Dancing Down the Moon

Seed Post #6: Exile

Before I start, I want to make one thing very clear:  the following is in no way meant to lambaste the Pagan community, criticize Wicca as a religion, or to mock anyone.  I am merely speaking from my own perspective which is biased, yes, but based on fifteen years' experience with Wicca and experiences with a variety of groups, traditions, and people both wonderful and not-so-very.  I'm sure your experience is very different from mine.  If you're happy with your religious practices, that's wonderful, keep it up! 

It doesn't always work out that way.

I've always said that you should take your religion seriously, but never yourself.  That's a great maxim and all, but where do you draw the line?  If your religion is supposed to inform every aspect of your life, is there even a line to draw?

This is how I ended up forcing myself to attend a lot of group rituals over the last decade even though I never, ever felt entirely comfortable there.  I tried a thousand times to get over myself and just go with it, but the fact is, almost every time I've been surrounded by my "people" in full religious regalia complete with tools and Iambic pentameter, the same thought kept forcing its nasty way up through my consciousness:  This is ridiculous.

I was surrounded by people in pseudo-medieval costumery waving sticks and knives around, chanting badly rhymed couplets such as,

"Da dada da dada da dada da fire
da  dada da dada da dada desire!
Da dada da dada da dada da Moon
da dada da dada da dada da boon!"

Who the hell says boon?

There were people around me who claimed to have animal spirits inside their bodies--one guy even tried to sniff me.  Everything seemed to be about sex--in ritual tradition dictated that a penis (a knife) be lowered into a vagina (a cauldron) as symbolic of the Biggest Damn Mystery and Aren't We Lucky it's a Sexy One?

The thought of a penis as a knife, incidentally, is NOT OKAY with me.  They're already used as weapons against women all over the world--why bring that symbolism into a holy temple that's supposed to be woman-loving?  Yes, a knife is a tool as much as a weapon, but thrusting it into something is not what I think of when I think of peaceful uses for a knife.

Pagan traditions from hundreds of years ago demanded that I make dollies out of corn husks to lay in beds so they could be pretend-ravished by their brother-father-lovers later on that night.  Couldn't we just play Dirty Barbie like everyone else? 

I tried, I really did.  And it wasn't a lack of belief that was the problem.  I was perfectly able to go along with the idea that stones held magical energy, and that dancing around in a circle could change the world.  I cast my spells and all of that.  And when I was by myself, able to work quietly and take the time to gently connect to Deity on my own terms, it worked. 

In small intimate groups of friends I'd known for months or years, it worked as well, but there was still a barrier between my experience and the group's.  It worked best if I led the rituals, spoke the guided meditations myself--that way I didn't put so much pressure on myself to "feel something," and was able to experience a priestess's transformation, which is never the same as those in her circle, but just as important.  The only time I truly felt comfortable was when I was in charge.  For a long time I figured that was because I'm bossy and demanding, but I eventually realized it was the best way for me to get something out of the rite, too, and not beat myself up for feeling out of place.

I get it.  I really do.  The idea behind all the silliness is that we disengage the "shoulds" and "should nots" of modern society and return to a more childlike way of looking at the world, where spirits and magic are possible and cynicism gives way to wonder.  It's a more visible manifestation of what Buddhists call "beginner's mind."  Go back to the beginning, to when the world was still enchanted to your eyes, and speak to it as if you'd never been told it was all pretend.  This is a wonderful idea, and a noble aim given how determined the world is to grind us down in stark reality and doom-and-gloom. 

And for those who can manage to do that and also have transformative spiritual experiences while dressed up like cast extras from A Knight's Tale, more power to you. 

In fact I envy you, because I just can't do it. 

Over the past few years as I've moved slowly away from Wicca and into...well, whatever it is  you'd call my thing now...I've investigated various traditions both under the Pagan umbrella and outside, and I have to say that the first thing that turns me off is the You're Joking, Right? factor.  You want me to weave ribbons around a giant phallic object to celebrate...fucking?  You're joking, right?  You want me to drink out of the horn of a dead animal after thirty other people?  You're joking, right?  You want me to give offerings to that hairy skirt-wearing guy in the antlers? 

