Archives For Teo Bishop

Pagan Voices: Teo Bishop, P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, Alley Valkyrie, and More!

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  May 6, 2013 — 4 Comments

Pagan voices is a spotlight on recent quotations from figures within the Pagan community. These voices may appear in the burgeoning Pagan media, or from a mainstream outlet, but all showcase our wisdom, thought processes, and evolution in the public eye. Is there a Pagan voice you’d like to see highlighted? Drop me a line with a link to the story, post, or audio.

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

“The big question that all of this sidesteps around, of course, is that if justice does come from the gods, and is supported by the gods, then why is it so often lacking in the world, especially in those cases wehre injustice causes a ton of suffering for some people, but a huge amount of luxury, richness, and prosperity for those who inflict such suffering and cause such injustice?

For my own part, I can’t imagine that this situation pleases the gods, particularly those most concerned with justice. But, if that is the case, then “they’ll get it in the end” is not much of a consolation to those who are suffering meanwhile. It brings up and highlights once again the ultimate answer to the other version of questions of theodicy, as outlined by Rabbi Harold Kushner: namely, that the gods must therefore not be omnipotent, even though they may support love, justice, and virtue.” – P. Sufenas Virius Lupus exploring the topic of theodicy at Aedicula Antinoi: A Small Shrine of Antinous.

Sannion (Photo: Dver)

Sannion (Photo: Dver)

“First off, I would say that a lot of people don’t understand what miasma precluded in antiquity. It was primarily concerned with access to holy places such as groves, mountains, wayside shrines and temples. The temples in particular were regarded as the abodes of the gods and repositories of their awesome power and consequently for a person to set foot in them required that person to undergo a greater than normal degree of purification, especially since religious functionaries were exposed to this power on a deeper level and a more regular basis than some pilgrim visiting the site on a festival day. (Think about the extra precautions taken by dentists and x-ray technicians who are daily exposed to radiation. It’s such small doses that it won’t harm you if you’re just getting your teeth fixed but being constantly surrounded by it they have to act accordingly.) In fact most festivals were conducted outside the temple and most people were never permitted past a certain point within it and certainly not where the cult image was housed. (For more on temples and how they worked in both Greek and Egyptian tradition, consult this article of mine.) Most of the purity codes and sacred regulations that have come down to us are concerned with access to temples and the proper performance of priestly offices – not the affairs of the average citizen and how they conducted their personal worship in front of their domestic shrine. No matter how deep in a state of miasma one was they could still pray to their gods and perform rudimentary ritual actions. Indeed purification would not have been possible without carrying out these ceremonies so it is absurd to suggest that one should cease all religious activity while in this state. Indeed we have accounts of the gods and spirits making numerous battlefield epiphanies and coming to the aid of women in distressed labor and all manner of things like that, so just because a playwright used a goddess abandoning her chosen hero as he expired as a plot device does not mean that we should surmise that the gods will have nothing to do with us while we are polluted. It can certainly be more difficult to feel their presence or receive communications from them at such times, but I suspect that this has more to do with impurity clouding our perception than it does divinities actively disengaging from us.” - Sannion, a Dionysian, on the topic of miasma at PaganSquare.

Teo Bishop

Teo Bishop

“I am all of the things I have ever been. I continue to be them, in one way or another. Nothing is ever fully released from the heart. It’s all there, tattoo-like. Those old parts of you call out and say, We’re still here: your memories; your long, lost hopes; your visions of truth; your doubts — all of it. All here, still intact, inked into the inner flesh.

My Christianity gave me my first introduction to reverence, mystery, humility and community. It encouraged me to recognize that there was nothing in the world that was not touched by the divine. It inspired me to care deeper, to give generously, and to seek out new, creative ways to serve others.

I bring all of those attributes with me to my work with the Solitary Druid Fellowship. Were it not for the Church, and for those many people who were inspired by Jesus to serve others in love, I wouldn’t be writing liturgies for Pagans.” – Teo Bishop, writing on a recent visit to an Episcopal church, at Bishop In The Grove.

Alison Leigh Lilly with a very big tree.

Alison Leigh Lilly with a very big tree.

“As a city-dweller, I know how easy it would be to give in to pessimism, seeing the landscape where I live as too far gone, too scarred by human exploitation. The problem is just too big for a handful of conservationists to tackle on their own, no matter how dedicated they are. Seattle will never again be a pristine wilderness — the invasives, human and nonhuman alike, are here to stay. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t new ways of thinking about how we live with our local landscape. Unlike other invasive species, we have the opportunity to change the stories we tell about our place in the world and, by changing our stories, changing the ways we live with and relate to the many other beings that share the world with us. Instead of seeing ourselves at war with invasives, and with ourselves, we can embrace the story of harvest.

The beauty of the harvest is that it promises sustenance and interdependence as the fruits of our labor. The effort we put into the harvest — the blood, sweat and tears — helps to foster connections instead of severing them, sustains and supports life instead of destroying it. We’re used to thinking of harvest as something easy: as easy as going to the grocery store and choosing between oranges and apples, or at most doing some gentle weeding and watering in our backyard gardens. The truth is, harvest is hard, sweaty work that demands a great deal of discipline, teamwork, commitment and courage. Rather than lionizing the sacrifices of the few, reclaiming metaphors of harvest gives us the opportunity to celebrate the efforts of ordinary people doing ordinary things that add up to real, meaningful change. It gives people a chance to be heroic in their everyday lives, as well as reacquaint themselves with the pleasure of hard work and its rewards.” – Alison Leigh Lilly, on the topics of warfare and harvest, at her Meadowsweet and Myrrh blog.

Jason Mankey

Jason Mankey

“Given that some of Wicca’s ritual structure (and terminology) owe a great deal to Freemasonry it’s not surprising that initiation plays an important part in many Wiccan traditions. Initiation is in the very DNA of Modern Witchcraft, but it’s also possible that Wicca has grown in ways that have taken it further and further from its origins. It’s hard to picture Gerald Gardner imagining just how many Wiccan traditions have evolved (and prospered) since the 1950′s. Wicca launched a full-scale Pagan Revival that shows no signs of stopping, we’ve come an incredibly long way in just 70 years.

We’ve reached another fork in the road and with it new questions. Is Wicca a spirituality ready to take its seat at the table with the other great religions of the world? Or is it a secret society with a complex set of rituals? If it’s a faith then it’s subject to all the watering downs and bastardizations that have befallen (and often benefitted) all of the world’s other religious paths. I understand The Wicca who walk the path of the initiate and bemoan the changes that have taken place in the last couple of decades, but I also see the hearts who have benefitted from that change. Who am I to tell them they don’t have a seat at the table?” – Jason Mankey, at his Patheos blog, on the nature of Wicca.

John Beckett

John Beckett

“For too many people in our society, “Pagan” still means “Other.” That must change. That’s why I’ve always blogged under my own name and posted announcements with my contact info (and I’ve never had a problem come from it). More recently I’ve come to understand that’s not enough. At this point in my life I have a fair amount of privilege and that privilege carries responsibilities.

