Pagan In Pants

deer totem

2010-09-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

I found this website that has Native American Astrology. I have no idea how authentic the idea is, or if they just took what's general for each time frame from Western or Chinese or both and made a NatAm one, but I kind of like what it has to say about mine, which is Deer:

Deer: May 21 – Jun 20

This Native American animal symbol is the muse of the zodiac. The Deer is inspiring lively and quick-witted. With a tailor-made humor, the Deer has a tendency to get a laugh out of anyone. Excellent ability for vocalizing, the Deer is a consummate conversationalist. This combined with his/her natural intelligence make the Deer a must-have guest at dinner parties. Always aware of his/her surroundings, and even more aware of his/her appearance, the Deer can be a bit self-involved. However, the Deer's narcissism is overlooked because of his/her congeniality and affability. In a supportive environment the Deer's natural liveliness and sparkly personality radiate even more. He/she is an inspiring force in any nurturing relationship. Left to his/her own devices the Deer can be selfish, moody, impatient, lazy, and two-faced.

Sounds basically like Gemini and Monkey combined, and not at all like Obsidian Knife, which is my Aztec symbol (again, according to the interwebs).

So now I'm Gemini Metal-Metal Monkey Obsidian Knife Deer. I figure I'll just keep collecting up symbols like this.

I've never really thought about deers as a totem, but maybe, in these terms, it makes a little sense. Generally I gravitate toward birds-- big scary ones like Hawk and Raven or little cute ones like Finch or Wren-- or go for symbols rather than animals. Lately I've been identifying with feathers, acorns, ferns, kelp (weird, right?)-- places where creatures live or what they leave behind, rather than the animals themselves.

But on the other hand, we're all works in progress, changing all the time. So maybe I'm just between creatures. Once I was Dragon, then I was Cat, what will I be next?

sources: the meanings of the planets, part 1

2010-04-20T07:41:00.001-07:00

from here:

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/sungodsgoddesses/a/070809sungods.htm
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/polytheisticreligions/tp/MoonGods.htm
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/25215969/Moon-god-goddess-List
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_deity
http://hubpages.com/hub/ASTROLOGY-AND-GEMSTONES
http://www.crystalinks.com/sumergods.html
http://folkloreandmyth.netfirms.com/gods_goddesses.html
http://www.astrology3d.com/planets.html
http://www.trans4mind.com/personal_development/astrology/LearningAstrology/theplanets.htm
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2853720/SPIRITUAL-Meanings-of-the-Planets-
http://www.claytentylor.com/astronotes4.html

notes: how to be a polite pagan when converters are around

2009-11-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

Paragraph two:

I'm the sort who can't just brush people off-- especially when there's people who are learning to do what they feel they are called to do, like there was yesterday when I was going to pick up my paycheck and my schedule. I don't like being rude, and I don't want to be sacrilegious to any religion, and I didn't have time to explain just what I felt was wrong about what they were saying or doing, especially not in a public street in front of my favorite wine shop. So I played along. I listened and let them do their spiel, I accepted their little booklet, I let them pray over me and feel the pride of getting through to someone, and then I went on my way.

Just because I have no interest in their giant church or their teachings, doesn't mean I have to be rude to them when they're just doing what they think is right. I've been through that point in my life and I've concluded that it's not for me, and I won't be going back to the Church, but I have no right to challenge their faith, and no interest in doing so.

notes: witchy 101 - building an altar

2009-11-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

On this article.

Choosing an altar.

Point 1: I have both a permanent and a travel altar, because I feel comforted by redundancy, and I think I'd like separate tools for others to handle, vs the ones that I'll handle entirely on my own. I also have a sort of transient almost-altar-- a shelf above my altar proper-- where I put random things that I like, that were once on my altar, but have been moved or are no longer needed. My permanent altar is a little shelf about a foot and a half long that one of my previous Circle-mates gifted to me one Yule, sitting on top of a lovely table my mom gave me when I moved into my first house, that I retopped with hand-painted majolica tiles. My travel altar is a basket where I keep all my travel tools, a handful of supplies like charcoals and matches, and a cloth, and they just get spread out on any available surface, including the ground, when they're needed.