There are not enough 'shrooms in the world.

Needless to say this attitude has led to a full self-imposed exile from the Pagan community.  I have absolutely zero interest in festivals, Pride Days, drum circles, public Sabbats, or semi-public Esbats.  If it were the right people I might give it a shot, but my tolerance for strangers is even lower than my tolerance for silly.  I love spending time with the women in my wee circle, but my favorite times are when we feast together, dance together, and talk and support each other.  And I still long for community, but I don't think my place is among the Pagani.  I like to think that my writing, or the majority of it, has an appeal for my old people as well as a broader audience around the spiritual web, but as far as my actual practices, well, the divide between myself and my former community seems to keep growing the older I get. 

For a long time I thought I was the problem, but I've come to understand that it's not my fault, or Wicca's fault--it's like any relationship.  You meet, you grow together for a while, and sometimes you part company.  One of you changes and the other doesn't, or you both change, but regardless, your paths may diverge for a while, perhaps for good.  It's sad, yes, but it means you're both free to evolve unfettered by each other's expectations and drama.

So I still call myself a Pagan, but I'm not sure what that means at the moment.  When I finally get around to writing my third nonfiction book it will most definitely not include the word "Wicca" in the title, and though my approach to spirituality is still similar to my first book, the third would be a rather different critter altogether.  There are some things I just don't do anymore; they no longer serve me.  That doesn't mean those things are bad or dumb or pointless.  It just means they're not my way anymore.

And believe me...if I never do another Drawing Down, it'll be too soon.

Dyslexic Cows Make Great Meditators

Let's say you're drawing a picture of a giraffe:  a four-legged ruminant mammal with horns, a superlong neck, and spots.  You draw a lot of giraffes.  You love giraffes; in fact you become well known for your depiction of giraffes in your giraffe blog.  You even write a book or two about giraffes. 

Then one day you draw a giraffe with a shorter neck.  Next you draw one with shorter legs.  A week later you shorten the neck even more and make its horns longer and curved.  The next giraffe you draw has a few large spots instead of lots of smaller ones.  Finally you draw a giraffe with pronounced udders and hooves instead of two toes.

You realize at this point that it's not a giraffe.  It's still a four-legged ruminant mammal with horns, but definitely not a giraffe anymore, and while you can label it "giraffe" all you want, deep down you know it's a cow.  Cows are awesome and giraffes are awesome, but cows are not giraffes and giraffes are not cows.

That's really all that happened to me.  Over the years since I wrote my first book I've been tweaking and reinventing tiny parts of my spiritual practice and cutting out bits that didn't work for me.  Finally I looked at the picture as a whole and realized that while I've put together something pretty nifty, it's really not Wicca anymore.

I say that as someone who's always championed the idea of eclecticism, and still do.  I really think that as a religion Wicca has a lot of room in it for a wide variety of beliefs and practices, but still, at some point you have to draw the line for yourself or your tradition.  Staunch traditionalists have been saying this all along, albeit to a much narrower set of criteria.  I'm not saying they're right or wrong, I'm just saying that eventually your giraffe is a cow and it needs to find other cows to graze with.

Religion is the public face of a community's spirituality.  Spirituality is much more private and individualized.  Religion is what people agree on when they're in a room together partying with God; and regardless of the rules, any religion can become dogmatic even when it's supposedly dogma-free. Does that invalidate it?  Of course not.  We're lucky enough to live in an era when we have a choice what religion to practice, or none at all.  We can choose our community and choose to either work within an established system or cut-and-paste with care to create something just for ourselves.

Wiccan belief is not what trips me up; it's a problem of practice, focus, and attitude.  In my ideal version of spirituality I am a mystic, not a magician.  The influence of Ceremonial Magick has always kind of...well, not bothered me, but definitely not spoken to me either.  Rituals based on the Wiccan framework with Circle casting in a dozen steps and Quarter calls and all of that almost always leave me bored and disconnected. So often the attention is all paid to the steps themselves that the actual center of the ritual, the part that's supposed to do something, gets neglected. This isn't to say great rituals don't exist, just that even the vaguest formality is too much for me these days. Besides, I'm not afraid of being eaten by psychic oogy-boogies while I pray.

