Deism, Poetic Reasoning ,and the Intuitive Language

To day there is debate between the secular humanists and the spiritual seeker about the value and place of reason and logic. Both parties in this debate are engaged in a dualistic thinking that you are either one or the other. The problem is not in reason or in spirituality it is in the way we think about these things. First the atheists and humanists are generally defining the words through the lens of mainstream Christianity. Secondly the spiritual side of the debate is not always looking through that lens. In this debate a third perspective is being ignored. The deist.

Deism is not simply the classical deism of Thomas Pain or John Locke that is known for the analogy about God being a watchmaker. Deism is more complex and has more depths; it affirms that spiritual understanding can be achieved through reason, observation, and personal experience. Contrary to popular belief, it has survived the enlightenment. Tis idea is saying that both the rational and the spiritual coexist.

Reason, does not have to be the hard-line scientific logic we often think about. The secular humanists and atheist have done a good job of framing the debate in this way. Reason and Logic is about consistency. If you accept an assumption as the basis of your world view, then your actions, thoughts, and feelings must be consistent to that assumption. This way logic and reason are fluid depending on the assumptions. If we take the assumption that scientific experience is the only reality our reason must conform to that logic; likewise, If we take the assumption that the Bible is the only truth all information is filtered through that reasoning.

Often experience and observation is inconsistent with a deeply held assumption. Many people, put on blinders and over rationalize around these inconsistencies, rather then address them directly. As an animist I have had to adjust my assumptions based on experiences and observations. Animism embraces a world view so different from the dualistic and colonial perspective that the world becomes alive and filled with other-then-human-persons we can communicate with. This may seem illogical to the dualistic colonial mind. But the two are working from two different assumptions. When an other-then-human or human person challenges my assumptions I am forced to re-evaluate that assumption.

One way to do this is with Poetic Reasoning or Creative Reasoning. In short, my poetry professor put it best as, “thinking like a poem.” Some might say it is abstract reasoning, but a good poem is not abstract; on the contrary, a good poem is very concrete, only that it strives to make the familiar unfamiliar and unfamiliar familiar. A poem uses language in unexpected ways to find the truth hidden underneath our experiences. When writing poetry, I have learned to let go of my ownership of the words.

When Poets and fiction writers talk about our craft there is an almost mystical reverence to the source of our inspiration. The Greeks called them the Muses. In the early days of literature and poetry, the poem itself had its own life and as a result often times the original “author” was lost in history. Poetry kept alive the values and world view of a people, and as these changed the poetry changed with it. The poetry of ancient and Medieval Europe was primarily concerned with narratives, whether it was cataloging the journeys of a mythic hero, or singing the praise of a saint. A well known story was often embed into the subject of the poetry. What if these narrative poems which survived into modern times, where the expression of cross-species communication, being the result of humans learning an intuitive language to the living world, and being taught this narrative poetry through ecstatic trances of different forms?

Instinct and intuition and inspiration is this intuitive language. The living world is willing to communicate with us, but many of us have forgotten how to listen, because we are no longer taught this intuitive language. Humans have been trained to fight and ignore these instincts, and to think and speak in dualism. We have been forbidden to speak this language. We can reclaim intuitive language by trusting our intuition, acting on instinct, and allowing inspiration to move us.

Local Deities and Bioregional Cosmology

A few weeks ago a my friend Kansa at PostPaganism on Tribe related the following story to us:

“I was invited to a "Friends & Family" party at an Italian restaurant before it officially opened over the weekend. There i am, drinking a delicious Chianti, eating really good pizza and having a wonderful conversation with some jazz chick next to me. And all of a sudden, there was a catholic priest BLESSING the restaurant's oven with holy water and prayers. The oven, I later found out, also had a name and a pic ture of the owner's grandmother [ . . .] imprinted into the tile above the oven's mouth. A friend of mine told me this was not unheard of in traditional times of southern Italy. and is probably another pagan thing introduced into the orthodox religions.”

