PostPaganism: Animism For The 21st Century

Insighst from Kamiak Butte

2011-09-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

The Unitarian Universalist nature covenant I belong to gathered at our churchand drove 20 minutes to Kamiak Butte in Washington. The butte isnames after the Yakima chief Kamiakin who lead his people during theware of 1855. It is interesting that the butte is aways fromYakima territory and probably named much later. What the connectionbetween the butte and chief Kamiakin is unclear, if there is anyconnection at all besides namesake. It is one of the few places wherenative specie thrive in the area and probably the highest peak in ThePalouse.

I took the first lesson from Earthwalksby James Endredy which was recently given as a gift and created ahiking ceremony out of it. The book explains how to walk with intent. You place the weighton your back foot and place your front foot with purpose and intent.As you walk you become mindful of your surroundings by focusing onyour body, breathing, the sensations and scenes around you.

Together we set out in silence for thefirst stretch of the hike which ended at a vista ½ mile in. Duringthis hike we watched in silence observing both the world around usand inside us. My breath was labored at firs as if my body was saying“Seriously? You are actually going to exercise?” Sadly schoolmakes me a bit more sedentary then I would like, and lately I havebeen feeling less energetic. But the shock of being out and hiking for thefirst time in months quickly wore off and my breath steadied.

Several chipmunks came out to nervouslystair us down as we walked quietly along the path. Even though we were observing silence we foundways to communicate with each other through laughter and bodylanguage. We found an interesting collection of boulders protrudingfrom the earth with a tree trunk entwined between them and onekeystone that looked that to remove it would cause a land slide.

I noticed the sunlight cutting throughthe thick canopy of evergreens and enjoyed the sensation of goingfrom shade to sunlight. I had asked for celerity from this walk, inhopes to feel less anxious about upcoming life decisions on what todo after I graduate undergrad in a year. The clarity I found was notwhat I expected. As we climbed the thicket of trees thinned and wecould see The Palouse through the trees. The endless wheat and canolafields had been harvested at the end of august and left behind theirdried husks on the rolling surface of the earth.

The paradox of this place set aside asa bit of “nature” designatedshrine of escape into nature to ignore the reality they are nature as they jogged up inmindless chatter, or zoned out with headphones. Aswe walked silently I felt the land shift in acknowledgment of oursilence and that we where there to partake and gain insight, not justto escape a false reality for another false reality. A strangemixture of joy and pain entered my thoughts that I do not think wasentirely my own but a reflection of something deeper shared betweenus and the land.

The mono-crops of industrializedfarming that peeked from between evergreen spires where reminders ofbrutality not just upon the land but done unto our selves.Industrialization has enslaved the land, and in turn enslaved us inways I am only beginning to understand. When we broke our silence andshared our insights the topics moved from the aces of our bodies, tothe aces of our lives, to the aces of the land and how these whereinterconnected. We made connections with our pain and the lands painin the ways of industrialized-style education separating us from eachother and the land. In an economy designed to exploit the land asslave intern has made us wage slaves. Granted we are associated withUnitarian Universalism and naturally progressive leaning but some ofwhat we spoke about in solemn tones was far more radical then isoften found in UU sermon.

I could feel the land shift under me aswe began to make vocalized connections between the suffering of ourtimes, our society, and our selves to the land. Like a sigh of reliefthat I do not entirely understand the context of. As we reached thepinnacle I could feel the earth stir underneath the soil and withinmyself. As we rested on top our conversations continued and we leftofferings of organic sage grown by my roommate, or organic localtomatoes. The feeling of the air was uneasy and the thick haze ofsmoke from wildfires obscured the horizon. We continued to speak ourinsights. As we discussed these things we continued to find rocks that had cocking glue sprayed upon them. The idea that some one was gluing rocks together along the trail completely baffled us. This brought out the contrast and paradox we were struggling with about the way society sets aside nature for human enjoyment, but in so doing is not being honest about reality.

One person remembered this place from childhood and brought out how interesting it was to her that the path had changed since she was a little girl. She continued to speak of how she had herfirst mystical experience with the land in this very spot when shewas a little girl on a hike with the girls scouts. She composedpoetry in her head, sharing with us a line here and there along thepath and during the offertory. Another of much fewer words was gladfor not having anyplace to be or do and to just be allowed to be asher husband got to deal with the kids while she was gone. My roommatestaid mostly silent. I spoke of anxieties not my own but theanxieties of land the uneasy shifting I felt under my feat and theirony of setting aside a place to be in nature when the rest of theland suffers under the whip of industrial agriculture and how we allsuffer under that same whip. “What we do unto the land we do untoourselves.” I said, finishing the offertory.

We continued our conversation down theshaded side of the trail. The girls removed their shoes and walkedbarefoot or with socks. I almost joined them, and do not know why Ikept my shoes on. This really perplexed my as to why I didn't seem towant to take of my shoes, but yet I did. The shade felt good as theforest became thick again and the canopy of evergreens burst intoRaven song. I felt excitement when I first heard their caws. Threeraves flew above us cawing and perching and followed us along theway. As they cried out, I had to respond in kind “Kaw, Kakaw, Kaw.”This felt important, I had not spoken with Raven in such ways in along time. The uneasy shifting of the land seemed to settle as wefinished our hike and slowly grounded ourselves once again.

Climate Change as Manifestation of Collective Trauma

2011-09-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

With the Earthquakes, Hurricane,Tornadoes, and Tropical Storm that Nick and Heather have been facing,I've been thinking about climate change and what it means. In theInland Northwest and Inter-mountain West, where I have spent most ofmy life, climate change has taken the form of increasingly hotsummers and winters that fluctuate drastically between mild andintense cold. The disaster dangers are wild fires, due to the intenseheat and dryness of summer. There have been wildfires near myparent's place that have blocked sunlight with dense thick blackclouds of smoke drifting overhead. Intense cold and wet wintersresult in mass flooding of rivers and tributaries closing down roadsin the early spring.

We know that climate change happenedbefore human emergence. For example there have been five ice agesbetween:

2.1 and 2.4 billion years ago
630 and 850 million years ago
420 and 460 million years ago
260 and 360 million years ago
2.58 million years ago

These events are so far removed fromhuman history it is hard for us to grasp outside of the context ofEarth Sciences. However, it may come as a surprise to others thatthere have been other times of climate change during human history.The Environmental Protection Agency list three:

Medieval Warm Period: is a period between 950 and 1250 CE with climate warming in and near the North Atlantic and Japan. Despite scant scientific record of the time, Science strongly suggest the warmest period in the last 2,000 years and prior to the 20th century accrued during this time. Temperatures around the African equator fluctuated between drier and water then today. Study on coral in the pacific ocean indicate cool dry conditions then.
The Little Ice Age: is a term indicating a cooling which accrued after the Medieval Warm Period (and not an actual ice age) between 16^th to 19^th centuries. This period experienced spikes of cold weather in 1650, 1770, and 1850. In Europe in North America, ice glaciers encroached upon human settlement and major rivers would freeze substantial during the extended winters. Evidence stupors cold draughts in central America.
The Industrial Era: has fed the current global warming with an unprecedented increase of carbon in the atmosphere due to increased intensity of fossil fuel consumption by humans in the last 150 years. This has contributed to increasing atmosphere and ocean temperatures (global warming). Scientists have also been monitoring solar activity which has contributed to current climate changing.

Thecurrent climate change is different due to the intensity of humanparticipation in altering our life-places. Deforestation, industrialagriculture, burning fossil fuels for mass transportation and massproduction increasing carbon in the atmosphere, a decrees intrees to handle the carbon, and physical stress on the earth's soiland surface, and increased human population which have over extendedthe sustainability of our life places. These events have shown anunhealthy and damaging relationship between humans and theirlife-places. There are no places on earth that have not, in some way,been directly effected by these actions. Everyplace suffers some formof trauma due to these actions. Our lifestyles are further manipulatedby top-down systematic exploitation of environment. Humans are anintegral part of the environment and have suffered trans-generationaltraumas of our own in the ways we have been corralled into livingdisconnected lifestyles.

Aspast actions described above have shown there is no separationbetween humanity and nature. What we have done to the environmentaround us has been inflicted upon us in turn by our own hands. We arean integral part of the interconnected body of all life. We havesickened our bodies with the toxins of mass production and masstransportation. Food processing and plastic production has resultedin an increase of toxicity in our own blood system and syncraticalythe rivers and waterways around us. I firmly believe the increase ofphysical illness (and what is dubbed mental illness or behaviouraldisorders are included in this category) are indistinguishable fromthe environmental crises.

Theland's pain is our pain and is reality not a metaphor. Healing is adifficult journey that has to bee taken with arealization that there is no separation between humanity and nature.Every act we take to heal the land will help heal us as a whole.Transversely act of healing enacted through systematic questioningand restructuring of power systems which exploit the whole are actsof healing the earth. I firmly believe that the current climatechange is a physical manifestation of the shared trans-generationaltrauma. When hurricanes and earthquakes and tornado, and forest firesare occurring all over the world they are not simply individualsymptoms of climate change, but the hemorrhaging of our collective pain(every plant, animal, element, and particle).

Ideeply wish I had some answers on how to deal with this trauma andhow to begin to heal. Understanding the source is one step. It is tooeasy to feel powerless and helpless, and that is a part of the hemorrhaging we are experience. There is fear behind the trauma andconfusion. No one is untouched by the trauma. We are all in traumarecovery with the whole of life on this planet.

Without Us

2011-09-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

Another Video by PixelMater.
Think of it as the Sequel to BioRegional Animism in Less Than 5 Minutes.

Creating New Gods

2011-09-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have continued to think aboutdeities. If you have been following my previous discourse on polytheism you will know that I have come to an understanding ofdeities as relationships. These deity relationships are roles whichare filled by a variety of phenomenon. It is my opinion that thedeities of neopolytheists are not the same deities of the lands andpeople of long ago who they are imitating or re-imagining. The Thorof yestermillenium is not the Thor of today. Further more, the Thorthat is being worshipped in the Southwest United States is not theThor of New England. Even the Thor, Thunar, and Tor worshippedin their respective parts of Europe are not the same as each other,and not the same as those from yestermillenium. The names used fordeities are titles, and these titles where co-created between humansand their environment to connect with mostly impersonal phenomenon (icall the more-beings).

I realize the above statement couldsound like hearsay to neopolytheists. I know many who seek personalrelationship with their gods. I am convinced that they are mistakingthe relationship with the actual phenomenon they are relating to.Secondly, the relationship does not strike me as much different fromthe idealized relationship sought from the Christian god (who Ibelieve is also a role being filled by many differentphenomenon.) Keeping the same concept of god but multiplying it doesnot really make much of a difference to me. To truly appreciate thedeities and place them within a relevant post-modern context we haveto re-evaluate how we think about deities on the ground level. Simplyreconstructing or re-imagining old deities from sources outside yourpresent place and time seems more like role-playing then religion.

The remains of cultural narratives whichhave survived to this day suggests that the main characters (thegods) where intrinsic to the environment they where found. They wherespecific relationships to specific people in specific places andspecific times. We can see shifts in mythic cycles, such as theintroduction of the Olympians usurping the earlier Greek gods.Scholars indicate that this trend reflects new cultural groupsencroaching and amalgamating with previous ones. This can bee seen inthe striking similarities between roman and Greek mythology. Furthermore the new mythologies borrow elements from the old but takeon a new shape and form depending upon need. Even the god of theBible can bee seen as changing within the contexts of time andculture.

Reconstructing and re-imagining thesepast religions and their pantheons is a largely speculative. Thisdoes not mean there isn't value in the old narratives. To thecontrary, the value in these remaining narratives provides us withclues (not blue-prints) to how and why they formed theserelationships. Once I began focusing on the why and how behind theremaining Brythonic-Celtic narratives rather then the what, thegods began to take on forms more suited to my life-place of the time.(you can read more about this here and here).I am not against the construction of new relationships using elementsof old narratives and the deity relationships they suggest. As can beread about my own experience they provide valuable starting point tohelp transition into creating new relationships with your life-placewithin the context of a post-modern reality. I must stress that thismethod is a temporary transitional stage in creating newrelationships with more-beings, and ultimately your life-place andall those who share it.

Some examples from my own experience in they wayi related to Gwydion. I learned from some guidance in understanding the MiddleWelsh form of his name that he was a Solar character. I felt he was apatron of mine and my cerimonies would revolve around his specificmythic cycles. Through this relationship I began to look upon how thesun interacted with my life-place, which at that point was highdesert. The relationship of sun to the high dessert was differentthen that of Great Britain. I made adjustments and began using sagebrush as offering. Since I was landlocked the story of Gwydion'sdeception of Arianrhod resulting in Dylan and Lleu did not syncwith my life-place. From the middle welsh text their Dylan's nameindicates a relationship to fish (for sustenance) and Llue withgrain. Wheat and barley had been introduced with the colonialsettlers and Llue maintained some relevancy as a relationship toagriculture. However Dylan was less relevant. On the other hand, Arianrhodbecame associated to the prominent twin mountain peeks in the east that could beeviewed for 100 mile radius (at least). Over time the characteristicsI expected from the Brythonic-Celtic source took shape in new storiesfrom my imagination. The titles from The Mabinogion became lessinfluential in my relationships which had shifted to a moreplace-based orientation. The twin peeks, the sun, the agriculturalcycles of where I lived took president and I was gifted imaginationto create new stories relative to those relationships in thatlife-place.

When I moved to The Palouse and LCValley the environment was different then the desert regions I hadbeen drifting in and out of for the past several years. Throughlearning the indiginouse language I began to know the Nez Perce'snames for places and their stories conserning the life-place. Havingalready gone through the process discovered above, I could appreciatetheir narratives as guides to introduce me to my new life-place in arespectful way. Their was no need for me to appropiate theirnarratives the way I did the Brythonic-Celts, and it would havedisrespectful of me to have done so. But, from my previous experienceand knowledge I found the land began to open up to me in waysno-other place had. I now have a relationship with this life-placethrough relationships co-created with the land.

The interesting thing, Is I have foundI am not the only one who has formed similar relationships. My friendtold me a story of dreams he had about a maiden seen on The Palousewho was deeply connected to the soil through the native Giant PalouseEarthworm. This image was unbelievable close to similar dream-visionsI have had. This representation of our relationship I call ThePalouse Mother, and call to her in ceremony. Another Relationship isBrother Sun and Brother Moon who work together (though sometimesfight) in maintaining the seasonal cycle of the life-place. Thentheir is Father RainShadow who results in the dry air being pushedover the cascades in the west stretching eastward to the RockyMountains. And I currently live not to far from the Snake River whichmy family has lived upon its banks (in one place or another) for 4generations.

What I am suggesting is beginning atransition into new deities relationships constructed of metaphorsthat are relevant not only to our place bu to our current post-modernreality. These new deity relationships can be reminiscent of the pastbut should be rooted in here and now. If polytheism provides anyrelevance to those in a western (particularly American) post-modernreality it has to bee fluid, flexible, and able to adapt to the newcircumstances of our time along with being rooted in the very placeswhere we live.

I have found some evidence of other people workingwith deities and the old narratives in ways I have been sugesting,creating new paradigms for the old deitie relationships from Europe.One example is Paganaidd's essay On the Road with the Wild Huntsman and Heather Awen's discussion of Rhiannon in relationship to raperecovery.

An interesting example from contemprory pop culture is the intersting novel, American Gods by Neil Gaimen. The book deals with a troubled young man's encounter with the gods of other places, times, and cultures in post-modern America. He strikes up a rather tenuous relationship with a being who turns out to be Loki. In the ending the American Loki ends up in Iceland (I think) and encounters the Loki of modern Iceland who is a happy jovial being, contrasting with the dark brooding American Loki.

If there are other examples like these on the web or in print I wouldlove to hear about them.

European Tricksters

2011-09-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

Tricksters are generally discussedwithin the context of indigenous cultures of North and South America,and occasional those of Africa and Australia. There is littlediscourse about tricksters in European context. This may be in-partthat the conceptualization of tricksters is a relatively newphenomenon in English literature. The term comes into English fromDaniel G. Brintons in Myths of the Americas (1868). By this timeEuropean consciousness had been far removed from its origins andsupplanted with Abrahamic thought. The age of enlightenmentfurther entrenched the culture into more human-centricity, and ithasn’t occurred (until recently) that there could be any parallelsbetween the two.

However, the image of the fool, juster,or clown has been a persistent element of European folklore andtraditions. The jester was employed by the king to entertain theroyal court with jokes, tricks, and general foolishness. After theEnglish Civil War (1642-1651) jesters where done away with byproclamation of Oliver Cromwell. Afterwords the Jester merged intotheatrical and literary traditions. The jester tradition was popularin many parts of England but as puritanism, Calvinism, and later theenlightenment, further diminished their role in the larger society.By modern times they have been reduced to comical relief for thelower classes.

One of the primary features of thejester is a deep tradition of satire. The jester was one of the fewwho could, at times, get away with poking fun at the monarchy.However, there was always a fine line in which the juster had to bemindful. If he pushed too far it would, at best, ruin his career, ormore likely result in execution. Satire was often a primary functionof wondering bards, and later the minstrel tradition. The ancientsatirists had the power to curse a person, family, or group of peoplewith his scathing remarks.

Satire is the art of strategicallyplacing criticism of society and/or politics within another context,and is generally (but not always) achieved as a form of humour. Thisallows the satirist to carefully make statements which wouldotherwise be inappropriate. Satire makes people uncomfortable byholding a mirror up to standers and behaviours seen as normal oracceptable which would otherwise be deplorable.

The role of satire is deeply intrenchedin our culture that remnants of it can bee seen in public mass mediaof post-modern America. Such example are South Park, the Simpsons,The Daily Show, and the Colbert Report. They are even employed by theeconomic powers and are allowed some freedoms to criticize suchpowers in the name of humour. Often times these kinds of programsare misunderstood and criticized for promoting undesirable behaviourswhen they are really shining the light on the large scale hypocrisyof the society.

The jester is merely one reflection oftrickster tradition in old European cultures and in post-modernAmerica. The tradition goes much deeper and extends broadly throughout European and American cultural heritage. Throughout the worldtheir have been cultural characters, literary figures, and evendeities who have intentional or unintentional gone against the grainof society by braking traditions, rules, taboos, and conventionalbehaviour to initiate change. Often times the trickster himself isunaffected by the events they sets into motion, but paradoxicallygrow with the needs of the society.

Following is a list and briefdescription of some of characters in European mythology, folklore,and literature, who display trickster like qualities:

(in no particular order)

Txiki from Basque tradition isknown for steeling the secretes of horticulture from Basajaunak, thelord of the woods.

Fairies fromwestern European narratives where often seen as malevolent beings whoplayed tricks on and deceived humans. One particular pastime of theFaries is to steeling human babies and replacing them withchangelings.

The Puca ofCeltic mythology is a changeling fairy closely associated with theEnglish Puck whoenjoys scaring humans but intend no serious harm.

Reynardis an anthropomorphic fox from medieval western European allegoriesknown for his satire directed towards the aristocracy and clergy.Reynard was later adapted into Renert the Foxby Michel Rodange in 1872. In the 1940's Reynard reemerged inanti-semantic propaganda.

Till Eulenspiegelentered western literary tradition in the beginning of The Renascencethrough older low German oral tradition. He was a classic jesterfigure who often was seen as having been a real person, though nowevidence sports his existence. He continues to enjoy popularity inmodern Germanic countriers.

Robin Hoodis known by nearly anyone with contact with western culture. He ismade famous for a 'steeling from the rich and giving to the poor' inbenevolent trickster fashion. His merry men where lively andrambunctious band of thieves who assisted Robin Hood in hisadventures.

Loki isprobably the most blatant trickster of European tradition havingentered modern sensibility through Scandinavian mythology. Loki isknown for being ambiguous in nature having stories where he eitherhelps the gods or causing problems for them. He is also known as ashapeshifter.

Veles comesfrom Slavic narrative cycles as a divine force of earth, water, andthe underworld. He is closely associated with magic and music instorm myth and carnival customs.

Hermesis seen as a trickster in early Greek mythology. As part of the kineof Apollo Hermes stole cattle and drove them back to Greece bywalking the backwards so that the tracks pointed the wrong way. BothHomer and Hesiod depict Hermes as being skilled in deception.

Gwydion,from the Forth Branch of the Mabinogi, is a trickster god ofBrythonic-Celtic origin. He set in motion a war between the north andsouth as distraction to allow Gilfaethwy to rape Goewin, the daughterof Math fab Mathonwy. Gwydion takes advantage of the chaos withmagical powers and deception to steel pigs from the underworld.

Don Quixote is the bumbling hero first brought to life in the early 1600's by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes, an no discussion of European tricksters could be complete without him.

BrerRabitis a witty trickster from southern united states folklore withposible roots in Africa and Creek and Cherokee Indian narratives andwas immortalized by Disney in the 1946 film Song of the South. Thoughof not directly of European source, Brer Rabit is an important figurein African American slavery reaction to the larger American societynot recognizing their person-hood and humanity. He is renowned forhis use of clever language and a rebellious nature.

BugsBunny couldbe considered a trickster of more modern origins who is a descendentof Brer Rabit, Reynald the Fox, and various indigenous Americantraditions.

Thisis only a short list of some tricksters with direct or indirect roots inEuropean, and by extension American tradition. Many of thesecharacters continue to live on in new post-modern forms, or areremembered fondly from children books, or continue to maintain sometraditional place in their originating cultures. Tricksters are widespread phenomenon in cultural narrative and literary traditionsthroughout the world, and have made their way into post-modernconciseness. What are some of the tricksters you can think of fromolder or modern European/American sources?

Crown-of-thorns Starfish Dream

2011-09-02T11:52:00.000-07:00

A few nights ago I had a dream that I cannot shake. Since I believe dreams are meant to be shared, and are not always intended for the dreamer specifically, I will share it with you.

I am in a white room flooded with light. The walls are white and translucent windows are letting in a bright light. Within this room water is constantly flowing. The water level never rose so there must have been an exit for the water which I did not see. The water is flowing over the walls and from white fountains lined up on aether side of me. I walk through this rather large room. The feeling in the room is rather sterile and everything is a bleached white. Not knowing where I am or why I am there, I began to feel nervous and apprehensive.

That is when I saw a purple spiny starfish resting on the lips of one of the fountains. Immediately it flies across the room and wraps around my left hand sinking its spins into my flesh. The pain is sharp and excruciating as I it pumping some kind of venom into me. I try frantically to remove it with my right hand. When I finally pry it off my hand has suffered several deep lacerations and is blue and puffy. I wake up.

I told my room-mate about the dream. He thinks about it for a moment and says the starfish sounds like a crown-of-thorns. So I search for crown-of-thorns starfish on the Internet and find the Wikipedia entry about the Crown-of-thorn starfish and the picture above matches closely to what I had seen in my dream.

I read further and learn that it is a venomous carnivore that preys on coral. When the its population is kept in check by its own natural predators it eats larger coral allowing for smaller coral to grow. However, in the last few decades the population of its natural predators has diminished and the crown-of-thorns has become problematic. Without the increase of population, the crown-of-thorns has over consumed coral in its natural habitat. When it eats the coral the digestive toxins kill off the coral and leave it bleached white. Wikipedia also mentioned that it is a solitary creature and they are rarely found in groups.

I had never heard of this species of starfish but found it interesting that I would have a dream about a rather unusual starfish I had never heard of before. It seems to be a significant dream but I have little Idea as to why. I have a vague suspicion that it pertains to consistent social anxieties issues I have had in my life.

Land prayer

2011-08-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

The following is a variation of a prayer-poem I sometimes use in ceremony or during my morning offertory. I provide it here for inspiration to whomever wishes to make it their own.

we drink the waters of chaos, and are given love
we slip under its current, and its thoughts are our own
the cycle of life is turned

we grow from the land, nourished by the soil
our bones are made from the ancestors,
the soil is rich with their wisdom and memories

we breath in the air and the land sees through our eyes,
moving our feet and moving our mind and moving our heart
the land is our flesh and the air is our breath

Water Communion

2011-08-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at service was one of my favourite UU traditions, Water Communion. It began in 1980 at a gathering of UU women "as a way for women who lived far apart to connect the work each was doing locally to the whole (Kimberly French). It has later evolved as acknowledging the community within UU congregations. Most congregations I have participated in have had a water communion in one form or another. The basic premise is that UU's will collect water from their activities and travels through out the year specifically for this service. During the service each person comes up to an alter with a large basin where they join their waters with everyone else. At this service as with others I have attended we had the opportunity to speak of where our water came from and what it means to us. If someone didn't come prepared a jug of water is provided so everyone has the chance to participate. Many ministers like to keep the water and then use it in other ceremonies throughout the year.

I actually have a jar of water from the Snake River near where I grew up, unfortunately I did not bring it with me when I Moved back to The Palouse. I used the communal waters provided. I thought I was going to make some comment about the snake river, but instead I felt the water is for change. I had to leave The Palouse so unexpectedly nearly a year ago, and told the congregation that I was overwhelmed by the welcoming back I had received over the last few weeks of being back.

As an animist this service goes beyond human community at our UU congregations but extends to that of the ecological community. Water is a vital part of life, the rains and rivers and the lakes and the oceans become an system of life which connects the earth as one being. Over 90% of the human body is water and around 70% of the earth's surface is water (not to mention the underground aquifers and hidden rivers). So much is dependent on water.

Ceisiw Serith discusses pleasurable hypothetical cosmology of proto-indo-europeans in which water is a central component.

“*Xártus, [. . .] is the pattern of the universe. This word comes from the root *xar- (in the usual notation, *H2er-), meaning "to fit together, particularly according to a pleasing pattern; to dovetail." Both linguistically and ideologically Xártus is the root of the Vedic rta, and the concept is similar as well to the Germanic wyrd. The Xártus is the pattern of the cosmos, but not one that’s imposed from without. Instead it grows from the cosmos itself.

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 (a kind of ghosti-relationship) that the universe can continue to exist.

