The jester or holy fool is an oft-necessary role within religious communities. It is far too easy at times to get over-serious and forget the inherent joy and playfulness that can come with living the Pagan life. It is during those times when we forget joy and humor that the fool points out that our fine clothes are imaginary, and we’ve been parading about naked. For many in modern Paganism the semi-official holy fools are the Discordians, worshippers of the sexy goddess of chaos Eris, a joke-cult/cult-joke popularized in such works as “The Principia Discordia”, “The Illuminatus! Trilogy”, and Margot Adler’s “Drawing Down the Moon”.

“In a way, it’s ridiculous even to talk seriously about the Erisians, a group, or collection of groups, that has called itself a “Non-Prophet Irreligious Disorganization” this “dedicated to an advanced understanding of the paraphysical manifestations of Everyday Chaos”, and at other times stated, “The Erisian revelation is not a complicated put-on disguised as a new religion, but a new religion disguised as a complicated put-on”.

But for some the joke can go too far, allowing the chaos to spread to a point where it turns a holy day into a jumbled mess of tired pop-culture references. That seems to be the experience of one woman who attended a CUUPs service for Lammas that seemed far more about Monty Python than first-harvests or the god Lugh.

“Our local CUUPS group hosted a strange Lammas/Lughnasadh ritual last night. Members of the group take turns as High Priest and Priestess and this ritual was led by our local Discordians … it’s not that I don’t appreciate some of the points made … I like the emphasis on those un-looked-for blessings, the life changing moments that come out of nowhere. It is good to notice and appreciate those once in a while. It is good to remember that while harmony in a worthy goal, disorder always lurks beneath the suface of order and that is not always a bad thing. I believe there really is a time and place for last night’s ritual. I don’t think Lughnasadh is it … It felt like I needed to hear the lessons about reaping the works of your labors and being multi-skilled. I was hoping for a ritual experience that would embed the ideas swirling in my head. Instead I got a quick thank you to Lugh, mixed for some reason with Gaia, but now let’s really talk about Eris all night … when people started quoting Monty Python as part of the ritual I knew my spiritual needs were not going to be met.”

Worse still, she left feeling “negative” and “conservative” for not being able to join in the laughs. No doubt part of this can be attributed to the ups and downs of a rotating eclectic gathering, sometimes the Discordians are put in charge when you are more in the mood for something a bit more reverent and serious, but I also think this might be a failure on the part of the CUUPs organizers. The Sabbats/High Holy Days/Fire Festivals can certainly include mirth and irreverence, but they are also meant to transmit deep truths, help us commune with the gods, and turn the wheel of the year. If the holy fools appointed/chosen as ritual leaders can’t control their own chaos long enough to mark the holiday, they are not only out-of-balance, but they imbalance all those who chose that event to connect to the mysteries of that holiday.

There are certainly times when the lunatics should take over the asylum, when chaos should overrun our natural inclinations towards order and safety, but those liminal times should be chosen carefully and not assigned arbitrarily. There are times for mayhem and there are times for work and for harvest. And on a personal note, quoting Monty Python (no doubt “Holy Grail”) in circle is sooo played out. Seriously, get some new material folks.

One fact that hasn’t sunk in too deeply to those on the outside looking in on modern Paganism is that our culture includes many different points of view on the topic of spiritual eclecticism. While some groups and individuals feel free to incorporate “whatever works”, others try very hard to find or reconstruct a singular tradition and are loathe to incorporate elements that they see as outside their cultural/religious boundaries. Today, many modern Pagans (myself included) fall somewhere in between these two poles. So I found it interesting that Pagan author Amber K seemed to take a shot at Pagans with a traditional bent in a recent article on Yule.

“People drawn to paganism tend to be “spiritual mavericks” because it’s a religion that is open to incorporating many beliefs, she said. “The fact is, if anything seems useful or true or good to us as individuals, we’ll incorporate that into our spiritual practice,” she said. “There are also pagans who don’t do that, who swallow a very set sort of beliefs and practices that are pretty rigid, but I would have to say the majority are pretty much wide open to spiritual truth wherever you find it.” That flexibility is one reason Kim Pennington-Dozier, a Jemez Springs resident, says she was drawn to paganism.” (emphasis mine)

I wouldn’t have noticed this if it weren’t for the “swallow” remark, and the subtle insinuation that the more tradition-bound Pagans are somehow denying spiritual truths in other faiths. Was she taken out of context? It can be hard to “hear” the intention in pieces like this, so perhaps she meant no insult? In either case, this brings up some interesting issues for the future of journalistic coverage of modern Paganism. More often than not, the “eclectic” Pagans get interviewed more often (for a variety of reasons) giving the impression that the entirety of modern Paganism is eclectic in nature. As modern Paganism continues to grow journalists will start to pick up on the divide between eclectic and traditionalist urges within modern Pagan faiths.

We are at a point now where we could establish the talking points for these idealogical differences within modern Paganism. If we don’t, we run the risk of having both sides of the ongoing debate stereotyped and defined by those who report on them. A good start would be avoiding comments that seem to inflate your viewpoint at the expense of those who don’t share it.