I have an obligation to put a name and a face on “Pagan” for friends and family who’ve never (knowingly) met one. I have an obligation to articulate what I believe, what I do and why. I have an obligation to be out, not just for myself (though that’s important by itself) but for Kyrja Withers and for everyone else who fears they will be targeted as the Other if their religion becomes known.

Some day, no one will care what god or goddess you do or don’t pray to, only that you conduct yourself with integrity and compassion. Until then, we need Pagan Coming Out Day.” - John Beckett, a Druid and UU, on the importance of Pagan Coming Out Day.

Alley Valkyrie. Photo by Rob Sydor.

Alley Valkyrie. Photo by Rob Sydor.

“I’m asking you for a 24-hour moratorium on violating the civil rights of the homeless. Try it for just one day. One day in which you don’t wake anyone up at night for sleeping, one day in which you don’t arrest anyone for existing in public, one day in which you don’t needlessly harass and intimidate kids on the park blocks. Just one day. 

In that one day, two beautiful things will happen. You will experience the reality of actually “protecting and serving” without oppressing, abusing, or disenfranchising anyone, and I will experience the reality of sleeping in, soaking in some sun, playing my ukulele, taking a walk by the river, drinking an ample amount of quality beer, and watching old reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation without having to worry that I’m about to get a text or a phone call from someone that’s on the wrong side of your “enforcement”.” – Alley Valkyrie, a Pagan and homelessness activist, in a plea to local law enforcement.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

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The Pagan Bubble

Teo Bishop —  March 26, 2013 — 133 Comments
Boy In A Bubble

Photo by Charles Strebor

We live in a Pagan bubble.

Mostly, we seem unaware that the bubble exists.

We talk a lot to ourselves, Pagans do. We talk to ourselves about who we are and who we are not. We talk to ourselves about what we believe, what we do not believe, and sometimes we even argue about whether or not belief is that meaningful.

We argue, Pagans do, within the Pagan bubble.

We also, at times, dive deep into meaningful conversations that look nothing like argument. Some of us sit in contemplation with the difficult stuff of community building, and we do so with grace and compassion. We are complicated, for certain.

But the Pagan bubble is real. And so long as we continue to live inside of it, we remain ghettoized.

At least, we are ghettoized online. The Pagan and polytheist corners of the internet foster conversations that require so much context as to be nearly unintelligible to outsiders. I suppose to a degree this is the nature of any walled-off community. It’s what religious people do: they talk within their walls about who they are.

But this talking to ourselves about ourselves is debilitating. We become steeped in our own lore, influenced by our own memetic waves, and stuck within a vocabulary and symbol system that could really benefit from a Universal Translator. We are well versed at talking about who we are to each other, but I’m beginning to think that we are (or, at least, I am) unpracticed at talking about who we are to people who do not share our vernacular.

This all came into focus for me as I was sitting at my parents dining room table this past weekend. My stepfather, a man who has loved me as his own for nearly thirty years, a man who has never been religious but who has been tolerant of my religiosity in its various incarnations, looked at me and said, gently,

“I read your blog, but I don’t really have any idea what you’re talking about.”

*pause*

I was speechless.

I didn’t know I’d been that cryptic. I didn’t realize that my writing was so narrowly focused. I’d thought that within the realm of Pagan writers I’d managed to do a pretty good job thinking and writing outside of the box. I’ve worked to consider the diversity of belief and religious practice in the Pagan world, and I often reach for something more universal — more purely human — that might unite us in a shared understanding.

But that’s just it. I’ve been doing this work from within the realm of Paganism. I have been writing in a Pagan bubble.

Even this blog post I’m writing now is written on a site create by a Pagan for Pagans. It offers a “modern Pagan perspective,” primarily for the benefit of other Pagans.

The bubble is big, and there’s a lot of great work going on within the bubble. But it is still a bubble.

Reeling from this realization, I ran through the list of places that house my writing:

  • My work at Bishop In The Grove is geared toward an audience of mostly Pagans and polytheists. There is the occasional Buddhist reader/commenter, and once in a while a Progressive Christian shows up with a kind word. But mostly, it’s a Pagan blog.
  • The Solitary Druid Fellowship blog is even more specific to a Pagan tradition (ADF Druidry). It’s more universal in its language and approach than many ADF groves, being that it seeks to serve solitaries of a wide variety of hearth cultures and traditions. But, you’ve still got to get a basic education in Paganism or Druidry to benefit from all of what the Fellowship offers.
  • I write for HuffPost Religion primarily on the High Days; and while I try to include a little descriptive information in each post about the relevance of the day for the benefit of non-Pagans, the posts are mostly directed toward people for whom these days already have relevance. I write posts that serve as reflections on days that are sacred to Pagans.
  • When I wrote at Patheos, an interfaith blogging site, it would have appeared that I was working outside of the Pagan bubble. But I was writing on the “Pagan channel.” Even within this mini-verse of religious blogs, there are clearly drawn religious lines. The Pagan bubble exists there, too.
  • I have a column coming out in the next edition of Witches and Pagans, and… well… can you get much more Pagan than that?

In a few seconds I realized that the majority, if not all of the writing I’ve done in the past few years — a couple hundred posts worth — has been Pagan-specific, Pagan-centered, and Pagan-directed.

Here in my parent’s kitchen, I found myself unpracticed at talking about Paganism (or more specifically, my paganism) with someone outside of my relatively small, insular world.

Photo by Jason Mrachina

Photo by Jason Mrachina

I’m not unfamiliar with operating within a cultural ghetto. Growing up gay, I immersed myself in an ad-hoc study of gay history, gay culture, and gay tradition. I sought out resources on gay spirituality, visited gay bookstores, and sewed a gay patch on my backpack. I bought gay political rags, gauged my support of politicians based on their stances on gay issues, and checked the language of newspaper and online articles with precision to search out “gay friendly” or “anti-gay” language.

Everything was, for a time, filtered through a gay lens. And by creating a gay bubble for myself (or, rather, by gleefully recognizing my place within the gay bubble created by my gay forebears), I was able to affirm my gay identity, my gay tastes and preferences, and my sense of gay-self. I knew where I stood within the gay bubble, and I knew very clearly what stood on the outside.

The gay community first organized in response to cultural oppression and subjugation. Gays organized because they were being treated poorly, and through organization we were able to forge change within culture. We continue to do so to this day. But should we achieve all of our political goals and forge the cultural change we have sought out for so long, we may find ourselves in a position where we are no longer in need of protection against the over-culture. The cultural forces whose othering allowed for us to shore up our sense of individual and collective identities may become benign.

I suspect a similar fate for Pagans should we step outside of our bubble, and I think this may be one reason why the bubble stays in place.

As my husband (my gay husband), Sean Michael Morris, told me while discussing this matter,

“In today’s world, many ghettos, which were created by people who othered us, are maintained because we cherish our otherness.”

We perpetuate our otherness because it’s safer than being out. We perpetuate our otherness, I think, because if we allow the walls to come down from around our encampment, our stronghold against those on the outside, we run the risk of losing our sense of identity in the world.

