I am no historian of religions but I have to think that ours is the first that is mainly built up around stores.   It is somehow humorously incongruous, a religion, something that is traditionally divorced from the material world, that meets in, organizes around, and has the main part of its public identity bound up in stores.  I suspect that this is also a uniquely American way of managing our religion.  An easy analysis would say that its our pervasive materialism simply expressing itself in religious terms.  If megachurches can have Starbucks and gift shops then we may indeed be at the cutting edge of religion in America.  We don’t just have shops in our churches, our churches are shops.

But that is too easy.  First, we simply don’t have many other places to go, particularly in large cities.  Second, they are more than just a meeting space.

They are an affirmation, one of the few, to the rest of the world that we exist.  They occupy a place on the street where everyone can see that Pagans and Witches exist.  If we didn’t then who else would frequent these shops?

We also have a unique problem, as the only alternative is to welcome people into our houses and other personal spaces.  This can be challenging for a variety of reasons.  We all know that crazy Pagan or the strange individual who has other motives.  Shops are a place that the picky, or perhaps sensible, amongst us can use to screen out at least some of the crazies.  They are a buffer between our intimate inner circles and the rest of the world, a “third place” that is neither festival nor personal.  Unlike Churches or rented halls the authority against trespass in shops is clear and readily backed up by law enforcement.  Most likely the owner will be there at the same time we are meeting, ready to police any behavior that goes too far outside of the (rather wide and relatively unmarked) lanes of Paganism.

Stores also allow leaders within our religion a place to both work and practice our religion.  With no paid clergy everything we do is volunteer and unpaid.  , shops, spells, or other items that can be sold are virtually the only way someone who is dedicated to the Craft and Paganism can work full time on their calling. Buying things and books at shops are the way we support the community.  The way we provide space and a place to worship.  They are a way to support some of the elders and Priests and Priestesses who serve us.

All this occurs to me because Lauri Cabot has just announced that she will be closing down her Salem shop at the end of January [http://www.theofficialwitchshoppe.com/].  It ends a 42 year run for Cabot in Salem where she has owned a variety of shops.  Regardless of what you think about her style and flamboyance, she has done a lot to mainstream modern American Paganism.  She grew Salem into a place where Witchcraft and Paganism are not just accepted inside of a few houses and stores, but on the street and within the government (Gov. Dukakis proclaimed her the “official Witch of Salem”).   And she did it through the stores.

Beginning in 1971 with Crow Haven Corner she has run four different stores in Salem, working the publicity and her reputation to bring in business not just for herself, but for the whole community.   Her goal was “to care for my children, support myself and family financially and educate the world about Witchcraft while living my life as a Witch.”

So what will Cabot be doing now that the shop is closing?  Focus on building a temple of Witchcraft in Salem.   What she probably would rather have done from the beginning.  She just couldn’t afford to do it because the depth and breadth of the congregation just wasn’t there 42 years ago to back her up.  Now it is.

This is an interesting evolution in our faith.   First, it is worth noting that Cabot was a real pioneer.  There weren’t a lot of public expressions of Paganism back in the 1970’s and she was a real visionary when she opened her store.   As a pioneer she could be said to have established the tradition in the US of having a “place” in which witches could gather and practice.  She was prophetic in opening a store, as stores have now become one of the de-facto public meeting places for Pagans and Witches.  The only other public place where Pagans and Witches gather is in Unitarian Universalist Churches through the Covenant of UU Pagans.   But UU Churches, for all the benefits they provide and their welcoming tradition, put a particular color on the rituals they sponsor (they are a Church after all, with specific beliefs and traditions unrelated to Paganism).

Now I think the question is whether Cabot is being prophetic in her opening the temple.  As she grows older (she’s in her 70’s now) I can guess that there is a desire to leave something behind that will continue on when she is gone.  I suspect that is the desire of many of us in the Pagan community, but what that might be has been elusive.  A temple, a self-sustaining community with clergy and infrastructure is one thing that just might endure past our lifetimes.  Stores, while they can provide infrastructure, don’t have the process and organization required for training and supporting priests and priestesses.  Temples do.

So Cabot’s move from being a business woman to a full time Priestess begs the question:  are we going to move from a store based public front to a temple based image?  I don’t know, but I suspect that if we don’t, it will be difficult to sustain an organized Pagan religion that has impact in the community.  While it is always possible to practice magic and witchcraft, Paganism and Witchcraft are not just magic: they are religions.  And religions require people, process, and infrastructure in order to sustain themselves over long periods of time.  Currently we have a lot of enthusiastic people, but how do we sustain those people over time?  We have a multitude of processes, but those processes (initiation, training, etc.) are not anchored in both a body of people or a place to go.  Instead they are dispersed amongst any number of covens, groups, and traditions.

Now that Cabot is moving on from store to temple, I believe other places, whether they are a temple or some “third place” where we can meet will follow suit.  Even in my own town a group has established a Pagan community center.  Just as there was a long and complicated path that led from store to temple in Salem, there will be a long path as others move from small meetings and coven groups to something more organized, more established.  We will always have our covens, but the potential exists to have something more.  And our prophet has once again shown us the way.

The young boy loved camping, particularly the fire building parts.  Tonight they were deep in the woods, staying under the stars in tents with families from the circle.  The adults knew that he loved fire making and had asked him to tend the ritual bonfire.  All during the ritual he’d been seeing shadows coming and going from the edge of the circle.  The Old Gods seemed to be out tonight, but that wasn’t something he worried about.  That stuff was for his mom.  He just liked the camping.  The circle was just opened and he turned to go get some more wood for the fire.  There, staring back at him from under a tree was a rattlesnake.  He stepped back, but the adults knew, the Old Gods really were out tonight.

Coincidence, fate, happenstance, or synchronicity, it seems to haunt us.  Things we do in magic or ritual seem somehow connected to other things that happen, shall we say, “in the real world.”   We achieve something we really want, but we lose our favorite ring within minutes of learning of our achievement.  We scry and find our predictions match perfectly with those of another worker who worked the scrying two days ago, a hundred miles away.

All of these things can easily be dismissed as simple coincidence.   Look at it this way: it is very improbable that you will finish a ritual and then see a rattlesnake outside the circle.  How many times has that happened?  But there are an infinite number of things that could occur, you just happen to be seeing the one that did occur.  You could have seen a deer, a badger, a friend, or a shooting star.  You didn’t, you saw a rattlesnake.   You are what creates the implausibility in the events, through your interpretation and attribution of meaning to them.  You connect the rattlesnake with the shadows, with the circle, and with the fact that Cernunnos was just called.  Had you simply been hiking it would have been just a spot of excitement.

This idea that we create relationships between objects and ideas in the world was terms “synchronicity” by Jung.  By giving meaning to these relationships we create a “cause and effect” relationship that is similar to, but certainly different than the cause and effect relationship of physics.  We interpret the universe and tie it together in a great story.  The story spans our lives and incorporates the past and the stories of others.  It is our ability to give things meaning that makes us different from anything else in the universe.  And those meanings bind us to the world and to each other.

For Pagan’s the idea of coincidence is always open for debate.  It can be coincidence, or it can be a meaningful part of our lives.  In a magical or ritual context there are no coincidences.  Through ritual the magical act assigns meaning to any coincidence that we notice.   Thus magic is another way in which we give things meanings that they would otherwise not have, and tie together disparate things across time and space.  Stories do this, but so does our magic or ritual.

Magical narrative banishes the coincidental and replaces it with relationships.  Success or failure is related to our will, our knowledge of magic, and the Gods and Goddesses.  A future occurrence is related to our past action in ritual.  Our knowing what we have done binds things together makes our magic, and prayer, “work.”  Without that knowledge, there would be no relationship, and any synchronistic occurrences would go unobserved.

One of the principles of magic that I really believe in is “magic spoken is magic spoiled.”  If you talk about your spell, then it will not come about.  In my opinion there are two reasons for this.  First, it is a good rule that some clever High Priestess probably made up back in the day to keep her charges from bragging around about all their powers and maybe bringing down trouble on the coven.   If you talk about what you have done, the spell can be avoided one way or another.  Someone could counter it, or they could come and drag you away.