Order gifts chaos in another way. Things passing out of existence, not only as in living things dying, but even as each moment passing away, are going from order into disorder. If cosmos is seen as the tree, then its dying bits are fruits or nuts. This imagery is found clearly in the Norse cosmology, in which drops of honeydew fall into the surrounding waters. In this way again chaos and cosmos are joined together into a relationship. Chaos gifts order, and order gifts chaos.

If the cosmos is a tree, then its branches form a pattern, which is the Xártus. Notice a number of things. First, the pattern forms itself out of the growth of the tree itself – as the cosmos grows, and actions and things arise and are added to the cosmos, the pattern of the branches changes. The Xártus therefore arises from the cosmos, rather than from outside it.

Note as well that although the cosmos grows the Xártus, the Xártus has an affect on the cosmos. The growth of the tree is not completely free; branches can’t grow from anywhere, and they can’t grow in any way they wish. It may be said that the Xártus impels but does not compel.

We form our lives within the organizing Xártus, and then our lives, like all things that happen in the cosmos, are fed into the Xártus. The things we do, as they pass away, and eventually we ourselves, also fall into the waters of chaos. Eventually, however, like the water from the well, all that we have given to chaos returns to cosmos, transformed first in the waters, and then by the tree. Like the tree, we have been fed by chaos, and we then feed chaos in turn.”
(read the entire article here)

I have always thought of water as being integral to the idea of Chaos. I do not hold a duality concept of Chaos and Order but see them as aspects of the same impulse of life. Therefore Chaos is a sacred element of change and creativity which is the essence of life and love. For me the water communion is a sacred right of acknowledging the one-soul (or what Serith might call Xártus and what I sometimes call Diewom) and allowing room for the vital waters of chaos to change and mold us as a community which extends beyond the human experience.

The Trajectory of PostPaganism

2011-08-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

This blog has always been a challenge. The thoughts and ideas we wished to cultivate here have been difficult to pinpoint and articulate at times. As a result of this; the blog has gone doormat and at times it has seen a burst of intense activity. We often do not know where this project will take us.

In the beginning PostPaganism was known as Pagan Bioregional Animism and started by Little Lightening Bolt (LLB) as an offshoot of his BioRegional Animism blog. The initial intent was to explore the possible relationship of modern paganism with the concepts of BioRegional Animism and connecting modern paganism with the land itself where its practitioners lived. There was a forum created on Tribes.net to act as a companion for the blog. Overtime, the blog and forum became inactive and LLB's concentration was primarily devoted to the parent project of BioRegional Animism.

Latter, I came along with a past experience dealing directly with the modern pagan scene and became active in the BioRegional Animism community on Tribes.net. My contributions lead to being given moderation of the Pagan BioRegional Animism community. Overtime there was felt a need for a more concise title for both the blog and the forum and I began flouting around the word PostPaganism which was welcomed warmly and became the new moniker for the project.

The topics of PostPaganism began as an exploration of what is known of pre-Christian European animism, and what had survived into today, and how it corresponded with the lands where it was practices. This lead to exploring how these methods could be applied to the places where we live in the 21^st century, which in many cases where far removed from Europe. However, this approach became increasingly difficult to talk about where we had exhausted the subject within the forum. I began thinking about postpaganism as a movement and progression from modern paganism into a new dynamic of animist relationships for the 21^st century. Once again the blog and forum became dormant as topic materiel seemed to become more scares, and my motivation to write on the subject had diminished significantly.

With the help of Heather Awen atAdventures in Animism I have been re-energized to write some more. Thank you Heather! So we will see what new directions this blog develops and if I can keep some momentum going along side my college classes that just started this season.

Lessons From The Colombia Plateau

2011-08-26T10:59:00.001-07:00

This is a sermon I gave for
The Unitarian Universalist Church of the Palouse
on August 9th, 2009

The most common definition of animism is the belief of spirits inhabiting animals, plants, and inanimate objects. However, this is an over simplification based upon western-colonial concepts. Animism, is being re-evaluated by many in the fields of comparative religion and anthropology. A new understanding is surfacing. In the writings of Graham Harvey, he explains that animism is not the projection of human qualities upon objects. He argues that these old ideas are outdated. On the contrary, animism is and absence of the idea that humans are superior and/or separate from the living world. Animism relates to the world as a community of people, only some of whom are human. By relinquishing our dominion over the rights, and consideration of person-hood, the world is no longer a collection of resources for consumption, but is seen as a delicate web of relationships.

The center of experience, sentience, conscience, awareness and life is the immediate surroundings we interact with on a daily basis; it is our life-place. It is logical that the center of our life traditions are likewise the life-place. This is one of the lessons of Bioregional Animism, and can be found within the foundations of people around the world, with Moses on Mt Sinai, Jesus in Gethsemane, the Greek gods on Mt Olympus, or the Ganges River flowing from the head of Shiva. These are all physical places with deep spiritual meaning embedded within the lives of the people. If one wishes they can visit these places today; however, one does not need to seek pilgrimage to distant lands but can find sacred places all around them. Even in the most populated and urban of cities we can look underneath the cement, asphalt, pavement, concrete, steel, and in between the cracks of modernization to find the most sacred of places.

The stories I am going to tell may seem fantastical to some, but to an animist the world is a fantastical place. We revel in it, and rejoice in it. Even though at times we may fear it's sheer size, power, and force, we respect it. Stories are a powerful communication device in animist traditions. It is my belief that new stories and new oral traditions need to emerge in order to teach how to relate to the other-then-human and human people, and rediscover the sacredness of our life-places. This is why many of us are compelled to share our stories. Because, in so doing the land is expressing itself.

This summer my grandfather passed away at the end of the semester. In a rush I drove down to Rupert Idaho near the banks of the Snake River, where I was born. On all sides of my family, several generations called that region home. My grandfather had spent almost all of his 90 plus years along the Snake River Plain. He diligently farmed the land, married, and raised four daughters. My family moved upriver a few years after my birth. Many times in my adulthood I have left the Snake River behind; however, my friend has drawn me back too many times too count. I could see how interconnected that river has become in my family's lives and history and in my own life. In that moment I felt my grandfather like I hadn't felt before. He was in the air, the river, songs of birds, the baking sun, the trees, and in the farmland. I realized with many of my immediate ancestors who spent most of their lives along the Snake River Plain, that it was an ancestral home to me -- Much closer in space, time, and heart then England, Scotland, Germany, or Russia. I found a new understanding for the power of life-place.

As i rediscovered the sacredness of the Snake River Plain, I thought about my new home where the Snake and Clearwater find union. I thought back upon the lessons it has shared with me and on the relationship I have developed over two years of being here. The Colombia Plateau has been known among the tribal people for its power of dreams and songs. I have discovered this power on a personal level. Since moving here, prayer and ceremony have come back into my life.

On the autumn equinox two years ago, I was driving randomly, as I often get the intuition to do so. I ended up driving through the town of Orofino, Idaho and I kept on going. After several miles I wondered if I should head back towards the Clearwater, or head north. I heard Raven caw. I looked in time to see him take flight north. I interpreted this to mean I was to follow. A few more miles, and had seen Raven again, perched on a sign for a sportsmen access. I took the dirt road to the small reservoir, and a fawn leaped along side me for several yards, letting me know I was going in the right direction.

I came to the reservoir where a few locals where fishing. I noticed a trail that followed along the rim of the reservoir and walked until I came to a clearing that had been partially clear-cut an d burned. The trail took me away from the reservoir. The usual casual chatter of the forest was around me, cicadas, songbirds, the wind. I heard Raven caw again, I looked up to see him circling above me. I sat down on a fallen tree trunk and cawed back contentedly (caw ca-caw c aw). Naturally he spoke back, and I spent an hour engaged in conversation with Raven. Often times, these kinds of conversation are not immediately understood. It takes me time to contemplate the experience and find the hidden nuances in the interaction.

Living in the Colombia Plateau, I have learned how friction can be deliberated to bring forth desired change. The forest fire, is an example. Many trees parish in the fire. By clearing the foliage and old growth new growth is allowed to breath. I have learned to listen to instinct, intuition, and inspiration, and that they are the same language in which the living world communicates and deliberates. we are a voice among many voices in a diverse community of life, but often our kind talk t oo load and can only hear our own voices .

Living in the LC valley I have found my self more rooted in this Unitarian Universalist community. When at all possible, I make a point to travel so I can participate and be a part of this community. These travels between here and there have given birth to other conversations and experiences. There is a definite shift between the valley an d the Palouse. The warm weather of Lewiston often contrasts with Moscow, when it is lightly raining, you may be snowed in up here. I can feel the transition into two places as I drive up and down the Lewiston grade. It is not a sudden transition, but a gradual one.

All of this place was once a giant sea bed, with the formations of hills through the collection of blown dirt, and the shifting eart h due to volcanic activity forming the basalt and hills that shapes this life-place. Mighty forces of the living world deliberated to give us fertile ground. However, 99% of the native vegetation of the Palouse have been destroyed by Agro-Industry. Lewiston was once known as Siminikum (the Nez Perce word meaning confluence), before the coming of the humans it was the place for deliberation between the animal people. Now Lewiston has a strange odor and feel to it, which I have never entirely become accustom to. However, both pl aces have become valuable teachers to me an d have shared with me their stories. They have shown me how their stories run through my story like a current.

The LC Valley has taught me, more then an y other place, that regardless of man-made adaptations to the land, there is always a sacred place to be honored and respected. The Palouse has shown me how to heal within adversity and pain. The Wallowa region of Oregon has opened me up to my dreams. Through its great wine, The Colombia Valley of Washington has reminds me to be joyful.

Graham Harvey said, “Animists are more pragmatic than romantic and know that people of different kinds eat one another. [. . .] Rules about eating, or those concerned with the proper treatment of animal and plant bodies, are important ways in which animist respect is worked out, even in the case of killing or taking life.” In other words, We know that frightened and hurt people often lash out. We know that not all people mean well. We know that community requires great compromise. We are careful about our relationships and strive to be mindful of how fragile life is. We strive to respect our relationships. We also know that we are people too, and people falter, and forget things, and do not always act in each others best interest, and do not always understand the ramifications of our actions.

In my own life animism, brings the first principle of Unitarian Universalism, "To respect and affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person" full circle with the last, "To respect and affirm the interconnected web of all existence." As an animist and a UU these are but one principle, and expands the concept of a person to include all the connecting points on the web of existence. I will not go into the logistic differences between animist traditions and what is considered a person, this is beyond the scope of this speech. However, Bioregional Animism relates to the very ecology of where we live as being a person itself, seeing the web as a person, and that we are that person, and that person is the land. Think about this, when you step outside and breath the air and look upon the beautiful landscape that is your life-place.

Mad props to the bee-people

2011-08-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Last night I went and saw this movie at the theatre for the local preforming arts center.

I have known the importance of the bees and other pollinators but not the details. The interviews with the bee-keepers fascinated me; they where so in love with their bees and had a sense of reciprocity. I would dare say these bee-keepers where animists - even though the word animism and concept of person hood was never directly addressed their attitudes and actions where clearly of an animistic nature.

I can see roof-top and backyard bee keeping could be a central activity for many animist in the 21st century who are seeking a reciprocal relationship with the land. Bees are needed more then ever, and they are being under attack by both GMO's and pesticides. I believe the claimed in the video that a primary response to ecological crisis is to save the bees. Perhaps bee keeping is not your thing or not practicle for you, but the seed bomb ritual Heather suggests could be another step you could take to entering relationship with the bees.

Morning offertory

2011-08-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

I have been developing the habit of morning offertories which is inspired by my friend Heather's morning devotional practice. I have never been good with routine and thus far the practice has not become daily but it is becoming more regular. The practice begins by stepping outside and saying hello to the various plants my roommate has been caring for. One plant particularly (a form of sage from Mexico) likes to drop leafs for me from time to time which become that mornings offering. If there are no leaves then I use clean filtered water.

I head up the hill behind the house which separates one part of the trailer park from the other and is lined with pine and aspen trees. I begin walking along the hill lengthways where I meet a gnarly tree trunk who accepts the offerings gladly. I Stand for a moment feeling the sunlight and whatever breeze their may be upon my skin. From there I walk further along the crest of the hill gathering whatever garbage I can find (mostly pieces of plastic, cigarette butts, bottles or cans of pop or beer, and the odd tattered clothing). If I have something on my mind I will contemplate the subject. Sometimes I just become focused on collecting garbage. As I go about this I key into subtle movement in the environment around me such as the birds or squirrels.

I think that the simple act of picking up garbage should become a ritual itself. Spilling you guts to the land is one thing, but if you do not show any effort in making the relationship reciprocal then why would anyone care about your words or thoughts? Whether your rituals and ceremonies are practices alone or with other communities it is important to include the other-than-humans and the more world into your practices. By doing so you show that you acknowledge their intrinsic worth and value and will become more willing to interact and participate with you.

Animism is about relationship and relating to those outside the human experience, it is about acknowledging the interconnectedness of all things, and respecting and being mindful of the delicate nature of the world around us. So next time you head out to the desert or the woods or that filed where you seek solitude for ritual and ceremony, or simply walking through the park to clear you mind, key into what the land wants from you and behave accordingly. Simply picking up an empty cup from the ground and placing in a trash receptacle is an act of reciprocity and the land will appreciate you for it.

Universalist Animism

2011-08-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

A couple of Sundays at my UU congregation the minister had spoken passionately about our Universalist heritage. The Unitarian Universalist Association ofCongregation was founded in 1961 upon the merging of the Univesalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association. This merger created a unique religion in North America that honoured the radical roots of its two predisposes and pushed the boundaries of religion into a more inclusive and rational direction. Today the UU includes peoples of many religious and philosophical world-views from humanism, deism, religious naturalism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, paganism, and even the odd animist like me. This sermon got me thinking about how the message of universalism realates to my animist world-view.

At the core of Universalism from the perspective of UU is the belief that God is love and this is taken to its logical conclusion as a reality not a metaphor. My druid friend pointed out to me that love is god would be a better statement of this reality, and I tend to agree. Because love and god are the same thing the biblical god is one of unconditional love who would not suffer damnation on anyone. This is the christian variation of Universalism but where UU is a religion of many sources, other forms of universalism have influenced UU philosophy.

For example, Hindu universalism embraces the whole world as one family and counters the western impulse to create identity division based on religion differences. Sikhism uses the metaphor of religions being rivers who merge with each other and eventually all lead to the ocean. The Baha'I see all religions as coming from a divine source. This is only naming a few.

These other sources and perspectives of universalism reinforce the idea of an all encompassing love which is god. However, in the UU today the use of the word god is minimal. This is partly due to our strong religious humanism tradition, and many UU's have had unfortunate experiences with mainstream views of God. Another reason is that concepts of the sacred and divine within UU are so diverse that discussion of 'God' becomes overly complicated.

The phrase Spirit of Life is commonly found in UU liturgy and is used as a unifying principle and source for all life which we hold sacred. I am personally fond of this phrase for meany rasons. As an Animist life is defined much broader then in mainstream science and expands to the world as a whole and to phenomenon like rivers, mountains, and is ingrained in the very fabric of place. I find life-place, a term often used by bioregionalism, a nice synonym for the genius loci. In my own worldview I make no distinction between spirit and mater and thus 'spirit of' becomes redundant to me.

In my own UU way life is god, continuing along the current of classic universalism this means to me that life is love. The idea of all the world and that within in it, above it, underneath it, and all around it, is related in community (or family if you like) is a primary aspect of animism in many forms and could be considered another form of universalism within the UU that originated from our earth-centred sources.

Beyond this, the idea of person-hood can take on a new dimension if we consider universalism in a broader aspect. In Animism: Respecting the Living World, Graham Harvey points out that there are limitations to what is considered to have person-hood. I believe that a distinct form of 21^st century animism is the universalism of person-hood. Many of these people find some degree of person-hood embedded in their world-view. Within a UU context the first principle we affirm is the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Univeraslism Animism extends this inherent worth and dignity far beyond that of the human experience and encompass our life-place and the complex interconnected ecosystems that comprise the earth.

Universalist Animism is a challenging world view that questions the foundation of colonial power structures at its core. It is also a difficult path because our freedoms to act upon our convictions have been greatly reduced by the power structure we are all forced to participate in on one level or another. This opens up a lot of questions about how to properly respond to the postmodern world with proper relationship when we now have plastics and nuclear waste whose relationship with with the rest of the world have significant impacts. It does not allow us to ignore the ecological crisis we find our selves in. It demands that concern for the environment is an ethical and moral imperative and leaves us asking how is the best way to act appropriately toward this new changing world. At this time there are few answers and we have to be the ones asking the questions that make our fellow humans uneasy and uncomfortable.

Pantheons as relationship systems

2011-08-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

So, I thought I was done thinking about deities for a while. However, Heather Awen's and Lupa's comments on my last post got me to thinking about pantheons as a system of deities and their interconnected nature. We live in a modern, or rather, post-modern world where information and travel between groups is a daily reality. We can hop on to the internet and talk to some one next door, on the other side of the continent, or across an ocean in a mater of nanoseconds.

Proponents of the gaia hypothesis suggest that the information super highway is a developing nurel net for the living collective of systems of the earth. What role do deity relationship and grand ancestors i mentioned in the previous post play in this reality? As a bio-regional animist I look at bio-regions in the manner of the Greek idea of genus loki, having distinct personality and identity but being integrated and interconnected to gaia. It is not inconceivable that these grand ancestors are intermingling in a way we have not seen before. Loki and Coyote are playing a game of poker together while Jesus and Lao Tzu throw back a couple of beers. It's a transmodern world baby! (more on transmondernity later).

This brings up questions of appropriation which is a tricky and messy subject to deal with. One of the things about bio-regional animism and postpaganism is we are not afraid to shy away from this subject and are greatly concerned with what is appropriate and inappropriate and tend to be sensitive to accusations of appropriation amongst the neoshaman and neopagan scenes. We don't claim to have all the answers on this, but conclude that it comes down to relationship (as it often does with animism). And if in some way you share or stand in true solidarity with the cultural expression and experiences of others and do so on a level of respect and within proper context that cultural exchange of ideas and customs can be respectful and appropriate. However, often times these exchanges are not done respectfully and are used in ways that disrespect all cultures involved. The plastic-shaman phenomenon is a good example of negative appropriation.

However, this is not meant to be an article about appropriation but an attempt to address the phenomenon of deities and grand ancestors in a world that is so integrated into a global information system. It is not far fetched to think that these varied pantheons know of and are aware of each other and interact on a daily basis such as many of their followers do. Some of them may get along and other s may not. But they are in relationship with each other and this forms a network system of pantheons that has become more increasingly integrated. I also think that there may be many phenomenon which go under the same ore similar names, and this is an impotent realization. When dealing with these phenomenon-persons realizing that names and titles are a human convenience they take for communication purposes with us and not to get hung up on the names as much as the messages they teach us.

I highly doubt the Zues of yester-millennium would be the Zues of today. One may encounter Zues in the Olympic National Forest of Washington, and one at Mt Kilimanjaro near the Tanzania / Kenyan boarder but is it the same Zues as the ancient Zues who lived on Mt Olympus in ancient Greece? Hell what is to say that the Zues who hangs out near modern day Mt Olympus is even the same phenomenon? But what is it that they have to teach us? What connects them? what is there message? And how does that message relate to who we are, where we are, and when we are?

Perhaps their are conduits of knowing that have been carved through our minds by the cultural stories which are told to us. The metaphors we have to relate to the more world (to use a term from Heather Awen) are useful to these phenomenon to communicate with us and thus their stories continues in different ways and different times, and their very personality changes due to the currents of metaphor that have shaped our ability to communicate with and through.

Growing up in the pacific northwest with stories of King Arthur would have effected me differently then if I grew up in London. But this conduit of King Arthur has been built between me and a broader world and relates to me in a unique way. Interpretations of King Arthur are limitless. What about the King Arthur of Australia?

The pantheons are what connect our relationships to gethar and form a vast network of relationships which spans the globe and more so then ever before in history. This has a massive ramification on our understanding of bioregions and the genus loci. Many bioregions have similar characteristics with each other. Bioregion A might share a characteristic with Bioregion B and another with Bioregion C but B and C might might share charecteristics that are not shared with bioregion A. I think grand ancestors work much this way. Many of the grand ancestors have roots in lands we may never visit but the lessons they can teach us about how to relate to the world can relate to other life-places in new and different ways. Perhaps pantheons are a complex interconnected system of deity relationships with an expansive collection of phenomenon.

I am working these thoughts out in my head as I go along. I feel there is a strong need for a new and more expansive way to think about deities, and (post) modern polytheism which is more relevant to the reality we have now. My views on the subject is one area that contently changes and shifts as I gain new experiences and learn from many sources about the living world. These view can, will, and have changed over time and suspect they will continue to do so. But, if I am onto something about deity relationships and the grand-ancestors as teaching us to relate, then change and evolution just might be the point.

Now I think I have thoroughly beaten the subject with a dead goat.

Deities, Grand Ancestors, and More-than-Human

2011-08-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

I am continuing to think about deities. If you have been following this thread of thought over the last couple of posts you will know that I have been thinking about deities as relationships. When I was more involved in polytheist thought I had experiences with deities I would consider personal. Deities who no longer really fit into my world-view but have still influenced that world view. These deities where mostly from Celtic origin, in particularly, the Mabinogion. Understanding them as relational phenomena particular to their land opened my eyes up to the relationship of deities.

I now feel that the deity relationship I had with them was not the same as it would have been thousands of years ago amongst the Brythonic-Celts, nore should it be. But I do believe that they do not have proper names but titles. Thus Gwyddon was a title and not a name, this implies that the Gwyddon I had a relationship with was not the Gwyddon the ancient Brythonic-Celts would have knows. I now believe that the relationship as such was one where those ancestor titles where available for me to communicate with something Gwyddon-like. Over time the need for the Celtic titles gave way as my relationship developed more intimately and I stopped anthropomorphizing I learned new names and titles.

Thinking upon my own experiences and contemplation upon the subject of deities has me thinking there could be different types of deity relationships. Often people have claimed there is a division between local land-deities and cultural deities. I do not think this is entirely true. For me the Celtic Deities showed me they were so integrated into the land that I had to seek a new relationship which better honoured that reality. However, I do believe there are what I will term Grand Ancestors. These are characters who have become immortalized through culture and take a life of their own. It is these Grand Ancestors who's stories evolve as the people continue telling them. Their immortality is linked to our remembering and are in a way a projections of the human experience. This is where I think the pantheons most neopagans are interested in fit in. They are the Olympians, The Nordic Gods, The Celtic Gods, the Egyptian Gods.

However they are not static beings, but are co-creative reflections that are given life by our memories. There are those who live only in a name, whos stories have long faded, such as Cernunnos. There are those who's stories have evolved and adapted with being exposed to different people and cultures such as King Arthur. The Christ of the bible I believe also fits into this category, and I would even go to the lenght to include Superman in to this pantheon of Grand Ancestors.

What function do the Grand-Ancestors serve? I think they are there to remind us of our humanity. They are anthropomorphic because they are integrated into the human experience. They take on the forms and their stories change as the people need. I believe they can guide us to remember humanities primordial essence. They teach us how to relate not only human to human but as humans to the world around us. I wounder if we confuse them with the relationships they are trying to teach us about?

Then there is the term More-than-human I have seen floating around the animist blog-sphere. I am unsure where the phrase originated but something about it has always made me uneasy. First off the implication that something is more then human seems that whatever it is has primary human attributes. It also indicates a sense of hierarchy that makes me nervous. Sometimes I have seen the word in application to what I have described as the Grand-Ancestors and some-times I have seen it used to describe ecological phenomenon like thunder storms and sometimes I have heard it used to describe things like, love, compassion . . etc. I can't shake a feeling of human-eccentricity when I run across this word in such vague application. Perhaps the usage stems out of other-than-human but I would not see the personhood of things described this was as being more significantly human as the word implies. To me the distinction is self-defeating to the aspect of person-hood which is central to animism and is perhaps more relevant to polytheism.

Through my contemplation on polytheism in relationship to Animism; I have explored the possibility of deities and concluded that my understanding is divergent from modern-western polytheism and relies upon thoughts of Religious Naturalism that explores the deities as a relationship with natural phenomenon devoid of super-naturalism. Perhaps, I would suggest the term polydeist form myself. Where Deism is distinct from theism in that it does not rely upon supernaturalism and prophetic text. Instead, Deism is dependent upon rational evaluation of our understanding of the the world and observations of how the divine is experienced. The divine to a modern deists is more expansive and inclusive then limited ideas about god often proposed by theology.

Regardless of how deities can be viewed. There is something intrinsic to humans relationship with the world. Even those who claim no gods have gods in the things in which they pay attention to and value. To many in modern society there social status and wealth is there god. To others striving for understanding the world through scientific principles is a god to them. I believe that thinking of deities as relationship rather then beings opens us up to understanding all relationship with everything.

Nick on Overpopulation

2011-08-18T08:30:00.000-07:00

Overpopulation is a serious problem that is often overlooked by environmentalists, green-washed hipsters, and Al Gore groupies. Nick at The Red Road has been brave enough to put the issue out on the table and share his thoughts about this problem. Here are some experts; you can read the entire article here:

When I say that overpopulation is central to everything I talk about here, I mean that almost every if not every problem the human race is facing today is in some way related to this 4,000-year-long baby boom we've had going. It shouldn't be a surprise that poverty as we know it didn't really kick in until we had thousands more humans than normal competing for the same resources (contrary to popular belief, hunter-gather societies didn't exist on the perpetual brink of starvation, and were actually described by anthropologist Marshal Sahlins as the "original affluent society"). Since most wars are in some way over resources, we can include increased warfare in the list, too. Disease became more common as people were packed more closely together. Extinction rates spiked as more and more plants and animals were converted into human tissue (there isn't an unlimited supply of biomass in the world). Pollution, deforestation, infant mortality, starvation and malnutrition, and increased crime rates have all been linked to overpopulation. I can go into any of those issues more if anyone would like, but the information's not that hard to find. . .