Do these boundaries continue to be necessary? Do they serve a purpose, other than for protection?

How, I wonder, might we be better served by the deconstruction of our ghettos? What would happen if we no longer lived in this Pagan bubble?

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Unsolitary

Eric Scott —  March 15, 2013 — 20 Comments
Picture taken in my parents' kitchen.

The banner of Coven Pleiades.

We are chanting, waiting for Lorelei to appear:

Full moon shining bright, midnight on the water
O! Aradia, Diana’s silver daughters

If Coven Pleiades, the Wiccan group I was born into, had only one song, it would be this one. We sing it, our voices growing loud enough to fill my parents’ house with the force of our love, loud enough to fill the dark space where Lorelei waits, her hands bound, her eyes covered, her body naked. This is her initiation ritual, the first we have held in several years – the first, I think, since my own second degree.

It’s also the first time I’ve seen an initiation from the other side of the blindfold. It’s a bit like being backstage at a play, or a magic show. I am part of a large cast, performing a show for an audience of one. When Lorelei appears, she will be set on a path beset by obstacles, a sharp and thorny forest filled with the howls of beasts. And of course, we are those beasts and brambles, both her path and the things that block her from it.

The priest, my father, goes to retrieve Lorelei from the underworld. She arrives at the edge of the circle, nervous, but ready.

“What is your name, child of the Goddess?” asks my mother, assuming the form of the White Goddess.

“Lorelei,” she says, formally adopting this as her Craft name.

“And what do you bring with you?” asks the Goddess.

“Perfect love and perfect trust,” says Lorelei.

Thus she brings the traditional wages of initiation, ready for us to offer her the bargain that they might buy.

***

Lorelei’s initiation happened the Saturday after Pantheacon. I had begun to recover by that point – returning to a soulless office job will do that for you – but still, I felt like a changed person. I had gone through a lot, been exposed to many things I had never seen within Pleiades.

Several people have told me that it was a brave act for me to come to a big event like Pantheacon alone. This was always said with the unspoken but obvious afterthought, “brave, and perhaps foolish.” I had nobody there to pull me back if I went too deep, nobody to ensure I, to use both a drug analogy and a play on words, didn’t have a bad trip. I can see how, had I been a slightly different person, or things have gone a slightly different way, I could have been overwhelmed by the experience, left broken by it. This is not to say that I made no friends at Pantheacon; the first thing I did when I got off the plane, in fact, was to meet the people who would become the dramatis personae of my weekend. But many of those folks were exactly the people luring me into new experiences, for which I might not have had the appropriate mental defenses.

This company of two thousand Pagans taught me much about solitude, and its value. I learned of my own need for loneliness in the times I had to withdraw to the quiet of my hotel room for an hour to escape the crowd. I learned more firmly about the things I could accept into my practice and the things that I couldn’t. And I learned that, sad to say, I’m really just not cut out for 1 AM hospitality suite parties. (Sorry, guys.)

On the last day of the convention, I went to Teo Bishop’s presentation on the Solitary Druid Fellowship. Compared to much of Pantheacon, it felt mellow and contemplative: just an audience, seated in the round, with Teo standing in the middle, spinning back and forth to face each of us in turn.

If I am being honest, I didn’t go to this workshop because I thought it would be particularly interesting to me. It was, after all, addressed to solitary members of the ADF, and I was neither of those. But I was more interested than I thought I would be. Teo knows how to tell a story.

In this one, he described the special needs of a solitary Pagan, reflecting the greater needs of that particular umbrella by describing what he needed in his own practice. He brought in his personal history – his past life as an Episcopalian, his current life within ADF, his love of liturgy and the Book of Common Prayer. He told us of the challenges of solitary practice – the feelings of loneliness, of personal motivation, of being disconnected from a greater religious practice. And he brought in the advantages of solitude – contemplation, personal direction, the opportunity for great work within the body of the individual practitioner.

I had never considered that being solitary could work out to one’s advantage, myself, so this last part came as a surprise – but I saw the possibilities as soon as Teo mentioned them. He had a point. Like many of the great ideas I have encountered in my life, I immediately recognized this one’s worth. Also like many of those great ideas, I recognized pretty quickly that it wasn’t meant for me.

Yet it made me think about my own practice, and how it related to the things Teo was talking about – the benefits and the consequences of being so ingrained into a group.

In my mind, the coven – or, to be more accurate, my coven, Pleiades – is the fundamental unit of religion. (Let me emphasize the words in my mind, lest you think I’m prescribing a course of action that I believe everyone must follow. You, as you have likely noticed by now, are not me.) The dynamic of the group is the basic energy which powers Wicca for me, and as our composition and focus changes, so does the religion. While I have explored and practiced several other forms of Paganism – Taoism, Kabbalism, a long courtship with Asatru – my mind always returns to Pleiades, which, to me, is Wicca itself.

This is a source of great strength, for within the group I find my teachers, who have guided me in my explorations of life and magick. Here I find my elders, who have watched me grow up, whose relationships with me have been a constant evolution. And here I find the people to whom my magick is directed, the people who assure me that my practice has a purpose beyond myself.

And this is a source of great trouble, too, because the relationships within a coven are not stable things. People move away, fall in love, break up, fall out. Even if those changes have nothing to do with our rituals, they still reverberate throughout our circle, like concentric waves in a pond once a rock has been thrown in. If those waves are violent enough, they can threaten the existence of the coven’s very existence; I suspect more covens have been destroyed by such forces than survived them.

To me, it’s worth the heartache. A good coven is a family, after all, and every family is a source of both sorrow and solace. That’s the bargain we make, and most of us, I think, find it a worthwhile one. For me, Pleiades isn’t even that old saw, a “family of choice” – I didn’t choose them. They’re simply family, as much as a family of blood or law.

***

The main business of the initiation has concluded. Lorelei has taken off her blindfold, had her hands released, slipped her robe back onto her body. She has been told the secrets, which I will not speak here. Now we sit, drinking wine and munching on cakes. We are talking – mostly about the ritual, giving Lorelei congratulations and presents. (I, in typical fashion, left my present in the car, so it will have to wait until later.) But we also talk about mundane things. We crack jokes. We talk about the present and the past. The name for the act is communion, after all. And here we are, a coven, communicating.

At one point, my dad clears his throat and speaks. “In a lot of groups, initiation means that you are a Witch. It’s a title you get by going through the ritual. Here, we don’t do that. Whether  you call yourself a Witch or not, that’s not for us to say – that’s between you and your gods.” He smiles at Lorelei. “For us, initiation means that now, you are our Witch. That you belong to us, and we belong to you.”

I have belonged to Pleiades since long before I was initiated, since I was in the womb. I am an unsolitary Pagan; I don’t really know any other way to do it. They are the the path and destination, the actors and the audience. While I stumble through the darkness of life, they are the ones stretching out their hands to mine. They guide me – and I guide them – on our eternal journey to our destination, our source, our home.

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Pagan Community Notes: Kyril Oakwind, Coreopsis, Spiral Rhythm, and More!

