[Today we welcome guest writer Darcy Totten an activist and solitary practitioner living in Sacramento, CA. Totten holds an MA in Journalism and has worked in media and communications for over fifteen years. Her consulting group, Activism Articulated, serves the communications and strategy needs of non-profit organizations, activists and student groups across California. She is currently working in partnership with the Spirituality and Social Justice collective, led by her and her wife Jasper James, to codify and articulate ideas around social justice as a lived spiritual practice in the Pagan community. To learn more about Totten’s work and the Spirituality and Social Justice workshops, contact her through ActivismArticulated or join Totten and James online at “Black Lives Matter: Allies Unite“]
A few weeks ago, my fiancé Jasper and I gathered with our usual small but dedicated group at The Enchanted Tree in Sacramento, CA for a workshop on “Spirituality and Social Justice.” We run the workshop monthly, punctuated with frequent online discussions, phone calls and social gatherings. Based initially off of Tim Titus’ ‘Pentacle of Activism’ and expanded upon reworked into the following (click here for PDF) the workshops are organized around the elements, with the idea that the group will examine issues of social justice in the context of Pagan spiritual space and will share ideas about integrating our spiritual lives with our daily realities. We hope to present the fruits of this labor in the form of a loose framework that can be applied to any Pagan tradition – or even adapted outside of the Pagan community to address social justice and racial equity as an integral aspect of spirituality.
Somewhere, in the midst of a discussion on the element of fire and the often-unconscious systems of White supremacy, Jasper looked up and said simply, “Social justice is not just connected to my practice. Social justice IS my spiritual practice.” The whole room came to a full stop.
It really is that simple. And it’s that hard.
To be clear, White supremacy is defined here, and throughout, simply as a racial hierarchy in which Whiteness sits on top and from which White privilege flows. In this hierarchical system, the benefits bestowed upon White people can be found in the very organizing principles of many non-profit and collective spaces.
![[Courtesy D. Totten]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/unnamed-500x487.jpg)
[Courtesy D. Totten]
Social justice is defined by our coalition as a process, not an outcome, which challenges injustice and values diversity in all areas of life. It empowers all people to realize their full potential and exists when all people share a recognized common humanity and a right to equitable treatment, support for their human rights, and a fair allocation of community resources.
Lately, our group has been struggling to prove its value both in its home space and in the wider community of Pagans who primarily seek out a Pagan practice as a way to heal from their own trauma. They struggle with the idea that not all trauma may be created equal; not all privilege is earned and not all responsibility is shouldered equitably. Many of our collective’s members have been subjected to a level of pushback that calls into question much of what our communities say they stand for. There is nothing loving or healing about backlash against Pagans of Color and their allies trying to make space to discuss these issues.
If we as Pagans continue to build our spiritual circles exclusively around the endless healing of life’s daily traumas with no room to examine those in a macro way, through the lens of systems, community and accountability, then we operate from a place of endless brokenness. In always focusing our collective energy toward healing one individualized issue or another, we never operate from a place of collective strength and power. Weakness, the very essence of White fragility and occasionally, manipulation, become the heart of the spiritual spaces in which many of us operate.
I reject that, wholeheartedly.
My spiritual practice rejects this notion that the only way to heal is through intense focus on my own life and issues. This is the very height of privilege; to have the time, the energy and the resources to dwell exclusively on one’s own individual needs. Every ritual circle spent holding a fellow White traveler’s hand through a break-up or personal crisis is one not spent holding the hand of a mother who has lost a son or daughter to police violence or the arms of fellow protestors demanding that he or she be the last.
One life is not more important than another, but one life, in the above scenario, has much more room to breathe. It is up to us, as spiritual creatures, to recognize that gulf between us and to bridge it; not with platitudes and ignorance or vaguely appropriating daily memes but with acceptance, true understanding, education and yes… responsibility.
