Doubt (Why I’m Not a New Ager)

“I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms upon awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt, and found her virgin in the morning”

“Doubt,

Doubt Thyself.

Doubt even if thou doubtest thyself.

Doubt all

Doubt even if thou doubtest all.”

“We place no reliance on virgin or pigeon,

Our method is science, our aim is religion.”

Aleister Crowley

I’ve been wasting time on the computer, despite having Too Much to do. Since I joined Facebook, hanging out on the computer has changed for me. I used to waste time by hanging out in religion chat rooms on Yahoo (and on MSN back when they had free chat). That could be fun, though I’ll admit that hanging with chatroom atheists became even more tedious than chatroom fundamentalists. At least with the latter I could say the word ‘spirit’ without having to digress into secondary debate for a half-hour. The good news is that on Facebook I can select discussion groups that are really focused on topics that interest me. No surprise those include Druidry and Paganism at the top of the list.

In past few days there has been a small wave of New Age visitors to one of the larger Druid zones. One woman tried to explain how the Voynich Manuscript contained the “lost language of the Druids” etc, and talked about ‘Druids of many races’ before ‘the murders’ etc. Another fellow wanted to apply Castaneda and the Celestine Prophecy to Druidism, and was looking for the Truth ‘behind’ all the world’s religions. All in all the fairly contentious Druid-oids on the boards were polite, though eventually the responses amounted to “Aw, come on…” In a few days the New Agers were gone.

One fellow described himself as a ‘possibility thinker’. He explained that when he looked at ideas his first impulse was to think about possibilities – possible connections between the ideas and other ideas, possible meanings, etc. This led him to embrace things like “The Peruvians *might* have learned or transmitted some of their wisdom through the ancient Druids.”

I found myself in sympathy with the notion of possibility thinking, and asked myself why I didn’t do more of it, and why the long-stretch possibilities embraced by some New Agers seemed so unreasonable to me. The fact is that my occult career has not inclined me to be ‘open to belief’. Rather it has inclined me towards doubt.

I suppose that’s the result of a lifetime of habit. After all, in order to even begin my journey toward Paganism I had to doubt the religious assertions of my parents and community. In the late 60s and early 70s when I was setting out the notion that all religions were part of some single great Truth was popular in some parts the witchcraft and occultism I was reading, but as far as I could see even from initial reading it just wasn’t so. I considered Blavatsky, Bailey, and the Theosophists to be nonsense on the face of it, once I read a bit, and the whole “New Group of World Servers” and suchlike early New Age stuff just wasn’t sorcerous enough for my aesthetic.

So, why did I find myself pursuing skepticism as I continued my occult investigations, where so many decide that wisdom lies in embracing lots of strange and new ideas? I dunno, maybe some people feel like a restrictive upbringing tells them that they aren’t allowed to believe in all these cool, different ideas that are out there. Thus when they reject the dogmatism and codified mytho-histories of traditional western religions, or of materialist reductionism they throw themselves open to anything that catches their imagination.

I was willing enough at first. I remained open-minded about Atlantis for a long time, waited for Edgar Cayce’s prophecies about California to come true, hoped that parapsychology would reveal the secrets of the inner planes to materialist science. Know what – none of that has happened. I guess as time wore on, and my own reading led me into scholastic basics, including the real prehistory of the world (i.e. the one they teach in colleges), real archeology (not 19th century archeology, that is) etc. Atlantis clearly became a non-starter. Blavatsky’s descriptions of the Hindu mysteries became untenable as I studied real eastern lore, New Age chakras, same deal. Maybe I was just lucky to have discovered thinkers like Crowley, Bonewits  (“Real Magic" was the best mix of skepticism and good magical advice available in 1972) and later Wilson. They made a fine antidote to, say Pauwels and Bergier.

Truly my whole occult intellectual history has been one of progressively disproving popular crap scholarship to myself. I started out really wanting to believe that modern Witchcraft was a survival of ancient Euro-Paganism, that secret brotherhoods of initiates maintained a lineage of wisdom reaching back into ancient days, that the Tarot was an occult cypher inherited from wizards of old. I no longer consider any of that true. In my migration into Celtia I learned that Graves was a fake, and that trying to fit non-Hermetic pantheons onto the Tree of Life produced bad mythography. I abandoned the idea that there could be one great mythic framework that explained all of “the mysteries”.