All ecologists know that when any population's food supply increases, that population increases as a result, and when the food supply goes down, so does the population that feeds on it. As a result hunter-gatherer societies (and those who practice sustainable agriculture) tend to fluctuate with their food supplies but hover around an ecologically stable average population. Our form of agriculture, on the other hand, has allowed us to increase our food supply steadily for thousands of years, so our population has risen accordingly. This would be obvious except that the people of our culture have decided that they aren't really animals and so the laws of ecology don't really apply to them. . .

Saying that we can chose to let other humans starve or not presumes that we are the ones doing the feeding. But we're not. Food comes to us via the sun's rays, which are accepted and transformed into nutrients by plants, with the aid of resources from Mother Earth. We eat some of those plants, others are eaten by animals and further metabolized before they find their way into our bodies. We are consuming the end product of a long and complicated process of creation, and at best we contribute a little effort at the very end. So no, food doesn't come from us. It's not created by humans. . . .

Cultural attitudes play a big part, too. I can't remember where I read this, it might have been in Viola Cordova's book, but somewhere I read a description of a certain North American tribe's attitudes towards family sizes. Apparently in this culture a woman was looked down on if she either began having children too early or continued too late. Like, if an older woman got pregnant people would talk and say, "What's her problem, does she think she's a young woman?" Things like that work, I think, because I'm not honestly sure if we should expect everyone to consciously think about population dynamics all the time, but attitudes that are engrained in people are much harder to ignore or forget (of course, that's also why our current damaging ideas are so hard to change or get rid of).

In fact, in the culture described, there was even a custom that if a woman had too many children, one would be taken and given to a family who couldn't have kids. That sounds pretty awful to us now, but consider the fact that in those kinds of societies it literally does take a village to raise a child. Here, if your child was given to another couple, you might not see them again. Then and there, it wasn't like that. I'm not saying we should do something like that, just that it worked for the people who did it. We will have to find our own customs that work for us.

Excerpts from "Animist Diplomats" by Heather Awen.

2011-08-17T11:09:00.000-07:00

Here are some experts of a new article Heather Awen of Adventures in Animism has writen on Witches Vox.

[The] important thing for all budding earth-honoring neopagan animistas to keep in mind. "Nature" is not something for you to "visit" and soak up the healing vibes from, dump your negative energies into, and then bail. You are not at daycare. You are an adult member of the Gaian super organism. . .

how do you know what the land needs? Since I spent most of my life honing the intuition my mother also has, I am not sure what to tell you. The training it takes to learn intuitive healing, psychic readings, and spell casting all apply here. Stay open, is the best advice. If the answers come quickly and clearly, I am guessing your imaginative ego made them up.

If there are indigenous people already doing earth-honoring rituals and you are invited, remember that it's not your show. 3rd degree High Priestess with a Masters in Comparative Shamanism doesn't get to tell the elder how to do it "right". That's the effects of racism and colonialism at work.

I personally feel that the vague "pray for the environment" stuff people send as junk emails to me don't do that much good. Any magician worth her wand knows that specific goals, correct relationships, and right timing made or break the magic. If I was sick, I'd rather the doctor looked at my chart to see what I needed and gave that to me, instead of randomly guessing and injecting me with sulfa which I am allergic to. Get my point?

True magic, as all us Dion Fortune/Starhawk reading Magi and Witches know, changes consciousness. If you can do these ceremonies and then buy non recycled toilet paper, empty your ashtray on the side of a dirt road, drink a plastic bottle of water a day, and go 4 wheeling in fragile ecosystems, the magic did not work. The rituals have to change you too. . .

Building relationships with the land and other-than-human persons is like building relationships with other human animals. Some will not like you. Some will be in pain. Most will have baggage. Sometimes you don't have any ability to communicate with each other. Some have their own healing already going on and don't want your energies included - too many healers messes up the healing. IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU. This actually should be the animist motto. Other-than-humans - be they thunderbirds, dairy cows, ravens, oak trees, fungi, waterfalls, marshlands - are not here to amuse, save, or profit you. It is imperative that we get rid of the dominator-culture mentality that the mainstream religions have poisoned our minds with. We are not above Life; we are a part of Life.

Again, IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU.”

Read the entire article on Witches Vox

The Deity Relationship

2011-08-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

I went camping two nights ago and Have been thinking long and hard about the Deity relationship. Thinking about deity as relationship got me to think about mystical experiences. To me, as an animist, a mystical experience is a time where I transcend the human experience and become sensitive to a greater reality. This is not supernatural; I see all phenomenon explained and unexplained as being a part of the 'natural' world and the universe. There is nothing out there, it is all here. As heather of Adventures in Animism says it is the More World (I like that). The deity relationship seems to be connected to the mystical experience.

As I mentioned earlier deities are relationships with landmarks, ecological phenomenon, emotion, abstract concepts, etc. However, animism is all about relationship, so what sets the deity relationship apart from the others. Due to western duality thinking, one might jump to the conclusion that a deity is worship. Worship such a tricky word with so many meanings. I learned to think of this word as considering that which has worth from a Unitarian Universalism minister. In that regards I worship love and life as the one-soul (deiwom). I think there is something a bit more to the deity relationship though.

I think deities are specific relationships which transcend human experience and serve as conduits to greater understanding of life and love. For example, a river deity courses through the land like a vein of blood which nurtures and nourishes those on the land. What does this teach us about life and love? This is where we get to learn something about ecology.

Rivers typically begin in high terrain and begin as surface runoff, springs, snow pack, or glaciers, and gather in water basins. They flow into other rivers and all that water eventual finds itself to the sea or ocean. This water moves in channels that have been formed over thousands or millions of years. These channels are not static however and the flow of a river can change over time. Many of the river pathways in the Pacific North West have been altered dramatically by hydro-electrical damning. These damns have had great negative effect on the migration and spawning of salmon and other fish. Rivers also move earth from the high country to the low country to providing soil nutrients. Rivers are important in the water cycle. The transfer the moister of the water from ice and snow to be carried to the ocean or sea where evaporation takes it back into the atmosphere to be deposited in the high country again. You could look at as a bond between the earth and the sky. Secondly, the river is vital to the distribution and livelihood to species who depend upon its nourishment through water and the nutrients it collects and gathers with it along its way. When we pollute river waters we effect all of these things.

A river is a conduit of life that moves in a cyclical pattern. It works in egalitarian principles redistributing nourishment for the land and animals along its ways. If you follow the river it will merge with other rivers and lead you to the sea or ocean. The ocean and seas are a collective body of water. This water is vital to life on this planet. Perhaps the river deity relationship leads us to the one-soul? It is no wonder rivers have featured prominently in the cultural narratives of animist people past and present.

This same kind of thought process can be applied to other deity relationships to. Think about the phenomenon and land-marks and other things that are central to your life-place and look at how they function ecological. Find the stories about them form either folktale, local indigenous cultural narrative, or through local history. This will allow you to build an understanding of who it is you are dealing with, give you an idea of how to build a deity relationship with it and what to expect from it.

The deity relationship is one of covenant that is to be taken seriously. The deity relationship will lead you to transcend the human experience but it comes at a price of commitment from you. If you commune with a river and it is being polluted you may be required to act upon that. However, entering into a deity relationship may take effort the rewords of that relationship will be like nothing you expected. I suggest entering into a deity relationship is not something to be taken lightly and should be prepared for with diligent attention and understanding of what it is you will be relating with.

Further thoughts on deities.

2011-08-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

My mind continues to wonder on the subject and an additional thought occurred to me. If deity is an agent of co-creativity and we are all agents of co-creativity and this is the implied animist meaning of person(-hood). Perhaps I have missed the mark on the role of deities in animist cultures. Maybe deities are specific type of relationships which are of important to us in our overall communication with the land. How does this work into Polytheism?

In this case I am thinking of what would be the deities of my pantheon:

Love/Life/Creativity
The Palouse
Inland Northwest Rainshadow
Northern Rockies
Snake and Clearwater rivers
Food
Tricksters
Humor
Sun
Moon
Storms
Electricity
Technology
Inspiration

To name a few.

Now I am wondering what is the essence of the deity relationship?

Deities and all that jazz

2011-08-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

The topic of deities and polytheism keeps coming up in correspondence and conversations. There are animist cultures who have and do currently practice a form of polytheism and then there are those who haven’t. I have spoken in the past about BioRegional deities and used to consider my self a polytheism. However, over time my need for or interest in deities has subsided.

One of the major things that happened is I became mindful of anthropomorphizing deities and a result of this I wouldn't engender them either. I no longer saw the need to interact with them in human form and began to devolve a pantheon based upon the landscape and environment around me of the place I lived. The more I did this the less I saw them as being representative of something but that they are those thing themselves.

Perhaps it is not that I don't have deities but that they have become something else to me then is commonly thought of in polytheism. I know polytheist who will acknowledge local deities, but many of them seemed to be attached to a pantheon of another culture such as Celtic or Nordic. They will claim that they are cultural deities and land deities. However, I do not think this distinction can be made. From my own experience with Celtic deities I got the distinction that the culture and land where inseparable. I cannot in good conscious worship deities of a people from another land or time.

I use the word deity over god or goddess because it is neutral and does not engender and doesn't necessarily imply an anthropomorphism like god/goddess does. In these situations I find etymology a good source for understanding variations in meanings that have been lost in modern vernacular.

From The Online Etymology Dictionary:

God:
O.E. god "supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person," from P.Gmc. *guthan (cf. O.S., O.Fris., Du. god, O.H.G. got, Ger. Gott, O.N. guð, Goth. guþ), from PIE *ghut- "that which is invoked" (cf. O.C.S. zovo "to call," Skt. huta- "invoked," an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- "to call, invoke." But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- "poured," from root *gheu- "to pour, pour a libation" (source of Gk. khein "to pour," also in the phrase khute gaia "poured earth," referring to a burial mound; see found (2)). "Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound" [Watkins]. Cf. also Zues.

To summerize its current form dirives from Old-English meaning Supreme bieng and was adapted from proto-Germanic meaning roughtly that wich is invoked and indicates some connection to possible Proto-Indo-European words for libations (which is a centeral act of worship in many european cultures).

Deity:
c.1300, "divine nature;" late 14c., "a god," from O.Fr. deité, from L.L. deitatem (nom. deitas) "divine nature," coined by Augustine from L. deus "god," from PIE *deiwos (see Zeus).

Deity is of newer origin having the earliest record in English found in the fourteenth century and drives from an Old-French word which came from an even earlier Latin word meaning "divine nature". This seems to lead us into a loop but what if we think of this as sacred nature. Sacred is of latin origin meaning the same as holy which is Germanic. Holy which is thought to drive from a concept of preserving something that is complete and cannot be violated.

Through this etymological experiment I am lead with Deity as an Acknowledge Sacred Nature. However the word nature is a tricky one that has many meanings in today's modern vernacular and one I have began to avoid because of its implication of duality thinking of mans separation from it.

Nature:
c.1300, "essential qualities, innate disposition," also "creative power in the material world," from O.Fr. nature, from L. natura "course of things, natural character, the universe," lit. "birth," from natus "born," pp. of nasci "to be born," from PIE *gene- "to give birth, beget" (see genus). Original sense is in human nature. Meaning "inherent, dominating power or impulse" of a person or thing is from late 14c. Nature and nurture have been contrasted since 1874.

The history of this word is fascinating and again a recent English word from the 14^th century. The suggested meaning of essential qualities, creative power in the materiel world” speaks to me in deriving from the possible proto-indo-european meaning for birth. Birth is a creative act – how interesting?

I propose that a deity is an agent of creativity. But here is the thing we are all agents of creativity. Creativity is forming something new out of what is already there. There is no creativity in a void for all creative activities are a result of a continues creative processes we are all caught up in. With this in mind Deity then becomes another word for co-creator. In the animist perspective what is a person and what is person-hood about? ultimately I think it comes down to being an agent of creativity or a co-creator.

Because of this line of thought the distinction of deities has become redundant to me and is simply another way to think about the animist concept of person-hood as proposed by Irving Hallowell, Graham Harvey and others. Secondly this has lead me to thinking about the divine, life, and love being embodied by the suggested Proto-Indo-European word deiwos which I think of as the one-soul we all share. I really can no longer think of myself as a polytheist in the modern sense of the word. If anything I adhere to a theological strain of religious naturalism which sees the divine and sacred as being creativity itself. And that is a topic for another time.

7 Unitarian Universalist principles through the eyes of an animist

2011-08-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

As some of you know I am an active Unitarian Universalist but I rarely talk about how that fits into my world-view as an animist. I have been thinking upon this topic for some time and feel it is time and try and address this topic more directly. For those who are unfamiliar with UU it is a religion that has no official dogma or doctrine but instead gathers together as church over a commitment to shared values. Because of this you can find the full spectrum of world-view within UU from Atheist, Agnostic, Humanist, Deist, Naturalist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Neopagan and more. These values are best described in 7 principles which have evolved over time through deliberation amongst the Unitarian Universalism Association of Congregations. These principles are not set in stone, and there has been recent movement to revise them. Their hasn't always been seven either; the seventh was added in the 80's to reflect the growing influence of earth-centred worldviews in our religion. Here I wish to explore these principles as they directly relate to my own worldview as an Animist.

We affirm and promote:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

This is a big one for me as an animist. As you can imagine I take a much broader stance on this because of the implementation of person. When these words where penned it is unquestionable that person was being used in the narrow sense of human-beings. Since the UU has a long history of Religious Humanism (not be confused with Secular Humanism) there can be a tendency towards human-centrism which I personally challenge and would like to see the UU move into a post-humanist religion to broaden their inclusiveness outside of the human experience. In this I want to see the UU expand their commitments to the greater ecological community around them. And this has been happening, though slower then I would like.

One example I can think where this is being tried is the growing practice of an Animal Blessing service. The idea is that people bring the animal people of their life to the service and the minister blesses them. However, I think this is backwards. Why is it we are the ones doing the blessing when it is truly the animals in our lives who are blessing us every day? I think an animal blessing should be an act of acknowledging the blessings our animal friends give us. This idea could be expanded into the plants, insects, ecological phenomenon, and land-marks.

To me affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person is everything we are in relation to and connected to. It is a commitment to respect and honour our life-place where where are churches are and to act upon the benefit of the larger ecological community and not just the funny hairless apes called humans.

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

Here I wish the word human would be omitted and is for too human-centric. However if we remove human from the phrasing it becomes more broad and inclusive (and inclusive is a corner stone of UU faith). By broading our conserns of justice, equity,and compassion beyound the human experience we have to commit our selves to environmentalism in a real an practical way. If we acknowledge the person hood of our ecological community then this principle demands we act upon that in very real ways. In ways UU is good at this; many congregations are quite environmental minded and long been proponents of fair-trade and local food. UU congregations tend to be mindful of things like recycling, and energy conservation within the realms of our influence. However, if we expand person-hood in the animist sense this work that benefit the whole of the ecological community becomes a religious imparative.

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

This is where the radical inclusivity comes in. The usage of the word congregations is on the human-centric side. But if we expand our sense of community to the whole of our life-place this starts to speak to me even more. The other problem is the word spiritual is ambiguous and can mean anythings to many people, both positive and negative. I would suggest a rewording of Acceptance of one another and encouragement in a fulfilling and sustainable life, to not limit this imperative only amongst ourselves but to all that we are in relationship with. This opens us up to ask questions like what is the full an sustainable life for our food? It is a challenging question because we ultimately need to eat are food which is something we are in relationship with. This questioning and thinking directly challenges factory farming, feed lots, and the green-washing (to steel a word from a friend) of capitalism.

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

This is a tricky one. What is truth? Many religions seek to make truth something that is fixed. However, I feel that at its core UU is one of the few non-duality traditions in western culture. They began questioning the trinity and the divinity of Christ, the validity of hell and salvation. We continue to struggle with the division of science and religion and often times find harmony between them. Many UU's have their duality hang ups- even me. But non-duality is rarely addressed with UU and I think it should be because of this principle alone. If we take truth as a non-duality concept it does away with the I'm right / your wrong mentality and sees truth as a subjective perspective on reality. It makes truth and experiential concept and not an absolute. Given the acceptance of one another stated above then this reinforces our radical inclusive and through the eyes of animist means we are responsible to assist each other in developing healthy relationships with all that is around us.

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

This is a big one for UU. UU came out of the congregational tradition where decision making was deliberated through method of democracy. The kind of democracy often practices with UU is direct democracy and places the decision of the UUA within the members of the congregation. Sometimes this can create a slow movement of change within the church but this movement is deliberated through its members. As an animist the conscience part is of importance because if we except the person-hood of all within our life-place then when we deliberate together we have to conscience consider the impacts our choices have amongst the greater ecological community. By doing so we bring a deeper sense of meaning to the democratic process.

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

This is where we have to act upon our convictions. If this is our goal then environmental along with peace and justice activism is a religious act. As an animist this commitment doesn’t stop at the human experience but to the complete well being of the planet. This is perhaps one of the most difficult and challenging aspects, because we have to act within our realm of control. We have to acknowledge our limitations as not to become burnt out and ineffective. We also have to be careful not to become overwhelmed with what we cannot do. This is where a community that bands together with these values can be more effective then individuals. To often this I see this is left up to individual UU to act and it should be a collaborative religious right. I have long held we need to be more visible amongst our larger communities and this is why. This simple phrase which is printed on the backs of our order of service and the first thing we turn to when asked what is UU demands we act. Acting as an animist means being ever mindful of the impact we have upon the larger life-place around it and the other-than-human persons.

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

As an animist UU this is where all the other principles intersect. Commitment to community is a broader concept that extends to the environment, democracy becomes a commitment to environment, searching truth becomes a commitment to respectful relationships with those outside the human experience, and we are called to act upon these convictions.

The interesting thing is this is the “new” principle which was heavily advocated for in the 80's by UUs who where largely pagan but speaks with more volume then I think they ever imagined or intended. For me it puts all of the other principles into focus as a deeper commitment not only to the human community but to the greater community of life-place and the planet itself.

Sometimes I wonder if the web is the best metaphor and would suggest removing the term web entirely. It becomes a statement of commitment because we know we are connected an related and our faith is enacted through the relationships in our life. IT reminds me that relationships are not simply between me and other humans, but in the greater context of animism is with all my interactions with the world which is manifested directly through the land I live in completeness and I am as much the land as the trees, rivers, birds, mammals, insects . . .etc.

With all that said and done, it is not an easy path as a UU and particularly not for an Animist UU. We are not always going to be able to fulfil these commitments. We will get in the way of ourselves and each-other. And we will not always act in respect. But this is why the underlining concept of radical inclusive is so important. As an animist this inclusivity has to be extended beyond the human experience and teaches me to be mindful of that around me. Radical inclusivity also means we have to hold one another accountable and responsible for our actions.

Not Pagan

2011-08-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

At one time I wanted to be pagan and i was pagan. I read all the literature and attended ceremonies and marched the party line. The party line would change from time to time. I progressed from generic Wicca to Druidry to Celtic reconstructionism before I found none of it felt right for me. Since a child I looked at nature as the blueprint of the divine. An attitude which is not very well welcomed by my conservative-christian parents. Naturally the claim of earth-centric religion appealed to me. Along with this I had a desire to be in touch with my ancestors. Whom at the time I saw in the classic western sense of people from the past who contributed to my DNA. So this lead me to Celtic/Brythonic and Anglo-Saxon verities of neopaganism. Through this exploration key differences would arise in my studies that lead me to feel more and more that I was not pagan but something else.

Key issues I have with paganism:

focus on ceremony and ritual over theology, cosmology, philosophy, world-view, and discipline.

Often time I find that these things came from the ceremonial and ritualistic. I believe that ceremony and ritual are profound acts of creative which arise from theology, cosmology, philosophy, world-view and discipline. My ceremonies are conversations that are part of a greater relationship with the land.

an emphasis on anthropomorphic deities

This topic will have to be a separate post. For now I will say, deities have little influence in my practice and beliefs. It is not that I reject a belief in them, only that I do not concern myself with them and are not relevant to my practice or personal beliefs. Secondly, I do not attribute human characteristic to the broader cosmic influences they represent.

supernaturalism, spirits, other-worlds

I cannot except that there is anything outside of the realm of nature. This does not mean that I do not except the unexplained in my beliefs and practices, but that the unexplained is a part of the physical/materiel universe. And I do not protest that humanity has or can have a complete understanding of the physical/materiel universe because mystery is an integral part of that. However, I regard the physical/materiel universe and that within it as being inherently sacred and should be worshipped in the Unitarian universalist sense of considering that which has worth. To me there are no other worlds/dimensions or ethereal spirits. I have come to learn this is a common outlook found within religious naturalism which I will write about in the future.

dualism and duality thinking

This is a big one and those who know me will know that this is a hot topic for me. I will inevitably dedicate more to this topic in the future. For know I will simple state that I make no distinction between spirit and mater. Many of the divisions found within modern culture and in effect neo-paganism (such as the four elements) I do not adhere to.

practising magic(k)

Not every form of neo-paganism practices magic however it is a very prominent feature in most forms of neo-paganism. Many sects of neo-paganism focus heavily and sometimes exclusively upon magic(k). Their is the high-ceremonialism to simplistic sorcery/sympathy magic(k). I know there are a few different perspectives on magic(k) and I will not split hairs about magic/magick. However the most common understanding is that of Alistair Crowley’s definition “the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will” which often gets interpreted as individual human will. In this context magic(k) can become too inward of a practice that projects ones personal will onto the outside world. Granted not all paganism is this way, but there is a fare share of this attitude out there I felt it bore mentioning. Likewise the rational side of me has a hard time including practices such as tarot or astrology into my worldview.

nature as metaphor

Often times I found an attitude in neo-paganims that treats nature as a metaphor for their own personal lives. What I mean is they project aspects of themselves onto the natural world. An other tendency is that aspects of nature are forced into Jungian archetypes as a template to deal with deities. I do not treat nature as a metaphor and try very hard not to project or romanticize it. I try to deal with it as it is through observation, subjective experience, and scientific understanding. It is not something seprete from me that I escape into or celibate on holiday. It is my sacred reality.

lack of ecological awareness

This is a big one for me. If one is to claim nature as the centre of their religion, spirituality, and faith, they have to look to the ecology around them. Not to gods of distant lands worshipped in other times by a culture that does not directly influence you. My faith, religion, and spirituality foremost comes from the very ground where I stand, air I breath, and the present moment. This is a hard way to live and requires knowing the land, not only ecologically but personally. My ceremonies, rituals, sacred narratives, and even deities evolve from relationship with the land in the context of the time I live. I do not see this very often reflected in neo-paganism.

As I conclude, I would like to make it clear that I understand that not all of these things pertains to all neo-paganism. Much of this does not pertain to reconstructional polytheism but that is a topic for another time. What I have mentioned is the broader mainstream attitudes I find and reasons why I diverge from those lines of thought. I am not trying to refute or question these held beliefs, only state why I do not hold them. But these difference are significant enough that I feel uncomfortable with the term. I feel paganism has become to broad of a term that doesn't apply to my beliefs, practices, and world-view.

Why the human hating?

2011-08-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been in a lot of conversations around the subject of environmentalism and the self-loathing of their humanness. It is easy to feel discouraged and even depressed by the current state of our global ecology but to jump to the conclusion that we are inherently evil because in our recent past our species has collectively acted like a spoiled little brat? The common metaphor of humans beings as a cancer on the earth is wrong. First the earth has survived ice ages and massive meteorites in the past. There is some evidence that dinosaurs over extended beyond the sustainability of their resources. There are narratives in southwestern tribes how their ancestors had squandered their resources and destroyed the world before this one and the survives escaped into this one through a whole in the sky. I am not bringing this up as justification but to point out that the earth is a lot more resilient then we give it credit for. I am not worried about the end of the world, not until the star Sol becomes a red giant and the earth's orbit will get incinerated by the sun. I might concede to the notion that humanity is suffering from a social-virus which is negatively effecting the world in dangerous ways.

What makes me cringe is the thought that these negative behaviours which have escalated over the last 150 years via the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism is indicative of some human nature? No, we are not perfect and there is no perfection so quite holding your species up to that false pedestal because you are bound to be disappointed. If anything the propaganda and indoctrinations of things like manifest destiny, individual self interest, capitalism, and even remnants form the enlightenment, have convinced us that these negative behaviours are a part of our genetic make up is complete and utter bull shit!

As a recent post at Adventures in Animism on this same subject points out:

“For 99% of the time humans have been here, we behaved like a healthy species.”

And historically she is right. If we place are current circumstances into the context of time humans have not always behaved this way. Perhaps it is a collective sociological disorder of our species? You might ask. Well, See – here we can approach the situation in a rational way. We can look at when humanity began acting this way, times when it got progressively worse, try to identify a triggering event, and work towards the rehabilitation of humanity as a whole. If you prefer the virus metaphor, then we must have contracted it some where? We can study it and develop and antidote. In either case, we are social creatures and this virus or disorder has effectively broken down our the social-fibre which keeps us healthy as a whole. At any rate, there are much more useful metaphors that can motivate. The self-loathing “save the world; kill yourself” is atrophied.

Heather Awen on Stripmining Crystals

2011-08-08T15:01:00.000-07:00

Heather Awen at Adventures in Animism posted a provocative article on Witches Vox that has been flooding her in-box with email from eco-pagans patting her on the back for speaking out or the reactionary new-age consumerist pagans who desperately wish to justify their green-washing. I will quote a few excerpts I found exceptional but I highly recommend that you read theentire article on her blog and leave her a comment of encouragement.

When discussing the ecological and social ramifications of mining crystals being sold at a convention she was attending the women gave Heather the “typical New Age defence” that “They want to heal the Earth and work with us or they wouldn’t allow themselves to be minded.”

Heather continues;

“There a dozen rants I could on from that, like children sex slaves want to be sex slaves because they are, or animals want to be factory farmed because they are, but I trust that my readers are smart people and have already seen the absurdity in this New Age justification.