This brought back a memory of ten years ago, when visiting the village of Gaeta north of Naples and along the coast in Italy. I started walking through the village heading upward to the hill which is the focal point of the region. Before the village gave way to the wildness an old ornate cathedral stood. I have always been a fascinated by old architecture, and places of worship. I went inside to find one side with statues of Catholic saints and on the other side Roman gods. The harmonization of these two supposed conflicting beliefs hit me. From what I know about Catholicism, it can be quite localized, with variations in practice and saints from Italy to Ireland. I was standing under the watchful gaze of the Roman Gods, and the Holly Roman Saints and it didn't feel contradictory. On the contrary, it felt as if harmony had been found between these two stereotypically warring factions.

Remembering had me thinking of the unavoidable circumstance of acculturation and when it is and is not appropriate. This is a very heated debated among indigenous people today. As a colonial descendant seeking the animistic roots of my own blood heritage the dynamic is a complicated one. However, I believe there is a way to respectfully approach both the ancestors of the land I live, and the blood ancestors. I believe in, and have experienced, what I call a trans-generation memory. This can be worked with in a way of relating directly with our life-place.

My friend Lance, put it best when he said,

“One should not try to copy the ceremonies of other times and other people. Those ceremonies are the expression of covenants that are not our own. We need to develop our own covenants with the land, the formalization of a relationship.”

After I left the cathedral I followed the road going to the top of the hill. Along the way, I stumbled into little groves where the power of place was so intense it overtook me. I hope to return there again someday and feel it again. Also along the path man made archways lead into tunnels , and if I ventured far enough I would come the center with the ocean crashing against the stone of the carved out a cave in the center (i did not learn this until after my visit). On the top of the hill a museum stood, and I learned that I was not on a simple hill but an ancient temple to Apollo.

The narratives of the gods which have survived into written text are a small sample which generally come from one regional location. The Nordic narratives for example are mostly of Iceland. However, regional variations existed. The Saxons, for example, have little reaming written record. Speculation from the Icelandic saga is used to fill in the blanks. The problem is that we don't have the entire skeleton. Taking the bones of a horse and fitting them in with a cow does not form the cow or the horse. Even if you have all the bones, the skeleton of the horse is not the horse.

Thinking about the names of the gods passed down, linguistic suggest that these could be titles and not proper names. Perhaps, these deity titles have a resonance with our trans-generational memory, allowing for pathways toward a relationship with the local deities. After all, the president of the United States is not the president of France. Thusly, the Thunar of Saxon England is not the Thor of the Icelandic sagas, and the Odin of Scandinavia is not the Wodin of saxony. Thor is a good example, because with Teutonic, Baltic, Slavic, and others, there are thunder deities.

In a post by my friend Lance, on The Sleeping Giant, points out:

“Most of the Gods and Goddesses of Classical Paganism can shown to be, in their essence/origins:

I. Universal Major Elements/Forces
1. Sky Father
2. Mother Earth
3. Winds
4. Storms/Thunder/Lightning
5. Ocean
6. Underworld
7. Ice, Fire, etc.

II. Human Ancestors who went through Apotheosis
1. Fathers and Mothers of an Ethnic Gro up
2. Direct Ancestors
3. Ancestors who were expert craftspeopl e or practitioners
4. Ghosts, Egregores, Tulpa, etc. formed by emotions, rituals, memories in the land placed there by ancestors

III. Local Anima Loci "Spirits of Place"/landvaettir
1. Mountains, Volcanoes, Cliffs, and Hills
2. Plants, Groves and Forests
3. Caves
4. Unusual Features (rock spires, etc.)
5. Watercourses: Rivers, streams, springs, ponds, lakes, waterfalls
6. Others..

EVERY God or Goddess I can think of, wh en you look at the origin myths, has an origin in one of the above categories, even if it was later amalgamated with another category.”

This is a very effective template regarding bioregional identity. It make sense to contact the thunder deity of where I live, and I could (if it suites both of us in that relationship) call it Thor. But I know that the Colombia Plateau Thor is not the Nordic Thor and is actually a regional deity I identify as Thor. However, I do not see Thor as a god of thunder; instead, i sense Thor is the thunder itself.

