguish it from Western assumptions about those two words as separate concepts.) This is a form of basic, relational interconnection. It concerns the way in which one relates to those they regularly encounter. The specific meditation practice for this is called Metta Bhavana. In it, one cultivates lovingkindness for progressively broader groups of people, and also increasingly difficult individuals. Eventually one gets to “all sentient beings,” but this is still a rather personal kind of connection. It stops at wishing people well.

The more abstract form of connection, and the one that I think would do us the most good in terms of thinking about prosperity, is Boddhichitta. This has a number of fairly poor translations, one being “Wisdom Attitude.” What it refers to is the desire to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. There are also progressive stages to this, each one involving more commitment and discipline.

Now, Modern Pagans can be a little averse to some conceptions of “Enlightenment.” Especially if their only experience with Buddhism is Theravada, where the specific goal is to abandon materiality altogether. Obviously this does not fit with anything Pagans believe. However, in the Mahayana traditions, particularly Vajrayana and the highest esoteric schools such as Dzogchen, the material world is seen as arising equally from Emptiness, and in fact being identical with it. These schools of non-duality express what amounts to a quite well developed concept of immanence.

The difference is that the goal is much “bigger.” Translating into Pagan terms, we can see ourselves as part of a sentient Cosmos, or Goddess. Nut, the Goddess of the Night Sky, would be a good image here in terms of vastness. We are all “stars,” as it were, in the body of this all encompassing, and all pervasive, Deity.

But our first experience is of separation. We are individual units with our own concerns for survival. Then we begin to notice and care for larger and larger groups of people. Eventually, we may be able to see beyond our own sufferings to that of others, and realize that it is the holding on to the smaller, pettier concerns that creates this suffering. We want to help others “wake up” to this wonderful, all encompassing Joy that is the Cosmos we all came from and share space in.

In this sense, the “wealth” is really already there. There may be artificial constraints to getting it, but the actual raw material we need to work in the world is all around us. We have an innate intelligence that can guide us to the best way of using our talents to acquire what we need in order to do this Great Work. “What we need to do the work” may not look like conventional ideas of wealth. But, in the end, we are part of the Cosmos, and there is no question of poverty in such a vast context. It is only a question of how we use that wealth.

We can squander our innate inheritance, as so many in past and current generations have done and continue to do. In that case, the world becomes more poisoned, more oppressive, less livable for our kind of bodies. Or, we can learn to use what we have been given to help ourselves and others. One cannot truly help one without helping the other, since ultimately we are all interacting facets of a larger diamond. We all shimmer or shatter together. This is Boddhichitta.

The poison and the pain of our lives are first born in our minds. Through no fault of our own we get caught up in trivial games that only serve to distract and irritate us, diverting us from the core fact of our separate existence: it hurts. But this division only makes reunion more joyous, and we have all we need to accomplish it. We have only to recognize it, which can be, we must admit, incredibly difficult.

But the consequences of not doing so are too grave. We can no longer fritter away our lives on small drama and the acquisition of toys to distract us. It is time to realize that, even if we are idle, in a broader sense we are always working, always weaving. And the results of our work show how much attention we’ve given it.

By Caroline Kenner

About ten years ago, I met a practitioner of Santeria for the first time. I had already read many books about Santeria, and was very enamored of the Orishas, but he was the first actual initiate I ever met. We started comparing and contrasting our religious beliefs and practices, Wicca with Santeria.

One of the first things he asked me was how I worked with the Ancestors. Like most Wiccans, I replied “Oh, yeah, I give them a nice big feast once a year at Samhain.” He looked startled, and said, “But that’s not nearly often enough. You need to invoke the Ancestors in every ceremony, even before you invoke the deities. If you don’t acknowledge the Ancestors, and give them food and drink offerings, they won’t help you. And they are magically powerful!”

These were interesting thoughts to me: that the Ancestors should be invoked in every ceremony, and that they needed to receive offerings from me to engage their help. I remembered many mentions of “ancestor worship” in ethnologies I read as an anthropology undergraduate. I started pursuing my own connection with the Ancestors, and learning to engage the Ancestors as a force in my magical work, predominantly in my shamanic healing work.

My shamanic teacher Sandra Ingerman supported my interest in ancestral spirits. Sandra likens us—the living—to a sports team currently playing a game, and she compares the Ancestors to the audience in the stadium, watching, cheering, booing….. and sometimes interfering on their team’s behalf. Sandra invokes the Ancestors as well as the Descendants in every ceremony she leads. Sandra believes we live on a continuum of time, the currently incarnate sandwiched between the discarnate Ancestors and the discarnate Descendants. In Sandra’s opinion and practice, both the Ancestors and the Descendants are sources of healing and magical power.

As I worked with the Ancestors over the course of ten years, I began to see a big difference in the results of my shamanic healings, especially in the areas of inherited disease and multi-generational curse breaking. I came to see that Sandra Ingerman and my Santeria friend were onto something powerful: the Ancestors can provide a lot of magical potency if they are petitioned to help their living descendants. This is a practice found almost universally in religions and spiritual paths with a similar world-view to Wicca, but is absent in the modern construct that is Wicca.

