Three Charms to Open Vision-Doors

Hot-diggity-doggerel, here are three rhyming charms meant to set one's course for the Underworld, Heavens and the back-side of the Middle-world. Real text article coming before month's end...

Prayer-a-Day Project, Pt 3

A few from week 2. These tend a bit toward 'high church' - formal invocations for formal occasions.

How Do I Become A Pagan?

A direct question, from a Facebook Pagan group. Let me just fizz about it for a minute, and I’ll offer some direct answers.

Of course the fashionable answer, among all those who imagine themselves woke from the yoke of “religion”, is that one may do as one pleases and call that Paganism. Sigh… 

In my opinion there is simply no real thing in the world that can be whatever one decides it should be. To start at that point is simply to assume that one’s spiritual work is not real, but rather a game or fancy, devised by a whim. While I suppose that might be enough for some people, I assume that when someone asks how to ‘become’ a Pagan, they mean more.

Several answers seemed to recommend a set of “beliefs” as definitive of being Pagan. Often these were very general – “believe in the Earth”, etc. Nobody seemed prepared to offer any systematic set of ‘beliefs’, which I suppose is just as well.

My own opinion is that Pagan religious participation is not defined by beliefs. Beliefs, in religion, are mandatory opinions, and modern Pagan religion has very few of them. Some specific sects may have their own little lists, but even that seems the exception rather than the rule in Pagan sub-groups. There is no organized agreement among Pagans about what ideas must be a part of a system in order for it to be Pagan.

My opinion is that in order to “be Pagan” one must be doing Pagan religious activity. Ancient Paganism was defined by participation in traditional action – in the sacrifices, and festivals and events of the local community. In ancient ways nobody seems to have asked one another what they though the Gods “really were”, nobody tried to exclude (or include) other people based on their enshrined opinions (i.e. beliefs) about the gods and spirits, or about the old stories. Myths and old tales were not mandatory objects of belief, nor taken as literal fact. Many such things would have had the unspoken presumption of fact in the local culture – e.g. “of course there are spirits – we’re just talking about what kind…”. Skepticism of cultural norms is seldom popular, but those norms were not usually codified into scripture or statements of belief.

Practice was another matter. Many ancient polytheist traditions kept ‘scriptures’ that were essentially records of hymns, invocations, spells and other specific ritual elements. The Indic Vedas are the most famous of these, but examples are found in Persia, Greece, and Rome, as well as from the city states long prior to those nations. Some ritual traditions were as tightly-regulated as any modern ideology. In Rome if an error in the traditional work was made, or a bad omen occurred one simply cancelled the rite and tried again another time.

While most modern Pagan systems don’t take such a formal approach to ritual, our ways are often defined by the practice of formal rites, in which words, symbols and natural forces combine to seek a spiritual effect. In many formal sects of neopaganism, such as traditional initiatory Wicca, or some forms of Druidry, a formal outline of ritual has been developed, that defines the sects the way a colors of a bird’s wing define its family. One becomes a part of that tradition by being taught the ritual form, and learning to do it effectively.

Like many elements of tradition this emphasis on ritual and deliberate religious action has been greatly watered-down in the post-internet Pagan world. The same hipster-philosophers will explain that we do not ‘need’ formal practice in order to interact with spirit, and that we can do ‘whatever feels right’ as we develop our personal practice. While these assertions may be true in some circumstances and for some people, I find them to be very bad advice for new students. Spiritual practice is a set of skills, and it is sensible to approach learning any new skill by following the instruction of a skilled teacher.

Both ancient and modern Pagan religious tradition is characterized by a variety of teachers, schools and methods. Modern schools tend to descend from two or three major styles of ritual work, but local groups often have major variations and specific customs. This too directly resembles the ways of the ancients. At the most individual end every household, every private altar, may have our special ways and specific beings. The gods are not jealous, and our own home ways never need stop us from joining with our neighbors for community practice.

So – How does one become a Pagan? 

My short answer is:

By learning how to keep ways of Pagan spirituality, and then keeping them.

This means that it is a bit of work to actually become Pagan. You can’t do it (in any meaningful way) while reading this, simply by deciding to apply a new label to yourself. Instead you must take up the work as you would any skill, whether guitar-playing or spiritual devotion.

For some people it can be a short-cut to choose one of the public Pagan teaching groups and simply practice their ways for a year or three. Groups with long-time, tried and fixed methods can prevent wasted time by providing a coherent outline of learning. There are a number of such schools, allowing students to find which of them best suits. Some traditions of ritual and practice are also well-preserved in modern published materials.

Many modern people seem to have been conditioned against ‘joining’. For those who demand to do-it-themselves there are a number of activities that I think add up to actually doing Pagan ways. Being Pagan means, to me, actually doing Pagan ways.

Here’s a list of categories of work that can add up to a Pagan-style spiritual practice.

1: Good Reading. Popular Pagan publishing has a very hit-and-miss record of providing real information about the ancient ways. Find some good academic reading lists from on-line resources, and commit yourself to reading whole big, dry books, cover to cover. Look, Paganism will almost never ask you to fast for days, or crawl up a mountain on your knees… read some books!