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  March 11, 2013 — 2 Comments

Pagan Community Notes is a series focused on news originating from within the Pagan community. Reinforcing the idea that what happens to and within our organizations, groups, and events is news, and news-worthy. My hope is that more individuals, especially those working within Pagan organizations, get into the habit of sharing their news with the world. So let’s get started!

In Memoriam: Kyril Oakwind (1951-2013): Word has come to us that Gardnerian and Church of All Worlds Priestess Kyril Oakwind passed away on March 9, 2013 after a long struggle with metastatic breast cancer. Oakwind served as a board member for Sweetwood Temenos, was founder of the Madison, Wisconsin area Pagan Tea & Talk, and publisher of Converging Paths Magazine. In a post today at her Facebook page, Selena Fox at Circle Sanctuary sent blessings for Kyril Oakwind’s many contributions to the Pagan community.

Kyril Oakwind

Kyril Oakwind

“Remembering Wiccan priestess, Pagan elder, neighbor, & friend Kyril, who died yesterday after a long battle with breast cancer. Thankful for Kyril’s many contributions to Paganism, near & far, over the years. Blessings to her in the realm of the Ancestors. Condolences & support to her family, friends, & all of us mourning her passing. Blessed Be.”

In an email to me Selena Fox went on to add that “she not only did teaching, rituals, and networking in the great Madison, Wisconsin area, but did writing and editing of Pagan publications that connected Pagans further away.” May we remember her, and all those who did the work of building connections in our community. Our condolences go out to her friends and family. What is remembered, lives.

The Return of Coreopsis: Coreopsis, a peer-reviewed journal of myth and theatre, is returning to publication thanks to Concrescent Scholars, the academic wing of Concrescent Press in Richmond, CA. According to Editor-in-Chief Lezlie Kinyon, Ph.D, the Spring/Summer issue will be published April 29 and the Fall/Winter issue will be published on October 29.

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“I am overjoyed to tell all of you that my peer review journal, Coreopsis, is coming back into publication. The submission period is open for 2013 – We go “live” on February 14 on our new site now published by Concrescent Scholars, the academic wing of Concrescent Press in Richmond, CA.  Submission are open to young scholars and working artists as well as established scholars.”

While the submission period for the Spring/Summer issue has now passed, the Fall/Winter issues submission deadline is August 15 with a theme of “Penny tae th’ Guisers: An examination of medieval performance before 1400.” Submission guidelines can be found, here.

Spiral Rhythm Turns to Kickstarter to Fund New Album: The band Spiral Rhythm, a regular fixture at many Pagan festivals and events, launched a Kickstarter to fund the recording of a new album. Now, with one week left, they need just over $3000 dollars to make their $10,000 goal.

Spiral Rhythm performing live.

Spiral Rhythm performing live.

“For several years we’ve been working towards a goal that you, our fans, set for us- make another album! With an eye towards stepping it up a notch, we will be entering a professional recording studio. We are hoping to cover studio and mixing/mastering time as well as post production pressing, packaging, and pachyderms (just kidding about that last bit – wanted to see if your paying attention), Spiral Rhythm is throwing ourselves upon the mercy of you, the fans, by initiating this Kickstarter project. Our hope is to make one shiny new CD, but if we raise the roof with this thing, we have enough material for two. Two! Want to help? Of course you do.”

If you’re a fan of Spiral Rhythm’s work, now’s the time to support them in their efforts. A $20 donation gets you a digital download, and a $35 donation gets you a copy of the physical CD (once recorded). The band adds that “we all do this for love, not profit, and we have to take into account jobs, children, family, all of which can interfere with the concrete reality of making a new CD.” They vow the new music will get recorded, but I’m sure it would help if they made their fundraising goal.

In Other Pagan Community News:

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

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The Fleshiness of PantheaCon

Teo Bishop —  February 15, 2013 — 8 Comments

cropped-PconBanner13a

PantheaCon is a conference for Pagans, Heathens, Indigenous Non-European and many of diverse beliefs that occurs annually over President’s Day weekend in San Jose, California. Well over 2000 people attend more than 200 presentations that range from rituals to workshops and from classes to concerts.

This post is one of a series on the meaning and relevance of PantheaCon to The Wild Hunt’s authors.

_________________________________________________

“I’m buzzing. Vibrating. I know that sounds New Age-y, but that’s really what it feels like to be in my body at this moment.

I’m sitting in the lobby of the San Jose DoubleTree Hotel, and PantheaCon is exploding all around me. There are men in skirts, women in top hats, people whose gender is a complete mystery, elders, newbies (like me), and a general spirit of something happening.

This is the place to be, and I’m here.

*grin*

Oh, and did I mention that there is a strong corseted faction? Because there is, and it’s amazing.

I’m overwhelmed, really. I didn’t know it would feel quite so exhilarating to be near this many strange, and delightfully decorated people. It’s as though my books have been made flesh.

For real.”

Photo by Alex Mar

Teo and Jason | Photo by Alex Mar

This was what PantheaCon was for me in 2012. Today marks the beginning of the 2013 PantheaCon extravaganza, the start of my Year 2, and I’m approaching this conference with a very different perspective.

I’m excited, don’t get me wrong. My excitement is just a little more tempered than it was before. After a full year of blogging, writing posts about the questionable act of public circle casting, the need for a liturgical practice for solitary Druids, and the truth about pop stars (or semi-pop stars), I feel like I have a different understanding about who the Pagan community is, and who I am in relationship to it. To write is to be known, and I certainly feel known in a way that I didn’t during my first go around.

I took advantage of that anonymity last year, but I also came away from PantheaCon with a completely new context for my identity. “Teo Bishop” is a name I chose for myself, a name I used to gingerly navigate the unknown territory of Paganism. I wrestled for a good while about what it meant to use this different name, and what reason I might have to bring my two names (and their corresponding parts) into greater alignment with one another. This dialogue continued after PantheaCon 2012, but it was forever changed by the weekend.

I went home from PantheaCon and decided that the person I am — the person who writes these posts, who considers the needs of solitaries, who asks uncomfortable questions, and who has compassion for this community in all of its diversity and complexity — is a person I love to be. It is the person who I have, in some ways, always been. And so, on account of the new awareness prompted by this transformative experience of community, I decided that this name I’d chosen would be the name I took for keeps.

There were other unexpected awarenesses, too. I wrote,

“PantheaCon … affirmed for me a number of things, not the least of which is that I have no qualms about identifying as a Pagan anymore. The discussion about that word, while fascinating for a time, is much less important to me than it was just a few months ago. Not only am I comfortable using the term “Pagan” to broadly identify what I do, I make the distinction that what I do is not all of who I am.”

Click picture to see larger image.

Click picture to see larger image.

Since last year we have witnessed a flurry of posts about the p-word. Each time the discussion resurfaces, tempers flare and new voices emerge to stand in support of or in objection to the Pagan umbrella. Jonathan Korman compiled a list of the most recent articles on the subject, and I’m sure there have been (and will be) more.