In this way, I can honor the local deities in a way that is a relationship from my own heritage. Anymore, I do not deal with gods as much as I used to. I know they are there, and I encounter them, and I respect them in passing. I acknowledge them with respects to bioregional identity. There was a time I identified my local deities with the Middle Welsh (Old Celtic-British Dialect) titles. Over time the bioregional identity became stronger, and as my relationship grew the titles I called them had changed. Generally, the titles reflect local names that are already there, such as Palouse Mother. Most titles are English derived (since is my mother language, for better or worse).

As we are the land we are also the gods. They where created from the earth and sky and chaos as we are, they are brothers and sisters, and ancestors; they are relatives - and nothing says you have to get along with them :)

Lessons from the Seasons

The end of this month I will have lived at the confluence of the Snake River and Clearwater Rivers for a 2 years. I have now witnessed the regions seasonal cycle in full twice. It has been a good deep winter, where snow has capped the high Palouse grasslands and mountains and been nice and rainy and cool in the warmth of the valley. The spring comes early to the valley and the trees come alive with pink and white flowers. Summer is a quick blazes of heat, and autumn is nice and rambling with golden and red Rocky mountain Maple leaves coating the surface. comes early to the valley and the trees come alive with pink and white flowers.

Here is something I have learned from this.

Summer is gold and the time of Morning Doves

Autumn is brown and the time of Ravens

Winter is white and the time of Kestrels

Spring is green and the time of the Herons

Morning Dove teaches me contentment and stillness.

Raven teaches me how to grow from pain.

Kestrels teaches me the beauty of aloneness.

Heron teaches me deliberation of harmony.

I have to remember these lessons and incorporate theme into my ritual observances and be open to learn new narratives for the seasons. I’ve come to these conclusions through praying with and communing with the land and have been shown to be relevant to my practice in the Colombia Plateau.

Thoughts on Death and Cosmology

My grandfather died about a week ago. The man was probably suffering from and undiagnosed mental illness for some time, which got progressively worse with time. Because of this my connection and closeness to the man was limited, but he was my grandfather and he was a part of me. His deaths forced me to think about, look upon, and examine death in my life and to confront my own mortality. We had been expecting his passing. He met death at his own terms and simply quite taking his medication, for this I learned to admire the man in a way I hadn’t before.


Since I am not of the same belief system as my family, I felt the desire to give him a ceremony of my own to honor him. I went to the barber, and was only going to trim the long hair I wore in a ponytail. The barber’s Scottish terrier ambled over to me, and at that moment I felt my grandfather in that dog’s face, and was given the impression that I should cut my hair in honor of him. With my former pony tail in an envelope I went to a small flouting doc out in the confluence of the Snake River and Clearwater River. I sung a death song given to me by White Tail Dear and with my cut hair griped in my fist; I plunged my hand into the water and released it to the river. My private ceremony for my grandfather made his death real, but also brought my cosmology to life in a way I hadn’t experienced before.


First, I do not believe in an individualistic soul or spirit which seeks salvation or enlightenment. I believe in what I call the one soul or Deiwom. (I borrowed from the speculative proto-indo-European language roughly meaning god). Deiwom is the whole, underlying, interconnected, collective, intelligence in which the physical world and universe is its body. We are its body, and the land where we live is the body of which we are a part. Think of it like an organ, and each ecosystem and place is an organ which functions in a unique way. The liver does not function like the heart, and thus the Columbia Plateau does not function like the Snake River Plain, or Cascadian Coast.


My physical being then is a wave within a current of the one soul which manifests as the man writing these words, with conscience, and awareness, and experiences, and a sphere of influence, and interaction with the current and the one soul itself. This includes other humans, the tree-people, river-people, mountain-people, fish-people, bear-people, dear-people, where I live, etc. These experiences and interactions and relationships create the individual within the context of community as the land itself. The living world is then shaped by these interactions.