But speaking of the spell also divides knowledge of the working between the worker and those who they tell.  Dividing the attention to the spell creates multiple meanings and dilutes the original meaning and attention of the worker.  If only you know of your work, the consequences and connections you make allow you to create your own magical narrative.  They allow you to see what is happening in the world through the story you have created in your spell.

Telling someone else is like inviting your relatives over for dinner.  Everyone will have an opinion, and often will feel free to provide those opinions.  The more opinions you get, the more observation you have, the more dilute and disrupted your attention becomes.  It is the same effect that some people who lack self-confidence feel when they are about to try something risky that puts them out for public judgment.  Any sense of judgment, or criticism, particularly from those who are close to them can have a negative effect on their performance.  It hits them right where it hurts, in their self-confidence.

Spells work in much the same way.  Your confidence as a practitioner, the belief or faith that you have, and your ability to construct a meaningful working all come together to make the magical working effective.  The more kibitzing that you get the more likely it is that you, and your working will get disrupted.

We can also extend this creation of narrative into other practices.  Ritual provides a way to connect disparate objects and concepts through implied meaning.  The creation of sacred space by casting the circle is a way to create a magical and religious narrative through time, space, and our collective relationships.  Because the circle casting is something we have done in all our rituals, it connects us meaningfully through time.  We have come to accept that once the circle is cast we are in sacred space.  (The idea of the magical circle goes back at least to the Greeks, so it is quite a time narrative that we create when we cast!)

These associations and meanings that we give things create a sacred space between us, because they are shared narratives amongst those in circle, and within ourselves.  We react to the narrative of the circle, the story we tell ourselves about what is happening, and it changes us.  We become more centered, more thoughtful, more magical.  Work in circle long enough and a lot of our life takes on the form of magic.  We begin to tell our own story as a magical one.  We are magical, our lives are special, and we are connected to the Gods and Goddesses.

Our challenge is to tell our story in a way that moves us forward toward the divine.  Making it about ourselves, our ego and our power, drives us away from the divine and keeps us in the present.   It breaks the association between divinity and what we do in the same way talking about magic creates a distraction for us and for the spell.

The circle itself, not the calls or casts or workings or trappings or fuss, is sufficient to establish a connection between past and future, between those in the circle now and those who will come, between us and the sacred, between us and the world where the Gods and Goddesses exist.  Our world.  Our stories.  Told through ritual and magic.

For Samhain this year our group will be putting on a ritual themed around the idea of atonement.  Not the “feel bad, please forgive my rotten mess” kind of atonement, but the idea of reviewing the past year, our actions, and their effects in order to see what we can do to affect our fates in the coming year.  In structuring the ritual I began to realize just how closely aligned atonement, review, contemplation, actions, effects, and other items normally associated with all these bad ideas of “sin” and “guilt” are closely aligned with the Pagan concept of fate.

For Christians all these ideas are very closely linked through the idea of punishment.  You do the crime you do the time, unless you are forgiven.  For Pagans it’s more of a weaving together of our past actions with how we plan to act in the future.  The future is always dependent on the past and its interpretation, and if we seek to know the future we need to understand our past and what we did and what effects we caused.  This balance between understanding the past, and figuring out how we are going to act in the future, seems like a very good subject to think about at this time of the new year.

But first, lets talk about sin and guilt.  Oh dear, I’m already feeling bad I brought all this up…

Within the religions of the book, sin, punishment, unworthiness, and just general low self-esteem seems to be the rule of the day.  Yom Kippur, the Jewish high holy day of atonement is an example of this tendency toward a focus on sin and forgiveness of sin that occupies these religions.   A person can commit many different “crimes,” from those against god to against man, or even the laws of the church (or people).  These transgressions are tied into your fate through the idea of punishment.  If your sins or transgressions are not somehow forgiven or made up for, then you can expect bad things to happen to you either in the coming year (Judaism) or for all eternity (Christianity, always upping the ante).

In modern religious interpretations of these concepts sin becomes guilt and unhappy feelings.  Guilt.  If the threat of some sort of supernatural punishment fails in the face of modern science, then feelings of hurt and unworthiness can easily substitute.   If the religious cannot make you scared of punishment, at least they can make you feel bad about yourself and your actions.

Ultimately I believe this is a form of bullying.  Actions or thoughts that are not illegal, or even potentially harmful, are used as reasons to exclude individuals as “bad” or not worthy of belonging.  Bullying is a way to exercise power, and guilt for actions that are not harmful is an easy way to accomplish that.  One of the worst examples are the attempts to make homosexuals feel shame or guilt for being who they are.

Modern Pagan religions categorically reject any concept of sin, or even guilt, as a motivator for behavior or our relationship with deity.  We don’t offend against the rules of the Gods and Goddesses, though we may offend them [1].  Often this rejection of sin and guilt seems to be a visceral reaction to the pervasive use of these emotions as a way to bully those who don’t conform to the norm into behaving themselves.  People who are raised in homes where disapproval is a pervasive way of interacting can feel joy and relief in a religion that rejects the entire concept.

A more fundamental reason for rejecting the idea of sin is that there is no sin in the world.  There is harm, there is suffering, but they are part of a balance of natural laws that provide for joy as well as suffering, for pleasure and pain.  Only when you step outside of the context of the natural world, into the realm of transcendent “Platonic” ideals do you find fault independent of harm.  There is harm, and hurt, and things that are to be avoided, but none of those things are somehow “against” the world.  It would be as if your left arm were against your right one.  It does not make sense to categorize good and evil as opposites in continual battle, rather they are manifest traits of what it is in the world.  That, of course, does not justify embracing evil that does harm, but at the same time we cannot categorize as “evil” things that do no harm but are disapproved of.

Nor do can we characterize something as evil because it violates some rule.  First, there are no rules, just natural laws that everyone operates under.  Second, the Gods and Goddesses have better things to do than fiddle around in our affairs, like tending to their own.  As the great Father and Mother they expect us to behave ourselves, but they don’t manifest and punish us if we don’t.  The world will take care of that for them.

Theistically we would say that dark and light are manifest visions of the Lord and Lady, both of them embodied in different Gods and Goddesses who represent all manner of good and ill.  Our Gods and Goddesses are not exclusive in their goodness, some Gods and Goddesses manifest the darkness as well.  War, pain, suffering, selfishness, greed, power, hunger, and more are all embodied in various Gods and Goddesses within each tribal tradition.  While we are not going to be super best friends with these Gods and Goddesses, we respect their power and can call on them to give us some of their authority, power, and decisiveness.

So, for us, sin is a meaningless concept, and we mainly seek to avoid doing harm to others because that itself is a good way to live [2].

But is there a Pagan form to the idea of rectifying bad results from the past.  A friend of mine would say this is “owning your own shit.”   If you have caused harm, or done something wrong, then understanding that you have done harm, and “owning” it or accepting that it is part of you, if fundamental to a Pagan ethic.  From a theological perspective this means that we are applying the idea of “as above, so below” to the idea of transgression.  If good and evil coexist in the world, and within the Gods and Goddesses, then they also coexist within ourselves.  We are both good and evil, we have elements of both in all we do.  When we own our actions we admit that we have done harm and, hopefully, seek to set it right.  That is a form of sin, and atonement.

This is different from the Christian concept of sin. Instead of seeing that inherent capacity for doing harm in all of us as “evil” we see it as “natural.”  Obviously common sense, ethics, and much federal and state law would say that we should try and not act on our evil natures.  But we accept that it is within us and not somehow an alien that must be rejected.  And, because it is part of us, we don’t need to be forgiven for it, we need to acknowledge it and do right in spite of it.

Who would we ask for forgiveness from anyway?  Dagda has his own problems if the tales be true, and Morrigan would merely laugh at the insignificance of our problems.  We need to be fully responsible for both sides of our natures, and not lean on the Gods and Goddesses to somehow save us from them.

Pagan atonement comes from changing that which we were, and growing into that which we could be.  If we can change, and everything that She touches does change, then we can seek to change in ways that make our lives, and the lives of those around us, less hurtful, better.   Reviewing our actions in the past, living with our shit for a while, can show us what we have done, and to whom.  This can be actions that have caused harm to family, or to the world.  No one who lives in this country, or has the ability to read this column, has done no harm.  We have all harmed the natural world, we have all caused harm in many ways and places we may not even know about.  What we consume leaves less for someone else (I’m talking to you: guy ahead of me in line for the new IPhone).   Instead of forgiving it away we should be thinking about how to fix it.