Identity politics drives traffic to blogs and makes for a dynamic, sometimes heated conference. It took the fleshiness of PantheaCon, the tactile goodness of being crammed into rooms with other thoughtful, inquisitive people for me to free up space for these new understandings about identity. But it was the fleshiness of Others, and the discordance between that soft fleshiness and the hard rigidity of doctrine and theology that inspired such controversy last year.

I wrote an account of the silent protest, and I watched during the following months as people hashed through their feelings about gender and identity. When my genderqueer kid underwent top-surgery last summer I thought back to the trans activists and allies at PantheaCon 2012. Their witness to the need for greater acceptance and understanding stayed with me during that challenging time. They were a reminder that the flesh is real, and that the flesh is sacred, and that there is no one correct way to be embodied.

One of the challenges I face as a blogger, and that I think we all face when we choose to engage with one another in threaded comments and on forums, is that my embodiment — my own fleshiness — is easily ignored or overlooked. When we write online, we are no longer a complex mush of human parts and emotions, deserving of patience and understanding: we are just text. And as text, you and I can be taken apart, dissected with a quickness. Our fullness is reduced in proportion to our ability to articulate clearly our ideas, and if we fall short of eloquence — watch out. Somebody’s got a red pen, and they are willing to make marks all over your homework.

It’s good to provide ourselves with reminders that we are more than the words we write. We are more than our ideas, and I think we are deserving of more kindness and compassion than we sometimes give to one another. PantheaCon reminded me of that.

Flag me down in the hallways of the DoubleTree, and you could have one of these!

Flag me down in the hallways of the DoubleTree, and you could have one of these!

So I move forward into this conference with a remembrance of the sacred, messy, beautiful nature of the flesh. I will watch for the ways that our ideas become manifest, and I anticipate neither harmony nor discord. There is simply no way to know what will come of this conference, or what will be born from its discussions.

One can hope that the conference will foster, along with the debates and discussions, a new awareness in the hearts of its attendants (and those following blogs like this). Perhaps we might all walk away from the weekend with a new love of the flesh, and a new respect for the fleshiness of Others.

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Druids Doing It Solo: ADF and The Solitary Druid Fellowship

Teo Bishop —  December 18, 2012 — 15 Comments

Solitary Druid Fellowship Header

The Solitary Druid Fellowship (SDF), an extension of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF), was launched last week at SolitaryDruid.org. The Fellowship released the first SDF shared liturgy on December 17th, just in time for the Winter Solstice.

To get a sense of what the Fellowship is, and how it fits into the broader world of Neopagan Druidry, we need to first take a closer look at how ADF functions.

ADF is in large part an organization built to encourage the practice of group worship. ADF members gather in Protogroves and Groves, celebrating the High Days together and building a religious practice in the company of other ADF members. Those who take part in group worship on a regular basis have experiences of congregation, and this experience can be tremendously valuable.

But ADF solitaries, or solitaries in general, rarely experience congregation in this way. Our religious work is done without the immediate feedback of a community. And while this independence can be empowering to some of us, it can also be quite challenging. Whether we are solitary by choice or by circumstance, our task is to keep our personal practice relevant, interesting, and sustainable throughout the year.

We are monks without monasteries.

ADF solitaries do have ways of connecting to the broader ADF membership body. ADF uses an e-mail listserv as the primary means of communication within the organization, but for many of us – myself included – the format feels antiquated and cumbersome. Social networking on Facebook and Twitter is available, but only slightly better.

However, none of these forms of online interaction provide solitaries with what I think is a more interesting, more esoteric form of connection.

The Development of A Shared Practice

Liturgy is an underutilized tool in the service to solitaries. Liturgy, when organized around and synchronized with the Wheel of the Year, provides a way for uniting solitaries in a shared practice that does not simply approximate the experience that one can have in a Protogrove or Grove; it does something altogether different.

By joining one another in a shared liturgical practice, we make possible a transcendental experience of congregation. The one becomes the many, and we experience congregation in solitude.

This is where SDF enters in.

SDF Logo

The Fellowship is organized to provide solitary Druids, as well as any solitary practitioner in the general public, with an opportunity to engage more deeply with their ritual practice by adopting a shared liturgical form. This form is unique to the Fellowship, just as the rituals designed within ADF Protogroves and Groves are unique to them.

The shared liturgical practice is also a work in progress, fashioned to be revised and reshaped, used and repurposed by anyone who downloads the ritual (which is free). It it protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, and there is the expectation that participants will – should – customize the liturgy to suit their needs. In time, it will become clear which parts of the liturgy are most useful to solitaries, and how the language can be refined.

From High Day to High Day, SDF will seek to help transition ADF solitary members and non-member participants through the changing seasons (which, admittedly, gets tricky when considering both hemispheres). On the week of the High Day, SDF distributes the shared liturgy (as it did on Monday), and solitaries can celebrate the High Day in solitude. On the following week, participants will be called upon to reflect on their experiences of shared, solitary worship, and the cycle begins again as we move toward the next High Day.

By taking part in this communal, albeit private practice, participants join one another in a kind of long distance fellowship; in a shared celebration of the gods, the ancestors, and the spirits of the land on which we each live, using many of the same words, invocations, and prayers.

All of this through liturgy.

Why SDF is Not An “Online Community”

It should be made clear that what is happening with the Solitary Druid Fellowship is not some kind of virtual experience. That word characterized much of the “cyberspace” gathering that took place in the 90′s and early 00′s, and it lessens the magnitude of the work done in solitude by painting it as merely a digital imitation of a “real world” format.

The Solitary Druid Fellowship is offering something altogether different. It will provide a service which is meant to enrich, inform and provide structure for the work of solitary ADF members, and solitary Pagans who have never been exposed to ADF. In this way, the Fellowship is living out Isaac Bonewits’ vision for ADF to be a Pagan church that serves the greater Pagan public.

From the SDF blog:

 

The Solitary Druid Fellowship is not an “online community”, nor is it a “virtual grove”. These terms, and any which place an on-ground phenomenon firmly on the Internet, do not describe the work we’re embarking on here.

What we are doing is an exercise in hybridity.

The Fellowship utilizes the Internet as a means for organization, and as a method for distribution of ideas and liturgy. But aside from those things, the Fellowship is an on-ground organization; it’s simply on a number of different grounds, spread out far and wide across the land. The Fellowship is centered around the work of the individual solitary Pagan. This work, while connected in part to the resources provided on SolitaryDruid.org, is done away from a computer within the sacred space of one’s own ritual practice.

 

SDF also provides a resource to members of Groves and Protogroves who find themselves in a place of solitude. As written by ADF Reverend Michael J. Dangler:

 

I have been quoted more than once as saying, “The fire on our hearth is the fire in our hearts.” The notion that I’m always trying to convey with this idea is that though many of us have the option to find community and to worship in groups, each of us must also keep the fire of piety burning within us.

But the two fires are not exactly the same: the fire at the center of our community is a flame that is kindled when others are near. It’s our public fire, the flame that ignites fellowship and community. The fire at the center of our heart is the flame that ignites (diversity) and piety, pushing us to deepen our work for our own sake, and for the sake of the Spirits.