The ceremony gave me the gift to feel my grandfather in the water of the river. Where I live now is several hundred miles down river from where he lived. I could feel him in the singing of the birds, and in the spring blossoms of the crab apple trees around me. In this moment I felt closer to him then I did in life. When I arrived for the funeral, I was a pall bearer along with my cousins. I remember when my grandparents bought there tombstone and showed them off to my parents. I felt odd looking at their names on the tombstone when they where standing right behind me. Now I was putting the body of my grandfather in that very spot fifteen years later.


Transmigration of life happens at death when the wave reseeds, and the currents pull the wave back into the depths of the one soul and a new current will bring new waves. In a more concrete sense the life that animates me, upon my death, will transmigrate back into the earth and then animate another human, animal, fish, bird, rock, tree, river, mountain, insect, or etc.

Cesiwr Serith has a webpage full of interesting information and theories, in particular is research into Proto-Indo-European studies including language, culture and religion. In the section on PIE Religion some speculative principles are described, which reflect my own cosmology.


Serith states “*Xartus, […] is the pattern of the universe.” Xartrus is derived from Indo-European root words meaning to fit together. This is reflective of the concept of Wyrd in Teutonic traditions, and that of the fates in Romano-Greco traditions. I think of this pattern of the universe as life itself, and that there is a universal impulse toward life, even in death. Death is where one pattern ends and another one begins. Life of the individual merges into the one soul and is transformed back into the living world. Being of a fluid nature, the life which animates me has animated everything before me, after me, and around me. I am a unique experience of the one soul, as is everything else.



Serith continues to writes:

“The Proto-Indo-Europeans saw the cosmos as centered around a tree and surrounded by water, which also rose up through a well to feed the tree. The tree was the cosmos itself, an ordered arrangement of things and actions, and the water was chaos, disorder. Notice that order is fed by disorder. Left to itself, order, like an unwatered tree, becomes brittle and dead. An influx of chaos is vital to its life. Chaos is dangerous and not capable of supporting life on its own, however, and only becomes meaningful when it is drawn into Order. It is through this interaction […] that the universe can continue to exist.”

In these regards, the essence of the one soul is what Serith is terming Chaos, and the tree is the physical body of the one soul, what we experience as the living world. This reflects the concept of the world tree found in many European traditions. Perhaps, Xartus can then be conceived as the thoughts of the one soul.


Here we see the essence and the body of the one soul as interdependent and interconnected which cannot be separated. Wiccans and other Neo-Pagans may find the goddess and god a useful metaphor to express this. I, however, feel it is best not to project human, western, post-Christian, concepts of gender upon the divine. The yin-yang of eastern philosophy is also a fitting metaphor, particularly when evaluated without western assumptions of dualism and seen as polarity. But the concepts Serish presents of Xartus, Chaos, and the World Tree give us a practical framework which could be more organic to those of a euro-colonial heritage.


During my grandfather’s funeral and hearing his life sketch which my mother reconstructed I learned, with five generations on both sides of my family, that the Snake River Plane is an ancestral home to me, as much if not more so then along the Elbe River in Germany, The Island of Great Britain, or along the Volga River in Russia. In my interactions with North American Indian friends, I have learned a concept of ancestry which is not simply bound by shared blood and DNA but a heritage tied to the land. Ancestors are not only the DNA that constructs my being through human coupling. I think this traditional knowledge is shared with the ancient animist traditions of Europe. Ancestors are those who have walked before me on any land in which I have walked. Even though I have not lived along of the Elbe River, Volga-River, and on Great Britain, I carry parts of it with me. However, I was an integrated part of the Snake River Plane growing up, and now I continue to be the Colombia Plateau. The powers of these places are more accessible to me and to honor my blood ancestors and the land ancestors it is imperative to have a personal relationship with the places I live. In my life I have been many places, and when I die my life will continue in those places, because time and space are more fluid then we often understand, and as a part of me will continue to live in those places, they continue to live in me – death will be the realization of that.