Pagan atonement means not asking for forgiveness but rather asking about fate.  What is our fate if we continue to do harm?  What will happen to us in the future if we continue to do what we are doing?   Will harm come back to us (maybe, like, threefold?)  Can we change that fate by changing our actions?

Fate, of course, is more than just “what’s going to happen to me in the future?”  Fate, in the Northern traditions, is a much more complex subject.  It is the weave of the world, the relationship between all that exists and time.  It carries us along as it carries along the Gods and Goddesses.  This idea of fate as the underlying fabric of everything in the universe means that fate affects everything and everything we do affects our fates, as well as everyone else’s fate.

Thus Pagan atonement is more than just simply trying to review our past and minimize harm in the future.  Rather it is a process by which we examine our lives, and prune or shape that which drives us away from the Gods and Goddesses and increase that which drives us toward them.  Things that drive us away include hurtful actions, thoughtless work, and diminished expectations.   Working for and with others for a better world, walking gently on the environment, and loving as hard as we can expand our spirits into the realm of the Gods and Goddesses.  Our spirits are of the same spark as the Gods and the Goddesses but we have a long path to travel to reach them.  Every now and then we see who they are and what we can be when we arrive on our journey.  When we love, when we are gracious, when we have joy in the natural world, we can see where our spirits are going, we can see our fate.

Pagan atonement allows us to examine who we are, what we are doing, and what we need to do to reach the other side.  What have we done that increases our spirit, and what have we done that decreases it?  That is the real question for atonement, to ask how we increase in spirit until we join the Gods and Goddesses in the dance of life.

There is no sin in any of this, no feeling guilty because of who or what you are.  The need to feel guilty as a way to push us toward the good is a trivial force compared to the reward that comes from becoming closer to the Gods and Goddesses, increasing our spirits until we can see their realms clearly, until we can hear their words and touch their hands.  At that point we will be without need of forgiveness, and we will be fulfilled without anyone’s mercy.

[1]  But what about the potential for very real trouble when we call or cross the wrong entity, or when entities that exist come into the world and our lives in ways that are harmful?  I would argue that this is essentially no different than what happens with corporeal entities (family, friends, strangers) that come into your life.  You may end up offending some, becoming a target of a nasty individual, or just get mixed up with bad people.  If the Gods and Goddesses are entities with personalities and attributes just like what we have, you would expect those kind of reactions from them.   But what I would contend they don’t do is pass judgment on our behavior based on a set of rules and regulations, and then punish us for our transgressions.

[2]  Elsewhere I have argued that an essentially humanist set of arguments makes the most sense when considering Pagan ethics.  A perfectly good ethical system can be derived from a deep respect for life, the right for conscious beings to make their own decisions, and the idea that we all need to get along and work together, amongst other ideas.  You don’t need to introduce deity in order to develop an ethical system.

One question that seems to be fundamental to Pagan belief is whether the Gods and Goddesses represent one idea or underlying form that has many names, or whether they represent many individual entities that, well, have many names.  This must be an important issue because it almost always seems to get mentioned in any discussion of belief or working.   The way it usually goes is along the lines “she is the mystery that we call by many names.”  This seems to be subdivided between those who say there is some practical division (male/female, dark/light) in the mystery and those who feel that everything is unified at the deepest level.  But however it goes we almost always work with various aspects or avatars of that underlying mystery.

Well, you say, anyone can believe anything they want so the answer is “yes, of course.”   Or 42.   Yes, anyone can believe anything they want, that’s why there are Christians.  But the key question in my opinion is what effect does the various ways of thinking about the Gods and Goddesses have on belief, worship, and what we take away from out encounters with them.

I am not talking about monotheism, as I’ve discussed the past there is no historical incompatibility between Paganism and monotheism, nor is there necessarily a theological problem with it.  Instead the question is how to think about whether the Gods and Goddesses are somehow layered, stacked one on top another in some sort of endless mystery spiral that ends in chaos, or they are “flat” and all somehow equal in their characteristics and priorities.

The idea that there is one mystery at the heart of deity, and everything else stems from that mystery appears to be related to the theological problem of theodicy, the study of god’s omnipotence and perfection.  I would contend that idea of an underlying mystery arises directly from the ontological argument.  As you will recall this argument essentially says that god exists because to not exist would be a lack of perfection (Descartes version) and, of course, the definition of god is perfection.  Kant had some problems with this argument.  Kant’s problem can be boiled down to the observation that the argument kind of assumes the result as a starting point.

From a modern Pagan perspective the idea of unity as a desirable trait, that one is better than many, seems like a logical assumption.  If we have an underlying mystery then it can be seen as above and beyond all the various dualisms that give rise to conflict and imperfection, such as male/female, good/evil, etc.  The various aspects of the sacred, from elementals to pantheons, come from this fertile pool of unified deity.   The underlying unity gives a depth and direction to our working, and makes explaining where the varieties of deities come from logical and consistent.  If the underlying mystery is the consciousness of the universe, the Mother of all, then we have a unity between the mystery, the Gods and Goddesses, and our own consciousness.   We are all simply embers or sparks from the divine fire, a fire we can neither know nor explain.

Unfortunately (for you) I do not like this line of argument, because I believe it is too easily transitioned into the New Age idea of union and blissful integration of all into one great mystery.  It also sounds like a concession to the ontological argument, which, in turn, makes it seem like we are arguing with the Christians to justify our beliefs.  I tend to think we need to stand on our own two feet.

But the alternative view, that all Pantheons stand on their own and Paganism’s defining characteristic of tolerance is the glue that keeps everything together, seems to lack the depth that an underlying, unified, mystery gives the theological idea of the Gods and Goddesses and their worship.  It just isn’t terribly satisfying if all there is are a bunch of Pantheons without some way to delve deeper into the mystery of what is behind it all.  Without some underlying unity we could easily ask why we spend all this energy on one set of deities as opposed to another.  Where are we going in our worship if not to the ultimate source of all?

In this month’s Cauldron I was reading a very interesting article about the Pale Faced Goddess and it occurred to me that the Witches might have an interestingly profound way of thinking about the mysteries (surprise, surprise) [1].    The standard Wiccan [2] way of thinking about the God and Goddess is that they are the manifestation of the deeper mystery, often an unnamed, or secretly named, underlying deity that is behind it all.  Sometime this deity is sentient, and other times it is a force of nature.

This Wiccan mystery can be translated many different ways, and the most common way I have seen it translated is what I have characterized as the Wiccan ontological argument: Theologically we need something at the bottom, a turtle, so to speak, upon which the rest of the world can be constructed, and this mystery is what we have.

But this does not seem to be either the Gardnarian or other Traditional [3] form of the mystery.   There is a more historical aspect to the Traditional approach, one that recognizes just how ancient our faith is and how deeply mysterious.

Now I must have a bit of an aside here to say what I mean my historical.  There are a couple of ways in which we can use the term.  First is the linear sense of a series of events or dates that occur as we proceed backward in time.  Or we can mean the study of the past and its characterization and analysis in the present time.  But I don’t want to mean any of those.  Instead by “historical” I mean that one thing is built on another over time like the layers in a sedimentary outcrop.  We could call this the stratigraphy of deity, but that would need just as much explaining as calling it a historical approach does.  The Gods and Goddesses had those who preceded them in time, and they grew and evolved themselves over time.  The Gods and Goddesses have a history, both mythologically as well as archeologically.

So in thinking about the Gods and Goddesses we can envision a wheel or a genealogical chart.  At the root is the great-unknown mystery of existence.  It is the creation of all, what was there beyond the big bang [4], before existence itself came into existence.  But from that beginning was borne the older Gods and Goddesses.  Take the Irish pantheon as an example.  Before Dagda and Morrigan came the Gods and Goddesses of those who moved in after the last glaciation and the following Neolithic megalith builders.   Crom Cruach [5] would be an example of one of these older Gods that survived relatively undisturbed (take that for what you will), while others of the Neolithic Gods and Goddesses became incorporated in subsequent generations of Gods and Goddesses.    Many of these older Gods and Goddesses became incorporated into subsequent Pagan Gods and Goddesses, such as Cernunnos and Herne, and eventually became Christianized as the devil.