It is historically documented that many indigenous people had power stones, usually crystals or meteorites. However I don’t know of any medicine woman or shaman who had 250 ones from different parts of the world. For me, part of the sacredness of these stones is that they are rare and the way they are found is special. A gift from the Earth is different than an online shopping spree. . .

“Nature and her harmony of evolution tell me that everything here has a reason for being here. I can’t help but wonder if crystals and tourmaline and tiger’s eye are meant to be underground. Humans are pretty ignorant. There might be some very important job they are doing in their growing colonies. Ripping them out with near-slave labor, that seems really dangerous. People can whine all they want about how the crystals are here for human healing and ascending, but the deal is, as a deep ecologist and an animist, I know that nature is not human-centric. The gimme gimmes have to stop. We don’t just get to take everything we want. That’s the legacy of colonialism in us. . .”

Read the entire article here

Lughnasadh on the Palouse

2011-08-08T14:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the small group of UU naturalists and pagans gathered to celebrate the Irish harvest festival in honour of the sun god Lugh. One of the members of the groups is studying to become a clergy person in ADF (a neo-pagan sect of druidry) and was the celebrant of the ceremony. I greatly respect and enjoy the perspectives offered by my Druid friend. Much of her views reflected my own when I was actively participating in Druidry and Celtic Reconstructionism. It is refreshing to find someone who is in control of her own spiritual trajectory and ADF suites her needs and philosophy well.

Ritualism and ceremony is a sticky subject within the context of nature-centric and neo-pagan paths. To me ceremony and ritual is an act of creativity between the humans and the place they live along with other things they are relating to. Ceremonies and rituals must be thoughtful and genuine growing organic from the relationship between us and the land itself. Importing broad religious ceremonies form a source like ADF makes me nervous. When we praised Lugh I had to wonder what the Irish sun god had to do with summer in the Palouse? I am familiar with Lugh through narrative and practice with other druids in the past. I may not have lived on the Palouse as long as others but I have grown a distinctive feel for what the land seeks from ceremony and practice from us, and the focus on lugh seemed to do little to honer the Palouse. Fortunately, I was given a few small parts, where as the celebrant was of open mind and not as rigidly organized as other druids I knew. I was able then to lend that focus to place and time through guided meditation and an offering to the land that kept some of the ceremony in relation to the land.

An interesting turn in the ceremony is when we where to bring an offering and give thanks to that which we felt responsible for our own talents. I think the celebrant was expecting something more along the bardic talents of song and dance. However it became a segment of acknowledgements of strengths we had and gratitude through personal covenants to community (in a human and broader ecological sense). Which filled me with admiration for all of those I had gathered with.

There was a time in the ceremony where things came into sharp clarity which was a result of those gathered and our willingness to be open to spontaneity (which can be a hard trait to find). We awaited an omen, church-bells rang which we felt told us the world was good, a lady bug joined us by floating about between us telling us to be child like and the breeze picked up calming and cooling us. The celebrant was still waiting an omen. So I spoke from within in me. “I looked for an omen. Church bells rang, I saw a lady bug, and the wind picked up, but still I waited. What was I waiting for?” She looked at me quizzically, then smiled, “I don't know.” Some moments of silence passed and another member spoke up “Recognition. . .” He said, “that we acknowledge these things and their meanings.” The celebrant's eyes light up and she said “Exactly!” and explained that omens can come from within as well and our omen was that we recognized the goodness of the world and we should be childlike in nature and to appreciate calmness. She seemed satisfied by the omen and we began closing the ceremony.

Upon closing up ceremonies I was given the charge to thank the “kindred” which I approached as being the one-soul we all share and to thank the ancestors which I emphasized are not just by blood but also by those who walked the land before us. I found thanking Lugh and saying he can stay if he wishes or leave if he must a bit odd because he IS the sun; where is the sun going go on a hot summer afternoon? It is the anthropomorphism of deities and nature spirits which bothers me. I have stopped anthropomorphizing things the deities stood for into forms like Lugh the Sun god or Thor god of Thunder and take them as these things themselves. The structure of the ceremony was built around these deities and nature spirits I find odd. It feels like relating to what we want them to be instead of what they actually are.

After ceremony, we began to play games. They where mostly board games and the friendly competition was fun. This aspect of the afternoon fit the best with my understanding of summer on the Palouse as being a time of play, frolicking, and mischief. One summer solstice ceremony me and my friend presented as a Sunday service for the UU church a year ago the day before I left involved the sun becoming jealous of the night sky and stuffing it into a seed. Trickster shows up and steels the seed releasing the night and wrapping the jealous sun up in it to realize that the climate went from being to warm to to cold. An agreement was made that the sun would have summer and the night would have winter. The intent was to create a new narrative about summer instead of borrowing from elsewhere and to show the playfulness of summertime through the actions of the trickster. The major trickster figure of the Palouse is that of Coyote, however we made the trickster generic to allow others to fill in the narrative themselves. Playing games fit in with the spirit of playfulness that is summer on The Palouse.

Overall, my comments are matters of difference of world view. Our group tries to be an inclusive group where others worldviews and practices are allowed to be respected and honoured, and they are never the same. We try to encourage others to share practices and wold views among us to cultivate our own covenant to the living world (however we may relate to it) and yesterdays ceremony accomplished that quite nicely. In essence, though some of the druid structure felt awkward to me at first, it was fluid enough to not only mold to the groups need but to that of the lands.

I am back on The Plaouse . . . for now

2011-08-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Punny Human's blog The New Animist and Heather Awen's blog Adventures in Animism for some time now. I am always impressed by their frank candour in which they talk about themselves. If you have not discovered these blogs I highly recommend you check them out. I am a terrible blogger because I really dislike talking about my self. When I post here I seem to end up pontificating. Both these bloggers have in subtle ways encouraged me to try blogging again (thank you). This is my second try in writing something more personal today. The first attempt (which I might post later) spiralled into pontificating about literature as cultural artifact which is a rough outline of a thesis I want to write if I get into gradschool.

I suppose if I am going to make this personal I must start with here I am now. Which is the focus of this blog (connecting to the where it is we find our selves in the present moment). I am sitting inside my little room at my friends house where I am staying and looking out over the trees and toward the sky of The Palouse as I struggle to write something personal.

People who have read this blog before will know that I have written and spoken about The Palouse before. However, in the past year I was forced to leave for financial reasons and ended up along the Upper Snake River Plain where I grew up. I took a few classes at the near by university and instantly missed the small intimate environment of my old school in the valley. I managed to find the money I needed to return and instead of living in the valley I am living on The Palouse. Though I love the school there, the valley was a reactionary conservative community that could be as smoggy as some of the bigger cities I have lived and visited, and I always sought refuge with the Unitarian Universalist community here. When I left a year ago I did not know that I would see this place, or the people here again. I am overwhelmed with a sense of being welcomed back I have not known before. I am used to leaving a place and never returning.

When I was away, I felt I had missed this place. That I had somehow taken roots into the soil here in a very real way. I had enacted what I had been talking and writing about. I have never known a place so intimately. Part of that intimacy came from learning the local language of the indigenous people who have called this place home since prehistory. Through learning the language I learned the stories of the place and it opened me up to a means of relating with the land that I had never known before. I do not think it is necessary to know the language and the stories to have this kind of relationship with a place, but that it is helpful. From that foundation my relationship with the Inland Northwest has expanded into my own narratives about the land populated with relationships which are unique to my circumstance and genuine in their development. Being an animist is all about relationship, not only with other humans but with the creativity happening all around me and with the place itself and all that comprises that place.

What bothers me, is upon pursuing gradschool and wanting resemblance of an actual career I am going to have to leave this place again, and worry if I will find this feeling of home again. But, I know I should not feel to disheartened. I now know through the lessons The Palouse and the valley have taught me that I can have this relationship with the land somewhere else, and I know how to develop such a relationship. I wonder what other homes may find me on the horizon of the future.

Inverview with rapper, songwriter, and feminist entrepreneur, Kellee Maize

2011-08-05T10:34:00.000-07:00

Pittsburgh girl Kellee Maize has been making some splashes in the Hip Hop and Rap community and has gained quite the following. She consistently ranks at the top of the list of female rappers on Amazon.com sales.

Her music is a brake from the mainstream interpretation of the genre and infused with power and positive empowerment. She is a performer, songwriter, feminist entrepreneur, who founded Näkturnal. According to the website:

“Näkturnal is a female-owned and operated agency focused on bringing together arts and corporate communities to create a more vibrant music & entertainment scene. We offer access to cutting-edge "underground" markets through unique promotional opportunities and thought-provoking events that inspire, move, and excite people; give talented artists and musicians a platform; unite people from diverse backgrounds for entertainment and networking purposes and raise awareness for worthy causes and issues. Näkturnal is in the business of creating a better world where artists, musicians, young entrepreneurs and activists get what they deserve, whether it's a stage, an open mind, or an opportunity.”

It turns out that Kellee is a reader of this blog. A few months ago she contacted us to let us know she enjoys the (little) work we do around here and we have been happy to let people know about her wonderful music by sharing her videos on YouTube with our readers and the following (much anticipated) exclusive e-mail interview.

***

When did you know that music was going to be a large part of your life?

Kellee: My mom says when i was little i was dancing and singing before I could walk And talk and music has always had a defining role in my life, helped me get through things and i have always been writing. Even though i didn’t have the confidence to make my own Music until i was much older, it was a part of every aspect of my life from a very young age.

I have to admit that Hip Hop and Rap is not my preferred musical style. What do you find is unique about Hip Hop and Rap as a form of musical expression and what draws you to it?

Kellee: That it is used by many as a form of activism, and you can fit a Lot of information into one song, and i love poetry, so it makes perfect sense to me :). AND, i have loved it since i discovered it at age 9!

From my experience your approach to Hip Hop and Rap is charged with a positive attitude and message that seems to contrast from what I have come to expect from a genre that comes off as egocentric male dominated aggression. Would this be an accurate observation (why or why not)?

Kellee: If you talking mostly mainstream, i would say yes you are Correct for the most part. There is a lot of underground hip hop that is conscious, and Empowering to women, there just isn't much that makes it into the mainstream.

What challenges have you and do you continue to face as a female hip hop and rap performer?

Kellee: There isn’t a lot of mainstream templates or examples that make it easy for people to know what to expect, so the level of judgement is Much higher being a female. And breaking the stereotype that women need To talk about sex and men can be challenging, because it’s not what i Write about for the most part. I Certainly talk about love and sex here and there but, its not a central theme in my work.

One of the features of you music is a spiritual message of being one, would you say that is accurate and could you expand upon how your spirituality influences your music?

Kellee: I would say my spirituality is infused in making the music on every level. IT Inspires my actual lyrics, my process of making music and the research and drive to actually follow this dream.

From reading your website, bio, and watching The City of Champions video it seems clear that Pittsburgh is an integral part of your identity. In what ways does this reflect in your personal spiritual practices?

Kellee: This article explains everything to a tee. I Love Pittsburgh and felt like a magnet brought me here. It is an amazing place.

Who are some preforming artists who have been influential in your own music career?

Kellee: The list is gigantic, but just to name a few: Michael Jackson, Madonna, Tori Amos, Lauryn Hill, Michael Franti, Ani Difranco, Outkast, and The Roots

Are there any artists inarticulate you would recommend to someone like me who is largely unfamiliar with the world of alternative/independent/underground rap that would challenge the stereotype we see in mainstream media?

Kellee: The Roots are still active, certainly Lauryn hill, and Outkast, but also artists like Talib Kweli, Immortal Technique, KRS 1, Apollo Poetry, and there is a local group that comes to mind called RXC...again, this list is incredibly long, but that's a good start.

I will be sure to check out those recommendations, and keep us informed on your musical and entrepreneurial projects; we will be sure to share them here. I thank you fro talking the time out of your busy schedule for this interview.

Kellee: Thank you so much, your support means the world to me!

***

For more information you can learn more and see her music videos on Kellee's website. I Also recommend exploring Näkturnal's website.

Word

2011-02-07T09:25:00.001-08:00

Post paganism keepin it real since 2007... what a long strange trip its been!

Re-enchanting Modernity: Imagining tradition as a psycho-social concept

2011-02-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Journal of Psycho-Social Studies

Vol 2 (2) 2003
Re-enchanting Modernity: Imagining tradition as a psycho-social concept

Dave Green
Reprinted with out permission... we are such rouges...
Since the Enlightenment...very few ideas have proven themselves to be as enduring in western social theory as the continuous struggles between 'the powers of tradition' and 'the forces of modernity'. Like the theme of organic nature confronting artificial culture, the binary opposition of tradition and modernity in the work of many social theorists remains fixed as a primary identity-creating and meaning-generating story. (Luke, 1996, p109)

One of the ironies of recent contemporary sociological theory is that whilst theoreticians seek to incorporate micro and the macro perspectives, and bridge the gap between the psychological and the social, one important concept which does both of these eminently has been discarded. I am speaking here of ‘tradition’. Ironically, theorists of late modernity such as Giddens (1990, 1991, 1994) and Beck (1992) have demonstrated that tradition is an important locus of symbolic, psychological, and social orientation only for then to make the concept redundant with their heralding of a new epoch - post-traditional society (Giddens, 1994). For them, it is the absence of traditional structures, practices and beliefs in modernity which has provoked contemporary existential and ontological crises. This lack simultaneously reinforces and radicalises processes of modernisation – in opposition to postmodernisation – as individual narratives, rather than traditional customs, take centre stage in identity construction. All too often sociology presents the demise of tradition as a fait accompli, with rationalisation, bureaucracy, and contingency replacing the magic, kinship, and fatalism of premodernity. Given this, moderns tend to orientalise traditional societies, in the process applying epithets such as ‘primitive’, ‘superstitious’, and ‘static’.

The final irony, however, is that the certainty and triumphalism of such post-traditionalism, in an otherwise uncertain world, has prompted other theorists to question the morbidity of tradition in contemporary society. In particular, two polar view-points have developed. One idea, allied to Giddens, which Heelas (1996, pp3-7) terms the 'radical thesis', also known as radical detraditionalization, 'entails the decline of the belief in pre-given or natural orders of things' (ibid., p2) and 'a shift of authority: from 'without' to 'within'' (ibid.). On the other hand, there are theorists who argue against this ''triumphalist' version of detraditionalization' (ibid.), instead viewing processes of detraditionalization as co-existing alongside existing traditions and, indeed, processes of retraditionalization - the rejuvenation of past traditions in forms acceptable to contemporary culture. As Heelas (1996, p3) states, this 'coexistence thesis' rather than envisaging detraditionalization 'as leading to across-the-board eradication of all traditions, it is seen as competing, interpenetrating or interplaying with processes to do with tradition-maintenance, rejuvenation and tradition construction' (ibid).

Heelas (ibid.) argues that proponents of the radical thesis tend to see the social in terms of binary oppositions with the openness of detraditionalization replacing the closed fixity of tradition. In other words, tradition tends toward ascribed and hierarchically differentiated ways of life, whereas post-traditional society concerns a reflexive existentialism which is catalyzed by global processes of fragmentation (Luhmann, 1990, 1996; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 1996).

There are, however, numerous criticisms of this radical position. Heelas (1996, p 6-7) himself argues that in some ways the radical thesis, when linked to theories of reflexive modernization, appears to undermine the modern credentials of the reflexive theory (Berger et al, 1974; Jameson, 1991). Bauman picks up this theme when he sees detraditionalization as the dissolution of foundational morality to be replaced by a contingent postmodern ethic sourced from the 'moral capacity of the self' (Bauman, 1996, p. 58; also see Luckmann, 1996). Given this, Heelas (1996) argues that the

best way to criticize the (radical) loss-of-tradition thesis is to argue that 'the traditional' (serving to guage what has been lost) is not as tradition dominated as might be supposed, that the 'modern/post-modern' is not as detraditionalized as might be claimed, and that detraditionalizing processes do not occur in isolation from other processes, namely those to do with tradition-maintenance and the construction - or reconstruction - of traditional forms of life. (Heelas, 1996, p7)

Interestingly, although Giddens posits a thoroughly detraditionalized modernity, a milieu where tradition and detraditionalizing processes co-exist would contain many of the existential struggles of which Giddens writes. Rather than, however, not only having to choose between a plurality of detraditionalized lifestyles, one would also have to choose between a plurality of traditional and detraditionalized sources of authority. In addition to pointing to the continued existence of the traditional in contemporary milieux, supporters of the coexistence thesis question the characterization of traditions as depicted by proponents of the radical detraditionalization thesis (Gross, 1992, pp4-5). Importantly, traditions are not static and monolithic, they are human constructions which can be transformed through human agency. Indeed, many traditions do not have the historic pedigree with which they are normally and nominally associated. Hobsbawm (1983, p1) famously argues that ''Traditions' which appear to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented.' (also see Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983). These 'invented traditions' imply a continuity with the past that they do not in actually possess. That is, tradition becomes a receptacle of phantasy and imagination. Indeed, such invented traditions are often linked to the development of nationalism and contemporary citizenship, often implying a continuity and solidarity with a nation's heroic or romantic past. Following from this Gross (1992) argues that for such inventions to be regarded as traditions they must meet three criteria. Tradition:

* at the very minimum a tradition must link at least three generations;

* must carry moral and spiritual prestige from past to present;

* convey a sense of continuity between past and present. It must convey an impression that it has been sequentially passed down through time. (Gross, 1992, p10)

This idea of the transmission of tradition is crucial. Shils (1981, p13), for example, argues that traditions are re-interpreted by their successive recipients. This implies that processes of tradition maintenance, like processes of modernization, are reflexive (Mellor, 1993; Adam, 1996; Mellor and Shilling, 1997; Walliss, 2002). Indeed, whilst tradition has been shaped by mediation, modernization and globalization, modernity itself has become paradoxically traditional as it seeks to cling to its Enlightenment heritage in the face of contemporary uncertainty (Gross, 1992, pp34-61). Given this, many theorists criticise the clear-cut dichotomy often made between traditional and modern society. Adam (1996), for example, echoes Beck (1992) in invoking the reflexive, multiple nature of modernity and in doing so makes a case for the reflexive, multiple impact of tradition on modernity (note Eisenstadt, 2000). According to Gross (1992, pp62-76) this tradition/modern dichotomy produces two main reactions: On one hand, the Giddensian view that a lack of tradition allows for the potential for a freer, unchained self; and, on the other, that the lack of tradition is the lack of a meaningful context in which to function. The first premise is based on the false assumptions that there is limitless agency for the detraditionalized selves of reflexive modernity, and that 'traditional society' was structured only through the collective conscience of communities (Macfarlane, 1978; Benton, 1982; Campbell, 1996; Poster, 1996; Rose, 1996). The second, that there is a lack of traditional authority in modern society. Rather than being lost to the past, traditional sources of authority have fragmented, become plural, and often oppositional (Bell, 1976; Taylor, 1989; Fiske, 1993; Hunter, 1994; Maffesoli, 1996). Importantly, despite such diffusion, they still underpin modern trajectories and institutions.

Secularisation as detraditionalization

One of the most interesting test cases of detraditionalization concerns contemporary religiosity. Theses concerning secularisation - 'the process whereby religious thinking, practice and institutions lose social significance' (Wilson, 1966, p14) – have dominated the sociology of religion for the last 40 years. Significantly secularisation - particularly this dominant Wilsonian thesis - can be viewed as a subset of wider processes of detraditionalization:

Wilson (1975) examines the fate of charisma in contemporary society. Following Weber he views both traditional and charismatic types of authority as quintessentially premodern. He argues that power is anthropomorphised in premodernity and so it makes sense to invest power in a particular ruler or messiah. However, in modernity charisma is little more than a romantic throw-back which can be mobilized, for Wilson (1976), only in 'small social movements operating at the periphery of society and with no capacity to change anything of significance except perhaps the lives of a few followers' (Aldridge, 2000, p73). Charisma does not even constitute a counterculture for Wilson, only diffuse 'random anti-cultural assertions' (Wilson, 1976, p110). These religious activists, even when they achieve publicity, rarely achieve their goals. Thus, for Wilson, religion is part of an affective culture of Gemeinschaft (Robertson, 1993, p2). This has been replaced by an urbanised, detraditionalized, secular Gesellschaft dominated by expert systems and ties based not on affect (and affection) but on social obligation (Wilson, 1982, p154).

Paganisms and tradition

For practitioners, the post-war rise of new religious movements in the West as party of a counter-cultural search for identity, moral certainty, and community, however, would seem to constitute more than ‘random anti-cultural assertions’. Whilst they are in no sense able to represent the sort of ‘total religious institution’ represented by the premodern Christian church, they do nevertheless present a staunch critique of secularisation, and by extension, of the radical detraditionalization thesis. One of the most significant and interesting challenges has been presented by that loose constellation of earth religions known as Paganism. Indeed, Paganisms self-consciously use the term ‘traditions’ to describe their particular spiritual paths; for example, the Wiccan, druidic, heathen, and shamanic traditions. In turn, these separate traditions are loosely bound by a set of spiritual contours - beliefs in cosmic interconnectedness; panentheism; animism; polytheism; a belief in the efficacy of magic; and a belief in the reciprocal link between seasonal cycles and of the behaviours of animals – human and non-human alike (Carpenter, 1996).

Rather like the wider New Age movement, Paganism is a complex bricolage, not only of differing magico-religious traditions, but of philosophical and social epistemes. In particular one can see the Pagan weltanschauung as being composed of ‘three stages of thought' (Harms, 1999, p 9):

1) the pre-modern or traditional, characterized by reference to tradition, authority (especially of a biblical nature), and lineages;
2) the modern, which emphasizes science, freedom of information, and grand attempts at systematization and the creation of metanarratives; and,
3) the postmodern, which manifests in an emphasis on local and personal knowledges, collage, humor and fluctuating belief.
(Harms, 1999, p9)

The flexibility of this epistemic bricolage functions as a legitimation strategy enabling Paganisms to adapt to, and colonise, societal change: Paganisms are primarily modern forms of spirituality, born of the post-War period, and as such reflect contemporary identity politics, with emphases on environmentalism and feminism, often within a pro-gay and lesbian spiritual idiom. In this sense they are rooted in Enlightenment anti-elitism, and libertarianism. They also share other Enlightenment sentiments; for example, the commitment to the interiorization of the other in their adoption and valorisation of the anti-types of ‘witch’, druid’ and ‘shaman’ (Eilberg-Schwartz, 1989); the insistence of the compatibility of scientific and magical discourse (Green, 2001); the systematisation of divergent premodern occult philosophies – for example, the Cabala, alchemy, and astrology - into modernist magical practices; and a commitment to the idea of human perfectibility, with magic increasingly viewed as a psychotherapeutic avenue of achieving spiritual enlightenment. Modern magic, however, has also accommodated contemporary societal changes with the inclusion a number of postmodern features, particularly its commitments to humour, play, and a Lyotardian scepticism towards metanarrative (Lyotard, 1984). Importantly, for the purposes of the arguments here, Pagans have made a central appeal to tradition and the resurrection of premodern practices:

Pre-modern philosophical currents are still very much part of contemporary Paganism and magic. Whilst Drury (2000, pp4-36) outlines a number of specific premodern occult currents which influenced Renaissance magic and the occult revival, and still influence contemporary magic – Gnosticism, the Cabala, the Hermetic Tradition, alchemy, and masonic traditions (Yates, 1964, 1987; Burckhardt, 1971; Barnstone, 1984; Andrews, 1998) – in a more general way Pagans draw inspiration from a pantheistic, pre-modern past. The Northern Traditions of Heathenism, or Odinism, for example, look to the pre-modern eddas and sagas of the Nordic and Teutonic mythos in order to create a contemporary spirituality which is grounded in the symbolism and glacial or monumental continuity of local landscapes (Blain, 2002; also Lash and Urry, 1994; Macnaghten and Urry, 1998, p236). Ralph Harrison, a prominent Odinist, for example, has discussed with me how his ritual sacrifices to the Gods, usually of mead or honey-flavoured wine, creates a spiritual link with the ritual tradition of the Northern European peoples simultaneously reproducing the reciprocal link between man and the gods and the religion in the past and present. Likewise, we see retraditionalization of pre-modern thought and practices in, for example, earth mysteries; in technoshamanic practices, matriarchal Goddess worship, the Celticization of many magical practices, and the Pagan penchant for deep ecology, all of which often hark back to a pre-modern utopia where humanity is seen as co-existing in harmony with nature; and, in the glacial cyclicity of the Pagan ritual calendar (Harvey, 1997, pp1-16).

Bricolage, morality and tradition

Given these differing epistemic currents, a number of commentators have stressed the syncretic, even globalized, nature of Paganism and magic-use (Simes, 1995; Beyer, 1998; Pike, 2001, Hetherington, 1996). Thus, Paganisms have been characterised as an eclectic spiritual bricolage of seemingly incongruous elements (Pike, 2001). The nature of this eclecticism, however, needs to be understood. That is, whilst eclectic, Pagan traditions are also contemporaneously cohesive:

Many commentators have labelled Paganisms as postmodern (Orion, 1995; Carpenter, 1996; Blain, 2002). Such a labelling is premature, however, as it ignores the aforementioned centrality of Enlightenment thought within Paganisms. Given the fundamentally modern nature of Paganisms, therefore, bricolage can be understood as a product of late modern processes of global disembedding and cultural syncretism, rather than of postmodern forms of de- and reconstruction. In such globalized and individualized late modern milieux, Pagans are free to appropriate disembedded elements and incorporate them into their own idiosyncratic forms of spiritual practice.