Point 2: I'm in love with the amazingly complex Catholic altars in the big Cathedrals, and I'd love to have something that big and special in my home, but there just isn't space in my house, so I keep it smaller. I live with several other people, none of which are Pagan, and so I have to respect their wishes not to have half the living room devoted to the Goddess.

I'd love to have a segmented board that's carved and woodburned and then lacquered until it's shiny that would set up across any two stones or stumps or whatever, and then break down like a Bedouin tent when I leave, but I just don't have the skill for that. If I did, I'd also have furniture that broke down easier so I could move more easily.

Point 3: There is no North wall in my room-- that's a double door and a closet-- and so my altar faces South, but it's right next to my bed and between where I sleep and where I put on my makeup in the morning, so I see it constantly, and it serves the purpose of reminding me of my beliefs very well.

Choosing decor:

Mine is all mostly found and gifted, but I like the color green, so a lot of it is green and that helps to pull it all together. Also helping is the fact that everything has a reason for being there, even the things I don't use much, and most of the items have specific memories associated with them. That helps me keep on track as I work.

out of circle experience

2009-10-29T12:51:00.000-07:00

Isn't this a lovely Circle? I wish it were mine, but alas it is not-- it belongs to the Leodis Circle, which is not here.

With Halloween coming up on us quickly, the History Channel has been trotting out the same specials it shows every year, and every year I get this weird feeling watching them. Aside from the fact that I think some of their details are foggy or glossed over, or at least many-times-repeated regardless of accuracy, there's this strange disconnect between watching a Circle on TV in a show that doesn't really know what it's taking about, and being inside one. See, there was this High Priestess somewhere north of here where it's actually cold. They were casting the Circle and Calling the Quarters, they were chanting The Circle is Open and We All Come From The Goddess, and these are all things I do with my own friends when we manage to get together, sometimes even on my own, and they're amazingly powerful in that context-- but watching them on TV like that, separated by the screen and the cameraman and the editor and the livingroom furniture with it's lights... It's just weird.

I don't really have much to say more than that, but the feeling has been nagging at me. The weirdness, like when I dream that I'm out of my body and watching myself. The vague almost-embarrassment that they'd be on TV like that, their precious faith exposed like a play for all the people who watch the History Channel, probably mostly for kicks instead of for knowledge this time of the year...

It's just weird.

notes: descent myths and the modern pagan

2009-10-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

Paragraph one:

In my own personal Palimpsest view of the metaphysical world (which I'll explain and argue for later), the God is both dead and in the underworld with the Old Goddess, getting restored and rebuilt for his rebirth, and he's transformed into the stag that guards the herd and the sleeping Winter Goddess, who is also being restored and rebuilt so that she can give birth to him at Yule. Just as she's the Moon and the Earth year round, he's the Stag and the Shadow in winter.

The official Trad-Wicca Descent Myth is a lot like Inanna (or here, too). The reasons and motivations are just shifted around a little. I'm still unsure how I feel about this story; I prefer Inanna's, or the Palimpsest version...

Paragraph two:

Really, most Descent Myths would fit; NeoPaganism is flexible like that.

Inanna:

- The stories / translations disagree on why she's there in the first place-- usually, they just say she went down, though her sister already hates her, so this isn't really a great idea. The Wiccan story gives her the motivation of wanting to know how Death works.

- Worldly power doesn't mean anything to the Underworld. You arrive there the same way you arrive in this world, naked and powerless.

- Since you can't be alive there, and you can't leave once you're there, the only way is to make you match the situation: Inanna has to die.

- This is also Dmuzi's resurrection story; it seems the Oldest Gods repeated each other's stories alot.

- The beings that go to retrieve Inanna are sometimes a very pretty boy-- but he doesn't please Ereshkigal or become her consort the way they seem to think he should; she's maybe an early angry feminist, and ideas like not marrying and holding power might have been weird and hard to deal with that far back. This is conjecture; I'll have to look into that.