While they may have been integrated into subsequent pantheons, these older Gods [6] still exist as unitary entities.   They are known by different names, Lilith, Holda, Norns, the White Goddess., or the various representations of the Fates.  Sometimes  their names obscure their real intentions and abilities.  Generally these ancient Gods and Goddesses are primal, and not always focused on the best intentions of those who call them.  They are truly independent, independent of our intentions and ideas, and often independent of our concepts of good and evil.

Calling on these Gods and Goddesses is both powerful, and dangerous.  Dangerous both in the traditional sense, and because when they manifest it can be overwhelming.  They are capable of producing awe, and fear.  We have all had moments in ritual when entities came, and things happened.   Often these interactions occur when the older Gods and Goddesses awaken and come.

These Gods and Goddesses are not always welcoming, but reflect the values and attributes of an earlier time when life was not lived by the same rules we live it by now.   They are independent of us and our values, lives, and wishes, but they can be a source of great inner power, support, and comfort in the same way that a good ship’s captain can make you feel better simply because you know he is in the wheelhouse.

These Gods and Goddesses are elemental not in the sense that they are related to the elements, but they are elemental’s of spirit.  They are fundamental forces or natures that do not relate as easily to our conditions as the Gods and Goddesses that came later in the historical development of Pagan deity.

Later Gods and Goddesses, the ones we typically associate with the Pantheons, arose from these older, foundational, Gods and Goddesses.  One generation of Gods and Goddesses gave birth to the next, and the next, and so on.

We see this form of understanding in the Theogony of Hesiod.  Chaos [7] and Gaia gave birth to the first generation of  Gods, the Titans [8].  The Titans Cronus, Coeus, and Oceanus with their consorts (and with some help from Gaia and Uranus) in turn birthed the Gods and Goddesses who were more human-like in their actions: Zeus, Apollo, Aphrodite and their relatives [9].   While this is all more complicated than it should be (Cronus overthrew Uranus in a particularly awkward way), what we have here is both a history, and a genealogy.  One layer of Gods and Goddesses builds upon the other.

Whether this history is part of the history behind the Gods and Goddesses, as in the case of the Greek Pantheon, or occurred naturally through the passage of time and the evolution of a peoples, as in the case of the Irish, both ways produce a wide range of deity, not all of which are the focus of modern Paganism.  In more recent times the focus of many Pagan rituals and workings has been on the most recent, “youngest” Gods and Goddesses.  The older Gods and Goddesses are not as popular, perhaps because of their more elemental, visceral, and distant nature.

But why Aphrodite or Hekate and not Coeus, Cronus, or Oceanus?  What can the older Gods and Goddesses tell us about deity, and about ourselves?

First I believe we can dismiss the notion of a “hierarchy” of Gods and Goddesses with the older being somehow “better” than the younger.  That seems to me to be a similar fallacy to the one discussed by Stephen Gould in the Mismeasure of Man: that we tend to like to see rankings and patterns in data where there really are none to see.  Just because one thing precedes the other in chronological order does not mean that it is either better, or more primitive, than the thing that follows.  Those concepts are human ways of thinking about the world, and don’t necessarily apply to everything in nature.

So the old Gods and Goddesses are neither better nor worse than the more modern ones.  But what they are is different.  They are more distant, more removed from the human-like traits we see in the younger Gods and Goddesses.  They are not your best friends, they are not waiting to welcome you with sweet verse and soothing balms into their arms.  They are demanding, they are tough, they are not what we would create if we were to make ourselves a deity.  This can be tough when it comes time to work with them, something the Traditional Witches seem to understand.

The old Gods and Goddesses have a lot to teach us, and a lot of power that we can draw from.  Their very distance is a form of healing from the world.  They can give the perspective of something beyond the world, an entity that does not worry about the same kind of things that we do.  Distance is sometimes as effective as engagement.

Their demands are demands that we should consider.  They ask for sacrifice, duty, and hard work.  They do not provide easy rewards.  These are attributes that we can use to get us what we need, or what we want.   They are the demands of the hard stones, the fallow land, and the drought.  Responding to their leadership leads us to survive and prosper.

They provide the power of self-confidence.  They are the example that risk-taking needs.  Who better to give us power, to lend us the ability to work toward our goals than an entity that has cracked the stones and ground the bones for millennia.   Their power comes from their age and their irreverence for the things that we value.  Gaining their perspective means losing a little of the world that we hold onto, of letting go so that we can become more than we are.

As I write this a thunderstorm is overtaking the house.  Lightening is flashing and thunder is booming.  I take this as a caution.  In advocating for attention to the Fates, to the old Gods and Goddesses, I am suggesting we engage and work with something elemental, fundamental, dangerous.  At the same time the danger, to those of true intent and will, is the jumping off point for an amazing encounter with power, a power that changes and breaks and grows faster and more deeply than the powers we work with in our daily rituals.  We should be careful, but we should also be curious.

[1] Theresa A. Lucas.  “The Pales-Faced Goddess, The Witch Goddess as seen in some forms of Traditional Craft.”  Cauldron.  141, Aug. 2011.   Though I’ll note that none of the commentary I make in the text has much at all to do with the article.

[2] Just to be clear, I’m using terminology precisely in this paper.  “Wiccan” refers to all the post-Gardnarian Pagans who identify with the general Wiccan set of practices.  Gardnarian means, Gardnarian.  Traditional means historical Witchcraft but not Gardnarian.   Gardnairans may or may not be Traditional; it depends on whether Old Dorothy was real.

[3] I’m capitalizing the “T” in traditional to try and distinguish between those versions of Witchcraft that do not descend from Gardner, but do claim ancient descent, and those that descend from Gardner.

[4] I know that neither space nor time have any meaning beyond the singularity, but you have to say it somehow.

[5] A gentleman I would not engage without a good reason, and sincere intent.  Respect.

[6] I’m avoiding the use of “elder Gods” for obvious reasons.

[7] Actually “Chaos” is better translated as “chasm” which I think is much more interesting.  Instead of Chaos getting busy with Gaia, the earth, we have Chasm or gap, or nothingness, coming together with matter, or Gaia, or somethingness to create the world.  Existentially this suggests that in the beginning the nothingness of consciousness was infused into the material of the world, and from that sprang the original sentient Gods and Goddesses

[8] Actually it’s a bit more complicated.  Chaos birthed Erebus and Black Night, which in turn produced Aether and Day.  Gaia produced Sky (Uranus) through parthenogenesis, and then mated with Uranus to make the Titans (Glenn W. Most (trans.).  Hesiod Theogony/Works and Days/Testimonia, Harvard, 2006.)

[9] A good place to see all this is here: http://www.ancientgreece.com/s/Mythology/#c_r

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Weiser (December 1, 2010)
• Author: Judith Joyce

A Paranormal Spectacular [Fail]

Last month I got to review an absolutely amazing book, The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon as edited by Joseph Peterson.  While that was an interesting and illuminating experience, its far more fun to take on a popular book where I don’t have to worry about dusting off 18th century references and doing what passes for fact checking in my columns.  Fortunately I’ll have none of those tasks this month as I’m reviewing the Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal [1].

The short review:  don’t buy this book.  Don’t even buy books that resemble it to make sure you don’t buy it accidentally.  Now you can go read another column and be free from the screed that follows.  You are welcome.

Still with me?  On with the fun!   First, the book in question is called a “field guide to the paranormal.”  Which begs the question, what is the paranormal, and where exactly in the field would you need a guide to assist you?  If you guessed, um…nowhere? You might find a lot of self-satisfaction in your cynicism, but I would disagree.  Field guides seem to my untrained eyes to involve a disposition on the nature of the subject and then a detailed set of reference material detailing either how to identify them, or some other useful information one would need in the field [2].  There are many paranormal and occult things encountered accidentally or deliberately out in fields, and a detailed guide might just provide good armchair, or even practical, reading.