Unsurprisingly, notions of detraditionalization – particularly, the postulated shift in moral development from the moral foundationalism of traditional authority to the late modern self - has meant that morality has once again become an important source of sociological inquiry. One can see such late modern disembedding at work one looks at the role that morality within Paganisms. At first glance, morality within Paganisms seems confused – it is a ‘mixed spectrum’(Greenwood, 2000, pp179-208) – but only so because it is idiosyncratically constructed by each practitioner. The Wiccan Rede – ‘an it harm none, do as you will’ (Greenwood, 2000, pp 203-6) - and Crowleyan antinomianism – ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ - both embody detraditionalized selves. Otherwordly guidance does not dictate moral conduct, but acts as a Giddensian form of expertise in providing a loose moral framework for individual Pagans. Importantly, however, this ‘moral’ free will tends to be simultaneously re-embedded into the framework of that practitioner’s chosen tradition. This affords ontological security sans a strong moral determinism. That is, contra-Giddens, detraditionalized selves and forms of moral authority are perversely situated within processes of retraditionalization. As this Wiccan argues:

The Otherworld and my patron deities…they do give me guidance, yes…but I am free to do my will. I do tend take their advice and live by their moral…what do you…precepts. My experiences tell me to do that. However I am free to pick and choose, of course…There are so many choices. Being a Wiccan is important too. Being part of a greater whole and knowing that my choices make sense in that way.

Similarly, Paganisms are cohesive despite the accommodation of seemingly disparate elements, as bricolage consciously and deliberately tends to build around and embed within a central meta-tradition. That is, a process of retraditionalization. Thus, in the case of Eclectic Wicca – an avowedly progressive and syncretic form of witchcraft (Hutton, 2001, pp398-9) - other spiritual elements are built around Wiccan spirituality, with Wicca providing the focus of the other elements. As this respondent, a progressive Wiccan, confides:

My eclecticism is selective. At the bottom of it all, I’m still a Witch.

Similarly, the shaman, mentioned above, used UFOlogy as a focus for his shamanic practices, with extra-terrestrials being equated with spirits and other dimensions qua spirit world(s).

Bricolage, perhaps counter-intuitively in a late modern context, is therefore made cohesive through the strategic – the tactical (de Certeau, 1984) - use of tradition. Olav Hammer (2001) argues that New Agers use tradition as a legitimation strategy in order to give their practices and discourses an archaic authenticity and legitimacy. Pagans adopt a similar strategy, only, in the Pagan case, the use of tradition is more complex and interesting:

Firstly, many Pagan ‘traditions’, for example, Gardnerian Wicca, are based upon fictitious – or fictive – histories and fictional influences which are not rooted in spiritual traditions, but rather fictional histories and literary genres. This strategy is deliberate and it does not appear to matter to practitioners whether the tradition possesses historical authenticity. Practitioners often believe that they are tapping into ancient magical powers which predate Gardner’s post-war formulation of Wicca. As these Wiccans observe:

[Magical] power doesn’t belong just to Wicca. It’s as old as the hills…In fact it’s as old as the World. We borrow it for a while and then pass it on.

Gerald didn’t invent magic. We know now that Wicca is only fifty years old, but there were witches before that, our ancestors, whom we look to for inspiration.

In this case, Wicca becomes a tool for accessing these powers rather than a tradition with an authentic historical pedigree.

Secondly, the pagan use of tradition is not only a legitimation strategy it is an existential modality. Furthermore, it is a form of existential anchor, or canopy, contra-late modern uncertainty, which, in turn, facilitates existential and spiritual experimentation and transformation (note, Berger, 1967). As this ceremonial magician confides:

I suppose you could call me a Hermetic magician, though I mix this freely with Wicca and other sources…At heart though my magic is Hermetic…Thinking about it aligning my magical work with a long standing tradition makes me feel safe. It makes me think of the great magicians who have also used these same methods. It also helps me push back my boundaries…Without this feeling I couldn’t experiment in the same way…I’ve not put this into words before. It’s strange really this feeling of…feeling secure is important in making me more…transforming me spiritually. It grounds the energy.

That is, traditions, however invented, act as stable orientation points for magicians which then allows them - in the language of late modern social theory - to take magical risks. This use of tradition is akin to the esoteric praxis of concordance wherein a gloss of historical authenticity, however consciously created, is important for magical efficacy; but, from this foundation, the use of tradition counter-intuitively catalyses processes of bricolage, spirtual transformation, and imagination. These uses of tradition within Paganisms will now be explored in greater depth:

The Fictive and Tradition: Imaginative histories

Giddens’ conception of tradition implies that it constituted a monolithic world-view which dominated zeitgeist, phantasy, and imagination. On the contrary, reflexive traditions are vehicles of imagination (and imagineering) within late modernity. Certainly the renaissance esoteric philosophy which informs much West magical practice emphasise the role of the imagination in uncovering spiritual revelation. These ideas are akin to a Castoriadian take on the imaginary as reflexively constituting self and society:

Cornelius Castoriadis (1987) - in a psycho-social reformulation of Freud, via the Lacanian imaginary - argues that human imagination is creation ex nihilo; as such the creation of contemporary social structure is intrinsically linked to the individual radical imaginary, and phantasy, and imaginary representations at the societal level. An implication of this is that the imagination is the source of existential, social and philosophical innovation. It provides new ways of thinking about the world and reconstitutes the world through that thought and the creativity of the imaginary. Certainly, traditions within late modernity - particularly pagan traditions - are ways of imaginative revisioning and remaking of the world. Imaginative, that is fictive, historical revisionism is a prime example within magical traditions:

Aleister Crowley still exerts an extraordinary influence over contemporary magicians despite the difficulties of separating biographical fact from fiction both in his own life and in the legends that surround the founding of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a ritual magic organisation central to the European occult revival in the late nineteenth century. Indeed, many other of the ‘founding fathers’ of Pagan magical traditions have apparently fabricated the spiritual heritages of their practices. Carlos Castaneda, for example, a seminal influence on Western neo-shamanisms, has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt to have fabricated many of the events he reportedly experienced as apprentice sorcerer to the Yaqui brujo, Don Juan Matus (Castaneda, 1970; Noel, 1997). Another infamous example is the founding of Wicca by Gerald Gardner:
The previously received wisdom that Gerald Gardner founded contemporary Wicca after being initiated into a witchcraft coven which claimed an unbroken continuity with premodern witchcraft has recently been questioned by academics (for example, Kelly, 1991; Hutton, 1999, 2001) - and indeed, by Wiccans themselves. As this Wiccan states:
It must have come as quite a shock back then, but I think everyone now accepts that Wicca is a creation of The ‘Fifties – maybe the late ‘Forties at a pinch … It’s no coincidence that The Witchcraft Act was repealed in 1951 and, suddenly, Gerald comes out of his closet.

If Gardner’s account of the historical continuity of Wicca with ancient Paganism is suspect, where did his information about and images of Wicca originate? A major source is Egyptologist Margaret Murray’s two influential books, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology (1921), and The God of the Witches (1933). Murray’s thesis is based on an extremely selective interpretation of the historical facts and contends that the witches persecuted by the European witch-craze of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not diabolists or the victims of a paranoiac moral panic, but, rather, were Pagans who worshipped the Horned God and practised magic (Simpson, 1994; Hutton, 2001, p362; Wood, 2001). Murray’s thesis continues by arguing that the witch-cult derived their practices from an unbroken spiritual connection with an ancient, pre-Christian Paganism, developing ideas first postulated by Michelet (1862) and Leland (1974). According to Murray, this ‘old religion’ co-existed alongside Christianity quite happily until the time of the witch trials, actively aided and abetted by friends in high places; for example, William Rufus.

The story of how Gerald Gardner founded Pagan witchcraft is now the stuff of magical legend: Gardner, after a life in the colonies, returned home and immediately became interested in Murray's ideas. He settled in Hampshire in 1938 and joined an organisation called the Rosicrucian Fellowship of Crotona which staged plays at its own theatre in Christchurch. According to Hutton (1999, p43), the Fellowship 'represented a mystical branch of the movement of Co-Masonry, itself an outgrowth of Freemasonry which admitted women'. Gardner made friends within the group a number of whom revealed to him that they were members of an old coven of witches in the New Forest. This coven was presented to him as a survival of Murray's witch cult and he, himself, became initiated in 1940 by the high priestess, Dorothy Clutterbuck. Although Hutton (1999, pp45-8) does not doubt the veracity of Gardner's induction into a coven, what he does doubt is, firstly, that this was a survival of the Dianic Cult of Murray, and, secondly, that Dorothy was the priestess (Kelly, 1991, pp137-9).

Despite the ambiguous, highly probably fictitious, beginnings of Pagan witchcraft Gardner went on to publish its first texts in the shape of High Magic's Aid and Witchcraft Today. Aiden Kelly (1991) has traced the first written Wiccan rituals to Gardner's use of a Renaissance text called 'Ye Bok of ye Art Magical' rather than any transmitted knowledge from a pre-existing coven. Hutton (1999, p49) notes that the Aid 'commenced as a repository for notes which Gardner took from various systems, such as Cabala and Tarot, and then became the repository for the first known Wiccan rituals, initiation rites for the three progressive degrees'. Eventually these were more formally written as the first Book of Shadows - which began the tradition of every Wicca coven possessing its own individual book of shadows within which are written the basic outlines for that coven's ritual practice.

In sum, it is beyond reasonable doubt that the founding of Wicca is based upon a fictional event – Gardener’s supposed initiation by the New Forest Coven – and upon a fictional spiritual tradition – Murray’s thesis of an ancient Pagan witch-cult. Rather, Gardnerian Wicca is an amalgam of folk religious practices, obscure magical lore, and naturism galvanised by Gardner’s active imagination. Yet to dismiss Wicca as a fiction, even when the authenticity of religious traditions in the wider world is held as sacrosanct, is overly simplistic. Despite its basis in a fictitious event, history and thesis, Wicca has proved to be an increasingly popular spirituality which has undoubtedly spiritually transformed the lives of its practitioners. Wiccans appear unfazed by the reinvented status of their spiritual tradition, and indeed, are keen to be part of creating a new religious movement which is also said to tap into ancient avenues of empowerment. As this Wiccan states:
No-one…no Witch…takes the old Gerald and Dorothy story seriously. But what we tap into goes far further back than the 1950s. That’s not to talk about the Burning Times…What we are tapping into is a far older power…Gerald knew that. I now that this power has transformed my life in untold ways.

Given this spiritual power, the term fictive is more appropriate than fictional (Noel, 1997). Whereas the fictional implies an artificial textual foundation, the fictive transcends this arguing that the fictitious can spawn imaginative milieux which can have far-reaching existential and ontological effects. The fictive influences also require one to rethink one’s notion of tradition. Rather than a passive remnant of premodernity, tradition becomes dynamic, innovative and modern:

Tradition can thus be understood, contrary to sociological consensus, as the matrix of innovation and the dynamic process of forward transmission…and innovation as well as tradition can be trusted as expressive and authentic within communities. Continuity can thus be changed whilst change is mediated. (Pearson, 1999, pp233-4)

Traditions, therefore, are pro-active rather than retrogressive. They constitute practice, but are actively constituted by the imaginary, phantasy and through imagination. As this shaman states:

We tend to think of traditions as being rooted in the past. Of course they are, but…they…they are timeless. Being without time they are of the present and the future too. They exist as long as we can dream.

As this Druid adds:

It’s important to hand spiritual wisdom…and traditions down to other generations … Thinking about it … mmm … just as we pass the environment on to our children … well, traditions are forward looking in that way … They bend with the wind too, or at least with our ideas.

Thus, in contra-distinction to the late modernity of Giddens, traditions still appear to proliferate in contemporary Western culture, providing stable existential orientation points whilst simultaneously pro-actively adapting to change, particularly by tactical uses of bricolage (Magliocco, 1996). That is, traditions do not disappear in late modernity, rather they become reflexive (Mellor, 1993; Mellor and Shilling, 1997; Walliss, 2002). Understood in this way, traditions become forward looking within magical communities - the catalyst for existential change as well as ontological security. Such a view acts to critique both the radical detraditionalization thesis and Giddens’ (1994) notion of a post-traditional society. This dual nature of fictive magical traditions is demonstrated by a closer examination at the relationship between fiction and magic.

Traditions and fiction

Interestingly, such personal invention of fictional selves is not the only influence on contemporary magical practice. One sees the dynamism of tradition in the magical uses of works of fiction. As Phil Hine (1999) states:

For the last three decades or so, there has been a growing interest amongst contemporary magicians towards developing magical perspectives from non-historical sources or mythic worlds which are not rooted in a particular culture, but which have arisen from literature, science fiction, or modern, urban myths (Hine, 1999, p220).

In fact, the use of fiction predates the 1970s. One can detect earlier uses of fictional sources in the formative years of Wicca with influences ranging from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, Graves’ The White Goddess, Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Fortune’s The Sea Priestess. That is not to neglect the recent impact that Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon has had on contemporary Arthurianism and Celtic inspired Wicca and Druidry (Harvey, 1993); that of Brian Bates’ fiction and non-fiction on shamanic practices and Pagan reconstructionism (Harvey, 2000); and, even that of Terry Pratchett on the development of Pagan humour. Adler (1986, pp283-318) notes the role that the fictions of Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand played in the foundation of the US Pagan Church of All Worlds, arguably the most important organisation in the formation of North American Paganisms. Perhaps the most interesting example, however, is Lovecraftian Magic. One sees in the magical uses of Lovecraft’s magic by chaos magicians the way in which fictive traditions go beyond being merely a discursive strategy and become a dynamic and imaginative existential strategy for magicians:

Lovecraftian magic

The roots of Lovecraftian magic is a bricolage encompassing the thelemite Kenneth Grant and his extra-terrestrial (transplutonic) channellings, Satanic ritual, but particularly chaos magic (La Vey, 1972; Grant, 1992; Hine, 1999, pp220-38). These strands were galvanized in the mid-1980s by a group of chaoists known as The Esoteric Order of Dagon (EOD). The anthropologist of magic Justin Woodman (2001) describes his initial contact with Lovecraftian magic through EOD thus:

During the course of research into contemporary occult subcultures in London, I became aware - both through the personal narratives of practitioners and the literature that they made recourse to in the construction of belief and practice - of a small but significant movement of “Lovecraftian magicians” dedicated to an occult exegesis of the fictional worlds of American science-fiction and horror writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890 - 1937). (Woodman, 2001, p1)

Lovecraft’s literary achievement was the creation of a fictional framework popularly known as the Cthulhu mythos named after Lovecraft’s submarine misanthropic extra-terrestrial Cthulhu (see Davis, 1995, p 1). As Woodman (2001) explains, Lovecraft’s works encompass ‘a series of stories making common reference to a nebulous mythology concerning monstrous, non-anthropomorphic extraterrestrial entities known as the Great Old Ones or Old Ones’ (Woodman, 2001, p 1), described by one contemporary magician as

a group of trans-dimensional entities.who, “when the stars are right”, can enter into our world via psychic or physical gateways. The Great Old Ones represent an ‘Elder Lore’ which antedates human civilisation and, to human perception, are both immensely powerful and alien. In the tales of the Cthulhu mythos, there is a worldwide network (or conspiracy) of cults who worship the Great old Ones and seek to speed their return to the Earth. (Zebulon, n.d., p1).

It is inferred by Lovecraft that humanity itself may have been an experiment, perhaps accidental, by one of these alien races. Hence, as Woodman (2001) rightly asserts:

Lovecraft used his fictional Great Old Ones as metaphors for a rather Nietzschean worldview, presenting the universe as blind and impersonal - an ethos which cast humanity’s eventual destruction as an incidental side-effect of the Old Ones’ inscrutable goals, not as a result of their antipathy towards the human race. Thus, the central themes of Lovecraft’s fiction are rather bleak and nihilistic - a Copernican decentring of human meaning within an indeterministic, incomprehensible, and intrinsically hostile cosmos. (Woodman, 2001, p.2)

Thus, the Lovecraftian cosmos is suffused with uncertainty, paralleling the uncertainties of globalized late modernity. Lovecraftian magic is significant because it both reflects and uses this uncertain zeitgeist. That is, magical identities have not merely contracted into a Giddensian cocoon of ontological security under the pressures of these existential uncertainties. On the contrary, they have expanded, becoming multiplied with many alter-egos, with ‘the fictive Old Ones as metaphors for exploring multiple dimensions of selfhood’ in an increasingly ‘complexified and uncertain socio-cultural context’ (Woodman, 2001, p3). Thus, the Old Ones are ‘masks of self’ which, when encountered can ‘register as a particular experience which expands the sense of self, enabling us to change ourselves and things around us, bringing us that much closer to reality’ (Sennitt 1997, p12). For Woodman, this essentially ‘reframes the apocalyptic return of the Great Old Ones as a transformation of human consciousness towards trans- or post-human and extraterrestrial modes of being, which retain little or no reference to prior forms of human sociality and morality’ (Woodman, 2001, p6). The Lovecraftian magician Stephen Grasso suggests that the Old Ones represent

our evolutionary heritage. They are memories of dinosaurs, the silence of space, and the primordial chaos of the big bang. In order for the human species to evolve beyond its current status of clever talking chimp, we must somehow find a way to awaken these long forgotten elements that shaped the development of our consciousness. Literally waking up the Great Old Ones that lie sleeping...the primeval consciousness of the universe which has been lying dormant in humanity but is now slowly waking up...[that] Lovecraftian magic was all about becoming the monsters ourselves. (undated personal communication to Woodman)

In sum, the literary conventions and traditions present within the Cthulhu mythos create an ontologically secure space which gives magicians the necessary license for magical risk and experimentation. In the case of Lovecraftian magic, this experimentation is an imaginative engagement with other or alien forms of selfhood. Thus, the security afforded by magical traditions, also perversely makes them imaginative avenues of liberation. This dual nature of tradition – as simultaneously secure and risky – is a particular feature of ritual traditions.

Tradition, creativity and ritual

The ludic existential experimentation of Lovecraftian magic is galvanized through the use of ritual. In particular, magicians take it in turns to become possessed by a particular Lovecraftian entity, all of which exhibit different characteristics – for example, Cthulhu’s monstrous misanthropy and Nyarlathotep’s animal cunning – in order to understand and transform that part of the psyche. Thus, Lovecraftian ritual is both magico-religious psycho-drama and personal exorcism. Such ritual practices are excellent examples of the ways in which magical traditions are both dynamic yet provide a measure of ontological security:

Wiccan rituals, for example, are constructed around Nietzsche’s notions of the Apollonian and the Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy (Nietzsche, 1993). For Nietzsche, Greek tragedy gained its power from its successful blending of structure – represented by the Hellenic sun god Apollo – and creativity – represented by Dionysus, the god of chaos of ecstasy. Similarly, Pagan traditions and rituals are hybrids of order and innovation. Rituals, particularly Wiccan sabbats – celebrations linked to seasonal cycles - are embedded in a particular glacial chronology and ritual style, yet are simultaneously ludic and open to change. That is, rituals are fixed in particular spiritual traditions, tending to be performed at particular times, in particular ways in order to obtain particular effects, but above and beyond this, the wording, intent, paraphernalia, and personnel of a ritual is open to diachronic change. Thus, rituals, like traditions, appear to possess this dual nature of both promoting feelings of ontological security and facilitating personal change. In this way, Pagan ritualism possesses a strong late modern character.

Conclusions
Ironically, the late modern theoretical marginalisation of tradition has merely bolstered its position as important psycho-social concept. In contra-distinction to Giddens, the reflexive reinvention of tradition is an important feature of late modernity. As John B. Thompson (1996) states ‘Tradition is not necessarily abandoned in the quest for ‘bread and enlightenment’ but is, on the contrary, reshaped, transformed, and perhaps even strengthened through the encounter’ (Thompson, 1996, p95). A theoretical reclamation of tradition as both constituting and being constituted by the imagination and phantasy, would restore its seemingly perverse position as a dynamic mode of modern invention and re-invention. Certainly, Paganisms provide important insight into the ways in which traditions both unmake and remake our contemporary world, affording simultaneous security and transformation. Late modern theorists - so perceptive when it comes to the psycho-social composition of risk, uncertainty and identity in contemporary societies - clearly need to re-imagine ‘tradition’ within this context.
Copyright - The Author
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Address for Correspondence

E-mail: david2.green@uwe.ac.uk
Copyright to the Author

City of Champions - New video by Kellee Maize

2011-01-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

In this video, Kellee Maize expresses the power she finds in her life-place, Pittsburgh.

The Celtic Fairy-Faith as part of a World-wide Animism

2011-01-04T10:46:00.000-08:00

The Celtic Fairy-Faith as part of a World-wide Animism

[Note: This is taken from W.Y. Evans Wentz's The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries.]

THE modern belief in fairies, with which until now we have been specifically concerned, is Celtic only in so far as it reflects Celtic traditions and customs, Celtic myth and religion, and Celtic social and environmental conditions. Otherwise, as will be shown throughout this and succeeding chapters, it is in essence a part of a world-wide animism, which forms the background of all religions in whatever stage of culture religions exist or to which they have attained by evolution, from the barbarism of the Congo black man to the civilization of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and as far back as we can go into human origins there is some corresponding belief in a fairy or spirit realm, as there is to-day among contemporary civilized and uncivilized races of all countries. We may therefore very profitably begin our examination of the living Fairy-Faith of the Celts by comparing it with a few examples, taken almost at random, from the animistic beliefs current among non-Celtic peoples.

To the Arunta tribes of Central Australia, furthest removed in space from the Celts and hence least likely to have been influenced by them, let us go first, in order to examine their doctrine of ancestral Alcheringa beings and of the Iruntarinia, which offers an almost complete parallel to the Celtic belief in fairies. These Alcheringa beings and Iruniarinia - to ignore the secondary differences between the two - are a spirit race inhabiting an invisible or fairy world. Only certain persons, medicine-men and seers, can see them; and these describe them as thin and shadowy, and, like the Irish Sidhe, as always youthful in appearance. Precisely like their Celtic counterparts in general, these Australian spirits are believed to haunt inanimate objects such as stones and trees; or to frequent totem centres, as in Ireland demons (daemons) are believed to frequent certain places known to have been anciently dedicated to the religious rites of the pre-Christian Celts; and, quite after the manner of the Breton dead and of most fairies, they are said to control human affairs and natural phenomena. All the Arunta invariably regard themselves as incarnations or reincarnations of these ancestral spirit-beings; and, in accordance with evidence to be set forth in our seventh chapter, ancient and modern Celts have likewise regarded themselves as incarnations or reincarnations of ancestors and of fairy beings. Also the Arunta think of the Alcheringa beings exactly as Celts think of fairies: as real invisible entities who must be propitiated if men wish to secure their goodwill; and as beneficent and protecting beings when not offended, who may attach themselves to individuals as guardian spirits.

Among the Melanesian peoples there is an equally firm faith in spiritual beings, which they call Vui and Wui, and these beings have very many of the chief attributes of the Aicheringa beings.

In Africa, the Amatongo, or Abapansi of Amazulu belief, have essentially the same motives for action toward men and women, and exhibit the same powers, as the Scotch and Irish peasants assign to the ‘good people’. They take the living through death; and people so taken appear afterwards as apparitions, having become Amatongo.

In the New World, we find in the North American Red Men a race as much given as the Celts are to a belief in various spirits like fairies. They believe that there are spirits in lakes, in rivers and in waterfalls, in rocks and trees, in the earth and in the air; and that these beings produce storms, droughts, good and bad harvests, abundance and scarcity of game, disease, and the varying fortunes of men. Mr. Leland, who has carefully studied these American beliefs, says that the Un ˆ games-suk, or little spirits inhabiting rocks and streams, play a much more influential part in the social and religious life of the North American Red Men than elves or fairies ever did among the Aryans.

In Asia there is the well-known and elaborate animistic creed of the Chinese and of the Japanese, to be in part illustrated in subsequent sections. In popular Indian belief, as found in the Panjab, there is no essential difference between various orders of beings endowed with immortality, such as ghosts and spirits on the one hand, and gods, demigods, and warriors on the other; for whether in bodies in this world or out of bodies in the invisible world, they equally live and act - quite as fairies do. Throughout the Malay Peninsula, belief in many orders of good and bad spirits, in demon-possession, in exorcism, and in the power of black magicians is very common. But in the Phi races of Siam we discover what is probably the most important and complete parallel to the Celtic Fairy-Faith existing in Asia.

According to the Siamese folk-belief, all the stars and various planets, as well as the ethereal spaces, are the dwelling-places of the ThÉvadas, gods and goddesses of the old pre-Buddhist mythology, who correspond pretty closely to the Tuatha De Danann of Irish mythology; and this world itself is peopled by legions of minor deities called Phi, who include all the various orders of good and bad spirits continually influencing mankind. Some of these Phi live in forests, in trees, in open spaces; and watercourses are full of them. Others inhabit mountains and high places. A particular order who haunt the sacred trees surrounding the Buddhist temples are known as Phi nang mai; and since nang is the word for female, and mai for tree, they are comparable to tree-dwelling fairies, or Greek wood-nymphs. Still another order called Chao phum phi (gods of the earth) are like house-frequenting brownies, fairies, and pixies, or like certain orders of corrigans who haunt barns, stables, and dwellings; and in many curious details these Chao phum phi correspond to the Penates of ancient Rome. Not only is the worship of this order of Phi widespread in Siam, but to every other order of Phi altars are erected and propitiatory offerings made by all classes of the Siamese people.

Before passing westwards to Europe, in completion of our rapid folk-lore tour of the world, we may observe that the Persians, even those who are well educated, have a firm belief in jinns and afreets, different orders of good and bad spirits with all the chief characteristics of fairies. And modern Arabs and Egyptians and Egyptian Turks hold similar animistic beliefs.

In Europe, the Greek peasant as firmly believes in nymphs or nereids as the Celtic peasant believes in fairies; and nymphs, nereids, and fairies alike are often the survivals of an ancient mythology. Mr. J. C. Lawson, who has very carefully investigated the folk-lore of modern Greece, says:

‘The nereids are conceived as women half-divine yet not immortal, always young, always beautiful, capricious at best, and at their worst cruel. Their presence is suspected everywhere. I myself had a nereid pointed out to me by my guide, and there certainly was the semblance of a female figure draped in white, and tall beyond human stature, flitting in the dusk between the gnarled and twisted boles of an old olive-yard. What the apparition was, I had no leisure to investigate; for my guide with many signs of the cross and muttered invocations of the Virgin urged my mule to perilous haste along the rough mountain path.’ Like Celtic fairies, these Greek nereids have their queens; they dance all night, disappearing at cock-crow; they can cast spells on animals or maladies on men and women; they can shift their shape; they take children in death and make changelings; and they fall in love with young men.