- Some of the stories say that while Inanna was dead, Ereshkigal was 'like a woman in labor', which seems to indicate that they switched roles for a bit, and neither was all that happy with it.

Osiris:

- Sometimes, it starts with Set trapping him in a sarcophagus and tossing him in the Nile, and the sarcophagus floating all the way across the Med to get trapped inside a cedar tree and then built into a palace, but to me, this feels like a comment on another culture appropriating their myths to base their own power on. I'd like to study that anthropologically, if I ever manage to get into a school for that...

- Did Osiris also guard the Sun on it's nightly journey through the Underworld? I think I remember that, but I couldn't find it; maybe that's my brain weaving stories together again.

Demeter and Persephone:

- There's an idea that this explains how marriage happens, too; if so, I'm glad I'm not marrying in Ancient Greece or Rome.

- There's also an idea that Persephone was an Underworld Deity before she was a free-floating nature deity, and that makes the story seem different, switching the focus-- though I haven't decided which way it reads now. Maybe I need to start writing papers on mythology.

- 'Wife' and 'captive' seem to be interchangeable in these stories. I wonder if there was an idea that after she was kidnapped, she came to love her Underworld captor? Was love even something expected of marriage? This needs a new story. It also implies that she was forced from maidenhood to womanhood, usually by force. This is uncomfortable in a modern context; how was it experienced back then?

- At one time, Persephone was the parthenogenic daughter of Demeter; she didn't need a man for creation, and maybe that's why she had to be kidnapped by a man and imprisoned in the Underworld?

Sources:

Wikipedia is great for reminding me how the myths go, and for getting all the links together in one place: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_to_the_underworld AND http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-death-rebirth_deity

This didn't really add much, but it's interesting and I found it while researching this: http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/wstudies/grahn/chapt13.htm - Narratives: Descent Myths and the Great Flood

i have faith

2009-10-19T20:30:00.001-07:00

- that overall, people as a species are pretty damn amazing

- that there's something out there that cares about us, even if it's just us, and that that's okay

- that religions will eventually level out

- that people will eventually all be educated enough that all this crap will seem barbaric and old

- that faith is good enough, whatever that faith is in

- that god/dess is big enough and powerful enough that science and philosophy fit inside and explain just how amazing she is

conservatives debunk paganism?

2009-10-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

This conservative review of a book debunking Paganism pisses me off on several levels.

One: It's very poorly written, with sentences that don't have much to do with each other and big stretches of weird dogma, and doesn't review the book so much as point out the most scare-tactic-type drama-mongering inside it. It makes so many assumptions of fact, regardless of whether it's actual fact or not, that I want to smack the author for bad scholarship.

Two: It conflates Modern Paganism with Nazis and communists* and conflates vegetarianism with Satanists, while seemingly not understanding what Satanism is, and doesnt' even acknowledge the fact that, historically, everything founded has a concurrent opposite value. Also, Alister Crowley was a devout Christian and a healer. He just happened to have decades if prophetic dreams.

notes: five deities for prosperity

2009-10-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

This is a subject very near to my heart this year.

Everything counts as Prosperity if it improves your life, I think-- health, wealth, good luck, good opportunities, family health, stress-free living, money, food, savings, having a lot of friends and things that you love to do...

Other deities considered for the five: Tezcatlipoca (but he was too dark and unreliable to call on for prosperity), Pluto (but the wealth of the underworld is not something the living want to mess with unless they're miners), Tyke (But she was more the determiner of fate than the giver of prosperity. I think Lakshmi and Abundantia are the best for this topic, the most all-around.

Ritual:

See, the thing about a ritual is that it's personal. I'm sort of informal. I don't plan out every word and ever step beforehand, I just gather the things that I feel I'll need and hash out a basic floorplan for the working, and then see how it feels as I work through it. If you're more of a defined thinker, feel absolutely free to call all the Quarters, name each and every step in rhyme, and perform a full High Magic Ritual to get the job done. I just prefer to do that sort of thing with a Circle or a Coven, and do my own workings in a much less formal way.