![[Courtesy D. Totten]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/unnamed-1-e1438958118828-500x272.jpg)
[Courtesy D. Totten]
Respectability politics demands that most White Pagans actively oppose the idea that they might, in fact, harbor any racist tendencies; yet our spaces abound with entrenched White supremacist attitudes of hierarchy and institutionalized approaches that favor the privileged. Personally, I do not draw strength from endless healing circles and hand holding around my many (potentially victimized) identities. I draw strength from a spiritual practice that encompasses survival, solidarity with warriors on all fronts, and the strength to look deep within our own shadows to see and to conquer that which makes us most uncomfortable and afraid. I want a spiritual practice that makes me strong, but more than that, I want a spiritual practice that strengthens those around me. I want to exist in a community of fierce, resilient, spiritual people who do not feel compelled to hide their anger, forgive their abusers, or stuff down their sense of injustice while clutching their crystals and gasping out gratitude’s just to have a place to worship in.
My spiritual practice and my work for justice are both grassroots, living room efforts, happening in small groups with like-minded folks all across the country — right now. Spiritual leadership training is, at its heart, similar to the things that I learned in activist trainings, and political discussion groups can look an awful lot like Pagan community circles when we let them.
Room for testimony is vital in both spaces; as is emotional support, care for the community as a whole, deep connection to balance and respect for the divine. The practice of lived solidarity, of coalition building among disparate groups who come together to make a greater whole…these things are straight from an activist’s playbook but they ALSO describe spiritual space…a church if you will.
![[Courtesy D. Totten]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/unnamed-2-500x281.jpg)
[Courtesy D. Totten]
To speak the names of the dead is, on it’s own, a spiritual act as much as it is a political one. It is how we honor their spirits and assure them they are not forgotten. My spiritual practice doesn’t just look like social justice work … it IS social justice work. They are one and the same. Both have the hands of my ancestors deep within, guiding and calling. Both require wisdom and help from the divine. Both require stillness, self-examination, self-reflection and accountability at levels that do not allow the ego to do the driving. Both demand a safe space to heal and to grieve and both demand that action be taken.
The call-t- action is a process, just as the call to spirit is. It is developed over a lifetime. One cannot become an ally in the fight for justice in a week, a month or in the course of a yearlong degree-training program. It is much simpler than that. It is an approach to social justice that is a lived practice of daily struggle and solidarity. Much like meditation or tarot card reading, the divinity, the spirit, is in the PROCESS.
White allyship in and of itself is also not an identity. It too is a process; one based in trust, accountability and relationships with marginalized individuals and/or groups of people. I call myself an ally. My allyship is based on a lot of complicated intersections and identities that include mixed-race heritage, white skin, class privilege, queerness, my status as a transracial adoptee and many more, and it is not up for group debate in circle or a matter of politics. It is part of my lived experience as a human being. It is a part of my spirit and how I speak with that which I consider divine.
Asking people not to speak about social justice in spiritual space isn’t about making the space safe and comfortable for everyone. Seating a Pagan of Color next to someone who, days earlier was spouting bigoted invectives online and telling them both not to talk politics within sacred space is not a way of making the space safe for everyone. It is effectively silencing the person with less power in the situation, the Person of Color.
In addressing complicated issues around social justice and racial equity in this limiting and silencing way, many of our Pagan organizations, even those designed for solitary practice, are actually choosing a side while professing neutrality and love for all. They are choosing the side of the bigot. As nature path walkers we must reevaluate what we really mean when we ask everyone to just focus on the “light”.
In the Pagan community we rely a lot on ritual to engage with aspects of ourselves that we consider to be divine and to draw power from nature and each other. Many of us are experts in the art of ritual, the power of it and the pull. The idea that the emotionally taxing work we do as activists belongs in the same category as this ritual practice was initially a difficult one for many as we began these conversations, but we came to realize that the problem wasn’t about trying to fit two disparate ideas into one too-small space; the problem was in how we approached the puzzle.
Darcy Totten [Courtesy Photo]
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.
This is interesting but in which ways is this Paganism?