Among the Roumain peoples the widespread belief in the lele shows in other ways equally marked parallels with the Fairy-Faith of the Celts. These lele wait at cross-roads and near dwellings, or at village fountains or in fields and woods, where they can best cast on men and women various maladies. Sometimes they fall in love with beautiful young men and women, and have on such occasions even been controlled by their mortal lovers. They are extremely fond of music and dancing, and many a shepherd with his pipes has been favoured by them, though they have their own music and songs too. The Albanian peoples have evil fairies, no taller than children twelve years old, called in Modem Greek 'those without,’ who correspond to the Iele. Young people who have been enticed to enter their round dance afterwards waste away and die, apparently becoming one of ‘those without’. These Albanian spirits, like the ‘good people’ and the Breton dead, have their own particular paths and retreats, and whoever violates these is struck and falls ill.’ These parallels from Roumain lands are probably due to the close Aryan relationship between the Roumains, the Greeks, and the Celts. The lele seem nothing more than the nymphs and nereids of classical antiquity transformed under Christian influence into beings who contradict their original good character, as in Celtic lands the fairy-folk have likewise come to be fallen angels and evil spirits.

There is an even closer relationship between the Italian and Celtic fairies. For example, among the EtruscanRoman people there are now flourishing animistic beliefs almost identical in all details with the Fairy-Faith of the Celts. In a very valuable study on the Neo-Latin Fay, Mr. H. C. Coote writes :- ‘ Who were the Fays - the fate of later Italy, the fees of mediaeval France? For it is perfectly clear that the fatua, fata, and fÉe are all one and the same word.’ And he proceeds to show that the race of immortal damsels whom the old natives of Italy called Fatuae gave origin to all the family of fees as these appear in Latin countries, and that the Italians recognized in the Greek nymphs their own Fatuae.

It is quite evident that we have here discovered in Italy, as we discovered in Greece and Roumain lands, fairies very Celtic in character; and should further examination be made of modern European folk-lore yet other similar fairies would be found, such, for example, as the elves of Germany and of Scandinavia, or as the servans of the Swiss peasant. And in all cases, whether the beliefs examined be Celtic or non-Celtic, Aryan or non-Aryan, from Australia, Polynesia, Africa, America, Asia, or Europe, they are in essence animistically the same, as later sections in this chapter will make clear. But while the parallelism of these beliefs is indicated it is, of course, not meant for a moment that in all of the cases or in any one of the cases the specific differences are not considerable. The ground of comparison consists simply in those generic characteristics which these fairy-faiths, as they may be called, invariably display - characteristics which we have good precedent for summing up in the single adjective animistic.

SHAPING INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

For the term animism we have to thank Dr. E. B. Tylor, whose Primitive Culture, in which the animistic theory is developed, may almost be said to mark the beginning of scientific anthropology. In this work, however, there is a decided tendency (which indeed displays itself in most of the leading anthropological works, as, for example, in those by Dr. Frazer) to regard men, or at any rate primitive men, as having a mind absolutely homogeneous, and therefore as thinking, feeling, and acting in the same way under all conditions alike. But a decided change is beginning to manifest itself in the interpretation of the customs and beliefs of the ruder races. It is assumed as a working principle that each ethnic group has or tends to have an individuality of its own, and, moreover, that the members of such a group think, feel, and act primarily as the representatives, so to speak, of that ethnic individuality in which they live, move, and have their being. That is to say, a social as contrasted with an individual psychology must, it is held, pronounce both the first and last word regarding all matters of mythology, religion, and art in its numerous forms. The reason is that these are social products, and as such are to be understood only in the light of the laws governing the workings of the collective mind of any particular ethnic group. Such a method is, for instance, employed in Mr. William McDougall’s Social Psychology, in Mr. R. R. Marett’s Threshold of Religion, and in many anthropological articles to be found in L’AnnÉe Sociologique.

If, therefore, we hold by this new and fruitful method of social psychology we must be prepared to treat the Fairy-Faith of the Celtic peoples also in and for itself, as expressive of an individuality more or less unique. It might, indeed, be objected that these peoples are not a single social group, but rather a number of such groups, and this is, in a way, true. Nevertheless their folk-lore displays such remarkable homogeneity, from whatever quarter of the Celtic world it be derived, that it seems the soundest method to treat them as one people for all the purposes of the student of sociology, mythology, and religion. Granting, then, such a unity in the beliefs of the pan-Celtic race, we are finally obliged to distinguish as it were two aspects thereof.

On the one hand there is shown, even in the mere handful of non-Celtic parallels, which for reasons of space we have been content to cite, as well as in their Celtic equivalents, a generic element common to all peoples living under primitive conditions of society. It is emphatically a social element, but at the same time one which any primitive society is bound to display. On the other hand, in a second aspect, the Celtic beliefs show of themselves a character which is wholly Celtic: in the Fairy-Faith, which is generically animistic, we find reflected all sorts of specific characteristics of the Celtic peoples - their patriotism, their peculiar type of imagination, their costumes, amusements, household life, and social and religious customs generally. With this fact in mind, we may proceed to examine certain of the more specialized aspects of the Fairy-Faith, as manifested both among Celts and elsewhere.

Carelian Magic

2010-12-08T17:47:00.000-08:00

When we start to look at the folk traditions and magical traditions of the people of europe, we see not an organized religion, but ways of relating to local spirits and ancestors. We do not see the worship of deities or advanced ritual magic, but humble pragmatic ways of interacting with the natural world, just as we see with animist people the world over...
Enjoy this connection to the past...

Retrospective

2010-11-29T17:11:00.000-08:00

Discussing the concept behind this blog is not easy. The challenge is to explain a non-dualist perspective to a largely modern context steeped in dualism. This blog first began as a side project of Little Lightning Bolt in relating BioRegional Animism to modern paganism. During its infancy it was known as Pagan Bioregional Animism (I think), then, BioRegional Paganism. The basic idea was to relate the practices of modern paganism to the land/bioregional approach of animism.

Later on I came on board with a broad experience with and background in modern paganism. I started sharing some of my thoughts and ideas on here. I quickly experienced frustration in areas of explaining land identity in a pagan context. There are many reasons I rarely associate with the modern pagan movement anymore. I am less concerned with the details of executing ceremonies or performing magick, or the reconstructionist path, and more concerned with a philosophical foundation with sacred ecology and animism as its core.

Is postpaganism paganism? That depends on how you define paganism. The point of changing the name to PostPaganism was a tongue in cheek attempt to evaluate and criticize the very usage of paganism as a blanket term for earth-centered religion and philosophy. We both found Graham Harvey’s etymological based definition of a pagan simply being “a person of place" and wished to explore that foundation further. In reality, I have settled on excepting it as an expression of philosophies I have explored since my disillusionment with modern paganism.

Between me and little lightning bolt, this blog/progject/philosophy, has grown into something else. What exactly it is can be difficult to identify and perhaps that has been the point the entire time.

Gaurdians of salmon spawning grounds

2010-11-28T22:37:00.000-08:00

Bioregional animist art of LLB

Thank You

2010-11-28T21:05:00.001-08:00

Often times when I write about my thoughts on paganism and animism I feel as if my words echo back at me. Lately I have felt little drive to share these thoughts with the world, and this blog has become very sporadic in posting. On top of this I live in very rural conservative arias where I feel isolated and alienate leaving me feeling ineffectual. With little input I have felt frustrated and have neglect this blog for long stretches of time. I also wonder if I do not make myself accessible enough. I am a quite and solitary person in real life and far from a social butterfly. However, in the past few days people directly or indirectly have reminded me that the words written on this blog and the thoughts shared here, and in other platforms on the Internet do resonate. This has given me renewed optimism to pick up, dust myself of again, and start sharing my private thoughts and life with the land more publicly again. I want to say thank you to those who have encouraged me along the way to share the insights gifted to me from the universe.

Pagan Rapper Kellee Maize

2010-11-28T18:19:00.000-08:00

Recently I was contact by a reader of the Post Paganism Blog, Female Rap artist Kellee Maize....
I must say I was impressed to see a pagan artist emerge from another genera then Black Metal and Gothic Rock (Not that I am complaining as I love those generas too). Kelle Maize is a female hiphop artist who's work has reached number one on downloads on amazon.com. This is not an easy task at all. That much of her songs are based in her spiritual practice as a pagan however makes this even more amazing. As well as telling, people are waking up to the needs that they see and feel around them, earth based or nature based spirituality is growing, like the vines of ivy that grow and tear down the ruins of cathedrals built on our ancient tribal sacred sites. Voices are singing of the awareness that comes from spirituality based on relationships with place, with the spirit of place, with nature. People want to hear these songs, if a pagan artist was able to get to number one on amazon.com's charts then that much is evident.
For those that have not heard Kellee Maizes song third eye check it out, its quite inspirational, and has a very positive message which is I think helping people to wake up and listen to the songs of nature.
Thanks Kellee for doing what your doing.

Paynimry (PostPagan) Manifesto

2010-11-23T12:43:00.001-08:00

ONE

Paynimry is not an -ism, it is not a spiritual practice, it is not doctrine or dogma, for all of these things require the acceptance of self separate from all other selves.

TWO

The flesh of our body is the flesh of the land, all life is shared through one single breath that is the air and atmosphere. There is no escaping this reality, only being unaware or ignorant of it.

THREE

The land is the source of our being. Our molecules and DNA comprise of where we are and where we have been and where we will be. There is no separation between us and those we share the land with.

FOUR

Person is not synonymous with human being and is fundamental to animist thought. Person is a distinction of inherent worth and dignity that is not the sole right of the human being. Person-hood is the essence of who we are collectively, from the flesh of our body to the flesh of the land.

FIVE

There is but one soul shared by every incarnation of life that is, has been, will be, and imagined. We are not isolated spiritual beings fighting for our salvation. We are a collective entity of many parts that share a co-creative responsibility to life.

SIX

Traditions are an extension of our relationship with the one-soul, life, and all the human and other-than-human persons around us. Therefore it is unethical to borrow (or steel) from others their relationships to the land and time which they belong. It is up to us to forge a unique relationship with the land below our feet and sky above our heads.

SEVEN

Where we stand, where we breath, is where we live, and the frequency in which we can communicate, commune, and co-create with the universe as a whole. Without this frequency we are merely listening to our own echoes bouncing around in a void.

Brief thoughts on person-hood

2010-10-11T19:00:00.000-07:00

It has been some time since I have posted on here. There has been a topic that keeps running through my head lately. The idea of person-hood, within the context of Hallowell, Harvey and others research. The word person continues to be problematic. But it is in that fact that I find it so useful. Using person in the animist context directly challenges wester-dualist assumptions and makes people THINK. In my own life, it continues to challenge my assumptions and forces me to THINK.

When a person is spoken of within the context of Animism, whether it is traditional indigenous culture, bioregional animism, or the broader context of animism in the 21st century, it is not anthropomorphic in any sense. It is only recently within the development of modern western history that minority groups and women have been considered a person. Granted, this context is still human-centric. However, the connotation carried with person is one of inherent worth and dignity, demanding respect in our relationships. Is it then too far of a stretch to extend this inherent worth, dignity, and respect to the greater whole of the living-world and all those within in? and if so, I can think of no other word in the English tongue to impress the weight of this relationship then the word person.

Racism, Paganism, bioregionalism and identity

2010-09-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

"So, since I am not a "nazi" I began to use another term, in the late 90ies. I did it not just to avoid confusion, but also to find a term more suitable and accurate than the other terms I had used. This new term was odalism, from Norse óðal ("homeland", "allodium", "allodial law", "nobility", "noble", "inherited goods", "fatherland", "land property", "distinguished family", "distinguished", "splendid", "kin" and "the nation"). This term replaces everything positive about all the other -isms I have ever used, and in it lies Paganism, traditional nationalism, racialism and environmentalism. It is not only a more accurate but also a more inclusive term that can be used by all Europeans (and others too for that sake). Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is not a term tainted by history.
If we have a positive relationship to our homeland, to our blood, to our race, to our religion and to our culture we will not destroy any of this with modern "civilization" (id est capitalism, materialism, Judeo-Christianity, pollution, urbanization, race mixing, Americanization, socialism, globalization, et cetera). The "nazi ghost" has scared millions of Europeans from caring about their blood and homeland for sixty years now, and it is about time we banish this ghost and again start to think and care about the things that (whether we like it or not) are important to us."

Varg Vikernes
(July 2005)
www.burzum.org/eng/librar...ory07.shtml
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes
First of all I would like to mention how disturbing the above quote is to me... But I would like to mention why it is that I thought it important to post it...

As in many ideologies the fascism is hard to see...

I have lots of friends who are into METAL, lots of black metal and, Norse inspired metal is becoming popular in the PNW and local cascadian black metal bands with heavy pagan undertones are becoming very popular, some focusing on bioregional concepts as well as pagan roots, maybe its the cloudy weather... its like Fenris has still eaten the sun here. A fascinating aspect of the metal culture is the embrace of paganism, and traditional norse roots. There is a very hard core rejection of judeo-christian spirituality, and a violent one at that some times. This rejection has even moved into European movements towards radical race based bioregional paganism. Ancestral and tribal in nature working the same father land like values of the Germanic people of world war too. The notion is reject that which is not of the father land. We are the father land, those that are not the father land are not our people, they are not human, their ways, and traditions do not belong on our land, nor do they. The identification and association of race, land and heritage, along with politics, and spirituality is not an old notion, it is still prevalent in MANY cultures, and many traditions, including native American sentiments. This relationship of race with bioregionalism and spirituality can be a dangerous one. Rights to land, rights to traditions and much more can be utilized to alienate others and to create societies of exclusivity. Depth psychologists such as Thomas Moore have dubbed this relational dynamic over the years Tribalism, and have equated it to a sort of alienating sort of practice which has seeds in nationalism, racism, religiosity, and ethnocentrism. Ive not always agreed with him on this note... however with the above quote from norse black metal musician and convicted murderer Varg Vikernes ( one of the original church burners) we see signs of what he is saying quite strongly. We see it in Norse pagan hate crimes in Europe. The Mentioning of Race Hygiene and Eugenics among "Odinists"...is another such example as is the notion of Odalism in the above quote.

These are ways of relating... and I would not say healthy ones at all.

I would never hope to see Bioregional animism, or paganism adopted by such notions or racial purity and entitlement. In fact I think that Bioregional animism as we know it and paganism is in direct opposition to such ways of relating, in that BRA creates a understanding that we are all the land we live upon regardless of race. Our bodies are all composed of the place we live within,and BRA encourages a full awareness and identity of that fact... but not in a socio-political format but a transpersonal/ecopsychological stand point. When we are in full awareness of our self as place we see others in the same light. We see others in our land as part of that ecological self we share with one another.
But what does this say of race and identity and place? Race from what my old anthropology teacher used to drive into our skulls is a political perspective and has no other foundation in reality. Given enough time people adapt to the ecology of the life place, it is the politics of culture and ethnicity that we confuse with these adaptions. What does this mean to the concepts of traditional lands? what does this do to the concepts of ancestral heritage and entitlement to place? These are highly complex issues, but they are political in nature and it is important to understand that. It is also important to recognize that regardless of these politics the reality of the matter is... we are the life place, despite, or nationality, despite our ethnicity, despite our politics, and ancestral heritage, those who live within the life place for 7 years are that place, every cell of their body is that land we stand upon the the sky we fill each cell with. This is the reality... we share this one body and self we call the life place, the bioregion. The politics that ignore that fact are aberrations.
Yet what about celebrating our diversity, our uniqueness, our differences? Bioregional animism and paganism does not seek to homogenize culture and do away with concepts of race? No not at all! We wish to celebrate it from point of view of difference not being a force of separation, but instead we recognize that like all of the unique other than human persons of place we are one. We are land, and sky, starting first and for most in our life place... and moving on from there to the whole of creation, this includes all peoples. Though not all peoples will get along peacefully all the time, the cat people and the dog people are excellent examples of this, it is something to strive for.
It is my hope that I have been able to share these ideas in such a way that does not inspire bioregional cultures of exclusivity, racism, nationalism and religiosity, but the opposite.My hope is that as Cascadian black metal spreads, the concepts of bioregional idenity and spirituality within examples such at Burzum can be seen as the ecofacism they are,and that concepts of Odalism do not become prevalent and preached within the subculture but can be identified as what to avoid within these emerging bioregional counter/sub cultures.

Poetry and the Mystery

2010-03-18T23:15:00.000-07:00

I have been feeling burned out on talking, writing, and speaking about animism. This is why I have been absent from the online communities I have frequented for some time now. I know what I am talking about, but I feel as if I do not speak the same languge as others. Where words are the primary obsession of my life, I feel frustrated by a language barrier where the only language involved is English.

I would like to begin posting on here again. However, I feel I have to do some back tracking. I have been thinking often on subjects of animism, person hood, land identity, and animism in general, and have been worrying about some misconceptions and misunderstandings on these subjects. I have also re-evaluated some of my own assumptions which have provided me more celerity.

Lately I have been in poetry mode, where I find I can escape the dichotomy of the English language and rediscover its sacred etymology. I am reluctant to share my poetry on the web for a couple of reasons. It is a personal thing rooted deeply in my experiences and relationship with the world around me, and because I am seek a pathway of traditional publication. In short the intenrent does not feel to be the proper place for the poetry I have been writing.

Poetry seeks to illustrate the mystery of life. a mystery which is exactly that, a mystery. I find in the processes of poetry I come closer to the experience I seek to express then in prose. I also find I can loosen the binds of rigid interpretation of language to explore depths which eventually escape materiel reason and transcend into creative rationality which bends and brakes the assumptions of our culture and reaches for a truth, which ironically, can never be frozen in words.

PIE

2010-02-26T13:05:00.000-08:00

Here is a really fun site on Proto-indo-european peoples...
I just find this all so fascinating.
I hope you do as well!
http://www.ceisiwrserith.com/pier/whatwasideology.htm

The silliness of "isms"

2010-02-17T21:30:00.000-08:00

Gizzley Adams wasn't a pagan... or was he?

Once again... my thoughts are brought around to the silliness of "isms". In this happenstance pagan"ism". Having had the long held critique of the silliness of shaman"ism" I have been left looking at pagan"ism" in a similar light. The suffix "ism" denotes a belief system., in this case the belief system of a pagan, or person of the land, country or rustic environment. Now how vague of a statement is it to apply an "ism" to a word that defines a rustic type of folk? From the point of place based relational ontology ie bioregional animism we can look at this and say well that's a tad silly. Belief systems from this point of view are so varied and dependent upon personal and communal relational dynamics that even within a particular region the attempt to classify or label a belief system under one vague blanket classification would just be plain misleading. Not to mention the country folk or people of the land that have belief systems that are far from be in any real connection tot he land they live within. I have met many a rural folk who could care less about what the land has to teach them spiritually and are more concerned with fishing, drinking canned beer and smoking meth and oxycodone occasionally then any thing else... and this is not a base stereotype is hard earned experience.

And what about the withershin side of all this... what about the pagan in the "ism"? How many urbane suburban armchair and basement rec room occultists out there identifying as pagan in their "ism" but rarely even go for a walk in the park let alone stumble out to the mall from time to time to visit hot topic? How are they people of the land? How are they country "Dweller's withing the land'? This more then any thing points to a need for post paganism! When we can become so divorced from meaning (even in the attempt to discover and retain or reclaim it) that our very words lack it, to the point where the labels and coin of a term can elucidate our own lack of understanding so aptly, yet we ignore and perpetuate such coinage... woe is the tongue that renders such words without question!!
Yet we argue, and we hold fast like drunken sailors to the ropes that tie us to the mast of our misunderstandings rendering us unable to break free to establishing new language and new forms of perceiving ways of being that are ancient and our birth right. Label's and terminology that loose their meaning are humpty dumpty words... the words of parrots. These sort of words gain new definitions like dung beetles growing a ball of dung for their dung beetle larvae to grow and nurture themselves in. The same was done with the term shaman and reclaiming this word and getting back down to its base etymological origins has been and still is a chore and trial for those of us that think it still has merit to do so.
Much in the modern "paganism" movement has revolved around reclaiming history and tradition, but linguistically we are getting very far from the origins of our words and even farther from original definitions. We need a reclaiming of the word pagan more then we need a reclaiming of runic lore or slavic incense manufacturing and spirit conjuring. We need to be able to look at why there was a religious conentation to be called a person of the country. We need a depth of understanding to evolve out of just looking at the etymology of the word pagan itself. How would that change things? would people identify as pagan any more? Just as bioregional animists at some point stop identifying as bioregional animists and identify as the lands belief in its own self, its very own nature and being. Will we see the same phenomena within pagan practice? If pagans begin to see themselves as people of place again "people of the country" will clarity begin to shine within the designation? Will the word itself loose meaning and be replaced with a word or term or sound that is the voice of the land and sky and the personages that are formed from those relationships within land and sky and mystery that some have come to call gods? How will the practices and beliefs of people of the country of the land come to reflect a clearer use of language? Will we garden more then we spend at the mall or playing online RPGs? Will our "ism" be grounded and integrated in how we live our daily lives?
I would like to know...

Animism @ Ning

2009-11-27T09:55:00.000-08:00

I am glad to announce the opening of a new animism community on Ning through the efforts of Corwen ap Broch who has done a wonderful job in organizing and designing a Ning community. The community provides chat, blogs, forums, file uploads and more, and is focused on animism in a broad sense such as is described by Graham Harvey and others. Please check it out and sing up and join the discussions!

Animism @ Ning

Deism, Poetic Reasoning ,and the Intuitive Language

2009-07-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-18T22:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

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 )

2009-04-26T23:06:00.000-07:00

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.”

Indigenous Traditions and Modern Paganism

2009-03-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

I always like it when I run across the rare honest critic of paganism from within. This article is one such example.
in some of its critique of appropriation by eclectic neopaganism, the author makes some comments which suggest at a lot of what we talk about on the PostPaganism tribe. Such as the fallowing.

"Nature religions - a group of religions of which many indigenous traditions are a part - are religions based on Nature and the Sacred Land. Almost all these indigenous traditions that we supposedly seek to emulate were/are Nature religions - they saw the Divine embodied in Nature, Nature was/is Sacred, and therefore all their traditions, beliefs, and mythologies were intrinsically linked to the Land upon which they dwelt, and therefore could neither be separated from the Land nor each other."

"Eclecticism, however, along with specific branches of Neo-Paganism that choose one indigenous Nature religion they will emulate and then endeavour to do so, does not recognise the fact that these indigenous traditions are tied to the Land of the people who practised them; away from this specific Land, they are spiritually worthless, although they still provide interesting psychological, anthropological or historical specimens. One cannot simply transplant the ancient Celtic tradition into Australia, the Indigenous Australian or Icelandic into North America, or the Native American into Europe; to simply super-impose these Nature religions onto your own land and context is to annihilate their value and meaning, resulting in a merely superficial shadow of the true depth of these traditions. “To be Pagan is to be particular”(2), because each Land has its own unique energy and Divinity; “The rituals and ceremonies and myths of the ancestors all arose from their actual relationship to a specific [emphasis mine] place on earth”(3)."

"by taking any spiritual or indigenous tradition out of its context (which in the case of Nature religions is the Land upon which said indigenous people dwelt), you are dishonouring both the tradition which you have taken out of its context and your own spiritual growth."

"It may not seem obvious, but if you truly believe the best path to spiritual growth is through a Nature religion then you are merely doing yourself a disservice by choosing to copy one that has been taken out of its context. How can we ever truly understand what the ancient Egyptians meant by “Ma’at” or how the Australian Aborigines really view the world? It’s the same principle underlying why nobody can ever truly understand how we feel or perceive or what we believe: because they lack the same foundation of personality and experience; they aren’t in our unique context."

"Why should we, as genuine spiritual seekers, restrict ourselves to a mere shadow of a tradition that has been removed from its context and is therefore spiritually meaningless to us? Why shouldn’t we create our own rich, layered, textured tradition of beliefs, traditions, practises, concepts, deities, etc.? Why shouldn’t we create a true Nature religion by developing a personal relationship with the Sacred Land - not the Sacred Land in the other hemisphere, across the equator, on the other side of the planet, but the Sacred Land on which we are standing right now?

There is no reason why we should not or cannot achieve these things - we are neither intellectually, emotionally, nor spiritually inferior to those indigenous peoples we so admire, and we have every capability to build a personal Nature religion that is every bit as deep and strong in our own hearts as theirs was/is in theirs. Stop being a “Neo-Pagan” already and get outside - Nature is waiting, ready to teach those who will listen…"

Three Branches of Modern Paganism

2009-02-28T12:46:00.001-08:00

I have identified three major currents within modern paganism I will call branches. The division I am going to suggest is not a concrete division, where as groups within one current can easily overlap with groups in another current. I work with these divisions because I feel there are specific strands with different goals and approaches and find Modern Paganism a better general term to compare these groups. Some of these groups make great effort to distinguish them as different from NeoPaganism, and these three branches are designed to indicate those contrasts.

NeoPaganism:

The term neo-paganism is first seen in print during 1868 by the psychiatrist and philosopher William James, latter in 1877 by John Addington Symond the poet, and in 1880 by the historian James McCarthy. Even though a witchcraft revival began as early as the 1920’s with Margret Murray’s Witch Cult hypothesis the word pagan was not adopted collectively as a self identifier until the foundation of the Church of All Worlds in 1967.