My Wiccan priest and priestess in Ireland, Gavin Bone and Janet Farrar, have this to say about the role of the Ancestors within Wicca:

The idea of ‘the Ancestors’ was something that was never talked about when we first became involved in Wicca; there was no reference to ancestral worship within ritual or the Book of Shadows. This has begun to change in the last few years, as many Wiccans have realised that something intrinsic is missing in their practise. Wiccans have begun to investigate the African Diaspora religions, and genuine Native American and other tribal religions, to learn more about how to incorporate the Ancestors into Wiccan ceremonies. We, ourselves, were honoured to be recognised by the Lesotho Sangoma (traditional healers) Ancestors as Elders when we traveled to South Africa to teach Wicca. As more and more western Pagans begin to investigate the Earth aspect of our spiritualities, they are finding that it is meaningless without recognition and contact with their ancestral spirits.

My much more local Wiccan priest in Delaware, author and teacher Ivo Dominguez, Jr. writes:

Belief in the power of the ancestors is normally associated with a worldview that populates the universe with a complicated ecology of spiritual beings and spiritual forces. Each type of Spirit has its place and merits respect and treatment appropriate to its niche. It is not surprising that interest in working with the ancestors is on the rise in the Neo-Pagan community, as it is an almost inevitable descendant of this worldview. (From Spirit Speak)

So who are the Ancestors? Are the Ancestors different from the ancestors? Again, I turn to Ivo Dominguez, Jr.’s Spirit Speak for enlightenment:

Merely dying does not make you one of the Ancestors. In most traditional cultures, only those people who have led exceptional lives become available as sources for guidance and information after they have died. Exceptional means that they are exemplary, which can mean good, bad and everything in between. A really bad Ancestor makes for a really good cautionary tale. People who become the Ancestors do not fade from memory, because their stories are told and retold.

I began to realize that the Ancestors were not only the dead people in my genetic line, but included diverse dead people from various categories. In his book Spirit Allies, Christopher Penczak highlights this issue:

Ancestors unrelated by blood are kindreds, those people with a similar path, problems, or inspirations as you. They have sympathy for your life and times. Think about those in the past with whom you feel a kinship. If you are a writer, you could feel a bond with a particularly inspiring author from history.

So how do these exemplary Ancestors transition from being ancestors to becoming Ancestors? Again, we can learn more about this from non-Western sources, because the rise of monotheism obliterated the rituals our genetic ancestors used in northern Europe. Malidoma Patrice Some teaches a ritual process he calls ancestralization, based on the beliefs and practices of his tribe, the Dagara of Burkina Faso:

Dagara people’s main job is to look the dead in the face, to treat their bodies not as remains but as temples of grace and beauty continuing from this world to the other. People grieve the passing of loved ones, though in this grief they stress beauty and community and continuity. The handing over of the loved one to the realm of the ancestors is what we call ancestralization. It allows for a sense of completion in the vast array of duties following the passing of a person. In this five-day event, we address this issue of fulfilling our duties toward the dead in the interest of transforming restlessness into rest, discontinuity into continuity and homelessness into homecoming.

One of my dearest friends, astrologer and Wiccan priestess Diotima Mantineia, has studied with Malidoma Some and participated in his ancestralization ceremonies. For a couple of years, I nagged her to set up an ancestor altar as part of her spirit worship. She replied that she didn’t get along with her family very well, and would prefer to exclude her ancestral line from her magical and spiritual practices, except at Samhain. Like water on a rock, I continued to nag in what I hope wasn’t an irritating way. Finally, Dio set up an ancestral altar, and some years later, was called to enroll in Malidoma’s class. Here is her description of the ancestralization ceremony:

For five days, our “village” of 25 people came together to make a remarkable ritual happen. We prepared by lovingly creating sticks and stools, physical representations of male and female ancestors, ritually enlivening them, then connecting with our ancestors in an all-night vigil, to give our ancestors the honor and the place in our lives they (and we!) deserve.

The ritual changed my life in profound ways, despite the fact that I had been working ritually with my ancestors for a number of years already. But the power of the rituals we performed during those five days broke through barriers between me and my ancestors that I was not even aware were there, and that was a great gift….

Diotima’s experience illustrates another point about the Ancestors: we Wiccans have left the spiritual path followed by our most recently departed Ancestors. How do the Ancestors feel about us becoming Pagans, and leaving the monotheistic religions of our families? Here is Christopher Penczak’s take on this issue, again quoted from his book Spirit Allies:

Practitioners also fear that the ancestor will not approve of the new spiritual path because they wouldn’t have approved in life. I’ve heard many times new witches thinking their departed loved ones are angry because they do not follow the family’s traditional faith. Once a being crosses over the veil, he or she realizes the truth to spirituality more than we could while incarnated.

This situation arose for me in an interview I did at Samhain in 2003, with a reporter from The Washington Post. The reporter asked me what my ancestors would have thought about my Pagan religion. The answer I should have given her is this: My ancestors couldn’t possibly disapprove of my Wiccan religion nearly as much as I disapprove of them owning slaves. I am the great-granddaughter of slave owners on both sides of my family, and to my shame, at least one of my ancestors was also a slave dealer.

Now, I have forgiven my ancestors for being slave owners. But still I feel a karmic debt to those slaves owned by my family in the bad old days. And I feel this debt calls for actions on my part today. I have taken actions both practical and spiritual over the years, to attempt to address my ancestors’ wrongdoing. Yet I know that nothing I can do will ever erase the stain of racism and slave-owning on my family line.