The idea of a field guide is that it might be actually used in the field.  Thus they are smallish books, and often printing on robust paper designed to survive being chucked into and out of a backpack under gritty, damp, conditions.  My Peterson’s Guide to the Atlantic Seashore [3] follows the general pattern of a field guide perfectly, its small, sort of waterproof, and has a broad and interesting introduction to seashore related stuff in the front (intertidal zonation anyone?).  With plates in the middle (who would not want at least another page on the brown seaweed “sausage weed”?), worms in the back, and an extensive bibliography to ensure that you know that it was written by real serious scientists with the intent of walking you through the complex muddle that is the Atlantic seashore it is both interesting to read and somewhat useful in the field.  And it’s written in type and layout designed for 30 year olds (field guides are too serious for 20′s and apparently not read by those over 50 without glasses).  And it contains an information density resembling a well-written encyclopedia on the Atlantic Seashore.  This is pretty much what I expect when I pick up a field guide.

Now, given all this, what, exactly, should a Field Guide to the Paranormal cover?  First we have to decide what we mean by “paranormal.”  The most obvious definition would be “not normal” but then many of our co-workers and relatives would need to be included.   Generally “paranormal” means things that are not easily explained by science, but could be explained if we could either catch them in a net or try a little harder with our experiments.  This differs from the occult in that it is not just dealing with hidden, secret, or mystical knowledge, but tangible things that exist in the world.  Overall the basic cut seems to be that cryptids (Bigfoot) and UFOs are included in the paranormal while they are excluded (by most circles) from the Occult.

This means that a field guide to the paranormal must encompass a huge range of subjects.  The key ones would be ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, strange events (spontaneous combustion), strange places (ley lines), and magic to name a few.  Ghosts could have a field guide all their own.  But life at the seashore is no small topic, so it should be possible to organize a book that helps people deal with paranormal events in the field.  In general it should cover the key topics, and it should do so in detail.  Ghosts, for example, would require a section on various ghost hunting procedures and technologies, an identification guide, and likely locations where they might be seen.  Bigfoot would have illustrations of the different types and a chart showing their worldwide distribution.  In color [4].  The same thing should apply to UFOs, other cryptids, and strange places or people.

At least that is how I would write and organize such a book.  It would be what it says:  a guide for people dealing with this stuff in the field.  For believers.

So lets see how this guide compares.

Weiser’s field guide is organized like an encyclopedia or dictionary, not a field guide.

Entries are listed alphabetically, with little regard for whether they are related.  Looking up Ghosts (under “G”), for example, gives a five and a half page write up that indicates paranormal investigators look for EVP and EMF readings.  But it neither explains what they are, nor indicates that by looking under “E” the reader will be able to cross reference those entries into the field guide.  Poltergeist and Stone Tape Theory [5] are called out in the entry under Ghosts, but residual haunting does not appear as an entry in the guide.

What all this means is that the “field guide” reads as a bathroom book.  A dictionary or encyclopedia would have cross-references to other articles that allowed the reader to follow related topics.  This book seems to assume you are reading it from front to back.  And cross-references would be easy in an encyclopedia dealing with a narrow subject like the paranormal.  This book is one of those generic encyclopedias of the occult/witchcraft/magic/whatever that we find taking up shelf space in the new age or paranormal section of the bookstore.

The writing is both skeptical, and colloquial.

Remember I said that field guides go a long way toward establishing scientific decorum with references and neat little line figures and whatnot.  Here the author seems to take the opposite approach.  Many entries begin with a breezy question:  “Does the human soul survive death?” is the opening line for Ghosts while the entry for Ghost Club [6] references Harry Potter and Casper in the first sentence.  This style would be fine for a bathroom book, but just looks odd in a field guide.

Even worse, in many of the entries the author comes across as skeptical.  While the author is clearly not a skeptic in the classical sense, she is also not writing as if the existence of these phenomena is a given and all we need to do is experience them.  Many times she comes across as winking at the reader, implying something along the lines of “look at all this stilly stuff that scientists don’t believe in.” Which is not what I would expect from a book that takes seriously the subject it was discussing.  For example, on ghosts:  “Modern science-oriented societies, however, ridicule this belief in ghosts.  Paranormal societies, thus, focus on providing the existence of ghosts in a scientific manner.”  While this is certainly true, the emphasis and focus here and throughout the book is more balanced than would be the case for a normal field guide.

There are too many extraneous entries.

This is a field guide, so why would you include entries that have nothing to do with what goes on in the field.  The biographical entries (Thomas Edison, Eddy Brothers, Sir hur Conan Doyle to name a few) are puzzling because I’m unlikely to run into them in the field, except perhaps on a ghost hunt.  The information contained under their entries could easily go elsewhere.   Or the space could be devoted to more detail on the relevant entries.

But, seriously, this isn’t a field guide.

Instead it is yet another example of the endless number of regurgitated encyclopedias and dictionaries on the occult thrown up by publishers.  The reason why publishers publish this stuff in such volume totally escapes me.   The sheer number of them means that if someone even does manage to poop out a good one, it will be lost in the hundreds of bad ones.   And this one wasn’t good at all.

The crappy layout and aesthetics of the book are obvious indicators it was done on the cheap.  It is double-spaced.  Let me repeat that.  It is double-spaced.  Lots of white space to makes your reading easier, but I suspect its there because it fills out the page count.  The figures are black and white clip art that meagerly illustrate their subjects and do nothing to enhance the book aesthetically or pedagogically.   Go to any bookstore, or even your own shelf, look at a real field guide, they are far from double-spaced, and are lavishly illustrated.

This whole project looks like someone had a gap in the schedule for a printing press and had to throw something on the schedule to make sure the down time was not wasted.  “Hey, lets get a lesser-known writer experienced in the occult to poop out some text, throw in some clip art, double space it and cut it down and hey, we’ve got something that we can sell as a field guide.  That will keep old Betsy the printing press working over the holidays.  And those crazy investigatin’ kids will like the idea of a field guide.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.”

I am being hard on this book for a reason.  While this book is about the paranormal, and I don’t care a lot about the paranormal, it too much resembles other books occupying shelf space on subjects I do care about.  I care deeply about Paganism, Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult beliefs.  And there are too many of these silly dictionary/encyclopedia/survey books churned out about them.  We need fewer of these sorts of books because they hurt our religion.  Let me repeat, they hurt our religion, and our reputations.   And we need to ask publishers to stop putting so many of them on store shelves and start putting more books of substance and vision on the shelves.  And we need to be writing more visionary and substantive works.

How many kids or curious adults pick up these books thinking they will learn something serious about the craft or our religion or even the paranormal and instead find dreck?  Too many do, and too many walk away because of it.  Many start with an interest in the paranormal and find their way to Paganism.  Many starting on their journey don’t know the difference, particularly kids.  A really good book on the paranormal, like Colin Wilson’s book, might just capture their imaginations, might just cause them to seek deeper truths.  These naive readers are exactly who this book is most likely targeted at.  Given that you are reading this column means you would look at this book and probably never even pick it up.  But someone who knew little or nothing about the paranormal just might.  And that makes me sad.

Perhaps some who have the true voice of the Goddess talking to them will persevere despite this crap.  We can tell ourselves that.  But in this economy, when the kid is from a family that has a tight budget, even buying books like this at a yard sale wastes something more precious than money.  It wastes a life that could be transformed by the Goddess.  And that’s why I really don’t like this book.

[1]  Judith Joyce, The Weisser Field Guide to the Paranormal, Weisser, 2011.  Interestingly Judith Joyce is a pseudonym.  The author is Judika Illes, an aromatherapist and scholar of many things occult.  http://www.judikailles.com/.  She seems like a sensible and nice person who writes professionally.

[2] The books I pulled off the shelf are all about seashells and the North American seashore, including one Peterson Field Guide to the Atlantic Seashore.  This stems from my inherent dislike of going to the beach with my family.  As a skin cancer victim I see it more as a slow motion death chamber than a vacation.  Thus I tend to wear big hats and try to remain interested by pestering the wildlife.  And, yes, I grew up a block from the beach in Florida.