Anyway, I guess that I’m a probability thinker. While lots of things, maybe anything, may be possible, a much smaller set of things is probable; really only a few are likely in any given moment. I think that it is this kind of thinking that makes successful results happen. So at this point I exclude from my thinking almost all ‘speculative’ history, physics and cosmology, in favor of more traditional patterns. I consider western science to be the most reliable description of the material world, scholastic history to be the most reliable description of human history, and traditional magical and religious models (by which I mostly mean pre- or non-monotheist ones) to be the most reliable spiritual models. So in general I reject what I characterize as New Age alternative sciences and histories.

Now, one must check the bath for babies. Many real traditional methods and systems, as well as the few working modern innovations, end up shelved with New Age stuff. While many popularizations of feng shui, astrology, even energy-meridian work may be pretty much crap, that doesn’t negate their value when studied from real sources. But once I see terms like ‘Ascension’ or ‘Galactic center’ or ‘Pleideians’ I start to smell what I consider pseudo-wisdom.

I do apply this same skepticism to claims that I would love to accept. I don’t really care whether alien wise-guys want to help us, but if there were really secret survivals of ancient Pagan cults among families in Europe I’d be all a-twitter. I doubt that there are. Same deal with claims of Druidic survivals in Gaelic countries. I’ll believe them when someone produces some actual evidence of them.

This habit of doubt has taught me not to build complex webs of symbolism and prop them up as if they are True. The building part can’t really be avoided, if one is to do anything in magic. I’ve done my share of multiplying of symbols, invocations and ritual patterns, as well as various speculative mythologies. I still have not, after 25 years, created for myself a ‘pantheon’ of Gaelic Gods limited to a specific number. There are certainly reconstructionists more rationalist than me, given my willingness to go all-in for current revelation by the spirits, but I try to take a careful, scholastically-aware approach to how I mix traditional myth with current practice.

I suppose I’ve succeeded in internalizing Crowley’s advice, above. I ‘believe’ (i.e. it is my opinion that) that I live in a world constructed by my perceptions within my mind - by my sensorium and my neurological editing functions. I would like to think that humans have some deep, innate, perhaps divinity-linked ability to bypass sensory awareness and gain direct perception of reality. But I doubt it. I remain an agnostic, in that I don’t believe humans have the equipment to arrive at a certain and uncorrectable knowledge of reality. I choose fairly conservative working models of reality (barring that little business about the existence and influence of spiritual reality, my world-view is much like any scientist’s). I operate as if my working models were true, and to the extent that I get the predicted results I hold my model to be confirmed.

Worked for Ptolemy…

But no matter how elegant or satisfying, any model can be shot down with the next discovery. That’s that Method of Science thing….

The Coolest Thing I've Seen This Week

Nanocthulhu Lovecrafti

Now, it's always cool when they find new speces, and it's cool that some scientist gets to name them.
It is very cool when they decide to enshrine the Priest of the Old Ones in the halls of taxonomy.

Merry May - Season-starter Update

Hey, this is my 200th post, which I didn't notice until the next day : ). Thanks to all you readers... on we go!

Summer arrives like a train around here, big, loud and steamy. I’m glad that I had a good winter for ritual and magical work, because now the face rises from the books and shrine and turns to the fire. More time with drums, less with the keyboard.

This is my usual beginning of summer post. May is always packed – public Beltaine last weekend (our best weather in the last several years), May Party here at Tredara this weekend and then the Wellspring Gathering on Memorial Day weekend. I’ll try to produce some content here, though. I have a couple of essays in the chute, but they’ll be done when they’re done.

I’m working on a next phase for the Pagan spirit-arte methods. My moment of revolutionary zeal in the spring has set me to developing a suite of rites intended to draw the spirits back into manifestation in a specific place or region. Such a grand goal must begin with small arrangements, and presently I’m working on rites offered to the Irish god Manannan. As always my problem is in identifying  and classifying the not-god spirits. Unlike Brigid, the Mac Lir has no handy three aspects or list of titles that can provide the ‘archangels’ for the model. I’ve taken another route, and I do hope to test it this summer. I have a growing certainty that Manannan the Trickster is a correct patron for a work of re-enchanting the land.