Among many other attempts at karmic remediation, I have received ceremonies in Santeria, also known as La Regla de Ocha de Lukumi. I wear the Necklaces and cherish my consecrated head of Ellegua. I proudly hold the Cauldron of the Warriors and two soperas, one for Oya and one for Obatala. I have permanent shrines to the Orishas and also some of the Haitian Vodou Lwa in my healing room. I work with Divine possession through these traditions. All of this has been a joy for me, a joy inspired in part by my family’s painful history.

Part of the Ancestors’ Wall in my altar room, Family Ladder by Katie Dell Kaufman

So, our more recent ancestors may not accord to our taste, in terms of their cultural practices, such as owning slaves and oppressing Native Americans and women, or in terms of their monotheistic religious paths. How about our ancient ancestors? Should we modern Pagans be making ritual overtures to our ancient Pagan ancestors?

My answer is a resounding YES! I have found wisdom and comfort in seeking out Ancestors who were Pagan in ancient times. In shamanism, my Upper World teacher is the last Pagan priestess in my genetic line on my father’s side. In my shamanic journeys, I have seen the tumultuous life she led in 7th century Anglo-Saxon England, when the Old Gods and the Old Ways were being abandoned in favor of the new monotheism, Christianity. Sigfritha, as my distant ancestor refers to herself, says that through our bond in shamanic reality outside of time, our family line of Pagan priestesses and priests is unbroken. Her teachings and her love are vital to my shamanic empowerment and to my magical path. In part through my ancestral connection with Sigfritha, I am a priestess of Freya.

Every shamanic healing ceremony I perform begins with the Ancestors. The Ancestors who come to the ceremonies vary a great deal. Each client brings their own set of Ancestors, and more recently deceased ancestors, to attend the healing ceremony. And then my own Ancestors come to all of my healing ceremonies. They are a motley array of genetic, shamanic, personal, past life and wildly eclectic Ancestors unique to me, a Washington Witchdoctor.

Of all the northern European Pagan paths currently active, the Asatru are taking their connection with their Ancestors most seriously. Here is a nice quote from Steve McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly:

Someday we will be dead, whatever that means. Hopefully we have left sons and daughters – and grandsons and granddaughters! – to tell our stories and to pour libations on our graves. As the Havamal says – “Seldom are [memorial] stones erected on the wayside, save by kinsmen for kinsmen.” How will you be remembered? Did you do deeds of worth? Were you true? Did you love much? Did you fight for what was right? Were you Awake, or did you live your life in trivialities? If we lead good lives here in Midgard, we will be good ancestors.

I got a chance to talk about the Ancestors with Steve in July 2007. He told me that he believes we disappoint our ancestors if we depart from the spiritual path they followed in their lifetimes. Obviously, with my extreme eclecticism, I don’t agree with him. But here is a wonderful paradox about working with the Ancestors: one can find ancestral support for Steve’s view, my view, and any other viewpoint as well. The Ancestors are not unitary in their beliefs and loyalties, but various and many. Both Steve and I are working closely and authentically with Ancestors who support our different points of view. Thus, we are not working with the same set of Ancestors. And it’s all good.

Currently, the dismissive way most of us treat our Ancestors in Wicca is all too similar to the way most of us treat our Elders. My esteemed colleague Brendan Myers wrote eloquently about the Elders on The Wild Hunt earlier this week, including how we Pagans can learn from indigenous practices honoring the Elders. We come from a culture that tends not to respect the elderly. We often institutionalize our Elders to keep their needs from intruding on our busy lives. We are missing out on an incredible source of wisdom and knowledge as the generation that won World War II is passing!

Having read this far, you will not be surprised to learn that I spent twenty years taking care of my elderly parents, including six years caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease. It was one of the most rigorous tests of my lifetime so far, and one of the most rewarding. And trust me on this one: if you can’t behave lovingly to your Elders while they are still here on this material plane, you are probably unsuited to working closely with the Ancestors.

At this point, I believe that Ancestor veneration is so important that it amounts to a missing cornerstone in Wicca. And since Wicca is constantly evolving, I suggest that now is a great time for us to begin including the Ancestors in our ceremonies all year round. We really shouldn’t wait until Samhain comes around once a year to invoke them, celebrate them and feast them. I will close with the words to the song I use to invoke the Ancestors at the beginning of every shamanic healing session I perform:

Ancestors, Blessed Ancestors, we’re calling you today for healing. We thank you for the strength you showed while you were here, the sufferings you endured and the love you gave to your children. And now we call to you: we are your sons and daughters, sons and daughters calling to you. Through the mists of time, we stretch out our hands to greet you with joy and ask for your help today, in a healing way. Blessed Ancestors, please help us, heal us, guide us, lead us on our paths into the future, where we will meet the Descendants yet to come, those as yet unmanifest, waiting to arrive, waiting to be alive, we call to you. Blessed Ancestors from the past, blessed Descendants yet to come, look on us with compassion here, and make this moment a time of true healing, a gift from the past, a gift from the future, to heal us now. We welcome you!

All Hail the Ancestors, the Mighty Dead! May we bless our Ancestors, and ask for their blessing often, and not just once a year at Samhain! So Mote It Be!

By John W. Morehead – guest author

It was something of a surprise to receive an invitation to provide a guest post for The Wild Hunt. I maintain two blogs myself, so the task of writing for an Internet audience was not the concern. But being a Christian and receiving an invitation to write for a prominent and well-read blog by a Pagan recently identified as a leader in this spiritual community was the surprise. I am humbled by this invitation, and I appreciate the trust that Jason has in me. I hope that the content of the post that follows contributes something positive to this blog and the interactions between Pagans and Christians.