The true secret of these flames is that the fire in our heart is the source of the flame that kindles our communal fires. We must keep it well, or the communal fire will never seem as bright as they should.

What SDF Very Much Is

The Fellowship is an experiment in Pagan liturgy, a leap into an uncertain, but thoroughly exciting future, and a chance for solitaries to participate in something that is both completely new and also very traditional. It is taking the best parts of the liturgical approach and mashing them together with the best parts of modern Druidry. It is imperfect, and evolving, but it is sincere.

Perhaps the best way to understand what the Solitary Druid Fellowship offers is to visit SolitaryDruid.org, browse through the blog, and download the SDF Winter Solstice liturgy. If you feel so moved, join along in the shared practice on the Solstice.

You may just have the transcendental experience of congregation in solitude!

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Followup On Denver’s PPD Ritual: An Interview With Joy Burton

Teo Bishop —  November 9, 2012 — 26 Comments

To start off my first column for the newly independent The Wild Hunt, I’d like to thank Jason Pitzl-Waters for letting me be a part of this valuable, community-supported news source. I believe in the work being done here, and it’s an honor to be blogging beside so many talented, thoughtful writers. I look forward to bringing the spirit of dialogue present on my blog, Bishop In The Grove, to my columns here at TWH.

_________________

When I wrote “I Felt Ashamed At Pagan Pride,” I had no idea it would elicit the response that it did. With over 100 comments, several thousand page views, and shares galore on Facebook, Twitter and Google+, this subjective account of my experience at Denver’s 2012 Pagan Pride Day event made waves through the community.

The dialogue generated around this post offered me new perspectives on the meaning of casting circle, the challenges of public ritual, and the possibility of a mythology of victimhood within the Pagan community. But there was one perspective missing: that of the person leading the PPD ritual, Joy Burton.

joyburton

Joy Burton, eclectic Wiccan priestess and founder and president of Living Earth, a Neo-Pagan open circle and church in the south Denver area.

I interviewed Joy via email with the intent to allow her the chance to voice her perspective without revision. Below is the full interview, unedited.

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Thank you for your willingness to speak with me, Joy. Could you tell us a little about yourself, and about the Living Earth Center?

I’ve been an eclectic Wiccan priestess for about 20 years, with strong Reclaiming influences. I helped start Pagan Picnic in St. Louis, and have been advocating for and active in the Pagan community ever since.  I’m part of an open circle in the south metro area of Denver called Living Earth. We started in 2006 and now we have about 700 members of varying Pagan traditions. We offer a national-scale Pagan festival and musicfest called Beltania every May, hold regular Sabbats and Esbats, and this winter we’ll be celebrating our one-year anniversary at Living Earth Center.

The Center is our small but much-loved church facility and community center at Holly and Evans in Denver, hosting about 20 rituals, classes, workshops, drum circles, and other events per month. Other groups and individuals are welcomed at Living Earth Center to hold their own events and rituals too.

Community service has always been important to us, and since we’ve had our own facility, our outreach activities (called the Hand2Hand Project) have expanded to include more charitable giving, a food bank, and helping our elders and those with disabilities. We have a winter clothing drive going on now. We even have our own church bowling league raising funds for the food bank.

How would you describe Denver’s Pagan community?

Living Earth

The people I have met through Living Earth have been some of the kindest, most generous and caring people I have ever met. These are people with some really big hearts, great ideas, and are movers and shakers who have accomplished so much. They don’t just talk about creating community, they do it. There’s a willingness I see now to try new things, and connect outside their comfort zones in meaningful ways. I think Denver has reached a “critical mass” of people who want not only to be Pagan but also to create connections, develop infrastructure, and offer their gifts, time, and talents to the community.

The Denver Pagan community is growing exponentially, with more families and children now being raised Pagan than ever before. The Denver community has a high number of veterans, I’ve noticed. It’s also an aging community, with a greater need for community services and support for our elders. I worry about the disconnect in parts of our community between the older generations and newcomers.

We have a lot more people willing to be open now about being Pagan, and more mainstream acceptance of Paganism than ever before. You’re just as likely to see a khakis-wearing math teacher as a silver jewelry-bedecked hippie type in a cloak. So in that sense we are more diverse than ever. I’m seeing more people wanting to lend a hand and help their neighbors.

And like any other faith community, the Denver Pagan community is full of very human people. We are striving, like any other group, to more fully manifest our ideals of compassion, wisdom, honor, love, and so much more.

“I Felt Ashamed At Pagan Pride,” received a huge response. My post was a one-sided account, and completely subjective. Could you offer your account of what the Pagan Pride Day ritual was like?

Well at this point I think there’s been enough subjective accounting of the ritual. I just don’t see the benefit to it. I have no interest in negating anyone’s experience. If there were any less-than-ideal circumstances at that time, I would not use this forum to criticize the Pagan Pride Day organizers who so graciously invited us to lead the ritual.

I honor your experience and your right to share that experience in the forum of your choosing. I honor the homeless person who could not contain their verbal remarks which came across as heckling, and the several other homeless folks we were blessed to meet and also offer some food and water that day too. I honor the people walking through and skateboarding in the park, the man who wanted a cigarette, and their right to be there. I honor the Pagans who boldly stepped into the center that day to choose to participate in a ritual for all to see, and also those who chose not to participate.  I honor the learning experience so many of us are having as a result of Pagan Pride and the conversations afterward.

I can’t remember any ritual, public or private, where there was a consensus in critiquing it. Where one person is turned off, another is deeply moved. Where one person is uncomfortable with casting a circle, another would think it necessary and important. That’s why we are so blessed to have such a diversity of faith traditions, groups, and practices here in Denver throughout the year and at Pagan Pride Day’s multitude of workshops, booths, and rituals.

On occasion, as I move through our community, I find myself in a ritual that isn’t comfortable for me or I sense something isn’t quite going as planned.  In any case, I consider it my responsibility as a priestess and guest to prepare myself with centering and grounding, create my own connection to Spirit, and hold myself in a state of grace as an example for others. I also make a point of send positive energies to assist in a productive fashion. All of this can be done without saying a word. When we purposefully act in support of each other, it becomes not just the leaders’ ritual but everyone’s ritual, and our community is strengthened.

I really appreciate your emphasis on being a positive force within the community. How would you encourage people to serve in that capacity in their individual cities? How does one begin? 

Diana's GroveI would encourage anyone wanting a more positive community to read Diana’s Grove Cornerstones of Community by Cynthea Jones.  I didn’t discover the Cornerstones of Community until recent years, but they so accurately capture what I had to learn the hard way and what I’ve observed in those who make a difference in this world.

The five cornerstones include Choice, Thinking Well of the Group, Thinking Well of Yourself, Stewardship of the Self, and The Sacred Wound. We can make the choice to be the change we want to see in the world…or not.  Our very presence in this community is a choice. Thinking Well of the Group invites us to choose a new default attitude and behavior towards people that honors and respects them rather than assuming the worst and demonizing them when things aren’t as we expect or desire.  And if we don’t think well of ourselves, it’s difficult to think well of others and be a positive influence in the community. When we are stewards over our lives, we have a responsibility and obligation to fully manifest what we are called to do.  And lastly, we need to make our wounds sacred.  There isn’t a single one of us who isn’t wounded from our past experiences.  We can allow our wounds to be our teachers and agents of growth instead of allowing them to paralyze us.