In the original citations found, the term was applied to the occult revival of the nineteenth century which was grounded in esoteric traditions derived from the Kabala and Egyptian cosmology with elements of eighteenth century classicism focused upon Greek and Roman literature and art. The most prominent of these groups was the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn a respective outgrowth of Masonic traditions. It was this same times that many Masonic inspired Druid orders emerged. In the 1940’s Gerald Gardner (1984 -1964) combined the Golden Dawn derived hermetic material with the Witchcraft Revival spawned by Murray. Through the continued work of Alex Sanders (1926 -1988), Raymond Buckland (born 1934), and Robert Cochran (1931-1966) the combination of Murray inspired witchcraft and the Golden Dawn hermetic magick of Aleister Crowley (1875 – 1947) gave rise to the birth of Wicca and modern witchcraft.

Today the Masonic traditions, Golden Dawn hermetic tradition, Crowley inspired Magick, and references to Murray’s witch cult hypothesis largely dominate the structure, rituals, ceremonies, cosmology, and hierarchies of NeoPaganism. Pantheons for various polytheistic historical religions have been adopted into the amalgamation of NeoPaganism, including but not limited to Egyptian deities, Roman and Greek deities, Celtic Deities, and Nordic Deities. Generally these deities are seen as archetypes and treated as symbols of a multi-faceted dual godhead consisting of a God and Goddess. There are disputes of authenticity from proclaimed Traditional Witchcraft seeking to distance itself from Wicca. However, examination of such groups indicates they maintain much the same practices and legacy, only that Wicca has become less structured and more incorporated into the mainstream new-age culture.

There are claims of NeoPaganism, Wicca and Modern Witchcraft being direct continuations of the ancient practices of pre-Christian Europe. In the tradition of Gerald Gardener himself, claims of hereditary traditions passed on from ancient times surviving the “burning times” into modern times have been common place. Over the past decade these erroneous claims are being brought into question, and the more sincere and honest proponents of NeoPaganism are aware of and accepting of the actualized history of the movement.

Pagan Reconstructionism:

Isaac Bonewits (born 1949) is often cited as first using the term in 1966 and the term took hold in 1979 with Drawing Down the Moon by Margret Adler (born 1946). Reconstructionism grew out of a need to identify with European ethnicity in practicing and maintaining the traditions as accurately as possible giving the historical, archaeological, and literary evidence remaining. Reconstructionism intentionally contrasts with Wicca and currents of NeoPaganism in that it rejects the romantic occult influence of Murray, Crowley, and the influence of Golden Dawn hermetic traditions. This movement often includes Celtic Reconstructionism, the Heathenism of Germanic origin, Baltic and Slavic traditions. Some groups stratle a fine line between reconstructionism and NeoPaganism such as Asatru and some currents of modern Druidism. Reconstructionsim seeks to redefine and rediscover the ethnic religious identity of their European ancestors through a more scholarly approach, and is often practiced outside the traditional homelands of the chosen ethnicity. The movement has been criticized for being too ridged and inflexible, and being a historic reenactment with a thin veneer of religion. In reaction to the criticism the movement is gradually moving away from the identification of reconstructionism and implementing a revisionist approach to reconcile with the modern times in which it is practiced.

Eco-Paganism:

This is the more resent branch of Modern paganism and the least researched and documented. Eco-Paganism can bee seen in two lights, often at the same time. The first identification of eco-paganism is that of environmental activists drawn to nature centered religions. The other light is Pagans who feel an imperative from their traditions, either Reconstructionism or NeoPaganism, to be a steward of the earth and protect her from harm. Both approaches to Eco-Paganism often employ the new definition of Animism as belonging to greater ecological community with whom only some persons are human, as defined by Graham Harvey in his book, Animism: Respecting the Living World.

Other forms of Eco-Spirituality could be included with Eco-paganism even if they may not identify as pagan. Elements of Deep Ecology are often prevalent in Eco-Pagan philosophy along with the Gaia Hypothesis. A new movement of Land Specific spirituality is emerging which is in part inspired by the bioregionalism movement and the new understandings of Animism as evident in the research of Harvey, Hallowell and others. Bioregional Animism is one such movement growing in size and influence. The PostPaganism is a project within the movement seeking to discover the land-based life traditions of Europe and seeing European paganism as a group of animist societies who developed relationships with the land they lived. The goul is to learn from the methods of European animism to cultivate new traditions both honoring the very land where they live and European heritage without neglecting the importance of those who have walked the land before them.

The State of Modern Paganism

2009-02-24T17:11:00.000-08:00

Since my re-induction into the pagan world I still maintain a distance between myself and some of the more mainstream currents of the pagan community. However, I have done some research and placed some feelers out into the 'pagan world' to see what has changed since my self induced exile from the larger pagan seen. There have been some improvements compared to my experience 8 to 10 years previously.

On large it appears that the actual history of modern paganism is being accepted; that there is no direct link between the paganism of pre-Christian Europe and modern paganism. Even though their are still proponents of the faulty witch cult hypothesis and the craze for validation of being in a 'hereditary' tradition has simmered down comparatively, there are people out in the pagan community who are challenging the old notions of Wicca being a surviver of the 'burning times' myth and coming to grasp that Wicca's Gardenarian origins may have been less the scrupiules but there is a positive direction for Wicca to grow. There are still the teen witches who want to piss of their parents and be different, and the new-agers who cling to every trend that comes their way. I am left with the general impression that the pagan community on large has matured and are becoming more capable of dealing with these internal conflicts.

I have to keep in mind that my original induction into the Pagan Community was when I myself was 18 to 21 years old. Now at 29 I can look back, and see that in the beginning I was one of the insincere seekers desperate for an identity which I felt deprived of. Therefore I have matured and my outlook and perspective on paganism will have changed. I may have been harsher then I should have when disenchanted with modern paganism. However, I was sold a false image of modern paganism being the extended religion and practice of my European ancestors. Having come from a religiose background which also claimed an unfounded history, I took it hard. But modern paganism being seen as a modern spiritual movement with youth and vitality it doesn't matter that there is no direct link to ancient traditions. There is still a danger of romanticisng a past that never existed, but modern paganism has the power to move beyond this with time, effort, and experience.

One improvement that needs to be made, is a distinct deology. I use deology in place of theology to emphasize a rational but intuitive approach to diverse cosmologies suggesting a deism based approach to divine identity then what theology often implies. In order to be taken seriously, and enter the ranks of world religion, there has to be a consistent methodology behind the movement. This however does not indicate a universally excepted dogma or doctrine, rather a distinct world view of paganism which can branch out in many directions like branches form a trunk of a tree, instead of the alagorius umbrella that anyone can claim. I believe this is already occurring, and the research by Graham Harvey and others who bring to light the ture nature of modern paganism.

Modern paganism is a very young religion, with an already complex history. A history that is likely to become more complex as it grows, which is the sign of a healthy organism. In some abstract ways the pre-Christian traditions of Europe might be the great grandparent to the movement, and the romantic occultism of the eighteenth and nineteenth century the grandparent, and the revival occultism of the first half of the 20th century its parent; Modern Paganism is not its grandparent or parent, but its own self and should be respected as such. Like any child modern paganism has to evaluate the identity of its parents, make decisions of its own, and grow into itself as its own person. This means at some point distancing away from the parents but not condemning them. As a young movement (only about 50 years old), in 500 years, modern paganism has the potential to grow into a deeply resonating ecological conscience with a larger felt influence then it has now.

Animist Discipline

2009-02-23T12:25:00.000-08:00

Animist discipline is central to the broader community of the life-place. This discipline does not require grandiose ceremonial observances, but can be practiced with actions, such as recycling what you consume, or finding reuse for it, and being mindful of what and how much you consume. To eat out less and live within one’s means is a good reminder of how much we consume and how it effects everything else. Being organic on a limited budget is not always practical, but purchasing what you can as local as you can is a big step in the right direction. Also thrift stores, and discount places that sell items that are still usable but have been rejected by the large chains is a great way to not only live within your means but salvage what would otherwise be discarded and participate in local economy. When buying things ask your self how much you need it. In short live a simple life.

Ceremony can be another aspect of an animist discipline, and this does not have to be the complex observances like Wicca. There is no need for casting circles in the right direction or calling the directions, in fact during my participation with modern paganism I found this distracting. I was always bothered by the buying and selling of special tools, like athema and swords, and candles, if these things find you without exchange of money it is good, but I believe it is best if sacred tools are given, and are not necessary for animist disciplines. Bioregional animist ceremony takes many forms and is a fluid, based on the unique personality of ones life-place. They should be focused on respectful relations with your life-place and all the persons your share it with. Leaving offerings at the base of trees, singing songs with the birds, making dances to honor the seasons are all that is needed. Ceremony should be fluid, improvisational, and simple expressions of life. They can be done privet or shared with others. The importance is the intent of respect to the living world.

One practice have is having a shrine. I prefer the concept of a shrine over an alter. In many neo-pagan traditions alters are the central focus of elaborate ceremonies and often involve the practice of magick, which I no longer practice. A shrine is a place designated for reflection; it is a place to sit and listen and contemplate. In the past my shrine was a simple small table built by my grandfather which I would place items I’ve collected while out in the woods. Much of the items have since been lost due to unfortunate circumstances, but that just tells me a new start Is needed. Now I have a small flat smooth peace of black basalt I found near the river. I could place a single candle on it, some incense, offerings of different kinds. And the best part is how portable it is. Overtime I will collect other shrines and items to be placed with a shrine. I have determined to select a time of the day to sit and listen and contemplate before my shrine. By doing so I hope to tune myself to the land and be inspired to work with the land in mutual benefit.

Simple acts of joy, sorrow, respect, and expressions of your relationships should become daily parts of life to help strengthen a connection to the land and the community. By intentionally taking time out of the day to go for walk in the park, sit near the river, watch the squirrels, and generally take care of basic needs in as minimalistic and simple way I remind myself of my animist ethics.

Introducing Glen "Fishbowl"

2009-02-22T15:21:00.000-08:00

The BioRegional Animist Pagan blog has gone dormant for some time. A year ago the moderatorship of the corresponding community at Tribe.net was handed over to me; However, I let the forum slip into inactivity. Now there has been a revitalized interest in connecting BioRegional Animism with the Animism of Europe which has given new life to the idea, resulting in the new name PostPaganism. In response, I have been allowed to manage the blog. All of the old material will be preserved, and I simply wish to build upon the work that has already been done.

With this in mind I feel it appropriate to introduce myself. My name is Glen, and I go bye Fishbowl within the online BioRegional Animism Community. I feel I have been walking the path of BioRegional Animism for a long time before I knew there where others who identified with Animism and worked towards cultivating unique relationships with their BioRegion. It is with much gratitude that I thank Marcus "Little Lightening Bolt" McCoy for being the catalyst of the greater vision of BioRegional Animism, the corresponding communities, and providing a language in which we can learn from each-other and encourage the growth of Bioregional Animist communities and cosmologies around the world.

My path has been influenced by the modern pagan movement; some of this history can be read in the speech "Spirit of Place" I gave at a local Unitarian Universalist curch. I have also been working on the BioRegionalAnimism.org website, which has been a continues challenge to use the Internet as a tool to foster and promote local communities of BioRegional Animism, and has underwent many incarnations in the processes and is currently being developed as a portal for the new Center of BioRegional Animism in Olympia Washington. I personally live in North-Centeral Idaho in a multi-ecological transition zone which provides a wealth of diversity for me to draw form. In this place, I go to college to study both Creative Writing and Native American Studies, including learning the local tribal language. I am active with a group of Unitarian Universalists pagans, eco-spiritualist, and other earth minded people. It is a rewarding experience, and a very open and accepting community which I cherish deeply.

What I would like to see develop with this blog is a place where other can contribute to the ideas of European Animism within the context of BioRegional identity. I will atampt to post my own thoughts and findings on a regular basis. Some of the content I would like to explore is a healthy Criticism of modern paganism from within. In this regards some of my comments may not be accepted warmly by people entrenched in the quazi-institutionalization of mainstream paganism as it is often excepted. Much of my criticism is focused on the pseudo-history, pseudo-theology, and blatant appropriation, which has been over generalized by the pagan public. However, I would also like to spend equal time exploring and examine the redeeming values of Modern Paganism, such as the observance of a seasonal year, and how they pertain to BioRegional Animism. In this endevor I feel it would be good to provide reviews of Pagan, Ecology, BioRegional, Anthropology, and Animism related literature. However, I prefer to keep the major focus on the ecological relationship of European Animist Traditions with their life-places and exploring how they can apply to our own life-places.

Spirit of Place

2009-02-22T15:01:00.001-08:00

This is a speech I wrote and give at The Unitarian Universalist Church of the Paluse, in Moscow Idaho, on Sunday the 3rd of August 2008

When I was younger I had a deep interest in the traditions and narratives of the People of Great Britain,‭ ‬where the majority of my bloodline originated from.‭ ‬With help of a friend well versed in Celtic studies,‭ ‬I examined the remaining narratives of the Celtic-Britons preserved in the Mabinigion and the poems of Taliesin the bard.‭ ‬With a basic understanding of the older Welsh dialect which these narratives were originally written and with firm background in historical context,‭ ‬the narratives took on a new life to me.‭ ‬What I learned was that the characters,‭ ‬and customs,‭ ‬and stories,‭ ‬of these people where not as important as the reasoning behind why they expressed themselves in these ways.‭ ‬They had developed different traditions within themselves,‭ ‬not only as tribal identities but as unique relationships with where they lived.‭ ‬I later learned this approach is fundamental‭ ‬to many indigenous peoples from around the world and often distinguished as animism.‭

Today,‭ ‬Animism is being understood as a set of worldviews that interacts with a living world where humans are only one part.‭ ‬By developing relationships with other-then-human-persons,‭ ‬they have a more inclusive concept of what a person is.‭ ‬In his book‭ ‬Animism:‭ ‬Respecting the Living World,‭ ‬Graham Harvey PhD‭ ‬summarizes the studies of Irving Hallowell by‭ ‬writing,‭ “‬To be a person does not require human-likeness,‭ ‬but rather humans are like other persons.‭ ‬Persons is the wider category,‭ ‬beneath which there may be listed sub-groups‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭ ‬Persons are related beings constitute by their many and various interactions with others.‭” ‬Graham points out that animist cultures can very greatly depending on the relational dynamic those people have with the place where they live.‭ ‬Furthermore,‭ ‬it‭ ‬cannot be emphasized enough that Animism is not the projection of human qualities upon the outside‭ ‬world‭;‬ rather,‭ ‬it challenges many of the assumptions of contemporary modern society.

I learned not to assume an intimate relationship with the land which has not been established through genuine connection‭; ‬to do so is assuming I was entitled the same privileges and consideration of‭ ‬an old friend or family member.‭ ‬To approach any person that way would be insulting and rude.‭ ‬Animist traditions grew from a personal relationship cultivated with the place they lived and the persons they shared it with,‭ ‬developing over countless generations.‭

I felt compelled to develop my own relationship with the place where I live.‎ ‏This required me to look to my immediate surroundings for inspiration.‭ ‬The Celtic-British narratives where a catalysis to learning how to relate with the ecological region where I lived.‭ ‬Associating the characters and stories to natural monuments and phenomenon around me allowed me to gradually see them with local personality and to interact with them in new ways.‭ ‬Before long,‭ ‬the Celtic-British narratives faded,‭ ‬and I was left with my own personal relationship with the place I lived‭ – ‬a moving experience which forever changed my life and the way I approach the world.‭

Person-hood is the central concept of animism and does not separate humankind from the world through evolutionary progress.‭ ‬Instead,‭ ‬it places the human being within the world of other persons,‭ ‬giving up distinction of humans as the only persons.‭ ‬It extends the inherent worth and dignity of every person to a greater community which consists of other-then-human-persons.‭ ‬It is through‭ ‬these vast networks of relationships which‭ ‬sustain life that animism learns respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.‭

When I moved to a new place I discovered I had to build a new relationship with that place and become familiar with its unique identity and personality.‭ ‬This is where I learned‭ ‬Bioregionalism,‭ ‬which is the conviction that social organizations and environmental policies be based on natural boundaries rather‭ ‬then regions defined by political and economic boundaries.‭ ‬Kirkpatrick Sale,‭ ‬in his book‭ ‬Dwellers in the Land:‭ ‬The Bioregional Vision,‭ ‬eloquently describes the essence of Bioregionalism,‭ “‬To become dwellers in the land,‭ [‬and‭] ‬to come to know the earth fully and honestly,‭ ‬the crucial and perhaps only and all-encompassing task is to understand‭ ‬place,‭ ‬the immediate specific place where we live.‭”‬ in short Bioregionalism also seeks to respect the interconnectedness of all life.

With animism viewing the ecological environment as a greater community of persons, motivates respect for other-then-human-persons and to work with them as integral parts of a greater community rooted deeply in a place. With an understanding of animism combined with the emphasis on place, the ageless desire of humans to understand the world and their place within it breathes new life into the worldviews of those who seek a deep connection with our planet.

When I discovered the writings of Marcus McCoy,‎ ‏who coined the term Bioregional Animism I was elated.‭ ‬McCoy’s writings are simple and eloquent explanation of the place-specific worldview of animism which had been a central part of my life,‭ ‬but with a solid foundation in academic discipline.‭ ‬McCoy’s drive to share these concepts was fueled by the works of‭ ‬Harvey and‭ ‬Sale,‭ ‬and others like them,‭ ‬and he began to journal his thoughts and experiences on the Internet.‭ ‬He writes,‭ “‬Bioregional animism is a response to the need for the rediscovery and rebirth or earth embracing traditions,‭ ‬and attempts to embody the ideal slogan of thinking globally but acting locally...‭ [‬It‭] ‬attempts to form deeply intimate relationships with the life and spirit of those around us.‭” ‬McCoy’s writings drew the attention of others,‭ ‬including myself,‭ ‬who have,‭ ‬in there own way,‭ ‬came to many of the same conclusions.‭ ‬What McCoy’s writing has done,‭ ‬is give people a common language and reference point in which to share and express their own experiences and thoughts,‭ ‬giving birth to an active community forum on the Internet.

It was then that my inner-life found an outlet and was reflected more vividly in my day to day interactions with human and other-‭ ‬then-human-persons around me.‭ ‬Being motivated by the Bioregional Animism community,‭ ‬and the welcoming arms of this congregations‭’‬ own‭ ‬pagan community I felt confidant and empowered to publicly share these views as a part of the Pagan Service held at this church nearly a year ago.‭

I find it is fitting to allow other members of the greater BioRegional Animism community to describe in their own words how it has impacted their own lives.‎ ‏White Wolf says,‭ “‬To me,‭ ‬it means being in harmony with the area in which you live.‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭ ‬Only when we open our heart and see these as relations,‭ ‬can we then communicate with them.‭ ‬If we only treat these as things,‭ ‬then they are but silent objects.‭” ‬Nanci comments that,‭ “‬Walking in balance with all people of creation‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭ ‬[I‭ ‬Listen‭]‬ to their sense of knowing and‭ [‬learn‭]‬ how that relates to my own sense of knowing and well being.‭ ‬Intentional mutual respect with all people allows me to maintain a balance in my own life and helps me not to enforce my will,‭ ‬but to harmonize and blend with theirs.‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭” ‬Mark adds,‭ “‬For me,‭ ‬bioregional animism is getting your roots deep into where you live,‭ ‬worshipping Mother Nature just where you are‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭ ‬.‭ ‬breathing and loving your area of Creation.‭”

On the summer solstice of this year some members of the greater BioRegional Animism community,‎ ‏including myself and Marcus McCoy,‭ ‬came together for the first time near‭ ‬Bellingham‭ ‬Washington for an event known as a‭ ‬Convergence.‭ ‬For me,‭ ‬it was validating to be with others who shared the same kinds of values and worldview.‭ ‬I was endlessly impressed by the people who made the trip to be there.‭ ‬There was little anxiety and each brought with them their own inherent abilities and talents which were lent to‭ ‬the group so effortlessly and without expectation.‭ ‬It was like old friends gathering after a long time of absence.

My friend, Rogerio, who also attended said, "The convergence was life changing. The keepers of the land, welcoming and sharing, showed me an ideal of communing with the land and living in peace with all persons, past and present. . .The spontaneity and truth in the ceremonies I witnessed, the conversations I joined and keep, the intentions I intend on extending, the knowledge I need to nurture, all are slowly, deeply assimilated into my everyday actions, renewed, understood and respected, giving way to my own roots, new ways of interacting with my surroundings, the beings and powers around me.” In addition, my Friend, Kate, said that for her, “the Convergence felt like a place where we united as a Tribe, and said our vows to bring our human communities to honor all of the living past, present and unseen.”

Their words are only a brief example of the impact this experience had on those in attendance.‭ ‬I am personally grateful for the experience I shared there.‭ ‬It is with consideration of others‭' ‬words that it is important to impress that Bioregional Animism is not Native American or other Indigenous Peoples Spirituality,‭ ‬nor a Modern Pagan tradition.‭ ‬Instead,‭ ‬it is syncratic with them and other ways of life.‭ ‬Bioregional animists have many cultural,‭ ‬philosophical,‭ ‬ideological,‭ ‬and spiritual backgrounds.‭ ‬Personally,‭ ‬I have found both Bioregional Animism and Unitarian Universalism to enhance and complete each other in my own life.‭ ‬In this regards,‭ ‬Bioregional‭ ‬Animism is a vision held within the hearts and minds of those who need it,‭ ‬and offered back to the world as a gift for those who likewise need to carry such a vision.‭

Hands of my Religion (A Rant)

2009-02-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

Hands of my Religion (A Rant)

This is going to be a blatant rant which has been boiling within me for many years since my introduction into the larger pagan community. I reluctantly use the word pagan as a self identifier, even though I do feel there is some validity in the label for land-based European animism. However, the word pagan has an unfortunate past, which has been used in many harmful ways which I do not feel the need to go into right now. What has driven me away from identifying with mainstream paganism is how ridicules the seen has become.

The hordes of nonsense being vomited out in ink on the pages of Llewellyn publications, with little ecological and earth based content, firmly attests to the pagan trend. I have personally witnessed Wiccan covens who base their traditions largely on a an amalgamation of Gardner and public mainstream media. Honestly, there is no connection to Wicca derived Modern Witchcraft and Medieval Witchcraft, and the romantic idea of the Witch Cult has long been discredited, and yet the nonsense keeps spreading. Furthermore the vague ambiguous nature in which the banner has been claimed by groups from the Golden Dawn persuasion to D&D and Harry potter inspired groups has gotten out of hand. The rant was induced by the discovery of Pantheacon, being promoted as a Pagan Convention, and complete with all the connotations of a Sci-Fi and Fantasy convention. The best example is the GreySchool of Wizardry as seen on you tube:

Since there is little actual information available when you search for PantheaCon this could be and exception to the rule. However, the need for a Convention for Paganism is further indication of the degeneration of the mainstream pagan movement, and in its strange way exemplifies why there has to be a methodology to land-based spirituality within the pagan community. Honestly, the self-identifcation hast to be questioned. Many people in the Bio Regional Animism community feel drawn to the land-based animist traditions of their European heritage, and this has spawned PostPaganism (formally BioRegional Animist Paganism). If paganism is ever going to be taken seriously as a wold religion we need to stand up against the egotism, appropriation and superficial consumerism which is wrongfully being passed of as meaning full religion under the banner of paganism.

Paganism From Our Backyard

2009-02-20T14:46:00.000-08:00

PostPaganism is animism for our backyard, grown in the soil of the sacred places that surround us on a daily basis. Modern Paganism should be grounded and centered within in the very life giving places where we live. In Animism: Respecting the Living World, Graham Harvey evaluates a new theory of animism as, "the recognition that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human." As Modern Pagans we must discover the diversity of our life-places by working, and communicating, and communing, directly with the ecological regions where we live. Also according to Harvey, in his book What Do Pagans Believe, "the original meaning of 'pagan' [is] ' an inhabitant of a particular place' [and] has encouraged a new focus on locality in modern paganism." he continues to say, "A classical pagan was someone who belonged, some one who celebrated where they lived, someone who knew their local shrines, springs, hills, trees and neighbors, and could trace their decent from local ancestors." Therfore, It is only natural as Modern Pagans, outside of Europe, for us to apply the same approach to were we live now.

European Pagans participate in bioregional polytheism, where deities are expressions of the bioregion and the cosmos and known, from the regional and cultural perspective of a people, as powerful other-then-human persons, Much of the polytheism of ancient Europe was very animistic in origin and tied to their bioregional surroundings. in his book, Dwellers in the Land: The Bioreigonal Vision, Kirkpatrick Sales, writes "To become 'dwellers in the land,' to regain the spirit of the Greeks, to fully and honestly come to know the earth, the crucial and perhaps only and all-encompassing task is to understand the place, the immediate, specific place, where we live [. . .] We must make its rhythms our patterns, its laws our guide, its fruits our bounty. That, in essence, is bio-regionalism. " Furthermore, This contrasts with modern trends of imitating what is believed to be practices of pre-Christian European traditions. It is important to know that there is a way of relating unique to our European ancestors that we can continue today, but in our own ways centered and grounded from the spirt of place.

Postpaganism is a way of cultivating distinct and diverse traditions specifically reflecting our life-places and their community of human and other-then-human persons. It is based upon the instinct of Modern pagan movements, and is a part of, and inspired by The Bioregional Animism Project. We can claim the redeeming values and concepts within the larger modern pagan movement, and supplement the romanticism trends based in 18th to 20th century occultism with the relational ontology of BioRegional Animism. Specifically, PostPaganism explores the animism of cultures, past and present, and how it applies to ecological regions. By maintaining an awareness of appropriation and acculturation, we can reject the need to import traditions from foreign lands, while maintaining a healthy rediscovery of animist relationships in the context of the life-places were we live.