[3]  Kenneth L. Gosner, Atlantic Seashore (Peterson Field Guides), Houghton-Mifflin, 1978

[4]  Bigfoot/Sasquatch are not topics in the book.  Let me repeat.  Not.  Even. Topics. But cryptids and chupacabra and Charles Fort are topics.  Thump, thump, thump, that’s the sound of the obvious hitting the table over and over again.  As yet another aside, I find it remarkable that Bigfoot was left out given the sasquatchploitation bandwagon we are currently on.  I just love it when they call them ‘squatch on Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot show.  Sounds like a particularly dirty kind of squat.  (http://animal.discovery.com/tv/finding-bigfoot/).  And yes, I come by all my paranormal creds honestly, by watching TV.

[5] An interesting theory that I have never heard of that means “residual haunting.”  Why the author has an entry under “stone tape theory” and not “residual haunting” escapes me.

[6] Some sort of United Kingdom ghost club claiming to be the oldest in the UK.  Ok, fair enough, but if you put in a page about this organization, why nothing about The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) and the US ghostploitation movement it has spawned?

I guess I’m just may be too inclined to try and stuff things into categories and bins but it has always escaped me why ceremonial magic and Paganism are often tied together.  I understand that modern Paganism is a broad net that sweeps up all the little fishes it can find, but I do sometimes think we have to draw the line somewhere.   Given the recent debate about who is and isn’t and does and doesn’t want to be a Pagan, I think this is a valid question [1].  In my opinion, ceremonial magicians are inherently Christian, given that their originating materials are all focused on angels and devils and whatnot.  That does not mean we can’t learn from them, or even participate, but we should at least know what we’re doing.

This screed is relevant because I’m reviewing an original “talismanic grimoire” The Clavis or Key to the Magic of Solomon, by a late 18^th century magician, Ebenezer Sibley [2].   Joseph Peterson [3] is a scholar of renaissance occultism who has been translating and publishing several of the grimoires of that time period.  His previous books, such as the Sixth and Seventh of Moses, Arbatel and the Lesser Key of Solomon, have been absolutely beautiful books [4].

Peterson’s version of Sibley’s Clavis is in four parts, an introduction outlining the history of the text, a facsimile reproduction that makes up the bulk of the text, a series of notes to the facsimile, and a critically established text that reproduces the text of the facsimile in regular typography.    What I am referring so breezily to as the “Clavis” is actually eight manuscripts bundled into one book.  The Clavis, or Key to Unlock the Mysteries of Rabbi Solomon makes up the bulk of the text.  It focuses on the manufacture of talismans and pretty much has all your talismanic needs covered, from being invincible to winning in games of hazard.  The Complete Book of Magical Science (by Hockley) concludes the book and focuses on conjuring spirits.  In between we find a series of “experiments” on the conjuration of spirits and a manuscript on magical rings (of the planetary, not Tolkien, kind).

The Clavis continues in the same tradition of Peterson’s previous books, but amps up the beauty by several notches.  The color facsimile is in itself a work of art, nearly flawless despite both its age and the fact that it was originally copied by hand.  It is perhaps the best-done grimoire that I have seen, even better than Skinner’s amazingly useful and well laid out books [5].   If you want to see how an 18^th century magician executed the various seals, figures, and talismans you can’t do much better than this short of the original manuscripts.

So, basically, that’s my review.  If you care about Grimoires, or if you care about magic, you should be aware of both Skinner’s and Peterson’s projects to bring beautiful and meticulously crafted versions of them to us.  And Peterson’s Clavis is pretty much the zenith of the current art of reproducing such things.  So you should buy it.

But it is unlikely that I’m going to stop at one page for such an amazingly beautiful book.  Instead I’ll go on to tackle what I think are the important questions:  What is a Grimoire?  Why should you care?  And why should you care about this grimoire?

Ok, so what’s a grimoire? A grimoire is a book of magic, typically specializing in charms and protection as well as conjuration of spirits.  It is most likely, though not exclusively, western European and Christian in orientation.  Of course all these features are not exclusive, many of the earliest Grimoires were of Middle Eastern origin.  Christianity and Judaism are often rather oblique features of these books, as they focus on angels and daemons, not the baby Jesus.   They were typically written by cunning men or ceremonial magicians and date from ancient times to the present day.  Their zenith in terms of power and frequency occurred in the late middle ages where their authors, mostly men and priests, were busy not being burned at the stake despite their active practice of magic and conjuration of devils.  Because they were men and priests they got a pass on real demonology, while a bunch of poor hapless women got burned for, well, being poor hapless women [6].

These books were used as practical tools right up until the 1800s (and beyond).  Cunning men and women sold their services to find, protect, or heal by using symbols and knowledge they gained from Grimoires, or fragments of Grimoires.  Grimoires also form the basis of modern, ceremonial, magic.

The problem with these texts is that it is hard, if not impossible, to map their interrelationships.  Just reading Peterson’s exhaustive and fascinating introduction to the Clavis shows why this mapping is hard.  Sibley apparently had a series of manuscripts on magic that he referred to but never intended to publish.  These were copied in his own hand from even older source documents, probably in the late 1700s.  But not too old, as Peterson points out a lot of the symbology and material can be traced to other popular Grimoires, including Scott’s Discoverie [7].

A series of booksellers obtained the texts from Sibley’s estate, and eventually the booksellers asked Hockley, who was one of the foundational members of modern occultism and magic, to write some copies.  Hockley made several copies, but perhaps not the copy that is reproduced in facsimile in Peterson’s text [8].  These copies have all come down to us, but not the original that was in Sibley’s library.  Peterson goes into an interesting amount of detail in tracing all of the influences that went into Sibley’s Clavis, ranging from the Discoverie to Arbatel de Magia Veterum. These books all intertwingle with Francis Barrett’s The Magnus, Levi, and other occultists of the 18^th and 19^th centuries  [9].  All of this influencing and being influenced makes it tough to figure out the original source for a lot of this magic, was it Scott or did they have other sources from either England or the continent?  Who influence Barrett and Levi, and who, in turn, did they influence?  Just like today with our froth of Pagan groups, the early 1800s were awash in different occultists and beliefs.

Peterson addresses a lot of this in both his introduction and his notes, and the results seem to point to Scott as a major influence at least on this grimoire.  That is kind of disappointing.  Scott’s Discoverie was perhaps the first skeptic’s view of magic and witchcraft, written with the hope that reason would prevail over superstition.  Which is why King John I burned all the copies he could get his hands on in 1603.  The tie with Discoverie is disappointing because the book’s information was drawn from witch trials, which means that the information may have been obtained through torture.  And, if you believe the FBI, torture is not perhaps the best way to obtain accurate information, even today.

But why should modern Pagans care about any of this?  Well, as I said before, Sibley and Hockley both had significant influence on the people who started the Golden Dawn movement: Israel Regardie and AE Waite.  They, in much the same fashion that the shinbone is connected to the knee bone, influenced Crowley in return who influenced Gardner.  This means that these late 18^th and early 19^th century grimoires are some of the foundational documents for modern magic, if not Paganism.  They don’t quite look like it, but they are.

Much of what passes for “standard Wicca operational plan 100” comes from these sources.  The elements, the circle, calling and evoking, all stem from ceremonialist influences.  The wands, the swords, the Athame, the magical writing also all were inspired or directly derived from these influences.  Not to mention that much of modern Masonry, Rosicrucianism, and Thelema hark directly back to these gentlemen and their influences.

But why should you care about this particular grimoire?  If you are the kind of magician who cares whether their instrument kit’s “little green stick of [hazel] wood” is from a year old branch or not (pp. xx and 31 Clavis), then you are already going to buy this book and there is nothing extra I need to do to convince you.  If you are not that guy, and you probably are not, then you may wish to pick up a grimoire just for the fun of it.  Typically the Lesser Key of Solomon is pretty much the standard baseline grimoire [8].   But, if you have special interests in manufacturing talismans, rings, or in conjuration then you may want to pick up the Clavis.  Or if you just really want to see what a “real” 18^th century grimoire actually looked like in facsimile, you may want this book.

But, lets be honest, if you are a guy like me who collects magic books and loves the lore of ancient texts and magical tomes, then you need this book.  In fact, I’d say you need all of Peterson’s books.   It won’t be cheap, but it will be worth it.