A positive, healthy, open, giving community starts inside of each person.

_________________

Many thanks to Joy for this interview. She’s been nothing but kind to me.

I ask you, TWH readers:

If you were a part of that first conversation on BITG, does knowing Joy’s perspective change the way you read that post? Did her answers leave you with new questions?

What do you think about the ”Cornerstones of Community?”

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Pagans on HuffPost Live & Conan + Peter Dybing on Sandy Aftermath

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  November 3, 2012 — 10 Comments

Pagans are a part of the web and weave of everyday culture. We’ve emerged from being a largely subcultural religious phenomenon and have steadily gained increasing attention, most notably from the mainstream media. For example, The Huffington Post’s new HuffPost Live initiative held a group interview on Halloween with Teo Bishop, Amy Blackthorn, Gus DiZerega, Morgan Copeland and Patrick McCollum. As expected, they covered some basics, talked about Samhain, and shared their personal perspectives on modern Paganism.

HuffPo Screenshot

You can watch the entire interview, here. In addition, Teo Bishop shares some of the conversation that happened after the formal interview ended.

“Perhaps the most exciting part of the experience for me was what happened after the Google Hangout ended. The panelists stayed on the call and talked for a good 30 minutes more, sharing perspectives about a whole variety of topics. We re-addressed some of what happened while we were on the air, and there are a few things that stuck out that I’d like to get your take on.”

A shame the follow-up conversation wasn’t recorded! In any case, this was a nice Pagan-centered exploration of our interconnected faiths, and I’m glad that HuffPost Live garnered such an impressive lineup! Congratulations!

On a less serious note – Pagans also got a bit of inadvertent mainstream attention from late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien when he showcased a number of magazines that will outlive Newsweek’s print edition. Among the titles picked? Why our own Witches & Pagans Magazine, featuring M. Macha NightMare on the cover!

conan macha

You can get a closer shot of Conan holding the magazine, here. You can watch the entire video segment, here. Now W&P editor Anne Newkirk Niven (and Macha) can add “as seen on Conan” to her publications resume! For those worried about if this was a negative portrayal, don’t worry, Conan’s show is on TBS.

On a more serious note, while it’s fun to see ourselves on HuffPost Live, or even on Conan, it’s good to remember that we’re more than what appears on popular media outlets. That many Pagans are dedicated to service, healing, and responding to those in need. Pagan elder Peter Dybing, a first responder who has served in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, the Gulf Coast during the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and several larger forest/brush fires, reports from an East Coast ravaged by Hurricane Sandy.

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An overview of the fire damage in Queens, New York, following Hurricane Sandy.

“As new missions evolve and priorities change the mission of my team keeps changing. Primarily we are clearing roads of downed trees so relief supplies and emergency vehicles can get through. The devastation is complete along the shore on Long Island. Thousands of cars along with hundreds of homes lie buried in the sand. Most heart breaking of all is the evacuee’s staying in the same place as the disaster teams. Their stories of hardship and loss have brought me to tears on multiple occasions. Hardest of all is remaining focused on our mission and not assisting the evacuees with issues outside our assignment.  My heart breaks for these families.” 

For some Pagan efforts to raise money for those affected by Hurricane Sandy, see my Community Notes post from Thursday. Our prayers go with Peter and all the other first responders working in the aftermath to help those affected rebuild. Our prayers also go out to those still struggling without power, without resources, or without a home.

Taken together, these impression complicate the picture some try to paint of our faiths, our movement. It reminds the world that we share their common humanity, and that we are a part of a larger community, even as we are a part of our own.

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Pagan Voices: Starhawk, David Salisbury, Ocean, Teo Bishop, and More!

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  October 25, 2012 — 4 Comments

Pagan voices is a new spotlight on recent quotations from figures within the Pagan community. These voices may appear in the burgeoning Pagan media, or from a mainstream outlet, but all showcase our wisdom, thought processes, and evolution  in the public eye. Is there a Pagan voice you’d like to see highlighted? Drop me a line with a link to the story, post, or audio.

David Salisbury

David Salisbury

“Celebrating Pagan youth doesn’t mean we have to shun our elders. Instead, we can recognize the value of both ends of the age spectrum and what each has to offer. There’s still a strange view in some Pagan communities that our youth are temporary expendables. That we’re only interested in the surface fad of an “alternative lifestyle” or are coming from a shallow, uninformed space. Looking at blogs about the recent news that MTV would like to profile occultists 25 or younger reveals a pessimistic view of young Pagans. “The under-25 age limit ensures this will be a disaster” is a frequent comment going around. My young coreligionists frustrated with this type of dialog have a wish for our communities. We want to let the Pagan world know that we’d like an equal seat at the table. If you give us a chance, you might be surprised by what we can accomplish.” – David Salisbury, from his new PaganSquare blog NextGen Pagan: Paganism for the Next Generation, advocating for younger Pagans to have a seat at the table.

Ocean from Deaf Pagan Crossroads

Ocean from Deaf Pagan Crossroads

“Somehow I’m just not sure how much confidence I can have in a diversity officer who seems to allow the teachings of her church to influence her in engaging in actions that might be counterproductive to the role she is expected to carry out on the campus. Don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t bother me that Dr. McCaskill is a Christian. I just hope it doesn’t bother her that I happen to be a Pagan. Or that it bothers the Office of Diversity and Inclusion should a group of Gallaudet students show up with a letter requesting to perform Full Moon Esbats on the campus, or asking to invite yours truly to lead a Dreaming the Dark ritual during the Sabbat of Samhain.” – Ocean at Deaf Pagan Crossroads commenting on the controversy involving Dr. Angela McCaskill, Chief Diversity Officer for Gallaudet University, a federally chartered university for the deaf and hard of hearing located in Washington, DC. McCaskill was put on administrative leave after signing a petition opposing same sex marriage, a move that some believe put her at odds with her position as a diversity officer.

Starhawk at Occupy Santa Cruz. Photo by Matt Fitt, Santa Cruz IMC.

Starhawk at Occupy Santa Cruz. Photo by Matt Fitt, Santa Cruz IMC.

“Here in California, there’s only two more days to register to vote.  And if you haven’t, I urge you to do so.  Now, I have to say my circles of friends and acquaintances include few if any potential Romney voters.  But they do include people who are so disaffected, or feel so frustrated, angry and disempowered by the political system, that even the sheer raw theater of it doesn’t move them to participate.  And others who enjoy saying, “Don’t vote, it only encourages them,” which is funny but patently untrue in an election year when the far right is working so hard to discourage people from voting.  If they’re going to such lengths to keep people from the polls, there must be something there that we want! [...] Elections are not the arena where I express my ideals–I do that in the garden, and in my writing, and in the streets.   Elections are where I get pragmatic, because they do matter, and the differences between the candidates can mean life or death to folks like Shawna and to me.” – Pagan author and activist Starhawk, at her Dirt Worship blog, endorsing Barack Obama for President, and explaining why voting is important, even if you’re disillusioned.