A tribal elder of the people of Squaxin Island said it perfectly, "Our old ways are mostly memories, but our ideas march to their beat." PostPaganism seeks new tradition with practices empowered by the very places we live, challenging the assumption that pagan traditions were strictly created by humans and assumptions in ethnicity and race. Together we can discover the remains of the animism buried in our own history and culture. Modern People can reclaim co-creative practices with our ecological community and reforge the broken links in the great chain of existence. it is imperative to form new relationships now! Ultimately, PostPaganism pushes Modern Paganism to its limits and its logical conclusion of being rooted in the land where we live. It is for anyone effected by, involved in, and a part of the larger spectrum to cultivate a perspective reconciling the loss of bio-regional awareness. By understanding that narratives, customs, and history developed in a bio-regional context, we can find our place as dwellers in the land, and as people of the land, once again.

greening the village

2008-03-16T21:58:00.000-07:00

I had a dream of the green man the other night... its a classic image the green man being driven out of a village out of fear of his wildness by the people... it was a sad scene...
it makes me wonder about deforestation, habitat loss, the destroying of large areas of land to create housing developments.
People do not build or create their communities with nature or with any mindfulness to the wild... natural communities, wild communities of other-than-human-persons are destroyed to make room for homo-domesticus. The green man is most definitely driven out of these areas.

I was also thinking of a faun that comes and enters into my body from time to time... it often feels that Cernunnos, the green man and the faun share a common ethereal body manifesting as either or depending on what is needed of them. The faun was of a large wild wooded area near my home I had given offerings to him and asked for him to share space with me so I could learn from him... and he did... it was an amazing process... at any rate his level of mischievousness was intense... bordering on a sick sense of humor, and a wrathful sense of justice. What made this faun sick? The forest was nothing compared to the size it used to be that he was one with. The level of respect payed there was higher then most however trash was to be found all over. The forest itself was chopped up into islands with pavement roads and developments tearing it apart.

The other night my grrrrl friend pointed out how dangerous and mischievous forest spirits can be, I know to well how much this is so... and she pointed out how much more mischievous and dangerous they are when threatened, we discussed how important it is to make them our allies if possible, to be wild and a part of the forest again in our communities and ways of life.
I look at the forests destroyed by housing developments and i see that none of it is necessary at all! That its all poor planning and life style decisions as well as ecological and social apathy brought about and perpetuated by those first colonized European Christan's driving the green man from the village.

How can we invite the green man back into our communities again? What offering and ritual action is needed to invoke him into our communities? What will bring the faun back to health, to make him seem less of a demon to those who see him as such out of ignorance? How can we honor the horned god where we live?

We can start by looking at how we consume the bounty of nature, how we live our lives daily, where we get our food. We can invite the green man back into our village by including the wild into the village again. Creating bio-swales instead of draining street water into the sewer system, creating green roofs on our houses, building with natural materials like cob, straw bale, and renewable resources, getting rid of pavement and the need for mass transit by re-designing our communities around COMMUNITY, so we can walk to all the places we need to go. Or we can create our own villages as a permacultured part of the wild forest... human beings have the ability to actually aid ecosystems with their presence as well as bio-remediate the areas that have been damaged. What would the psyche of a people be like if they lived not in civilization but in and with the wild again, not beside it but a part of it?
The joy of the green man and the growth and balance of his dancing feet would be in our hearts, the masculine stereotypes and gender roles would change and no longer would men be seen as symbols of oppression. Art and beauty would be just another natural expression like a birds song, simple and humble and to be found in the artifacts we create for daily living.
To invoke these beings of nature, these spirits and powers the ritual is a change in the way we live our lives. The new magical training is skill building in eco-design, whole systems design, permaculture, renewable resources, sustainability, and alternative energy. The circle that is cast is the recognition of our interdependence, and the chants are the affirmations and oaths that we will change the way we live and no longer participate in this driving of the green man from our village. We invite him back and give offerings to him, by create the pace for him to exist in our village and in our actions.

Animism Americana

2007-12-10T16:55:00.001-08:00

I have long struggled with the conflict between the imperialism of my European heritage and the need to reconcile with a foreign land. the truth is that our DNA is a construct of thousands of ancestors before us who walked upon the land. For Native people this land is the same land their people have inhabited for thousands of years, which gives them an inherent intimate relationship with it. Those of us of colonial ancestors have a different dynamic to deal with, in that our genetics may not be of the land, but our experiences and culture is. We are the accumulation of personal experience, ethnic experience, of not only our ancestors but the living we interact with on a daily basis. We are more a result of our culture then our DNA.

This is where new animism diverges from the attitudes of modern paganism. The ancient culture simply do not exist, and the are brutal aspects of it that are no longer applicable. Animism is the base for all human expression, and it is buried in the mythology of our genetic ancestors, whether it is the Celts, Germans, Norse, Slavs. Romans, or Greeks, Africans, or Chinese. Animism is preserved to be rediscovered by the new animist. One has to be mindful that culture context these mythologies were persevered in, no longer exists but gives us valuable information on HOW to develop an animist model that is distinct to all that we are. Many look at the old myths and think "this is what we do and believe to express earth religion" - the animist sees in them "this is how the ancient came to their conclusions and world view, and this is how we can find a unique world view that reconciles our genetics and culture with the land we inhabit." This may seem a subtle to some but it is a very fundamental difference between the modern pagan and the new animist; However, a modern pagan can be a new animist.

There is a theory that there was a trans-generational historical trauma the Indo-European descendants have felt for thousands of years, in which they inflict upon others through the process of colonialization. New Animism and Bio-Regional Animism signifies a major step in healing the scars of this trauma.

Americana is a term used to describe the accumulation of many interconnecting and colliding cultures that has built the greater American culture. It is a broad sense of American ethnicity and incorporates many attributing influences; the African-American Slave Culture, the Latino Culture, the Creol Culture, the Native American Cultures, the New England Culture, the South west Culture, the Midwest Culture, the Appalachia Culture, The Pacific Northwest Culture, the French-Canadian Culture. Americana is expressed differently in different , and is the unique ethnicity of a given location, that was given by the combination of the land, the natives, and the incoming colonialists and slave cultures.

The Americana of the Appalachia country gave rise to the expression of Bluegrass; it is a combination of Irish and Scottish settlement with African Slave culture and Native American tribes of the region. The Northwest is a Collision of the Fur Trapping Cultures of the Russians, French, and English; the exploration cultures; the Gold Rush and Land Rush that brought Swedish, Irish, and Scottish; the Chinese rail workers; and the Plateau and Pacific Coastal Native cultures; all of this is Northwest Americana.

Instead of looking so much into the genetics of our heritage we should look at the ethnic identity of the Bio-Regions of North America as much as their Ecological Identity. Animism Americana places the expressions of these Americana Cultures into an Animist framework that is informed by, but not restricted to, our genetic ancestry. The end result is not going to be Celtic Animism or Norse Animism, or Slavic Animism, which can only exist within those cultures that most Americans have little to no involvement with. Instead, what we have is Northwest Animism Americana, Appalachia Animism Americana, Creole Animism Americana (etc. . ). Animism Americana implies along side ecological bio-regional identity, that ethnic identity of North American Bio-Regions be placed into a spiritual animist context.

This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY!

2007-10-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY !

In honor of A(lfred) Irving Hallowell
(source)
Died 10 Oct 1974 (born 28 Dec 1892) American cultural anthropologist who was an authority on the Northern Ojibwa Indians. He used tests of perception, and particularly favoured the Rorschach ink blot test to assess individual Ojibwa personalities. Hallowell collected a series of 266 Rorschach records from various Ojibwa communities, and although he never prepared an over-all summary of the results in the form of a sketch of typical Ojibwa personality structures, he used the data in a number of papers. All of Hallowell's field work was undertaken among American Indians. He published many studies of the tribes and made important contributions to culture- and- personality theory. His book Culture and Experience appeared in 1955.« The Ojibwa of Berens River, Manitoba: Ethnography into History, by A. Irving Hallowell, et al.

October 10th is DOR day! What is DOR day you might ask?

A day of respect, or DOR DAY!
OK... so here is either a holiday for Bioregional Animists, a cognitive challenge, or a weekly or even daily practice... I guess it depends on you!
But here is the idea...
Find time to, just for the heck of it, think like an animist all day. Take the whole day to do it too...
by this I mean RELATE to every thing around you as a person ( an other than human person, NOT an anthropomorphised person, for you newbs to new animism) see how relating to every thing around you as a person changes your perception and your actions. Ask your self questions, ask other than human persons questions. Be mindful and respectful in your relations, but do this all day, and just see what happens.
It can be easy for us to take on the animist practice in theory and it can be easy to have relationships with powerful beings in nature like bears and cougars etc... but to extend animist thought and behavior into everything that we do for a day will be a hard rewiring for many of us not raised in a traditional animist home, and might even be hard for those of us who were!
This is a Day Of Respect to other-than-human-persons and of cultivating respectful relationships. It forces us to reevaluate of indoctrinated assumptions and behaviors and form new healthier ones...deepening our roots to our life place through the cultivation of new ways of thinking and acting in our life place... its a time of transformation and change, honor and respect... communication, acknowledgment, and celebration!
Especially CELEBRATION!!! Focus this on this day in ways we can cultivate new celebratory relationships with natural cycles and other-than-human-persons ( who might be a natural cycle as well... hmmm....), maybe ask the land how it celebrates its birthday, or the coming of winter, or how it honors its dead? DOR day is a day of communion and discovering how we might celebrate and honor our lives as animists.

Have a Happy DOR DAY!
Thanks Irving for opening a Door...

Building your body from the land up...

2007-09-30T22:53:00.000-07:00

Cellular Regeneration
From wellnessadvocate.com"Every minute of every day your body is renewing itself. Humans bodies have about 100 trillion cells. Each day, millions of cells in our bodies die and new ones replace them. The quality of the new cells determines our health in the future. Your cells are affected by the foods you eat, the water you drink, the air you breathe, sunshine and anything that gets into your body through the skin. Exercise, rest, your environment and stress can also affect the quality of these cells and the health and strength of your body.

The frequency at which these cells are replaced differs in various types of bodily tissues. Some tissues regenerate very quickly and some take years. Except for our brain and certain parts of the nervous system, we actually regenerate a new body every seven years. Most of our cells are replaced within that time.

When you were seven years old, you had a very different body from when you were first born. When you were fourteen, you were in another new body. Hormones influenced you and helped you to grow taller and more like a young adult than a child. By the time you were 21 you were in an adult body. This body was totally different from the one you were born with or the one you will have when you are 70 years old.

Just as hormones influence the changes in your body, so does everything else that you do. Foods that you eat are the materials that form the body's building blocks. When you eat an unhealthy food you are affecting more than your waistline. You are having an effect on the health of the new body that you will have seven years from now. Every time you exercise you are increasing your potential for a stronger body in the future. Each time you smoke a cigarette, drink a glass of alcohol or take a harmful drug you are poisoning your body and increasing your chances of developing diseased cells. Excess stress can prevent the cells from forming perfectly. The life force is continually regenerating you and you can directly influence your health and the body that you have in the future. By incorporating certain wellness practices you can get your body to build stronger, healthier cells as it replaces the old ones.

When your body regenerates new cells do you want them to be healthy cells or diseased cells? Your actions can make the difference! You have the power to create illness or health in your own body. With active prevention you take action to encourage your body to be healthy. There are many techniques for this such as proper nutrition, regular exercise, fresh air and sunshine and abstaining from poisons such as alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. Anti-stress techniques such as deep breathing and meditation can also create wellness in your body and can help you to ward off disease."
To read more on this subject please read this article from the New Scientist.

" Our cells are literally flushed out, and rebuilt with new cells.
Depending on what source you read (from Dr. Deepak Chopra, MD to Gray’s Anatomy), our body replace its tissues and cells every 1 to 7 years.
- Muscles get replaced every 6 months to 3 years
- The pancreas replaces every 5-12 months
- Our bones replace every 8 months to 4 years
- Red blood cells replace every 90-120 days
- The intestinal lining replaces every 5-30 days
Realize, we have been doing this regeneration every day since the day we were first conceived."

- By Scott Ohlgren

click the link on this photo for more on the science of "you are what you eat"

This topic has been a source of inspiration for me for a long time...
When you look at this information and you look at the fact that you literally are what you eat, then the perception that if one was to move to a new bioregion or ecoregion then one would literally be composed of this ecoregion within a seven year period.
We are composed of our ecoregions and bioregions... our cells are designed by place, even our DNA is composed of the foods we eat.
Eating bioregionaly helps to adapt one to ones bioregion, because you are literally building your body out of it. Feeding your children a bioregional diet also helps with this process...
So much of the foods we eat are from other places this is such an ecologically and socially destructive practice, but it also confuses our very being! One example... Eating local Bee pollen can help one defend against pollen allergies... but only if the Bee pollen is from local bees.
If one only wanted to look at this from a purely metaphorical level, just knowing that you are composed of the foods from the bioregion you live as a part of... just looking at your own body would help remind you that you are one with the land and sky and waters of your land. The actual act of obtaining food bioregionaly to build your body from the land up actually facilitates the maintaining and developing of relationships, which as we all know is the basis of animist ontology.
Eating locally also helps us reconcile our sense of not belong to a place of not being native to place, as well as our sense of loss as to a identity based on regionality, and BEING native to place. If we know that our body is composed of the land helps to foster being native again, just knowing that our cells die and are reborn only to be built from what we put in it, puts a new spin on the word native, which in its most literal definition means to be born of a place... to be of a place, or to be from a place... and if one is eating foods from ones life place and ones cells are deign and being reborn... after seven years of living in a place you are that place... literally!
You really are what you EAT, and if you eat Bioregionaly, go our side look around and say to your self with pride, I AM THAT! I am the land talking and thinking and reading this about its self right now! How wondrous!
The simple act of eating can facilitate a ecological sense of self and identity based on place... to me this breaks down concepts of race, ethnicity, cultural identity and brings it down to the earth...LITERALLY! And is a basis for bioregional animist based identity and cultural.
So become a localvour! Think globally eat locally!

Animist Manifesto

2007-09-30T22:48:00.001-07:00

An animist manifesto

By Graham Harvey

All that exists lives

All that lives is worthy of respect

You don’t have to like what you respect

Not liking someone is no reason for not respecting them

Respecting someone is no reason for not eating them

Reasons are best worked out in relationship – especially if you are looking for reasons to eat someone – or if you are looking for reasons not to be eaten

If you agree that all that exists is alive and worthy of respect, it is best to talk about ‘persons’ or ‘people’ rather than ‘beings’ or ‘spirits’, let alone ‘biomechanisms’, ‘resources’, ‘possessions’, and ‘things’

The world is full of persons (people if you prefer), but few of them are human

The world is full of other-than-human persons

The world is full of other-than-oak persons

The world is full of other-than-hedgehog persons

The world is full of other-than-salmon persons

The world is full of other-than-kingfisher persons

The world is full of other-than-rock persons…

‘Other-than’ has at least three references:

it reminds us that we are persons in relationship with others,

it reminds us that many of our closest kin are human, while the closest kin of oaks are oaks, so we talk most easily with humans while rocks talk most easily with other rocks…

it reminds us to speak first of what we know best (those closest to us)

Make that four references:

it reminds us to celebrate difference as an opportunity to expand our relationships rather than seeing it as a cause of conflict or conquest

All life is relational and we should not collapse our intimate alterities into identities

Others and otherness keep us open to change, open to becoming, never finally fixed in being

Alterities resist entropy and encourage creativity through rationality, sociality (or, as William Blake said, ‘enmity is true friendship’)

Animism is neither monist nor dualist, it is only just beginning when you get beyond counting one, two… At its best it is thoroughly, gloriously, unashamedly, rampantly pluralist

Respect means being cautious and constructive

It is cautiously approaching others — and our own wishes,

It is constructing relationships, constructing opportunities to talk, to relate, to listen, to spend time in the face-to-face presence and company of others

It is taking care of, caring for, caring about, being careful about…

It can be shown by leaving alone and by giving gifts

believers in ‘human rights’, for example, demonstrate their belief in rights not only by supporting legislation to protect individuals from states, companies and majorities, but by not insisting on hogging the whole road or pavement, not insisting on another human getting out of the way on a busy street…

You don’t have to hug every tree to show them respect but you might have to let trees grow where they will—you might have to move your telephone lines or greenhouse

You might have to build that road away from that rock or that tree

Hugging trees that you don’t know may be rude – try introducing yourself first

Just because the world and the cosmos is full of life does not make it a nice and easy place to live. Lots of persons are quite unfriendly to others. Many see us as a good dinner. They might respect us as they eat us. Or they may need education. Like us, they might learn best in relationship with others who show respect even to those they don’t like, and especially to those they like the taste of.

Although evolution has no aim, life is not pointless. The purpose of life is to be good people — and good humans or good rocks or good badgers. What we have to find out is what ‘good’ means where we are, when we are, with whom we are, and so on. It is certainly wrapped up with the word ‘respect’ and all the acts that implies.

Since all that exists lives—and since all that lives is, in some senses, to some degree, conscious, communicative and relational—and since many of the persons with whom we humans share this planet have a far better idea of what’s going on than we do—we can now stop all the silliness about being the pinnacle of creation, the highest achievement of evolution, the self-consciousness of the world or cosmos… We’re just part of the whole living community and we’ve got a lot to learn. Our job isn’t to save the planet, or speak for the animals, or evolve towards higher states. Many other-than-human people are already happily self-aware, thank you very much, and if we paid attention we might learn a few things ourselves. By the way, we’re probably not alone in mistaking ourselves for the most important people in the world: hedgehogs probably think they are (but they’re spiky flea-ridden beasts so why believe them?!).

Um, when I said that ‘all that exists lives’, I’m not sure about plastic bags.

But I am certain that we should not treat objects as mere resources, somehow available or even given to us, or humanity, to use as we will or wish.

The same goes for words like ‘substances’, especially those that exist within plant and fungal persons. There are substances, but they aren’t ours until they are given, gifted to us. And then we’d better find out why we’ve been given whatever gifts we get. And we’d better ask how those gifts might be best used (whether its for pleasure, power, wisdom or whatever). This is especially true if the plant or mushroom person who offers us the gift substance has to lose their life in the process.

Maybe sometimes the mushrooms just want to help us join in the big conversation that’s going on all around us. But not all rocks, fish, plants, fungi, birds, animals or humans want to talk with us:

Sometimes they want to be quiet

Sometimes they want to be rude

Sometimes they have other concerns

Sometimes they don’t understand

Sometimes we don’t speak the language

Sometimes we don’t know the appropriate gift

The precise and proper way to show respect depends where you are, who you are, who you are respecting and what they expect. Gifts, like swords and words, have more than one side. Alcohol is a gift in one place, a poison somewhere else. Handshakes are friendly in one place, shows of strength elsewhere. Kissing is respectful to some people, an assault on others. Respectful etiquette is hard work but its reward is fuller participation in a large and exciting community of life.

Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking for us

Sometimes we need shamans to do the talking to us

Animism is just over the bridge that closes the Cartesian gap by knowing how to answer the question, What is your favourite colour? Perhaps it is the bridge. Perhaps there is no gap and animists are people who refuse to collude with the illusion

Animism is often discovered by sitting beneath trees, on hills, in rivers, with hedgehogs, beside fires… Animism is better communicated in trickster tales, soulful songs, powerful poems, rousing rituals, and/or elemental etiquette than in manifestos.

[Originally published By Strange Attractor Journal Journal number three . We would like to thank Graham for giving us the permission to publish this for the first time on line!]

Reconciliation

2007-09-26T13:54:00.001-07:00

In the history of European people there has been a lot of conquest and a lot of colonization that have subjugated the expression of the land and the first-people of that land. In deep history we find the Indo-European expanding from the Euro Mountains into Europe, Northern Middle-East, Persia, and the northern Indian Peninsula between 4000 B.C.E. to 1000 B.C.E. splintering into many linguistic and culture groups with unique expressions in how they related to the environments they have now inhabitant for thousands of years.

Then they began to encroach on other indo-European territory and subjugating those Indo-European cultures with their own. We see this with the expansion of Russia, into Eastern Europe, the Germanic invasion into Celtic territory and most prominent in our historical awareness are the Greeks, then the Romans. Not only that these Indo-European cultures amalgamated, through many methods of expansion into Europe itself. Little is known about the alpine races of Europe that pre-dated the explosion of Celtic and Germanic migrations.

In more modern history the age of exploration saw the Spanish, Dutch, and English expand great territories around the world. Somewhere in-between all of this, these cultures lost their own Bio-Regional identities with the state religion of Rome, later superseded by the expansion of Christianity. Christianity being of Semitic origin in the Middle East beginning as a faction of Judaism. At large the Indo-European had adopted a foreign mythos with stories centered around middle-eastern Bio-Regions and introducing the concept of Monotheism (one god/divine force of an anthropmophic figure over all creation) severing the Indo-European expression even further from Bio-Regional awareness and subjugating nature to natural resources to be consumed to fuel the economic and religious expansion into distant lands.

Not a single part of the world can claim to be untouched by this expansion. The expansion saw the subjugation of many first peoples and their animist perspectives to the authority of the European world view which belonged to the Europeans as much as it did these first people. This expansion spread plague and deceases desecrating many populations and obliterating entire civilizations, along side large scale economic exploitation of the remaining populations which is still going on today.

As an American of European heritage this is a very hard history to swallow and digest. Not that this kind of history cannot be found in China, and the Muslim expansion in the Middle East and Northern Africa. Or with the genocides between tribal civilizations in today’s world. But it is a the history of my people, but in many ways I have to question how much of it applies to me personally? After all I never owned slaves, I never raped and pillaged native villages, and I never demanded my religion be adopted over another. So, I do not see the use of feeling guilt about this history; however my concern is this history places me in undeserved privilege where the entire world has unjustly been bent towards these advantages. This does concern me greatly! How do post-colonial Europeans reconcile with the land and people they have colonized?
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Bio-Regional Animism in Less than Five Minutes

2007-09-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

This is a speech I will be giving at The Unitarian Universalist Church of the Paluse, in Moscow Idaho, on Sunday the 23rd of September 2007.

Spirituality is everywhere to be found; it unfolds with the peddles of a rose, and gurgles in the song of a creek, and in the canyons, and running through the forest. This is the experience animism is built from. It is the belief in spirit. It does not distinguish from the spiritual and the material; instead, they are one and the same.

Our planet is a vast network of ecosystems that work in highly concentrated ways and have been surveyed for their resources then divided to be bought and sold on the market. Through this homogenous market, our culture has become disconnected from our eco-systems, losing the sacredness of daily life. Nature is not a collection of resources for human consumption, but are equals to humans. This teaches us to relate our lives to what is needed for daily sustenance and to contributing back to nature, forcing one to realize that life is sacrificed to sustain life. This perspective demands empathy with our environment and to feel its reality in order to implement environmental, ecological, and social change. Humans are not above nature but as much a part of it in everyway. However, we have been irresponsible, subjugating our environment to mere material and forgetting its spiritual nature.

Bio-Regional Animism seeks to re-cultivates the sacred relationship of humans and the eco-systems they inhabit by recognizing the lessons taught by animist cultures worldwide, past and the present, and applying the animist process to our eco-systems. It spiritually relates our modern culture to the forest, rivers, mountains, animals, energies, and scientific principles as individuals with inherent worth and dignity. Scientific understanding of the environment, like knowing where your water and food comes from, social activities of local wildlife, and the medicinal value of indigenous plants, builds the foundation for relating to our ecosystem through improvisational ceremonies and meditations. This is achieved by discarding the dualism of modern society, and realizing there is only spirit.

Bio-Regional animism is not a new religion or even a new tradition of neo-paganism; rather, it is a way of relating to our environment in a deeply spiritual way and can co-exist with other ways of life, given openness to the needs, desires, and unique understanding of their ecosystem. Bio-Regional animism is not the path for those who seek predefinitions and structure; instead, it directly challenges these notions, leaving us with the very soil under our feet and sky above our heads, and that is what we work with to grow our spiritual relationships.

blessings to you

2007-09-20T01:47:00.000-07:00

With many thanks to Copper Woman and Wiccan web for posting a bit about us and giving a link...
Many blessings to you and your family...
Check out their site here.........
http://www.wiccanweb.ca

PostPaganism: Animism For The 21st Century

Insighst from Kamiak Butte

Climate Change as Manifestation of Collective Trauma

Without Us

Creating New Gods

European Tricksters

Crown-of-thorns Starfish Dream

Land prayer

Water Communion

The Trajectory of PostPaganism

﻿Lessons From The Colombia Plateau

Mad props to the bee-people

Morning offertory

Universalist Animism

Pantheons as relationship systems

Deities, Grand Ancestors, and More-than-Human

Nick on Overpopulation

Excerpts from "Animist Diplomats" by Heather Awen.

The Deity Relationship

Further thoughts on deities.

Deities and all that jazz

7 Unitarian Universalist principles through the eyes of an animist

Not Pagan

Why the human hating?

Heather Awen on Stripmining Crystals

Lughnasadh on the Palouse

I am back on The Plaouse . . . for now

Inverview with rapper, songwriter, and feminist entrepreneur, Kellee Maize

Word

Re-enchanting Modernity: Imagining tradition as a psycho-social concept

City of Champions - New video by Kellee Maize

The Celtic Fairy-Faith as part of a World-wide Animism

Carelian Magic

Retrospective

Gaurdians of salmon spawning grounds

Thank You

Pagan Rapper Kellee Maize

Paynimry (PostPagan) Manifesto

Brief thoughts on person-hood

Racism, Paganism, bioregionalism and identity

Poetry and the Mystery

PIE

The silliness of "isms"

Animism @ Ning

Deism, Poetic Reasoning ,and the Intuitive Language

Local Deities and Bioregional Cosmology

Lessons from the Seasons

Thoughts on Death and Cosmology

Sacred Eclology (an excerpt )

Indigenous Traditions and Modern Paganism

Three Branches of Modern Paganism

The State of Modern Paganism

Animist Discipline

Introducing Glen "Fishbowl"

Spirit of Place

Hands of my Religion (A Rant)

Paganism From Our Backyard

greening the village

Animism Americana

This Oct. 10th Have A HAPPY DOR DAY!

Building your body from the land up...

Animist Manifesto

Reconciliation

Bio-Regional Animism in Less than Five Minutes

blessings to you

Lessons From The Colombia Plateau