Sacred Eclology (an excerpt )

I am often critical of Paganism, for distancing itself from ecology. There is more talk about magic and occult ritual then there are deep theological and philosophical discussions about ecology. It would apear, there is a division between Modern Paganism in America and Europe. The fallowing excerpt is writin from a U.K. perspective. Anymore even the word paganism seems to drift further from being earth-centered or nature-based in practice, where some self-identified pagans, reject that aspect inplace for a humanistic polytheism, ethnic reconstructionism, or occult and new age practices. So, when I came acrost the fallowing article, I was elated to read that there is some discourse about ecology and modern paganism. (The full article can be read here.)

Sacred Ecology (an excerpt)

This paper was originally presented at Newcastle University conference, 'Paganism Today' in September 1994. It is published as part of a collection of papers in 'Paganism Today' (Ed.Harvey and Hardman) publ. Harper Collins.

“There are a lot of valuable insights in both Deep & Social Ecology, but they are fixed in the Western philosophical tradition which goes back beyond Aristotle & which, I would argue, is the root of the whole problem. For it is a way of making sense of the world which is profoundly cerebral & which assumes a Universe of concepts, language & logic which has no place for the mystical which lies beyond words.
Even Deep Ecologists, who appear to be proposing a kind of spiritual understanding of our place in the ecology of the planet, end up producing verbose academic discussions full of careful definitions & well considered principles to be followed, like a doctors prescription or some legalistic judgement.

From my study of the subject of environmental philosophy it seems that al these Green thinkers are stuck in a common mind set: Such systems live in the head, the rational, analytical world of argument & counter-argument.
What is required is another way of knowing, a Sacred Ecology that moves beyond the cerebral to bring us to a direct experience of a wholeness rooted in the body.
The Sacred Ecology, which is emerging, does not proscribe or provide manifestos. It does not have a carefully argued programme of principles, because it is not known intellectually, but through direct experience.

Besides the cerebral knowledge we all possess, the words & ideas stored in our heads, there is a deeper knowledge held within the tissue of our bodies. It is a somatic, physical knowing which comes from direct experience. This is the knowledge of faith, of emotion, of the gut feeling.

The philosophical tradition of the West is an intellectual one founded on logic & language. It is profoundly limiting, for within it whatever cannot be said does not exist. What I am proposing is a radical alternative: A Somatic philosophy which respects the knowing of the body, the knowledge memories & wisdom held within our muscles, flowing with our hormones, sparking through our nerves.

A Somatic Philosophy is yet to be developed, although the seeds of it exist in the work of Wilhelm Reich & Morris Berman, in the practice of body work, massage, Rolfing & Alexander technique.

But accept for a moment the possibility of such a way of knowing, for therein lies Sacred Ecology.

Our culture is based on a certain way of understanding reality, which has developed over the last two thousand years or so. What passes for common sense, as obvious, actually has a history. The way we think about ourselves & our world is not ‘natural’, not born into us, but learnt. What we in the West have inherited from the great philosophers & theologians of the past, Plato, Aristotle, Saint Paul, & their ilk, is a split in our reality that alienates us from ourselves. Our languages, our culture, & our 'common sense’ all conspire to convince us that we are self contained entities, divided from the rest of the universe. Each of us occupies a little box, & most of us remain shut up inside our heads for our entire lives.

'Common sense' teaches us to analyse our world into discrete units. I am 'in here', & everything else is 'out there'. We are separate, unconnected, & the boundaries are set by that Sacred Cow of the West, the big 'I am ‘, the ego.

But this analytical & divisive way of knowing the world is not the only one possible, as anyone who has been part of a powerful ritual or experienced good sex, can tell you.
At such times we come to the wisdom of the body; that all things are ultimately one.

Intellectually, that is a very difficult thing to prove, although research on the edge of quantum physics is moving towards such a conclusion.

Yet even if we accept intellectually that the split between the self & the other can be healed, as some Deep Ecologists do, it is far more important to feel it, experience it in our bodies, for that is a far deeper knowing & a true healing.