Teo Bishop

Teo Bishop

“But we just created an out there by casting this circle. We closed them off from us, shut them out, but only symbolically because they could see and hear all of what we were doing. Play it like we’re the victims, but we just created — through ritual — the same kind of alienation that we feel in relation to the greater society. We just became The Church.” – Teo Bishop, at his newly independent Bishop In The Grove blog, explaining his discomfort at a recent Pagan Pride Day in Colorado. You can read a follow up, here. Also – be sure to stay tuned for a special column from Teo here at The Wild Hunt exploring these topics further.

Jason Mankey

Jason Mankey

“I just don’t think the gods, any gods, care at all about politics. I don’t care if that god lives near the star Kolob, once resided in the Holy of Holies, or was worshipped on the Acropolis in the Parthenon of Ancient Athens. I just can’t see gods, divine beings with memories that span millennia, getting all worked up over things that would feel like seconds to them. I think my gods care about me (and that your gods care about you), but I can’t picture Cernunnos reading the latest misleading headline over on The Huffington Post or spending his morning watching Fox and Friends. It’s not that the gods aren’t worried about this world, it’s just that some decisions are made by people, and some things are controlled by higher powers, voting is not one of those things.” – Jason Mankey, at his Raise the Horns blog, opining that perhaps the gods don’t care all that much about politics.

T. Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle

“We cannot control our lives. What we can do – by noticing, engaging, and releasing –  is stay in active engagement with our lives and the process we are in. We can adjust attitudes, habits, actions, thoughts. We can come into right relationship with emotions. We can learn how to better be a part of community. We can of better service. Control can be a useful concept, but more often than not it becomes a stand in for what actually helps. Think of muscle control. An athlete wants this. But really, what the athlete wants is to engage heart, breath, attention and muscles all at once, so as to move precisely, with strength and flexibility, in the moment. Eventually, this becomes a state of pure presence, the athlete is one with herself and the water, the track, the grass, the mat. We can call that control. I would rather call it engagement. Relationship. Presence. Why? Simply because the concept of control can turn into rigidity of form and attempts to force an outcome.” – T. Thorn Coyle, explaining how “Liberation is a Process.”

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

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Pagan Voices: Donald Michael Kraig, Ivo Dominguez Jr., Alison Leigh Lilly, and More!

Jason Pitzl-Waters —  September 23, 2012 — 5 Comments

Pagan voices is a new spotlight on recent quotations from figures within the Pagan community. These voices may appear in the burgeoning Pagan media, or from a mainstream outlet, but all showcase our wisdom, thought processes, and evolution  in the public eye. Is there a Pagan voice you’d like to see highlighted? Drop me a line with a link to the story, post, or audio.

Donald Michael Kraig

“Merely because something works for you doesn’t mean it will work for others. However, it is quite possible that if something works for you either that method or something similar may very well work for others. If it is shared in that light, that’s great. If you share what you’ve learned for others to try and, if necessary, change as needed, that too is great. Similarly, if someone shares something they’ve developed and that works for them so you can try it out and perhaps modify it so it will work for you, that’s excellent.

Problems develop when someone believes that because something worked for them it must work for everyone and can only be done the way they want it. That entire approach, in my opinion, runs counter to the very concept of the New Age. And yet there are people for whom something worked who market their “discovery” claiming it will work for others. They have no evidence to support it, but since it’s “New Age” it must be true, right? And if you buy the product or service and it doesn’t work for you, the fault isn’t that the seller moved from the specific (it works for me) to the general (it should work for you) without any reason to do so. No, it’s because you, the consumer, aren’t spiritually advanced enough to make it work.” – Donald Michael Kraig, from a blog post at Llewellyn Worldwide entitled “Where the ‘New Age’ Goes Wrong.”

Ivo Dominguez, Jr.

Ivo Dominguez, Jr.

“Agora is the ancient greek word for the gathering-place or marketplace that was also the center of political and spiritual life in a city. Pagan businesses and the activities that they help to foster, can act as our agora. Within our community the idea of thinking globally but acting locally is very popular. I know many pagans that go to great lengths to eat locally grown food, which is a good thing. Please extend the concept of acting locally to supporting your local pagan businesses. Pagan bookstores and businesses are an endangered species. They are endangered because of thoughtless actions fueled by the need for convenience. I mentioned at the beginning of this post that running a bookstore is a labor of love. That is true, but I can also tell you that it takes money to keep the doors open. Unless more pagans choose to use their money locally at pagan businesses, then our money shall line the pockets of large corporations and feed their Gods. Minority communities only begin to thrive when they fully invest in themselves first.” - Ivo Dominguez Jr, from his blog post “The Once and Future Agora.”

Alison Leigh Lilly with a very big tree.

Alison Leigh Lilly with a very big tree.

“Natural polytheism draws on an ecological approach to theology to build upon the insights of hard polytheism, challenging us to deepen our relationships with the gods by asking more challenging questions about their relationships with us, with each other and with the natural world. Natural polytheism does not reject hard polytheism any more than natural history excludes hard sciences like biology, geology or chemistry by embracing ecology. But it does draw connections and invite us to think about the world holistically, as systems nested within systems, wholes nested within wholes. An ecological perspective can deepen our scientific understanding of the world by moving us beyond the questions “What is it?” and “How does it work?” to the more challenging questions, ‘How come?’ and ‘What for?’” -  Alison Leigh Lilly, from her recent blog post: “Natural Theology: Polytheism Beyond the Pale”

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

“Are British Traditional Witchcraft practitioners in the U.S. practicing an “indigenous” religion? No, not really, I don’t think, because by definition, that religion was created and grew up in a land and a culture quite different from the U.S. The same is true of any “ethnic” polytheism that is practiced in the U.S., Canada and Australia, as well as many other places. At very best, those various ethnic polytheisms and the forms of modern Paganism that they have inspired are diasporic religions, but they are not indigenous religions unless they are practiced in the land which gave them—and the cultures who practiced them—their original shape.” – P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, from a Patheos column entitled “The Indigeny Debate.”

Teo Bishop

Teo Bishop

“These thoughts occur to me as I continue with my ADF Dedicant Path studies. I feel like I’m studying to be one thing, but the stuff around me suggests that I’m something quite different. I’m studying to be an ADF Druid working within a Pan-Celtic hearth, as it were, but my stuff indicates that I’m really quite eclectic. This isn’t a crisis by any means, but it is something to consider. What does our stuff say about us? And, how much stuff do we need in order to do our religion?” – Teo Bishop ponders his stuff in a post entitled “How Much Stuff Does One Pagan Need?”

T. Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle

I honor the ancestors and those who are to come.

I honor this moment and the spacious reach of soul.

I am placed between the rising and the setting sun,

The warm and the cool.

I stand between the great above and this firm earth.

Here I am. Awakened to this day.

- T. Thorn Coyle, from her poem “Equinox Morning: Some Thoughts After Waking.”

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

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