I’m going to be doing the Court of Brigid Working again at Eight Winds Festival at the end of June. Once I get this suite of Manannan rites to a point I must go back to the original festival script of the Brigid work and see what my year has taught me about it. I look forward to getting a chance to improve it, and test the improvements on willing subjects : ). I think that soon following I will produce a published version of the rites, with the list of spirits and their sigils.

In connection with the trip to Eight Winds I expect to get a bit of time for tourism in Cali, both LA-ish and more northerly. Should be fun. Next year maybe back to the British Isles!

Then it will be off to Starwood! I’m still doing on-the-ground organizer duties, so I still try to avoid doing serious occult work at the event. It’s too bad, really, because it is my biggest potential audience of the year. Maybe one of these years I’ll redirect my energies to doing some Theurgy for the multitudes. As it is ADF will be doing some specialized teaching and the usual demo ritual and I’ll be working with that. I’ll sing at a gig or two there and enjoy what is really more of a working vacation.

Now it’s back to the mowing and prepping. It’s May Party weekend here. This is actually the oldest party on the place, having been held by L since way back in the mid-80s. It’s a secular but Beltaine-charged gathering with a nice tall maypole-dance as the sunset centerpiece. I mean to get pics this year – we’ll see how many of them are blog-friendly ; ).

Hope you are enjoying the merry month of Beltaine. May your luck be good and your life be rich.

Yes, I’m Pagan!

There’s news, eh?

Yesterday was national Pagan Coming Out Day. It’s pretty much a redundancy for me, since I’m nearly as out as one can be, without actually hanging a ‘witch’ shingle or raising an idol in the *front* yard. (The one is the back yard can’t be seen from the road.) My friends, family and bosses know, and if every co-worker doesn’t know it’s only because we have a pretty religion-neutral workplace where the subject doesn’t come up. Nevertheless I’m a Pagan, and proud to wear the label.

I must admit finding the unwillingness of some folks to adopt the label to be rather puzzling. Yes, I know it isn’t an authentic label from any ancient culture. I know it may be an invented term probably first popularized by Christians to describe the hold-outs of the Old Religion. I know that it conflates systems from multiple cultures into a mish-mash modern term that tells very little about what any individual may believe.

Too bad. I’m willing to use it anyway. I wish more people were. One of the main reasons, I think, that the term is viewed askance is that it has no clear definition in terms of religious doctrine or even cultural description. The word is in flux, and has been for 100 years. I hope to help it settle in to refer primarily to Us. It hasn’t much use for anything else.

So, I have an ongoing philosophical project to devise a definition of the word Paganism that suits what I think are the unspoken assumptions of the movement, and doesn’t insult scholarship. The first part of that isn’t possible in any absolute sense – too many will always disagree, and our theological flux is at least as wide as the flux in the word’s definition. Still, one can apply weight to one’s end of the balance, and see how it goes…

Toward A Definition of Pagan Religions

Let’s start with the schoolboy stuff. I remind us that dictionaries trail behind usage, and are commercial indicators, not legislators of the meaning of words.
I’m rather pleased to see the online Free Dictionary give:
1. An adherent of a polytheistic religion in antiquity, especially when viewed in contrast to an adherent of a monotheistic religion.
2. A Neopagan.
3. Offensive
a. One who has no religion.
b. An adherent of a religion other than Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.
4. A hedonist.
(Odd that 'hedonist' isn't on the offensive list...)

Oxford gives:
1: a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions: a Muslim majority had to live in close proximity to large communities of Christians and pagans
2: dated, derogatory a non-Christian.
3: a member of a modern religious movement which seeks to incorporate beliefs or practices from outside the main world religions, especially nature worship.
It is interesting that the current language says “the main world religions”. Just a decade ago it would surely have said “Christianity, Judaism or Islam”, and maybe not Islam.

Merriam Webster gives:
1: heathen: especially : a follower of a polytheistic religion (as in ancient Rome)
2: one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods : an irreligious or hedonistic person
3: neo-pagan

In all three cases I’m pleased to see that neopaganism is given as one of the standard definitions of the word, and that two of the three give traditional polytheism as a/the defining characteristic. Usage has long abandoned the use of ‘Pagan’ to refer to ‘any non-Abrahamic religion’. Dictionaries are following suit, and hopefully on-line pontificators on the topic will catch up.