2: Spend time in Nature. This needn’t be any fancier than you like. Simply getting yourself out of the straight lines and machine hum of human life is a teacher about Pagan spirit.

3: Choose a simple ritual form. There are choices – learn to cast a circle, learn to bless the Sacred Center, or any of a dozen similar methods in print. Simply find one you like, or write one, then learn to do it smoothly and with a sense of inspiration. Having simple ‘start and finish’ prayers can be enough, though the fact is that tradition usually prefers complexity.
3a: Consider keeping a Calendar: Setting yourself to do ritual work based on the course of the moon or the turning of the seasons can help provide an ‘excuse’ for actual practice.
4: Learn Simple Trance & Meditation. Oh yes you can. It’s like exercise – you can’t do it until you’ve done it a while. You have to just do it. If you don’t do it, you end up a couch-potato warrior.

5: Find a Local Pagan Temple. These days there are often public organizations making worship and teaching available to the general interested community. Attendance at such rites can help a solitary Pagan meet community, and work the seasonal blessings on a scale often unavailable at home. 

So, life is busy, and very few people really manage to keep busy with all five of these all the time. But if your goal is to have a Pagan spirituality then trying to keep at two or three of these going in your life will keep you developing and growing. In time you will probably come to have close feelings for some Gods, perhaps know the affection and protection of your Ancestors, and deepen your wonder at the non-human beings of the spiritual worlds. In that way we hope to walk in harmony with all things, without strife.

Prayer-a-Day Challenge Pt2

More prayer-graphics (the rest of week 1) from the November project:

Prayer-a-Day Challenge, Pt 1

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and many intrepid writers are attempting 50,000 narrative words this month. Not me. Maybe some year...

However in ADF the custom has arisen of writing a prayer or charm or such each day in the month. So far we haven't done group prompts, but let each of us locate them for ourselves. So far I have found that the most difficult thing, and we're only eight days in.

In any case here are some items from week one...

A Prayer for the Murdered

Spirits, Daemons, Gods - Toward a Coherent Model

In the development of Neopagan religious practice and discourse several disputes have arisen concerning the true nature of the gods and spirits. In my opinion these disputes arise mainly due to the remains of Judeo-Christian theological thinking, combined with the influence of modern skepticism and rationalism. As one who finds consideration of theology and metaphysics useful, I will attempt to venture perhaps further into such speculations than is common in our modern Pagan discussion.

The Reality of the Spirits

Let me begin by saying that for this discussion we will treat the world of spirits as ‘real’. In this we need not adopt any firm description of the final nature of that reality. Whether it is a subcategory of ‘material’ manifestation within the quantum foam, or a psycho-linguistic field, or an epiphenomenon of human telepathy, or any other thing, the whole world – every culture in every age – has experienced the presence of the spirits. Communication; direct material action, possession and para-personal expression are just some of the spirit-phenomena common to many or most human cultural experiences. Materialist science has devised a number of clever efforts that attempt to ‘explain away’ such phenomena.  In the mythic reality of our Paganism, let us begin by taking spirits as given, and making it our business to know how to deal with them well. 

While we may not be able to box up the ‘True nature’ of spirits, we can approach them as phenomena, and discuss the traits that humans have seen. To avoid a long summary of world-wide evidence, I will presume to propose a list of general behaviors and characteristics of spirits, in no particular order:

• Spirits are not primarily material, though many traditions describe them as able to manifest bodies of air and smoke, or even of more dense elements.

• Spirits act both psychospiritually and on occasion materially. Like much of magic, spirits seem to operate by affecting How Things Go – which crossroads are taken, which way the coin falls, etc. It is rare to the degree of ‘miracle’ for spirits to act directly on matter, but it is not unknown.

• Spirits resonate with and respond to the material world. When described as ‘animism’ we think of spirits as being ‘in’ or ‘of’ specific material objects – the spirit in a tree or of a waterfall.

• Spirits act through living people, not only by direct possession or guidance, but by influence based on their nature. A merry spirit makes mortals near it inclined to merriment.

• Spirits are widely various in their influence on mortals, some being potentially or overtly dangerous or destructive and others providing blessings worthy of the divine.

Non-Locality of the Spirits

Spirits who become the ‘Gods’ of humankind seem to be those who are particularly powerful or able. In essence they are those who respond to human worship, and give good blessings. While some spirits seem rather localized – attached directly to a specific material basis - the spirits who are called ‘gods’ by the poets often have presence in a wider range of culture and geography; they transcend the local. Sometimes this has a natural material basis – the Sun is visible in all places, even if its effects vary. Sometimes it has a widespread cultural basis – customs surrounding hearth-fire can be relevant to most human habitation.

As a Pagan I take nature and its dance to be a map of the real nature of spiritual reality. As above, so below, the old wisdom says – nature is the materialization of spirit, and we can learn much about one from the actions of the other. When we apply this principle to the nature and presence of the gods we arrive at what I see as the center of polytheism.