[1] Of course this whole terminology thing is a hot topic this month, see my column and the Pagan portal at Patheos (http://www.patheos.com/Religion-Portals/Pagan.html).  Not much discussion of this issue by the ceremonialists, however.  Though I suspect that the traditional Witches problems with the term Pagan could also extend to them.

[2] Joseph Peterson (ed.), Ebenezer Sibley and Frederick Hockley, The Clavis of Key to the Magic of Solomon, Ibis, 2010.  Joseph Peterson is responsible for putting the book together, and writing an extensive introduction and set of notes.  I suspect he also transcribed the facsimile reproduction as well.  Not to mention that he is a Chemical Engineer, which certainly recommends him as someone who is both careful and capable (not to mention highly intelligent – perhaps you can tell my profession).

[3] His web site explains a lot: http://www.esotericarchives.com/

[4] This is not just me Amazon shopping as I review, I happen to own all of them except the Grimorium Vernum and I’m fixing that right now based on the Clavis.

[5] Skinner’s books are quite similar to Peterson’s, including a version of the Clavis.  However Peterson’s Clavis totally beats Skinner’s as Skinner tends to rely on black and white and lacks Peterson’s graphical pizzazz.  http://www.amazon.com/Stephen-Skinner/e/B001HOA5US/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

[6] The best history of grimoires is:  Owen Davies, Grimoires:  A History of Magic , Oxford 2009.  It is a remarkable history because it is factual, readable, well organized, and make sense.  I have not found this to be a common feature in books on this subject.  Davies is mentioned in the Clavis, but his book in turn does not mention the Clavis, though he does mention Sibley.  He emphasizes Sibley’s role as the pre-eminent astrologer of his time.  This is logical if the Clavis was taken from Sibley’s unpublished papers since it would not have been part of his public persona.

[7] Reginald Scott in 1584 published The Discoverie of Witchcraft.  This text has been very influential, from being cribbed in later grimoires and cunning men’s materials (including Joseph Smith who was perhaps more of a cunning man than Mormon’s would admit).  In another section of the text Scott also tries to show how some of the things conjurers would do were actually slights of hand, making it one of the earliest books of magic (See Robert Kaufman’s forward to the Kaufman and Greenberg edition of Discoverie.)  Reginald Scott, The Discoverie of Witchcraft, Kaufman and Greenberg, 1995 (a beautiful hardbound version by a stage magic publishing company).

[8] In reading about the various copies and Sibley and Hockley you get an appreciation for life before laser printing technology and the ability to easily copy words and documents.  If you wanted a copy back in 1825, you got out a pen and wrote yourself a copy.

[9]  Arbatel de Magia Veterum is another Peterson book, http://www.amazon.com/Arbatel-Concerning-Ancients-Joseph-Peterson/dp/0892541520/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307312039&sr=1-1, and there are many versions of Barrett and Levi’s books out there:  http://www.amazon.com/History-Magic-Eliphas-Levi/dp/0877289298/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307312089&sr=1-1;

http://www.amazon.com/Magus-Complete-System-Occult-Philosophy/dp/0877289425/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307312114&sr=1-1-spell

[10]  Of course Peterson has come out with a wonderful version:  http://www.amazon.com/Lesser-Key-Solomon-Joseph-Peterson/dp/157863220X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1307315567&sr=8-2 but the standard text is Waite:  http://www.amazon.com/Lesser-Solomon-hur-Edward-Waite/dp/1163064300/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307315640&sr=8-1

While I think both of us would really like to avoid any reference to Miley Cyrus in this column,  I am going to talk about the mountain, and the climb [1].   We all have our own mountain, and our own path.  For some its steeper, for some, higher.  Sometimes its wooded and we, like Dante, can’t quite see where we are headed.  For others it is so rocky and barren they can barely stand it.   Many people decide on the Christian path, even if they don’t stick to it and their mountain looks really different from the one Christ actually climbed.  Others, the secularists, turn away from the mountain and go have a beer in town.  Pagans take a different path, one that is both tough and magical.

Thinking about paths and climbing, I thought it would be worthwhile to talk a little about the idea of journey in the context of a Pagan theology.    I know I risk getting my wheels stuck in the mud of advice columns [2], but I’ll try to avoid the usual prescriptions.

In his book “Four Spiritualties” Peter Richardson [3] discusses four different types of spiritual paths.  His paths correspond to different Meyer’s-Briggs personality Indicators [4].  These personality types go back to Jung’s psychological types, which in turn work into the idea of the magical.  But that’s another story.

In his book Richardson describes the journey’s that appeal to each grouping of personality type:  the path of unity, the journey of devotion, the journey of works, and the journey of harmony.  While you might want to read his book to see which type of journey you fit into, and what each one entails, I was inspired by his idea of journey to think about what constitutes a Pagan journey.  What propels us along the path?  What actions lead us to fulfillment, and how do we get there through the Gods and Goddesses?  These are big questions, ones I’ll only begin to talk about here, but I think they are extremely interesting questions.

Unlike Richardson who sees each journey as an integrated set of actions that encompass all the different aspects of spiritual questing, I want to examine the individual components that make up a journey.  In other words I’m using Richardson’s idea of the four paths as a way to organize my thinking about the tasks that lead us along the Pagan path.   These are:  take others with you, find love, find peace, and practice.  Each loosely corresponds to Richardson’s paths:  unity: others; devotion: love; harmony: peace; works: practice.

The first task is to take others with you on the journey.  Without others, the journey will not only be lonely, but you will miss the key lessons that compassion and humanity can teach you.  If you look at many Pagan books, they focus a lot on the inner and out works, but not on works that engage us with other people and the world.  The book religions are all about engaging with the world, in particular Christianity focuses a lot on not only how you treat others, but in how you treat the least fortunate, the outcasts, and the marginalized.

Taking others with you on the journey means travelling together, and picking up those who are laying beside the road.  In travelling together we are asked to test our faith against the beliefs and actions of other Pagans.  While it is totally possible to be a solitary practitioner, and to be spiritual alone, it is not possible to be religious alone [5].  Beliefs, practices, magic, spirit, faith, and other beliefs are private, but religion is both private and public.  It is an organized faith, whether it is organized around a circle, a Pagan festival, or a meetup.  It asks that you not only believe, but that you take the risk of speaking and affirming your belief amongst others.  Faith that is witnessed, that is tested, grows stronger and propels you along the path.

Teachers also give us the experience of the other in our journey.  Learning by reading or having a spiritual experience often requires considerable work and in many cases you still get it wrong.  A teacher, at least a good one, can explain in few words many things that you have overlooked or misread.  And only a teacher can teach you how to be in a faith.  Attitude, confidence, the idea of a magical will, are all things that are shown and taught between people.

Travelling together and with our teachers we often encounter the less fortunate.  There are those who are down on their luck.  In fact today there are many more down on their luck than in the past.  There are also those who are down on their spiritual luck, those whose attitudes, personalities, and abilities have left the alone on the journey.  Many of those people show up at our circles and meetups.  We need to show compassion, in order to learn how to be compassionate.  But at the same time we are on a climb.  The Pagan path is both demanding and weird.  Those who drop behind on the path, those who are not disposed to its hardships and requirements, we must let them know we will be waiting, but they need to know that we will not stop.  There is a balance between helping, and stopping.

The second task is to find love.  Love is another spiritual goal that is not readily discussed in the Pagan literature.  Perhaps that’s because of all the “god is love” Christian nonsense.  God is not just love, the Lord and Lady come in many forms, love, cruelty, vengeance, satisfaction, plenty, warmth, amongst only a few.  But we also need to remember that we do have Goddesses of love:  Aphrodite, Aine, Ishtar, Inanna, and others.   Love is as much a part of Paganism as anything else, honor, sex, nature, or magic.

Finding love requires more of us than simply falling in love with one of our fellow travellers.  It means seeking and finding the love of the Lord and Lady.  Their love is within us, all around us, it is in everything that we see, touch, walk on, and breathe.  It comes from the breath of the world, from our experience in nature and in ritual.  Love is that which propels us up the path with out fellow travellers.  In it we find that which is more than ourselves.  From love of the Goddess comes peace.