 As I thought about what to write over the last couple of weeks since receiving the invitation, I decided to bring together several of my interests into one post. First, I have been involved in interreligious dialogue for some time now, including with those involved with the Pagan community. One example of this is the book by Gus diZerega and Philip Johnson, Beyond the Burning Times (Lion, 2009), which brought together a Pagan and Christian for respectful dialogue, a project I edited and coordinated. Another interest and activity of mine is reflection on the fantastic in popular culture, particularly the genres of fantasy, science fiction, and horror as expressed in film and television. I’d like to suggest that these two areas can and should be brought together, and in so doing they provide us with a means of understanding each other better as well as the culture in which we live.

I am especially interested in “cinefantastique,” the films of the fantastic. Beyond their entertainment value, the films of the fantastic incorporate several interesting aspects that enable it to function as a device for personal, social, and cultural reflection. Some of these aspects include its use of “othering” and “distancing” which involves a metaphorical element whereby narrative elements parallel aspects of culture in the real world, and through the projection of these elements into a fictional future, difficult subject matter becomes more palatable for reflection. Some of the best examples of othering include the many science fiction films of the 1950s such as Invaders from Mars (1953) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) where alien invaders can be interpreted as a reflection of American fears of both the Communism of the former Soviet Union, as well as fears of conformity raised by McCarthyism.

In terms of distancing, television’s Star Trek in its original incarnation in the 1960s (1966-1969) represents an example of this phenomenon whereby issues of racism were explored in the episode “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield,” and Vietnam was explored in the episode “A Private Little War.” We see this same phenomenon continuing in contemporary science fiction through the television series Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009). Over the course of its multiple seasons this program has dealt with a number of contemporary issues, including those of a controversial nature, such as the “war on terror” as well as religion. Each of these examples illustrate that through othering and distancing science fiction and fantasy provide the emotional and cognitive separation between viewer and subject matter that is necessary for reflection on difficult topics for audiences of a given time and social location.

Another significant aspect of science fiction is its willingness at times to incorporate discussions of the transcendent and religion. Concerning the former, in Sacred Terror (Baylor University Press, 2008), Douglas Cowan’s book on religion and horror in film, argues that what and how we fear is socially constructed, and that this manifests itself in the continuing relationship between religion and cinema horror. In his companion volume on science fiction and religion currently in production, titled Sacred Space, Cowan looks at the relationship between religion as expressed in science fiction cinema and television, which involve various dystopic visions of “culturally constructed and socially reinforced conceptions of transcendent hope.”

Beyond a broad quest for transcendent hope science fiction has also often grappled with the question of religion. In the Star Trek franchise we see a development from a critical secular humanism and rejection of religion as cultural superstition in the original series to a late modern view involving both ambiguity and acceptance of spirituality in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Of course there has been a lot of discussion among scholars and commentators about the religious elements in the Star Wars series of films as a complex and developing understanding of religion surrounding the force and Jedi warriors. The theology of this seemingly never-ending fantasy franchise, much like The Matrix films, is informed by an eclectic variety of influences from mythology and various religious traditions.

All very interesting, the reader might be thinking at this point, but how does one move from these aspects of the fantastic in television and film to bridge the gap to religion and interreligious dialogue? In his book Film as Religion (New York University Press, 2003), John Lyden utilizes a functionalist definition of religion drawn from the work of the noted anthropologist Clifford Geertz. With this approach, what is important is how film functions for those who view it. In Lyden’s view then popular film performs a religious function many times in our culture. If this suggestion has any merit then it would mean that the gulf between cinematic experience and religious experience is not all that great. In fact, at times they parallel or even approximate each other. Since films often involve their own ethic and worldview they may be understood to represent a religion. Framed in this way, Lyden suggest that as viewers bring their own perspectives on such matters to the cinematic experience and attempt to understand a film and engage its message, then this may be understood as a form of dialogue between one religion and another.

Lyden then moves to a consideration of this process to not only dialogue with film, also interreligius dialogue. As he discusses the various contributions of certain disciplines to the process of interreligious dialogue, Lyden notes that in some circles at least we have thankfully moved beyond stereotypes and demonization to attempts at more sympathetic understandings and means of engagement. This is promising, not only as a means of gaining a more sympathetic and multifaceted interpretation of film, but also for what it may produce in application to our understanding of each other across religious traditions.

To try to bring all of this together in practical application, I propose that we should consider the medium of film (and television) in the fantastic genres as a venue for interreligious dialogue. In other words, science fiction, fantasy, and even horror film fans among various religious groups should consider fantastic film and television as a medium for interreligious dialogue. In this way, cinefantastique, the fantastic in cinema, becomes theofantastique, a medium for the discussion of the sacred and the divine.

I have experimented with this in my own work at my website TheoFantastique. Here I not only explore science fiction, fantasy, and horror in culture on a popular level as a fan, but also interact with the growing body of academic literature on the topic. The subject matter and my academic means of engagement, which also looks at the religious aspects of the fantastic, has been very well received, primarily by two religious groups: Mormons who appreciate my exploration of science fiction, and adherents of the Western Esoteric tradition who appreciate the discussion of horror and fantasy. My work at TheoFantastique provides me not only with an opportunity to probe and understand the fantastic in greater depth in terms of what it tells us about us as individuals and in our social interactions, but also to engage with members of different religious communities.