Just as with any real thing in our natural world, the divine exists in and as multiple (infinite… uncountable…) entities. The gods as they appear in ‘mythology’ – in the bodies of tales preserved and retold by poets – bear only a generic resemblance to those gods as they are present in local temples and regions. If one considers “Diana” of the Anatolian city of Ephesus, in comparison to the Artemis/Diana of Greco-Roman story my principle is clearly indicated. This phenomenon happens across the polytheist world. In both India and in W African religions it is often formally acknowledged. The Goddess or honored spirit ‘of’ a local village may have the same name and stories as that of three villages away, yet have local presence, history and nature that clearly distinguishes her from another presence in another temple. This doesn’t prevent scholars and theologians inside the tradition from identifying them all as one entity, or villages from competing over whose Goddess is the coolest.

To me this entirely blurs the argument between so-called ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ polytheisms, in which ‘hard’ insists that every iteration of a deity is a distinct entity and not an ‘aspect’ of some other, while the ‘soft’ holds that deities are trans-individual, existing in many aspects. It is clear to me that traditional polytheisms today, and almost certainly those of European ancestors, are and were both. I sometimes propose an axiom that gods and other mighty spirits simply have the power to exist as multiple persons.

The Daemons

To find a specific solution in the myth and metaphysics of Pagan peoples I turn to the Hellenic notion of ‘daemons’. The word ‘daemon’ (from roots meaning ‘separate being’) is a general Greek term for ‘a spirit’. Homer applies it to the Gods while popular Hellenic Paganism could apply it all the way down to one’s garden-sprites as well. In Classical Greek Pagan theology the Daemons were similar to what we think of as ‘angels’ – agents and messengers of the gods. They were understood to attend the sacrifices on behalf of the gods, to carry the blessings of the gods in turn to mortal worshippers, and in essence to function *as* the god at the local level. In this way Zeus “of” a particular regional temple could be both a separate self-acting agency, and a ‘person of’ the storied deity.

I have described Sam Webster’s Fire metaphor before, but it is so very apt here. If I take a spark from a fire, and go a mile away, and use it to light another fire, it will be, in many ways, almost exactly the same as the original – same chemical processes, consuming the same kinds of fuel, etc. It is Fire, in the directly descriptive sense. Yet each such fire is distinctly individual – it is in a new place, it illuminates new things, it develops a unique history and narrative. So, we might think, it is with the Gods. A new image is made, a new ritual fire is lit, and customs are established influenced by the landscape and climate of the new temple.

We may say that in such work a different daemon of the deity is attracted to one temple than to another. In essence these spirit ambassadors or presences act and exist as the deity, as it may appear in the setting mortals have made for it. Mythic tales tell of deities making their own places of worship, reshaping the material world but, again, this level of the miraculous is not the rule. More commonly humans make a particular pattern, lay a sacred feast with a particular flavor, and it attracts the deity in and as a properly resonant daemon.

In this way it is not mistaken to think of the beings that act in each temple as separate and individual beings, who may have their own inclinations and desires. Likewise if you spoke with any one of them they would identify themselves as That God From the Stories, even as local versions of the myths diverge. This polyvalent perspective renders empty many disputes about which kind of worship, which narrative, which theology, is the “real” version from Ancient Days. The real pattern of ancient Paganisms was probably a patchwork of localisms linked by larger cultural forms.

This model has applications at both the most immediate levels, and at the transcendent. For those of us working to establish a home cultus it offers the freedom to establish the work as we will, and accept the results we get. When we establish a home shrine, develop out customs and implement them ‘religiously’ we summon a daemon of the god who is fit for the work we are fit for. If one wishes simply to establish harmony, get a good blessing, and live in peace then the simple sacrificial relationship with your own local daemon of your god may be all you need. For those of more mystical bent, the divine work of formal ritual makes a pathway of linkages – from the image of the God in your mind, through the material form of an idol and invocation, to the daemon of the God who serves at your fire to, perhaps, the cosmic principle of the God themself.

This model can lead us toward certain other speculations. Modern Pagans often ask ourselves about how such culturally similar forms as, say, Diana and Artemis, or Manannan and Manawyddan may be spiritually related. For those drawn to lumping, this daemon theory can easily be expanded from the local to the regional. I, myself, find it just too unlikely that thunder-gods from neighboring cultures with linguistically-neighboring names such as Taranis, Thunor and Thor must be utterly distinct entities. If there is some shorter list of great powers behind the many cousins of the European pantheons, the transpersonal and transcultural spiritual powers behind so many local daemons. Even so they need be no more relevant than a poet’s tales of the Earth-Mother are to bringing in a good harvest, as we approach those Powers almost exclusively through their local expressions. There is nothing in Pagan ways to insist that the ‘highest’ must be a special object of worship; practical work often is better done through more earthly spirits. Once again, we need not try to decide which is “true” – that all gods are separate individuals, or that some gods are ‘aspects’ or ‘persons’ of one another. We can comfortably and reasonably go for “both”.