Also interesting is the ongoing development of the understanding of the etymology of the term.

The Online Etymology Dictionary gives:
pagan late 14c., from L.L. paganus "pagan," in classical Latin "villager, rustic, civilian," from pagus "rural district," originally "district limited by markers," thus related to pangere "to fix, fasten," from PIE root *pag- "to fix" (see pact). Religious sense is often said to derive from conservative rural adherence to the old gods after the Christianization of Roman towns and cities; but the word in this sense predates that period in Church history, and it is more likely derived from the use of paganus in Roman military jargon for "civilian, incompetent soldier," which Christians (Tertullian, c.202; Augustine) picked up with the military imagery of the early Church (e.g. milites "soldier of Christ," etc.). Applied to modern pantheists and nature-worshippers from 1908.

That’s all just as I would have said, ten years ago. Lately it has been noticed that ‘pagus’ doesn’t refer to anything specifically rural or countryside. The meaning of ‘district limited by markers’ applied to urban areas as well as to country districts. As a modern metaphor we might think of ‘wards’ or ‘parishes’. Culture being what it was in a tribal or post-tribal Indo-European nation each district would have had its constellation of temples and shrines, around which the natives would have grown up. So if ‘pagan’ has a meaning derived from its etymology (always a chancy claim…) it might be ‘local’. Pagan religion was/is the religion of the Gods of the place where you live.

In this context one can see why even later polytheist Hellenes, for instance, might have used it as a term of disdain. As cosmopolitanism crept into culture, with the establishment of multi-ethnic cities and multi-state empires in Europe, the ‘religious marketplace’ would have come into existence. Many intellectuals and fashionable aesthetes would have been interested in foreign cults, brought in strange books from eastern lands, etc. The fashion in Rome before Christ, for instance, was certainly for various mystery cults – Isis, Dionysus/Orpheus, the fashion for Judaism and the rising monotheism of the Neoplatonists. Those who clung to their local Olympian gods in the old way of sacrifice and blessing might have seemed unfashionable to the literate classes. Unfortunately, that’s all surmise on my part, until we find some snippet of text from the period. It does make sense of the term ‘civilian’ since ‘pagan’ would have most directly meant ‘local’ to the world-travelling legions.

So we find ourselves with both polytheism and locality as characteristics. That’s good so far. What we don’t find is any sense of Pagan applies exclusively or primarily to rural or countryside settings. One hears occasional complaints that ‘urban Pagan’ is a linguistic contradiction. Recent scholarship says it ain’t so.

In later usage the political church used Pagan to refer to all those who held to any of the previous cults or sects. Since the church was willing to consider all of those gods as members of Satan’s single conspiracy of demons it made it possible to imagine a single ‘religion’ that the Christian religion was set against. Thus when that church encountered the tribes of the north they recognized Paganism as well. Of course they were more or less right. The religions of Greece, Rome, Gaul, Germany, and the Isles were similar enough to be recognizable to literate commenters, though different enough to be remarked upon. But rites of sacrifice to great powers, and local cults of stone, trees, wells and springs, as well as varieties of ancestral and ghost religion would have been as recognizable as Lutheranism to a Catholic.

Here we enter a phase where the literate observers of the traditions we seek to emulate are writing from a position of active opposition to what they observe. Mostly we have the laws written by churchmen forbidding the continuing remnants of the Old Religions. In these the most common references are to the making of offerings to wells, stones and trees, along with formulaic language forbidding ‘witchcraft’ or ‘ill-working’ that surely refers to practices that would have been called part of religion by the previous generations. To me, that is enough to indicate the practice of the veneration of ‘natural’ or material presences as the habitations of spirits. That, in turn, is enough for me to refer to the Paganism the churchmen observed as ‘nature worship’.