Tokens:

I've seen raw emeralds and diamonds and such for sale at rock shows and on eBay, so if you have them, that's a good start for a spell to draw riches. But they aren't necessary. Anything that signals wealth and freedom from want for you will work as the token offering.

Sources:

Wikipedia

http://ravensilverwing.tripod.com/bos/prosperrits.html

http://www.theorderoftime.com/politics/cemetery/stout/h/myth-aut.htm#Wealth

This google search: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS264&q=who+is+Abundantia%3F&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

notes: living as a pagan in the south

2009-10-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

On Examiner.

First paragraph:

It's hard making generalizations about Paganism because of the total lack of centralization, and because so many of the traditions evolved independently-- the world didn't start out with one massive religion, no matter what the ones in power would like us to believe.

Second paragraph:

The massive amounts of publication in the Pagan religions section sort of makes it look like it's more of a solid, unified mass than it really is. I think this is because of a need to reach the solitary starters-- people who have been studying for years with a coven don't really need the books, and they aren't as likely to share all their Mysteries, either, so that means the ones that do share get all the press. Which is somewhat misleading.

A quick Google search pulls up a lot of sites for Pagans in Florida, but not much at all about being a pagan in the unique climate of Florida, which is nothing at all like England or Germany or Scandinavia or any of the other places where the main traditions seem to come from or where they draw their influences from. I really think that accommodations need to be made, especially if you come from somewhere else.

Third paragraph:

I'm generally inclined to gravitate toward the Middle Path between any two extremes, anyway; maybe you aren't, and that's great. Live what's good for you.

Fourth paragraph:

I'm not sure I really believe that any branch of paganism goes all the way back to the Paleolithic unbroken, but I do think that archaeology and paleontology have a lot to teach us about how people once lived and believed, and there's more than enough reason to back track, find your genealogical roots, and see what spiritual sustenance you can get from them. I think how we deal with the unknown and the stories we tell ourselves and each other are linked to how and where we evolved and lived for so many generations, and there's a racial memory that can trigger and pull us back to where our ancestors are. There's value in that.

There's nothing wrong with making it up as you go. One of the greatest perks of Paganism over most other religions is that it's customizable, and therefore you can say 'whatever, I do what I want' and have that be a valid argument. The divine gave us free will, right? Why not use it. Find your own way back.

Fifth paragraph:

I don't understand how a religion based on love and compassion and humility gets off being so condemning, but I'm glad that not all Christians are like that... it's a shame that more of the ones who aren't don't step up in defense of how it should be and in protest to how it's being done, though.

Photo:

I'm both highly amused and terribly scared of this shirt. But since I fall more in line with not really over-revering sacredness, I'm okay with the personalization of the pagan equivalent of Amen, and I like how that personalization ties it to the region. We're a regional species, identifying self with place, and that shouldn't be denied. Even if I have Editorial Issues with the word 'y'all'... ~;)

lammas: a late report

2009-08-17T10:06:00.000-07:00

As usual, I sort of missed the holiday; I always seem to miss the cross-quarters and barely remember the quarters-- but within a few days of the sabbat, I managed to make my first harvest of the year: one tomato, the first of the year; two peppers, the only ones I've gotten so far, and a rose, not the first, but the one that opened on Lammas. It's a little harvest, but it's a good looking one, and I'm glad to have it. When the community garden opens up at the end of this month or the beginning of next, i'm hoping to get some tomatoes in the ground, if there are any left, and maybe they'll fruit for real. This should have been an ideal summer for them with all the rain and the cooler nights, but I never managed to get them into enough dirt, and now most of them have been eaten by bugs. ::sigh:: But such is life, and even tasty things have to go the Way of All Things. It was a small ritual, but it was mine, mindfully harvesting what I'd put effort and thought and hope into, and even if nothing else comes of it, I've got this, and it's lovely.