To be sure there are obstacles to be overcome with this suggestion. First, many representatives of Paganism and Christianity do not support dialogue between our communities and are content to either ignore each other or continue our history of conflict. Such individuals will likely not be persuaded of the validity of my suggestion, but my hope is that there are at least a few Pagans and Christians who see value in moving beyond these stances. Second, evangelical Christians, with the exception of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, tend to eschew much science fiction and fantasy, and particularly horror. Such evangelicals might consider good reasons to rethink their concerns in this area, as I have tried to argue in a previous post for evangelicals in relation to horror, and in another as I responded to an atheist writer on the topic, a post of mine that surprisingly led to commentary and lively discussion at Cinefantastique Online. But regardless of whether many of my fellow evangelicals can be persuaded, I believe there are enough Christians who find value in the fantastic who might consider the merits of viewing it as a medium for interreligious dialogue. The task before us then is to move from proposal to reality, perhaps at a future conference with the precise venue to be determined.

I present this thesis to The Wild Hunt readers for their consideration and responses. I hope my proposal moves us forward to more promising forms of understanding and interaction.

Note: This is a guest essay by author, artist, and harried graduate student Lupa, who is helping out with content while Jason’s doing his cross-country move.

In the United States, we have achieved what is possibly the most hyperindividualized culture in the history of our species. Some of the effects of this have benefited people, particularly minorities of various sorts who, while still facing oppression, are able to find more footholds for asserting their unique identities amid the masses. However, we’ve taken the archetype of the Rugged Individualist to such an extent that most of us no longer really know how to function as a cohesive community. More and more of us no longer live in the same state, let alone city or neighborhood, as our extended or even nuclear families. The average American moves over a dozen times in their lifetime.

Culturally, we feel rootless as well. Dissatisfied with mainstream (generally white) American culture, more people, neopagans included, are seeking connection with other cultures as a substitute for strip malls, reality television, and the aggressive competition associated with hyperindividualism. Unfortunately, this often results in varying degrees of cultural appropriation, in which an individual draws whatever isolated elements of a culture’s practices they prefer, while ignoring the context provided by what they’ve left behind.

I can personally speak only from an American perspective. However, while we’re not in a situation where “As goes the United States, so goes the world”, neopaganism has developed largely in individual-based Western cultures, and neopagan religions retain that influence to some degree, even when practiced in more communal settings.

I’ve run into countless pagans who want to form “tribes”, “families”, or other sorts of communities. Some may want to create intentional communities on land that no one yet owns; others just want some connection in their city or region. Many are inspired by the Temporary Autonomous Zones created in the context of pagan festivals, and wish they could extend that permanently. Unfortunately, community doesn’t just happen overnight. Nor can it be forced or even necessarily planned neatly. It’s an organic thing that happens at its own pace. Wanting to have a community doesn’t automatically confer the social and practical skills necessary to make it happen.

We aren’t used to being part of a community because our culture has slid so far into individualism. We’re used to being in groups of people, we’re used to making friends and other relationships, but we have a tendency to isolate ourselves outside of our preferred social circles. Many Americans today, pagan and otherwise, couldn’t tell you who most of the people who live on their street are—something that was very different even a couple of generations ago. Some of the pie-in-the-sky plans for intentional communities I’ve heard cooked up over the years have included “pagan communes”, self-sufficient and detached from “Christian America”.

Community requires interdependence with a variety of people, not just the ones we like. Yes, often communities are formed out of reaction to a lack of safe space due to being a minority of some sort. However, what keeps us from being able to create that safe space in the form of pagan-centric community is the intense focus on the self. We can see this in the common sabotage of attempts to create covens and other small groups, as well as other organization efforts. One or more people, miffed that the project isn’t going their way, will instead turn their actions towards destroying it out of spite—putting their own needs over that of the group as a whole. Personal disagreements take precedence over the greater goal. It’s not just isolation from non-pagans that is problematic—it’s the fact that we’ve been conditioned to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others to an unhealthy degree, even to the point of damaging one-on-one relationships.

These one-on-one relationships are the building-blocks of community, which also requires starting small. Relationships have to be established and built up over time if the people involved are going to survive the stressors of being in close proximity on a long-term basis. The most naïve daydreams I’ve seen often include a bunch of people who have little, if any, connection with each other, other than perhaps being friends with the ringleader(s). If your biggest concern is making sure that your needs get met, and you aren’t all that invested in the needs of most of the other people in your “community”, are you really going to be willing to temporarily set aside your needs in order to listen to everyone else’s as a way of facilitating group communication?

Conversely, “community” doesn’t always have to include every single member of the community all the time. Some of the strongest moments of a community are when one person with a problem simply knows that they can go to another person and get a solution. An example is the practice of borrowing a cup of sugar; we’ve so lost track of interconnectedness that very few of us feel we have an option in that instance beyond going out to the store, or doing without. While one’s pagan community may be scattered far enough apart across an area that borrowing that sugar may be difficult, there are other small but significant interactions that can still happen.

And it’s these small interactions involving trust and communication that are the building blocks for making community happen on a larger scale. I’ve been privileged enough to be able to go to festivals at permanent pagan sites, and observe the interactions among long-term residents, volunteers, and other staff. They get to be human beings, with errors and problems, but there’s a cohesion that’s impressive to behold. It took a lot of time, and weathering a lot of challenges to temper those relationships. But it can happen.