(Hardcore magical ritual is another thing altogether--I'm speaking mainly of celebratory and seasonal rituals here.)

The focus on fertility and sex in the community is also grating to me, as I've blogged about here before.  I'm sure plenty of people would chalk that up to personal repression, and it may indeed be, but you know? I don't care. I don't want to pretend my chalice is a big vagina. There's something inherently violent to me about the whole Great Rite in Token symbolism anyway, picturing the penis as a blade; my body is not a sheath. Neither is my Goddess. I understand celebrating sensuality and pleasure, but to me that's something that can't be done in the proper reverent frame of mind except in private.

But that's a rant for another day.  Suffice it to say that I'm a great lover of Nature and the seasons, not just the mating season. Add to that the squick factor of the traditional Wheel symbolism, and well, it just doesn't feel right with my own approach. 

That's really the point of all this babbling--I got my Wiccan education via people like Scott Cunningham who said things like, "if it feels right, and doesn't hurt anybody, go with it." Jettisoning the label feels right to me. As with veganism and all the other things I believe in, I don't expect everyone around me to do the same, or to agree with me.  I'm just speaking my own truth, sharing my experiences, and trying to honor my own evolution.

Most of my life I've been afraid to exist outside of categories.  Like a lot of people who turn to alternative mores I've struggled with the feeling that I never belonged anywhere--not at church, not in the cliques at school, not in my hometown, not at college, not in the Pagan community. Still, humans need to feel that sense of place and  unity, and often we cling to vocabulary words that no longer define us rather than risk going it alone.

My brain keeps begging, "But...but if you're not calling yourself Wiccan, then what are you?  You need a WORD!"

I wish there was one.  Pagan will have to do for now, although it's too broad; Witch is incomplete; Goddess-worshipper is too narrow and unwieldy.  Hell, if I can describe my spiritual path in 20 words or less I'll be doing better than a lot of people.  Maybe I'll invent a term.  Sylvan, 39th Priestess of the First Church of Awesome sounds pretty good. 

In the meantime, what I'm working on these days is stretching, growing past my old sense of myself.  In the painfully over-quoted words of Anais Nin,

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Cow, giraffe, zebra, elephant, hamster, ostrich:  whatever we are, whoever we want to be, may we all risk the blossom.

By Knot of One...

My early training as a Wiccan was fairly typical once I got to college.  After two years of solitude, stuck in a small town before the Internet, I found a whole new world in Austin and soon started a series of classes with a group that sounded reputable and had an eclectic curriculum.  The main advantage of the group was that it was made up primarily of solitaries, and once initiated students could go off and do their own thing, join other groups, and so forth, or continue up the degree ladder.  I liked the structure-without-structure.  I stayed with them for several years but eventually personal differences with the leadership drove me out. 

At the time it was a negative experience, as an unfortunately large percentage of Pagan group experiences are, but I'm grateful to that organization for several reasons, most significantly that through them I met some of the most important people in my life.  It was worth all the drama just for S1ren, quite possibly the most amazing woman I know.  I also might never otherwise have met Amber, fellow writer, early teaching partner, and all around cool chica. 

I also came away with a much firmer idea of what I wanted to give my future students and what I believed Wicca really was.  My brand of spirituality was fundamentally different from what I had seen in class, and I was glad to have learned that it's all right to be a black sheep even among other black sheep. 

More of a red sheep, really.  Or possibly paisley.

Give it Up for the Goddess

My Goddess is a demanding one.  It's barely even the edge of Autumn, and She's making Her wishes known to me in ritual and meditation.  I am asked to tithe to Her in devotion, time, and even skin. 

Those are the easy part.  There's more.