Besides saying that our Pagan understanding of life as an interconnected web in which we all play a role and linking the concept of Ritual with activist work, I did not really see how all of this is particularly ´Pagan´.
Don’t get me wrong, I get the general idea, but I feel like if one replaced the word ´spiritual´ from this article (alongside, ´Paganism´ and ´Ritual´) it would be hard to see how these ideas are different from other, non-Pagan SJ activists.
I learned the interconnected web of life concept from Paganism. It was one of the first worldview-changing things I learned from this religion, over a decade ago. Perhaps other spiritual paths have picked up the concept and it is spreading. This can only be a good thing. 🙂 I’m always happy to see humanity’s Pagan roots sprouting back up into the culture, healing it… even if it doesn’t have a blatant label of “Pagan” on it. It still came from nature-based spirituality/Paganism.
I see, this makes more sense now. Thanks for your answer.
The perception of the interconnected web of life did not originate with Paganism, except in the sense that most religious ideas originated millennia ago when everyone was Pagan anyway. In particular Unitarian Universalism celebrated the “interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part” long before it adopted Earth Centered Religion as one of its formal Source. Which takes nothing away from your point that upon finding Paganism one confronts this idea head-on and early-on.
I read this as the visible surface of Darcy Totten’s spiritual journey, given the particulars of her life and origins. She is Pagan, so her current place on her journey demonstrates a way of being Pagan. It is not imho (and despite some of the terms she uses) an essay on the One True Way to be Pagan.
Understand pain of any people endangers ourselves as well. We are not islands everything we do, we say, and think affects all the people around us for good and for bad. So if there are problems what are your actions doing to help create the problem or help end the problem. How are your words adding to the problem, or helping bring it down. The same with your thoughts. What are you doing, thinking, and saying to make this word a better place. every day.
When I deal with the customers of my little shop, whether there is a sale big or small may be the least important part of what happens. It may be more my acting as a encourager, showing people that even health issues and physical limitations, of which I have many, do to have to make one miserable, that aging can have its fun side, I almost seventy. I remember what each age felt like.
Once I know the age of a person I can show common problems, and common benefits of each age. Many are far more aware of the problems of their age, but not the benefit, so I point out them. If there are kids, or teenagers, or even twenty somethings, I talk to them and, ask them questions, and listen to their answers, because most of the time adult ignore them as though they are not there. They are not as bored while their parents shop.
Then there are lost and lonely people and sales are not the important thing, letting these people talk and my listening is needed, so I often can give the an hour or more and we discuss whatever they choose to discuss.
None of these are necessary to running a business, I don’t claim to be a good or a successful business man. However most of these people leave shop happier than they came in, often laughing at the strange experience they have just had. It is my way of giving back to the greater community. It is something I am capable of doing, so I do it.
Your outlook and compassion to those who enter make a lot of your business possible. My sig–and my experience agrees:
People will forget what you said
People will forget what you did
But people will never forget how you made them feel. Maya Angelou (b. 1928) American poet
Dantes the practice itself is based off of the elements. As a mixed POC “squared” (native, black and Pagan) I can tell you that when engaging in social justice as a spiritual practice the very acts of engaging in speaking about justice to others to reading history of black radical thinkers becomes an act of communing with the divine. We have seen it done many times throughout history in different ways, however until now there has never been a group of people who have taken it upon themselves to join these 2 very powerful aspects of communion via justice work as one in the same, but to me that is what it has become. As a POC I must fight in Pagan spaces to not allow white Pagans to politicize the experiences of being black because for us its not political it is very personal when you see the amount of black bodies piling up- feeling helpless was what prompted me to accept what to me is a obvious direction to merge these aspects to help me to heal the tragedy that faces POC on a daily basis. Just like with any spiritual practice what makes it “real” to you is a shift in perspective and the adoption of certain texts or ideology. If Pagans can believe in magical dragons and fairies speaking to them on a regular basis then surely me speaking with my ancestors and doing rituals that centralize around justice, freedom and clarity for humanity to see the errors of white supremacy can absolutely be a religion as well.. and the fact is no one can tell me otherwise simply because I have the right to believe in what I believe. Social justice has become my spiritual journey and I for one am thankful because it empowers me in so many ways- I
experience the divine everyday through this practice.