Admittedly I can only speak so much in practice at this point. I don’t live in an intentional community, and much of my time is taken up with personal pursuits (the Master’s Degree That Ate My Life being a primary one). However, that Master’s degree will be in counseling psychology, from a program with an emphasis on community involvement—not just taking on the clients who are most like me. And in my personal life, I’m attempting to make the first steps in creating an environment in which community can hopefully develop; last month, for example, my husband Taylor and I hosted a pot luck and swap meet in our home where people not only shared food but excess resources. Granted, our collection of “resources” looked more like the fodder for a yard sale, but it was a start. And while I’m not yet the greatest gardener in the world, I’ve planted some extra onion sets in anticipation of a barter with a friend of mine who raises quail. It just so happens that a large portion of my social circle happens to be pagan—but my goal isn’t necessarily a specifically pagan community.

That’s where I’m at right now, and I’m fine with that. I have a lot of individualistic tendencies to move past, and I have a lot of practical and relational skills I need to develop. But I can also learn from those who have made community—whether pagan or otherwise—so successful, and I can put those lessons into practice. And that’s what I’d suggest to those who want to build community: learn from those who have made it happen. There’s work to be done, but it can be done—it is being done.

One of my favorite memories of Pagan life is of the time, halfway through a camping retreat in Vermont, when about a dozen of us snuck off to a local pancake house for breakfast.

I should be clear about this: this wasn’t one of those big gatherings, like Freespirit or Starwood, where the locals would logically be expected to know there were bands of Pagans in their town.  It was a small gathering, invitation only, of no more than thirty or forty of us on private land.

We weren’t wearing garb.  Any visible pentacles were small and innocuous.  I don’t think we were even wearing tie-dye, and, though we would have smelled of wood smoke, so would any number of other campers on that sunny summer day.

We’d gone into town for pancakes, real maple syrup, and deliciously hot coffee in stoneware mugs.  All around us was the usual crowd of breakfast-eaters: farmers done with their chores, local families, carpenters and loggers and friends meeting over eggs and bacon.  Surrounded by good smells, laughter, and chatter, our group sat at one long table, telling stories and getting caught up on new jobs, how the kids were doing, new romances, and all the other details of life that old friends will catch up on when given a chance.  We had almost finished our meal when a woman from a nearby table approached us, bent low over us, and said, “Excuse me for asking.  You guys… are Pagans, aren’t you?”

We said that we were, and she nodded in satisfaction.  “I thought so,” she said.

Something about how we talked to one another. Something about how we interacted with each other.

Of course, there are parts of the country where the remarkable thing about this story would be that the stranger was not reacting with fear or suspicion.  And I don’t mean to minimize the good that is simply an absence of prejudice.   But that would not be enough to make this a favorite memory for me.  No: it was the fact that what identified us as Pagan to this outside observer was our warmth, our interconnectedness.

As important as the ecstatic parts of my religious life are to me, both in terms of my Quaker worship and my years of ritual and trance work as a Wiccan and in other forms of Paganism, what I wind up coming back to again and again when I reflect on what has been most important in my spiritual growth, is my life in community.  It is the warm and loving, and sometimes heated and tempetuous relationships I have formed in twenty years as a Pagan that have done the most to shape me into the person I am: hopefully, a woman the gods can approve and love.  Certainly, my interactions with the gods have shown me the woman I would like to become.  But it has been within the dojo of Pagan community that I have made the most progress in learning to fulfill the goals the gods have set for me.  Without the practice of attempting to live a life of authenticity, courage, and compassion while being inspired, angered, and confused by my fellow Pagans, I think I would have made very few gains over the years.

Another memory, from the years before I developed the friendships and connections of my Pagan community, reflects what I mean.

Almost the first thing I learned, when I became Pagan, was trance journey.  It began with working solo.  I had books to guide me, and many of the books featured trance work meant to be engaged in by a group, with one person reading out loud from a script.  Working alone, I had no one to read a script.  (I was much too self-conscious, back then, to read into a tape-recorder.)  So necessity required I give up the scripts early.  Likewise, without a partner, I had no one to beat a drum for me. So I settled on a focus on my own breath, and began exploring an interior landscape based, at first, on what scripts from my books suggested, but then more and more focused on encounters from dreams and from previous journeys.

Many of the encounters I had in that first year of working alone are still important to me.  Many of the landscapes I visited I still return to.  Sometimes I speculate on which mythological landscape they are related to–but that’s really beside the point here. Imagine that they come from whatever mythology makes sense to you.

On those journeys and in those dreams, I came to recognize a series of spirit-beings.  It was at that time that I began to connect with the goddess I work with to this day, a figure who once told me, when I asked her name, that I could call her “Rosie.”

Like a lot of imaginative people, I was very uncomfortable sharing my inner world with other people. So this means of working–going off to my own room, casting a circle, focusing on my breath, and finding my lonely way to an interior landscape–was very satisfying to me.  No risk, all gain.  I felt like I could go on this way forever… but I also sensed that I was reaching the limits of what I was going to be able to learn from books.  So I centered myself, went into trance, and went off to find Rosie, to ask her to guide me to a teacher.  Maybe even to be my teacher.

There exist a number of techniques for deepening trance.  I had discovered several of them.  My journeys, at that point, tended to be full of smells, textures, sounds.  They could unfold with a good deal of richness.  Places were distinct, specific, recognizeable.  And, as my books instructed me, I always made a point of retracing my steps in the reverse direction at the end of my journey, in order to “go home” to ordinary waking consciousness.