Moon Day

2009-07-20T13:43:00.000-07:00

Today is both Monday (Moon Day) and the 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing, and therefore sounds like an auspicious day to think about the moon. Mythologically, the moon is feminine, associated with emotions and water and tides and life cycles and women's lives. It's the Goddess to the sun's God, and it's both a symbol of the night we can't see in, and the light that lets us see what we usually couldn't. It's softer and kinder than the sun, and borrows it's light from him so we can see it. It's the hope of humanity's future in the real world, and it's the hope that the cycle will always turn in the spiritual world. It's a symbol of how utterly inventive humans are, and it's potentially a new cradle of civilization, the first place where humans can live off Earth. It's a place and an object and an idea, and it's been part of our history and our myths throughout human memory. It's probably even why we exist, since scientists started thinking that a big moon to stabilize a planet's spin and to protect it from asteroids is sort of necessary for life to have a chance to not be obliterated early on.

So tonight, look up at the moon and think about the few people who've been there, think about what it means and what it can mean, and offer a prayer to the Moon Goddess and the promise she offers us.

Litha!

2009-06-22T10:52:00.001-07:00

I'd thought I wasn't going to do much this Litha, maybe light a few candles and try not to get eaten by bugs. I missed sunrise, which would have been an ideal time for this little mini-ritual, and then we had a spectacularly abortive yard sale. I was inside thinking that Midsummer in Florida is not really all that kind to humans bred for something more... Brittish... when Auds came and invited me to her friends' little party down in Palm Coast.

"Little" is a relative term. Twenty or more people that I didn't know all came and all brought food, and then there were literally hours of eating before we got to the ritual. It was too hot most of the day, so we waited until after sundown, and then had a really nice led-circle honoring the Sun in the dark after it's setting. Ha! I haven't been in a hybrid circle in ages-- open to all, but with a definite shape of things and a defined leader, defined words to say. We all said our lines, and I do like a good call-and-response, but we didn't raise energy, and I sort of missed the toning and singing and movement that my Regulars usually do. But it was a lovely and beautiful ceremony, even with the bugs and the blinding heat and the humidity. P took pictures during the Faerie portion; I wonder if there's any faeries-on-film?

I know what I asked for in the season to come. I hope I was heard.

The Times has set up an Environmental Team

2009-01-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

"The Times has created an environmental reporting team that will include writers with expertise in business, science, foreign affairs, and politics. Their goal will be to integrate environmental stories with coverage of the other important dimensions of human society.

Because, when you think about it, the environment is not "out there," as it is often portrayed, but is fundamental to our existence. Managing the environment is really about managing ourselves – our choices in how we feed and clothe ourselves, how we produce energy, how we use water, forests, and soils, and how we provide for the many poor people who want the health and abundance that we Americans take for granted."

I think this is amazingly good news, and a solid sigh that people are finally getting ready to actually DO something. Because I feel environmental issues on a spiritual level-- what with having an Earthmother Goddess and all-- I've been trying to green my life up for some time, and I'm so glad, for once, that something I'm doing is moving into the mainstream. Even if it's not, thousands or millions of people read the Times, and that'll push these issues into the mainstream and get people to understand how they matter. Sweden's on board, because they understand. Even England has been forced to understand, and they have consumption issues similar to ours. We're bigger, but we can do it, too-- especially with a President in office who pointedly said to make global warming a priority!

Musings: Carbon Nanotubes

2008-10-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

I just had a spiritual moment reading about science. This is not unusual for me. Anyway, I was reading the caption for this picture of carbon nanotubes being made, and it said that sometimes when they heat the graphite to make them, they grow out like bulbs sprouting in the spring, and it occurred to me that carbon is what makes those bulbs. It's what makes all of life what it is. And what if this is another example of conservation of idea, of fractal patterning in nature? Atoms, planets, solarsystems, galaxies all sort of mirror eachother, so what if carbon naturally mirrors life? What if life is inherent in carbon? We happened because the idea that would be magnified to out own structure is already there in how the thing grows anyway?

I know, poor science, but it's the idea that blew my mind.

Pomagranates

2008-10-16T08:49:00.000-07:00

I had my first pom of the season this morning for breakfast. I look forward to the times when they're available, and I wait all year for them-- this year it came a little early because the farmer's market had a little pile of perfect early poms, but all the associations are always there, regardless.