Once you move deeper than the outer layers of Wicca, once the symbols and the holidays are part of your life and you're ready for something more spiritually intimate, you hit what is, for a lot of modern people, a snag:  God is neither a fairy godmother nor your bitch.  For every prayer answered, for every spell that succeeds, a sacrifice must be made. 

Younger generation Americans in particular hate the notion of sacrifice, I've observed.  A lot of people feel like they're entitled to "have it all" with a minimum of actual effort.  Meanwhile, the older generations raised in the shadow of war and Depression understand the idea of sacrifice, but for them it tends to be about sacrificing for the family and for country, not for self-actualization.  Personally I was born at the butt end of Gen X, so I have no work ethic, but I don't expect much, so it all evens out to a nice manageable level of slackerdom.

The fact, however, remains the fact:  there is no give without take.  A relationship must flow both ways in order to be healthy; that holds as true for a relationship with Deity as it does for a marriage. 

I've said all of this before, of course.  And of course, those new to the idea of Paganism and Wicca should note that when I say "sacrifice" obviously I'm not talking about cute furry animals or children.  Nope, you should only sacrifice ugly hairless animals.  Children are always okay.

Just kidding.  Calm down.

When I say "sacrifice," I don't mean to imply that there's a giant tote board in the sky keeping track of your deeds and wishes granted, or that the universe is a giant zero-sum game.  I mean simply that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.  If you want something new and wonderful in your life, room must be made for it.  You have to work to clear the ground and prepare the soil; if it's full of roots and rocks, you're less likely to reap a good crop.  If you want to be healthier, you can't just sit around filling yourself with white light and humping your crystals--you have to make real, practical changes in your real, practical life, the life you want transformed.  Life doesn't just happen on the astral plane; neither does magic.  Show the gods you're willing to make the sacrifice necessary, and willing to accept the consequences of the changes you have asked for.  Life is like wearing a white shirt to an Italian restaurant.  There will be deliciousness and satisfaction and succulence, but there will also be marinara on your shirt.

Of course, what that means is, be careful what you wish for.  When it comes down to it, is your goal worth what you'll have to give up?  Is it worth the time, the extra work?  Is a new relationship worth breaking off an old one?  Is a more fulfilling life worth moving, changing jobs, losing friends?  Are you truly willing to let go of the old way and embrace the new?  If you're not, you will not succeed.  If your closet is full of baggage, don't expect the gods to hand you a new wardrobe.

This is a minor sticking point I have with the Charge of the Goddess--that line about "nor do I demand aught of sacrifice."  I'm sure that it was written with the intention of stating clearly that Witches don't off bunnies and kitties and babies in their rituals, but it is a bit misleading in a broader sense.  No spiritual evolution has ever come freely.  However, I suppose the point is that  the Goddess doesn't force us into anything--in the end, we have to decide for ourselves if we are willing to give what must be given.  We always have the option to walk away, to let life continue until it becomes utterly unbearable.  Unfortunately what tends to happen is, if we don't walk into the sacrifice willingly when we have the opportunity, eventually things will get so horrible that we are forced out of our inertia into much more difficult choices.  Life will change; that is its nature.  Our freedom and responsibility is to create that change ourselves instead of allowing circumstances to dictate our stories.  To quote Natasha Bedingfield, "Today is where your book begins; the rest is still unwritten."

The important thing is not to confuse "sacrifice" with "suffering."  It doesn't always have to be painful, although we tend to cling so hard to our possessions and past that we bring a lot of undue pain upon ourselves.  Sacrifice isn't about agony, it's about significance. As we come into the waning time of year, when Death and the Dark Queen step onto the stage, They will surely ask you:  What is your heart's desire?  And what do you offer Us in return?

Only you can know the answer.

For more on the concept of sacrifice in religion, read this excellent article over at Breathless Noon:  What Are You Willing to Give Up For It?

Reader-Inspired Topic #6 - Definition Soup

I recently had a very interesting and thought-provoking question posed to me via email (yes, I checked my email, don't be so shocked).  The submitter expressed that she was pleased to see panentheism included in my definition of Wicca, and mentioned that it was a pretty rare phenomenon, as was the idea of focusing on the Wheel of the Year as a personal journey and relationship with the environment instead of as a myth cycle.  She mentioned that most writers emphasize Wicca as an immanent (pantheistic or polytheistic) religion.