How do we come to know this wisdom of the body? We need some way of reconnecting with our own physical selves, healing the rift between our cerebral self & our somatic self. I mentioned two ways of connecting to wholeness earlier: Ritual & sex.

For now I want to talk specifically about healing the split through the techniques & beliefs systems broadly called Paganism.

There has been much debate of late about what we mean by Paganism. One of the
clearest & simplest expressions I have found is in a short article on 'Witches & the Earth’, by Chas S. Clifton:

"Live so that someone ignorant about Paganism would know from watching your life or visiting your home, that you followed an Earth religion"

For me Paganism is not so much a set of beliefs as a way of relating to the world. The wholeness I have spoken of, that oneness of everything which we experience in moments of spiritual knowing, is what I call the Sacred, & Pagan ritual is both a path to the Sacred & a way of honouring it. In our rituals we reconnect with ourselves, healing the rift between body & mind through ecstatic dance, Chanting & the drama of ritualized myth. We loose our ego centered selves & achieve that somatic knowing of the unity of everything. It is in these moments of spiritual ecstasy that we know the wisdom of the body.

One function of myth & ritual is psychological integration operating somatically at the deepest emotional level. It is concerned with what we truly are & what we can be.
This healing through ecstatic Pagan ritual is what lies at the heart of Sacred Ecology. It is a deep knowing of the sacredness of the Earth that is more than just an intellectual awareness of the facts & figures about species decimation & habitat loss. It is a feeling of unity with the Earth that we have in our gut. There is no guilt now, no fear or disempowerment. We act to protect our Earth because we know, in every cell of our bodies, that our lives, our communities, & our land are sacred. We act from a grounded strength that reaches beyond intellectual awareness & yet reinforces it, rooting deep within us.

Sex food & music all have sacredness, but in our society they are pre-packaged & freeze dried. Fast food, musak & pornography are all expressions of our consumerist mode of being. We have sanitized once sacred acts, cut out their essence, and taken the love & the care out of them: Food music & sex without qualities. It has become simply material. We stuff ourselves with this pap, somehow believing that consuming more will satisfy our need.

The shattered shards of the sacred remain buried in many aspects of Western culture: Music, sport, advertising, dance, drama, & the cultural icons of art, all hold smoldering embers of the scattered fire of the sacred.

The obsessional worship of pop stars & sports personalities which is manifested in the tribalism of football supporters & youth subculture, is an attempt to reach wholeness, to relate to something larger than ourselves.

The resurgence of Paganism is bringing together these elements. We are creating something entirely new from threads leading back into our cultural past that connects us to our physical selves & to our Earth.

I believe that Paganism has the ability to rise to this challenge & the responsibility to accept it. If we are to live in harmony with our Earth & know the joy of unity that is the sacred, we must abandon much of what passes for common sense. Established values & accepted principles have brought us to where we are today. I don't need to list the horrors of environmental destruction or human misery, for you already know too well the birthright bequeathed to us by the errors of the past. But there is nothing that cannot be changed. Piecemeal elastoplast repairs to the environment will only postpone the crisis, for even if scientific techno-fixes can save us from global warming, ozone depletion & habitat destruction, the human crisis remains.

Ultimately we must face the need for radical change. The ecological crisis is more than a question of environmental destruction & human misery, for it is at root a spiritual crisis. Genuine alternatives, revolutionary alternatives, require remarkable imaginative leaps. Sadly most revolutions simply regurgitate old forms; hence their inevitable failure. We must think beyond ourselves. Not simply beyond the established consumer driven system, but beyond language, beyond the conceptions, categories & habits that tie our minds to established ideological models. We must go beyond, to imagine what has never been conceived of, to dare to demand what contemporary thought considers impossible.

But all this is just words. What is basic to Sacred Ecology lies beyond language, for words are but a finger pointing to the moon. Sacred Ecology leaves behind words. It can only ever truly be known through experience.”