On that particular day, I had no real problem finding my way into trance, nor finding my way to the specific place in a wood where I often met Rosie.  But when I framed my question to her, something new happened:  the trance simply ended.  Like being dumped out of a wheelbarrow.  I was just done. With a strong non-verbal sense that this was not what Rosie wanted me to do.  I would not find a teacher in the spirit world.

I’ve come to recognize that my loner instinct needed curbing.  That the gods were indeed interested in engaging me in deepening relationship–but that they recognized that the way to make that happen was going to involve more than lip service to the immanence of spirit in the world.  I was going to have to go out into the physical world, and into the scariest part of the physical world at that: the social world, of prickly, pretentious, quarrelsome, judgemental human beings.  I was going to have to find my way to the gods through the hearts and minds of my fellow men and women.

I took the lesson to heart.  Oh, I still do engage in trance journey from time to time, and other forms of ritual and worship as well.  The direct encounter with Spirit is what I love best about my religious life.

But I have come to realize that, without interaction with humans, I would be incomplete.  I need to practice whatever wisdom the gods lead me to in that toughest of arenas: human community.

I don’t know how I would have fared had I become Pagan in the age of the Internet! With so many online forums and groups, it is perhaps possible never to connect with another Pagan face-to-face.  I might have been so sorely tempted by that that I would never have ventured out into the deep wild water of direct human community.  And that would have been a shame.

Because real community will hurt you, betray you, let you down.  And that’s a feature, not a bug.  Oh, I’m not saying we should welcome betrayal into our communities, or cultivate disillusionment as a path to wisdom.  But there’s a way that compassion and love and mature spiritual vision will not thrive in an ideal world. We need to be buffetted a bit by the kind of storms that are inevitable in an imperfect group of humans.

And, baby, they’re all imperfect.  That wonderful clan of Pagans whose warmth so impressed an outside observer was wonderful–but also engaged in a schism from another, larger group of Pagans, with plenty of acrimony on all sides.  We were all learning how to work on perfecting our spiritual selves in the midst of imperfect community.  None of us were (or are) perfect people, and yet we thought our communities ought to be!  We hadn’t yet mastered the delicate balancing of boundaries and generosity, love and limits, that spiritual maturity demands.

And if we’ve come closer in the years since–I hope I have, at least–it is only because we struggled with one another to find out how to do it: how to be real, and committed to one another, and still striving for something better–together.

In an Internet world, it has become easier to throw away people when they cause us pain, and to simply drop communities when they (inevitably) experience conflict.  It has become easier and easier to stay home, stay safe, and only journey inwards to find what we want of the spirit world.

But I don’t think that’s what the gods want of us.  I think the gods want us to keep it real, keep it present, get invested, get bumped and sometimes bruised among our fellows.  And, in the process, to mature, both as individuals and as a people.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…

–E.M. Forster, Howards End

Cat Chapin-Bishop blogs at Quaker Pagan Reflections.

(guest post by Elysia Gallo)

I’m committed to becoming another brick in the wall – one that makes it stronger – rather than becoming another sucker who punches a hole in that wall. What wall am I talking about? The wall of separation between church and state.

The Establishment Clause provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” Jefferson later famously referred to this clause in a letter as having built “a wall of separation between church and state.” Like all walls (the Gaza wall, the US-Mexican border, the Great Firewall of China), this wall is not impermeable. It protects us from being forced by the government to join or financially support a church, but it does allow in streams of personal religious expression – the other right we hold so dear. The Constitution ensures that religious expression on a personal level is acceptable, as long as our government does not endorse one religion over another. However, there are many times when it does just that, whether purposely or simply because the majority thoughtlessly and naively sees itself as the default mode.

For example, when a crèche turns up in front of city hall, minority faiths who want equal representation in the public sphere often have to ask for inclusion after the fact. In many cases– in Wisconsin and Washington state, for example – the consequent opening of the door to all faiths is quickly followed by a swift slamming of it when too many requests flood in or the displays cause too much controversy. Baby Jesus and a menorah are one thing, but a Wiccan pentacle? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Festivus Pole? The mainstream can’t take it!

A poll last year found that “83% [of respondents] say a nativity scene on city property should be legal, but only 60% say a display honoring Islam during Ramadan should be legal. Overall, 58% of all Americans feel both should be legal, while 15% feel both should be illegal.” If the majority of Americans are for the nativity but only slightly more than half would open up that space to all faiths regardless of their personal religious views, you have the majority effectively suppressing the minority’s religious expression. We need to put a stop to this practice altogether, or else this stream could become a flood that washes away our Constitutional protection against such state-sanctioned oppression. The Constitution is supposed to protect the rights of minorities, not strengthen those of the majority – that’s what the Civil Rights movement was all about.

While not all Christians are trying to push their religion on us, not all non-mainstream religions are without ulterior motives of their own…

Should we support proselytizing by non-mainstream religious groups?

You may remember Jason blogging about the case of a fringe religious group called Summum trying to get its Seven Aphorisms erected in a city park in Pleasant Grove, UT, on equal standing with the Ten Commandments already displayed there.

However, Summum had challenged another city for the same reasons – the city of Duchesne, UT. While the Pleasant Grove case proceeded to the Supreme Court, Duchesne instead reluctantly moved its Ten Commandments piece to a cemetery to avoid further litigation. Surprisingly enough, this was not seen as a victory in Summum’s eyes; in an article published after the monument had been moved,

“We are saddened that the Ten Commandments monument has been removed from the city park in Duchesne,” Summum President Su Menu said.