I eat them despite the fact that they're a pain in the butt because I like them-- but part of why I love them is because they're so full of history. Each of those little 888 ruby kernels is like a piece of history. The fruit was one of the first domesticated, and was common in the earliest civilizations man participated in. They're sacred to the feminine forces, and a vital part of myths. When I had my circle, we'd take them with us to the Esbats and Sabbats, and we'd crack them open and share them with each other through the fall and winter celebrations along side fire-brewed tea, honey-drenched apples and gypsy stew. They're part of my personal mythology, too, because of those nights, three beautiful falls and winters that seeped into my little pagan soul, and now I don't have a circle, but I can still have Poms and I can eat them and remember those shiny, innocent days before we all had to deal with the crap of an adult life in a mundane world, when we were all together and felt like we belonged.

So I have my yearly ritual of slowly eating and enjoying my first pom of the year, and this year it's early, but no less powerful. And I thank the Dieties for the chance. I'm planting the seeds to preserve this chance, just in case they're unavailable or far too expenseive next year.

Politics and Religion

2008-10-07T10:49:00.001-07:00

Okay, okay, I'm a little behind the wagon, but I only just heard of this Palin protection-from-witches BS and so I've done a little research about how the various candidates feel about neopaganism.

First this whole Palin thing. Even if we assume that she's just going along with this and not the one whose idea it was to get protected from such things-- still, she's going along with it. Which either means she doesn't disagree enough to make an issue of it / agrees she needs the protection, or she doesn't have the willpower to stop such craziness. If she agrees with it or doesn't argue with it, that's an inquisition waiting to happen, and if she doesn't have the will power to take control of her own spirituality, how the hell can she take control of anything else? And this is not even taking into account that the rest of this guy's crazy involves a vision of a radical fascist Christian world-- with Christianity used as a bad word, a totalitarian soul-crusher, not a religion of peace and tolerance.

And you know, the more I find out about her, the more I hear her speaking, the more I want to kick her in the face and tell her she's a horrible insult to everything I believe in-- feminism, womanhood, leadership, environmentalism, rationality, literacy, common sense... She's more and more a joke, and that's really the only way I can deal with her, because if I take her seriously, the thought that she might become president by default is terrifying. I hope the Republicans realize what they've done and how they've damaged their own cause with this loony.

And you know what? The rest of the candidates are being really quiet about religion.

McCain managed to come off as a little too Christian and intolerant of Islam, but that's not that unusual, or unexpected, considering the cloud of other associations around him-- And he honestly believes that the people who founded America were Christians just like him, and not at all like Christianity was three hundred odd years ago, and especially not like Freemasons or social humanists or anything else. At least, that's how he sounds to me.

I can't find anything on how McCain OR Obama feel about paganism directly, but I can tell you that Obama supports more of the things that would gather pagan attention, like peace, tolerance, greening the country, alternative energy, honesty...

links:
Palin: the About.com page here.

About McCain pissing off Muslims, here. The best response: "When the Founders wrote the nation’s Constitution, they specified that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” (Article 6, section 3) This provision was radical in its day– giving equal citizenship to believers and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no single religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion, such as England had. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention religion, except in exclusionary terms. The words “Jesus Christ, Christianity, Bible, and God” are never mentioned in the Constitution– not once."

movies: iron man

2008-10-05T12:52:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, I'm the last person on the planet to see Iron Man, buy you know what? It doesn't matter, because even on the TV, it's a pretty sweet flick. Glowing heart-sustainers! Explosions! Emergency Engineering! Socio-political Commentary! More Explosions! It's bright, shiny, snarky to the point where I almost actually forget that I never much liked Iron Man in the comics, and it's got layers that were unexpected from this genre: he manages to change without sacrificing who he is, he decides to do right in his own way, war = bad is proved without being too blunt or indelicate, big business = bad (when you aren't in control of your own interests) is proved, too... And the computer's voice is Paul Bettany, who I love, and who manages to be snarktastic even in a flat synthesized way. Additionally, there's Pepper Pots, who entirely understands her boss, her job and herself, who cares enough about him to get in the middle of a massive-robot battle, and cares enough about herself to keep the love-interest angle where it should be-- at least until he becomes capable of not wandering from model to model. Although, a loving, open, polyamorous super hero might be really nice...