Combining political activism with religion is a recipe for violence and hatred. Social Justice + Islam = Al Qaeda. Social Justice + Catholicism = The Troubles. Political Activism + Shinto = Japanese participation in WWII. What Ms. Totten is doing is nothing less than attempting to create acceptance for a similarly authoritarian ideology.
Throughout this article, Ms. Totten consistently employs racist concepts and wraps them up in seemingly reasonable platitudes. But make no mistake; she is as racist as those Heathens who have caused such consternation among more reasonable pagans.
Ms. Totten’s ideology and tactics should be rejected out of hand. They are antithetical to an egalitarian practice.
The example closest to most Americans, however, is Social Justice + Black Protestantism = Civil Rights Movement, which doesn’t fit the frame you’ve offered at all.
Bai, as the partner of Darcy Totten and the person who is on this journey with her I must say that I am in complete awe of your response. Not only because I am a person of color and have been Ms. Totten’s partner for 10 years but because you are clearly not a stupid person. However, I must say that your accusations do not sit well for me for many reasons- Moreover, one would think that if you are reading this blog then you are a person of spiritual advancement.. however your words completely gloss over the fact that Ms. Totten is a PERSON. That’s right, a person with feelings who’s only crime is that she is looking to empower herself and those who are so serious about their social justice work that they choose to transform their life through working for justice and freedom for those who deserve it. You’re just upset that her article is so solid that you can’t even break down her argument – instead you attack her person? It’s not only sad, its a shame. Your words are not only harmful but they are telling of what motivates your own spiritual practice. It would serve you better on your path to focus more on how to love Bai, how to have compassion and empathy.. because if you did, you would have enough spiritual sense and emotional where with all to not come for someone in the manner in which you have within a public forum. You would do us all a great service to learn more about the history of white supremacy and the default effects it has had on all the people involved both black and white. Then I would suggest that you pray to whatever God (goddess) you serve and ask them for guidance on how to be a better human being. Learn to love your fellow man as yourself. Bai.. until you do that, all of your words will fall on deaf ears.
Ad hominem arguments demonstrate losing the argument to hand, Bai.
Very powerful essay! Navajo spirituality infuses all of Navajo life. If one’s spirituality infuses one’s actions and vice versa, we are whole.
Social activism, a journey towards bringing justice (true justice, not this muck we’re dealing with here in the US, and in many other countries) to all, especially those who have received the short end of the stick throughout their lives, has been an element of my spiritual practice for years, but it’s more a part of my journey than ever before. Social justice, of your definition, is the end-goal of that.
I like your expanded & reworked version of Tim Titus’ Pentacle of Activism, and have bookmarked it.
You write:
We hope to present the fruits of this labor in the form of a loose framework that can be applied to any Pagan tradition – or even adapted outside of the Pagan community to address social justice and racial equity as an integral aspect of spirituality.
I look forward to hearing more about this–is there a blog or a signup to help with that? I don’t FB, or Twitter (too much time out of my day)…
“White fragility” reminds me too much of the “fragile male ego” trope that I rejected when I first heard of it senior year of highschool, 40-odd years ago. Grow up, already! Both seem like a cultivation of victimhood by an oppressor, denial of responsibility to grow and correct, and too much of a pity-party.
WRT racism as a systemic force, even if we look only at the number of blacks killed by LEOs and white civilians in the past three years, and how their murderers tend 99% to get off without any consequences: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention, as the bumpersticker says.
I’m outraged that so many people are willingly blind to pervasive racism in the so-called “justice system”. I’m doing what I can to change that, and to work towards racial equality, especially in a country that calls itself a melting pot.
Darcy, your photo reminds me so much of my own friend Darcy, now the other side of the country away.