“Summum has never requested that religious monuments be removed from government property. We have only asked that all religions be given equal access,” Menu said. “Just as the citizens of Duchesne have benefited from the display of the Decalogue, so, too, would they have benefited from the display of our Seven Aphorisms.”

So was Summum ultimately just trying to win converts, or did they believe that all beliefs could peacefully coexist if everyone had equal access to them? Would we ever want to erect a statue of the 42 Principles of Maat, or the Nine Noble Virtues, or the Wiccan Rede in a public park simply because others “may benefit” from its display? Proselytizing is not a central tenet of any Pagan faith I can think of, but does that mean we should bar others from doing so? If we are all for tolerance and acknowledging the validity of an infinite number of other paths, why would we be intolerant of a Ten Commandments statue in a park or courtroom?

And if we went to all the courthouses of the nation to dismantle any Christian-themed decorations, then what of Pagan decorations like Lady Liberty? Would you get rid of Moses yet keep Confucius? What of Mars in front of the US Capitol, or the Three Fates and the four elements in front of the Supreme Court building? Obviously we live in a society where religious expression is not easily extracted from the public sphere; indeed, in many cases it makes our lives richer.

Conversely, if tolerance is one of our core beliefs as Pagans, how can we tolerate intolerance and religious aggression? Wiccans say “An’ it harm none, do as ye will” – so the question then becomes whether Christians are actually doing harm by erecting the Ten Commandments in public places, placing nativities on City Halls, and so forth.

Pagans and Atheists – strange bedfellows?

Unfortunately what may have once been the simple, well-intentioned decorating of buildings and parks in the past is now being pushed as part of a malicious and divisive political agenda. That fits the definition of “harm” well enough for me. You can see this again and again as part of the “Culture Wars” that fundamentalist Christians believe they must wage to stop the secularization of America. In the words of Green Bay City Council President Chad Fradette, who placed the nativity on government property, “I’m trying to take this fight to the people who need to be fought. I’ll keep going on this until this group imposing Madison values crawls back into its hole and never crawls out.”

Because of people like Chad, I’m more inclined these days to crawl into bed with the atheists – to stop, or at least to impede, the progress of the Christian right juggernaut that is hell-bent on tying up taxpayer’s money in long, drawn-out court battles revolving around their supposed “persecution” by a secularized America. I realize that in not supporting religious displays on public land I’m in a small minority of Americans – but what else is new?

It’s not just Chad fighting to get us back in our hole – many Christians are organizing to be more proactive in thrusting their nativities into the public sphere, to deliberately inflame others. The response of setting up a Wiccan pentacle is just feeding into that – a retribution against having the nativity on government property. And then that pentacle gets trashed, which is just more revenge visited upon retribution. Does it make any sense? Can’t we just nip it in the bud by saying no to everyone before it gets ugly? Can’t religious displays be simply relegated to private homes, churches and temples? Why bring it to city property or schools in the first place?

A huge chorus of secularists saying “no” to these displays will probably be heard more loudly than one or two minority faiths’ disjointed efforts to fight these assaults or gain equal standing on their own.

One atheist organization, the Secular Coalition for America, has been lobbying Washington of late for initiatives that Pagans may also support, such as eliminating faith-based policies that impose mainstream religious tenets on the rest of us through discriminatory hiring, weakening science-based education and health services, and proselytizing through charity. They are also urging more atheists to come out of the closet; this article about their lobbying efforts reveals that of 23 privately self-proclaimed atheists in the House and Senate, only one was willing to go public with it! Ultimately they, too, fear PR damage on the basis of the mainstream American belief that only Christians can be moral or ethical and that atheists are necessarily evil, deluded, liberal or untrustworthy. (Sound familiar? Such labels are often applied to Pagans, too.)

As Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition, wrote to me in an email,

“Our mission is twofold: to promote non-theism and work for the separation of religion and government. We are on your side on just about all cases. […] I think it is a good idea for all of our groups to work together on the main issues and also to work for the visibility and respectability of our constituencies. The more Atheists and Pagans come out of their closets, the better off we will all be.”

Besides the Secular Coalition and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, there are more inclusive groups fighting for the same ideals (because believers of any faith can be secularists, too), such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State – the very same organization that helped Roberta Stewart and Circle Sanctuary with the pentacle quest.

What do you think? Do you want to join the atheists and other secularists to ensure that minority rights don’t get trampled by keeping faith out of the public sphere, where we still can? Or will it be more effective to fight for better minority faith inclusion in the long run? How should we respond when “culture warriors” provoke us to action?

(by Brendan Myers)

In the last few years I’ve started to hear more and more about Elders in the Pagan community. The people who first joined the movement back in the 60’s are in their 60’s now (in terms of age, if not a decade!) and many of them have done so much work for the movement in that time – running a festival, writing books, managing a shop, teaching new people – that the word Elder is more frequently being attached to them.

In the spring and summer of 2006 I worked as a contract researcher for the branch of the government of Canada responsible for peacekeeping and policing in the First Nations. During this job, I came into contact with 50 traditional indigenous Elders from all across Canada. I think that as the Pagan community begins to acknowledge Elders of its own, it would benefit from a look at the way Aboriginal people understand their Elders. Here’s a short account of my own experiences.

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