And there's plenty of squee. Hints of War Machine, that whole section at the end of the credits, the classic Iron Man things like hand-weapons and crazy flying... Over all, a pretty solid and really fun sort of movie, with way more joy in it's existence than the last X-Men movie, which seemed to entirely forget that all this super hero stuff is just really really cool.

Real Life Adventures of the Pagan Variety

2008-09-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

I had friends in town yesterday. They're some of the oldest friends I have, and some of them I hadn't seen in something like a decade. We were at the wine bar, drinking six different varieties and a sangria, and just sort of passing them around, with me drinking a large portion because all my oldest friends are lightweights and I'm the one with a religion based on revelry, when M turns the conversation to religion. She's semi-recently discovered that her family is actually secretly Jewish and converted under duress sometime after the Inquisition, so she'd gone back to being Jewish like her ancestresses, and it's freed her mentally and spiritually. A lot of what she had to say jives with what I've been thinking and what led me to an Earth-goddess-centered spirituality, so I was open and understanding and sharing info as I am wont to do in such situations-- which is to say, in the semi-defensive philosophical sense, rather than just jumping in an being all pagan up in someone's face. I hate when people do that to me, and I don't want to do it with others, and it's just polite to keep religion and politics on a more philosophical level then it is to be attack-ish about it, which does not help people to understand where you're coming from.

This is all good, and I'm happy for her, and I agree that faith means so much more when you find it yourself.

Then, we started talking about how we were raised, and T, the girl I've only just met, said something about her family being really conservative, and I sort of agreed, and M went straight to 'and you're Wiccan, right?'. It was unexpected, and I was a little drunk, and I couldn't find the place to start explaining that ten years ago I was Wiccan, and I've since moved on and consider myself more of an Ecclectic Heathen now. Which would have led to a conversation of what that even means, and since I don't follow any path but my own, it would have been... freeform. I like my spirituality that way, but I don't think people who don't know anything about neopaganism want their explinations that way. They want markers, definitions, facts, structure to hang things on, and that's great, but that's not how I work, and it's not how i can make it to make it understandable. ::sigh::

I don't mind Big Important Conversations About Faith, but when they broadside me when I'm a little tipsy, I always flub the answers and can't seem to distill over a decade's worth of adding and editing to create an easily-understood soundbite of what I am. It started as Wicca, and it morphed with eastern philosophies and native american ideas, mixed with mythology and an anthropology degree, got mooshed around and pared down with alot of my own personal experience both with other pagans and with myself, in my own head, and it came out as this system that works for me, and that I hope is cohesive enough to pass down to my children if they're of the witchy sort and want it, but might not even make sense to anyone outside my head.

Am I weird? Am I missing an easy way to tell people what I believe?

A Paganistic Future

2008-09-27T09:11:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me that with oil and gas prices going so high, and global warming getting so hard to deny and recycling becoming so very important, the world is slowly shifting to a nicely pagan point of view. On it's own, even, and without realizing it. But haven't we been saying for fifty-odd years that you have to watch out for what you do because it comes back stronger and badness comes back worse? Haven't we been saying we need to look after and protect the earth instead of damaging and stripping it of all value? Haven't we been saying, at least since the 70s, that there are better ways to live and better ways to run a society?

Here's my hope: These are all just growing pains. I hope that within my life, fuel costs will force a drastic shift toward cleaner, renewable energies, and that this forced shift will drive the whole mentality of the country and the world toward a Gaia-centric place, where we seek to save the world, not use it up, where we try our damnedest to be clean and renewable and post-industrial and useful to the planet and humankind. My hope is that we can green up our cities and power our lives with wind and water and light and not have to give up the technological freedoms we've developed, but can adapt them to better help us improve the species as a whole. That's the goal I think we've all forgotten-- we want the species to survive, and the best way to do that is to repair all the damage we've made and keep the planet alive.