I know that there are segments of the polytheist scene that resist the term ‘Nature Worship’. I must admit to being puzzled at that. Sure I direct my ‘worship’ (that is, my ritualized respect) mainly to the Gods and Spirits. I don’t see how the Gods and Spirits can be conceived of as outside of nature. Isn’t the idea of a ‘Creator’ that exists outside of the existing cosmic order an Abrahamic thing? Didn’t the Gods arise from the Mater-ial of the world, whether in the First Slaying or from the Cosmic Egg or the Stuff of Night, etc.? To me the whole cosmological picture of Indo-European religions places Gods, Spirits and all *inside* what one might call nature.

All that aside, if one makes offering to a spirit that lives in a tree or stone or pool, that is nature worship. To be clear, this has zero to do with one’s position on political environmentalism, or on any specific model like the Gaia Hypothesis. Traditional Paganism seems plainly to declare that divinity can be present in and as objects in the material world. It is also plainly acceptable, even desirable, to understand divinity as specifically present in or as the object. We can discuss whether some separation between spirit and matter might exist, but we’ll be doing it as we make offerings to a tree or mountain. Even those who make offerings to stars are honoring nature.

So we find ourselves with polytheism, locality and the divine-in-nature as visible characteristics of what has been previously called Paganism. Do we find those in Neopaganism? In fact we do. While the theological discussions of the nature of the Gods in Neopaganism ranges from monism to abstract duotheism to various ever-firmer polytheisms, our practice almost always includes addressing the spiritual in multiple names and persons. The ancients never asked one another whether the Gods were ‘aspects’ of one another, except in moments of philosophizing, and we needn’t either. It simply isn’t important for us to agree on how many gods there “really” are, or what their natures might be, to worship together or to accept that we are part of the same broad religious tradition, which I think it would be simplest to call Paganism.

Locality is the rule in modern Paganisms. While books may transmit broad concepts and some specific images of the Gods and Spirits, every living-room circle or one-woman shrine will make their own connections with the Powers. We can agree that all of our local Hecates are presences of Hecate, but Your Shrinage May Vary as to flavor, potencies or cult from the Hecate in the next pagus. Usually it is poets, who have to entertain in multiple neighborhoods, who have to be able to speak of Hecate (or whomever) in a way that all will recognize. If we were all to simply Pagan up, it would be entirely consistent to simply welcome every hearth-god and local cult as another aspect of the religions. Disputes about who is correct are just irrelevant to a polytheist attitude toward the practice of religion, though they were probably inevitable in the ale hall or symposium.

How nature-grounded is Neopaganism? Not enough yet, imo, but progress is being made. Re-enchanting the landscape isn’t a decision you can make on Facebook. It will take a generation or three to start to have storied places of our new Paganism in North America. Living rooms just won’t be preserved long enough. One can watch the work happening through various blog-windows on the internet as modern spiritual workers make new alliances, meet the guardians of local places, and develop local nature-based cults. Some of our success in securing and remembering storied places may be would up with our ability as a movement to develop institutional management of land and money. That can only be made easier by being willing to join together under a generic banner that makes room for all our local variants.

Finally, it seems to me that some folks resist the label ‘Pagan’ because they don’t wish to be associated with certain others people who use the term. For this I have nothing but disdain. Do these folks think they are sooo cool that they would lose cool-points by wearing the same label as less cool people? Are they concerned that their own coolness will allow less cool people to claim unworthy coolness by association? In personal style I am more like a tie-dye hippie than a business-suit professional, but if I can stand to be associated with various Euro-Pagan followers of Evola, Guenon, etc, then I think even conservative polytheists can stand to be associated with me, in order to grow a Pagan movement that can have a useful impact on western culture.

Pagan isn't a term that can tell much about the specific spirituality of any adherent. Truly the same can be said for the term Christian or Hindu. While Christianity often pretends unity around scripture and tradition the practices and beliefs of members vary widely from sect to sect, and also from believer to believer. No amount of legislated doctrine can prevent people from developing their own opinion. However 'Pagan' can serve as a general tag for most of the polytheistic, mystical paths that have grown up in or near it. We freely use the term 'bread', but to hear something called bread tells us very little about its actual composition, style or flavor. It remains a useful term, as does Pagan.

(Engage full soap-box-mode) So I really do encourage those who are polytheists (that includes animism, for me) who seek to work their spirituality in the land where they dwell with the spirits that are part of their work to be willing to stand with others in identifying as ‘Pagan’. There’s not a reason in the world not to.