Her question was, in essence, where do I draw the line between Wicca and more general NeoPaganism?  At what point do a person's beliefs stray so far off into left field that they no longer really qualify as Wiccan?

Well, it depends on who you ask.  If you asked some hardcore traditional Wiccans, they'd probably tell you I'm not a "real" Wiccan, and neither are most of my American Eclectic brethren, for reasons ranging from not having the proper lineage to not practicing in the nude.  To those narrow-minded folk I say "Get over it, Wicca's evolving and it's too late to stop it." 

Still and all, we do have to have some generally-accepted guidelines, otherwise any nutcase with an athame can call himself a Third Degree Priest and start a coven that exists specifically to get him laid...

Oh, wait.  People already do that.

On Pagan Conformity

Recently there’s been a bit of discussion 'round the blogosphere about the issue of Pagans looking like, well, Renaissance-festival reject freaks, and whether or not we can ever be taken seriously in the religious community if we come off as members of a fandom.

As with any online discussion there’s a good deal of self-righteousness and indignation attached to the subject, some yelling, quite a bit of snobbery.  (Did you know that cursing makes you "trailer-park?"  Well, fuck me.) I was a bit surprised at how vehement and venemous people got about it, but then, this is the Internet.

I'll be the first to admit that the more colorful members of our community do put me off.  In fact, they put a lot of people off, including those who might otherwise stay and become valuable members of the community.  In my mind, the costumes aren't the problem; the problem is the people wearing them…er, some of them.  I don't mean to judge everyone who wanders about in a cape and loincloth, although it does help me decide who I don't want to date.

My Most Recent Idea (of Shadows)

Pagans are a creative bunch. Whether it's because artistic and creative thinkers tend to shy away from the mainstream and therefore tend to congregate in alternative religions, or because our up-close-and-personal relationship with Deity tends to inspire us so passionately we have to find some way of expressing our ecstasy, or both, or something else entirely, over the years I have seen some of the most fantastic art and craft from my people, ranging from Tarot to music to sculpture and all points West.

I’m something of an artist, and by that I mean I have artistic talent but not the drive to make use of it regularly. My creativity finds its outlet in the written word, plus occasional forays into colored pencil art, wee sculptures in polymer clay, and even a painting or two. (Painting is difficult for me, as I have essential tremors in both hands, so mostly I stick to pencil and clay.)

Even if you don’t think you have any talent, there are some forms of art that any enterprising Pagan can create. The most obvious, and perhaps most important, is of course the altar, where form and function unite, making a Michelangelo out of every Aradia WeaselFox. The second is that "ancient" form of magical recordkeeping, the Book of Shadows.

On crises of faith

Sara Winn over at Pagan Godspell posed an interesting question yesterday about Pagans and crises of faith.

I started to comment on her post, but as usual got so long-winded I decided just to ramble about it here. I suggest reading her post, as well as the comments, so you'll have a better idea what I'm on about.

Grace and Gratitude

Once again I must apologize for my absence of late.  I blame Mercury.  Hey, it's as good an excuse as any, right?

I am at present toying with a couple of new book ideas (or rather, old ideas that are resurfacing because obviously I don't have enough to do with my time), and the one that I think is most likely to see print first is a book on my approach to Wiccan values, the Graces.  I believe in a system of virtue-based ethics, and "Graces" is simply my name for those virtues I feel are most in keeping with Wicca as I practice it. 

Thoughts on the Ancestors

This time of year the Pagan internet is filled with thoughts, prayers, rituals, and altars to the Ancestors and Beloved Dead.

Once upon a time, I dutifully built my altars and made noises of honor as well; a few years ago, however, I just...stopped. I had finally reached the point in my practice where I was no longer willing to go along with things just because that's how they were done; I needed a reason to do what I was doing. So I finally sat down and really thought about the concept of Ancestors, Beloved Dead, and how it all fits into my life.