Mabon

2008-09-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

I am a bad pagan. I missed Mabon again. Maybe it's something that's wrong with my life or my life-view, but I always miss the First Harvest, like it doesn't even matter, when the whole point of a harvest is to reap the rewards of all your hard work. Wouldn't it have been nice if I'd gotten a job that day, because that's where all my hard work is going right now...

Maybe it's the fact that I'm living in Florida, where it's still pretty summery as far as sun and rain are concerned, and we've still got months left on our growing season. The hurricane killed all my tomatoes, which would have been starting to actually produce now that the nights aren't so hot, so I'm already missing that little connection to the Wheel. I've got my peppers and eggplants, but they only just started budding and fruiting again, so that's a false message, as far as a temperate-climate calendar is concerned.

Maybe it's the fact that the afore-mentioned temperate-climate calendar just doesn't apply here? I've been playing with the idea of figuring out a non-temperate calendar for myself, moving the holidays around to fit their equivalent placements in a Florida year, but that would require a large chunk of the holidays to be crammed into the small segment of the year that isn't summer, and Mabon's an equinox, anyway, so that's set even if the rest of the year doesn't like me. I'd have to separate it from the equinox, and that just seems... weird. Wrong? I don't know, something like that. Of course, I'd be able to have two calendars running at once like the Maya did, and that could be neat.

But this post is supposed to be about Mabon. Here's what I've reaped in this first harvest:
- an understanding that retail is not what I want to spend my life stuck in, and an understanding that the state of the american economy might make that necessary
- a little knowledge in how to market myself, and the vague feeling that it's degrading-- and yet, less degrading then dumbing myself down for a crap job I hate
- the belief that without a circle, I kinda suck at being a pagan, and the existential question of whether religion even matters to the world if you only share it with yourself?
- one pepper from the garden, but lots of basil all through the year
- a renewed dedication to getting my fat ass thinned down, even if I sometimes forget the exact day I'm supposed to be dancing on
- a refreshed love of cooking

What did you reap?

Stonehenge

2008-09-27T08:47:00.000-07:00

I read an article from National Geographic a few days ago (which I can't seem to find now, so there's no proof it exists) that said they've decided recently that Stonehenge may have been an ancient Lourdes sort of place, with religious significance and the idea of magical healing. The idea is based on the fact that all the bodies they have found were damaged or sick in some way, not all of them with obvious injuries of the sort that could be called 'sacrificial'.

I admit that I've never been there, but based on my obsessive devouring of all the new info and theories, I think this one is the most cohesive and multifaceted. It absorbs the ancient evidence from before the stones were set, the fact that lots of celebration sites have been found without a lot of evidence of long-term living in the immediate area, it explains the abundance of burial mounds in the area, takes into account the previous discoveries at Woodhenge and along the river, and doesn't try to discount the idea that the whole place is specifically aligned with the heavens. And I'm a big fan of cohesive, all-inclusive theories. People are complex, and I think just because we perceive their technology as simpler, it doesn't mean their minds were, or that their cultures were. Everywhere people go, every site that people use, has more than one purpose, even if it was founded for one specific thing, and to try and make it mean less than that is to sell people short.

We know it wasn't built by Druids. We think we know that it was used long afterward but Druids, and I think that's just a natural extension of how it was used before-- even without knowing the purpose or who built it, anyone walking onto that plain can see that it was an important place, that there had to be a reason to move such big stones so far and arrange them in entirely-not-easy-to-accomplish ways, and if you're the sort that's open to energy-patterns, you'd be able to feel all the focus and belief the place was steeped in. I think that's what draws millions of tourists there every year-- not just the idea that it's a great mystery, but the idea that there's all this energy that people don't recognize these days but still has the ability to alter your view of the world, even a little bit. There's a voyeauristic thrill to looking in on places where other people once worshipped, and a connection to a past we no longer have roots to, and whatever drew those people there to begin with is still there, underneath it all, unexplained, still doing whatever cosmic thing it has always done.