Which brings us to our third task:  find peace.  Peace here refers to inner peace.  It is the balance that comes from a loving community.  It is the calm that comes from knowing yourself and having your beliefs, values, and worth firmly grounded.  Peace lets us navigate the tricky, technical, parts of our climb.  When things become dangerous, peace is the solid bedrock beneath our feet that keeps us from falling.

Without peace there are many challenges that we will not overcome when we face them.  The first test that the mountain usually gives us on the Pagan path is one of ego.  For some reason Paganism, and magic, can easily lead to a narcissistic pursuit of personal power and egotism.  You know everything, you are always right about the Gods and Goddesses, you must be the first, the boss, the most magical.  Perhaps it is the association of magic with power that is so tempting, or the fact that Pagan beliefs are so malleable that we each are essentially charting our own without any higher authority.  Personally I believe that Paganism encourages self-centeredness because it is different, it is not mainstream.  By just starting down a Pagan path you become different, special, unique.  If you long to be special, Paganism can provide that specialness.  We attract those who want to be unique, different.

Unfortunately that way does not lead to peace, to grounding.  It’s too easy to fall from the path, to lose others, to lose love, if it is all about you.  While the rede and the threefold law are seen as the most important expressions of Pagan ethics, I see the magical law:  magic spoken is magic spoiled, as the most important law.  The discipline of not talking about your craft, of your religion, of your beliefs, robs Paganism of that ego feeding uniqueness.  If you do not tell unless you need to no one will know that you are different.  I know how tempting it is to let your Christian friends know about your beliefs.  And I’m not saying you shouldn’t.  But you should also know that there is a power in holding back, and that power is the peace of seeking the Gods and Goddesses for what they are, not what you are.

Another challenge that we face as Pagans, particularly Pagan leaders, is burnout.  Without peace I have seen too many leaders eventually fall off the path, or at least retreat into solitary practice.  If ego claims half of those who fall away, burnout claims the other.   Peace gives you the grounding to know what is important to do right now.  Attend to your Gods and Goddesses first, for they are the mountain and the path.  Everything else, your reward, fellowship, and practice, are second to that focus.

Which brings us to the fourth task:  practice.   Now practice can mean a lot of things.  It can mean a regular devotional practice such as ritual or prayer, it can mean the practice of magic or other practical spiritual arts, or it can mean “doing something in the world.”  I’d contend all of these are a component of a religious practice.  They both ground you in the world, and they require a certain regulated discipline out of you.  In each of them you are giving something, usually time and attention, to the world of the spirit.

Pagan devotional practices are not as regulated as those of other religions with their rosaries and regularly scheduled prayers.  However, just because we don’t have those rules, doesn’t mean that there are not useful, or that we can’t implement them ourselves.  Pagan devotions can range from daily prayer or communion with the Gods and Goddesses to a simple walk through the woods.  With the Gods and the Goddesses all around us, and within us, many daily actions or rituals can become devotional.  Gardening, making a meal, or playing with your dog can all be ways of connecting with the Goddess [6].

But practice is a serious occupation as well.  It is focused attention on the work of the Gods and the Goddess.  Prayer, meditation, and magic represent related but different ways that attention can be focused.   Prayer is a conversation, mediation or shamanic journey is a seeking of union, and magic is bringing the spirit into manifestation in the world.  None of these practices is done well the first time you do it.  It takes practice to do practice right.  That’s why it’s typically called a spiritual discipline.  Because the discipline you accept in focusing your mind gives you the mental and psychic strength you need to accomplish the task.

Practice can also mean acting in the world.  After all you “practice” a faith or a spiritual discipline.  The practical aspect of faith is perhaps not as glamorous as the spiritual, but its something that we all benefit from.  Leading ritual, helping to prepare meals for the homeless, or working for progress in our religion are all examples of practice.

Think about the time and effort that many of our leaders put into our groups every day.  Scheduling Pagan Pride day, doing rituals, leading classes, and simply organizing covens and groups takes a lot of effort.  These are all spiritual practices that build character and faith through service.    These practices do not make the leaders greater, they make them more humble, more thoughtful, and more prone to realize the ways in which they fall short.  To practice leadership within a Pagan group is to work long hours for only the reward of better self awareness.  In thinking about practice it is important to realize that the practice is not itself what propels you along the path, but the changes it makes in how you see the world.

So what constitutes a Pagan journey?  I’d contend these four tasks:  be with others, find love, find peace, and practice, are great starting points for developing an answer to that question.

The book religions have lots of theological and liturgical answers to the questions of fellowship, love, peace, and works.  But we have little to guide us, as many of the teachings of the old religions have been lost.  Given the proliferation of love Goddesses, for example, it is almost certain that ancient Celtic and Mediterranean religions had deep and thoughtful things to say about the role of love in our relationships.  And some of those relationships are between us and the Gods and Goddesses.

So what path do we take?  What do our ancestors tell us about the climb?  It sure would be great to follow the path that has been trod for millennia.

That is not possible today.   As Pagans we are pretty much on our own.  To climb as high as we can on the mountain we need to understand the path using our own experiences and reasoning.  We need to know how to climb, and where our footing is sure and where it is weak.  This is an enormous challenge, one I do not think we realize the depth and complexity of.  Defining a new way, a way that incorporates reified deity into the quest for transcendent love, inner peace, and selfless practice is very hard work.

Because we do not have the path, we must cut one for ourselves.  That is pretty scary, because the mountain is tall and rugged.  But at the same time it is exhilarating.  As we cut our way up the mountain we are finding remnants of those who have come before us.  As we work, lead, and practice the Pagan path will become clear, maybe not easier, but clear.

[1] Instead of anything by Cyrus (either one), I’d recommend Mother, I Climbed written by the great Dave Carter and performed by Tracy Grammer.  It challenges the whole idea of this column, saying that at the top of the mountain he found nothing, and it was only returning to the earth, the womb of the Goddess (Marianna, who can be taken as an obscure love Goddess or the symbol reason (and France)), that he found peace.  It is a very interesting song, like all of Carter’s songs.  And Tracy Grammer is one of the best folk vocalists recording today.  http://www.tracygrammer.com/php/lyrics.php?uid=506

[2] Another Dave Carter reference.  http://www.tracygrammer.com/php/lyrics.php?uid=98http://www.tracygrammer.com/php/lyrics.php?uid=98

[3]  Peter Tufts Richardson.  Four Spiritualties:  Expressions of Self, Expressions of Spirit:  A Psychology of Contemporary Spiritual Choice, Davies-Black Publishing, 1996.

[4]  Meyers-Briggs Type Indicators and MBTI are registered trademarks of Consulting Psychologists Press Inc.

[5]  I get a lot of grief when I say this, but I am talking in a very technical sense about the term “religion.”  It is not the same as “mystic,” “shaman,” “magician,” or even “witch.”  Religion implies a set of agreed on beliefs, and organization, and a public witness.  Paganism in all its forms totally qualifies on all these (well, except we are not terribly well organized at the strategic level).  However solitary spirituality is not a “religion.” It is a practice, a faith, or a spirituality, but not a religion.  Its not bad, its just we need a term to indicate an organized group who believes the same thing about deity.

[6]  Remember there are Gods and Goddesses for everything, Epona, while typically associated with horses, is also seen in her statuary accompanied by dogs.

One big advantage any theologian of the book religions have is the they, um, have a book.  That gives them a lot to talk about [1], even if it many times doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense.  The critical analysis of religious texts, more specifically Christian texts like the Bible, is called exegesis.  The word derives from the Greek meaning “to lead out.”  Exegesis takes on many different forms, it can mean the direct, religious, interpretation of the text either through inspiration or rational inquiry, or it can mean the “meta” analysis of the text where you look at the text independent of faith and assess its historical or literary meaning.

Exegesis is not just a Christian activity.  In the Hebrew tradition exegesis (Pardes) plays a big role in understanding of the law (Torah) and what it requires.  Jewish exegesis breaks into several useful sub-categories that expand on the idea of a practical or outer exegesis and an “inner” one derived from mystical insight.  Essentially most of these exegesis techniques were designed to aid in either the study or understanding of the simple or “extended” meaning of the Torah.

The Mimamsa school of Hindu philosophy is concerned with understanding dharma by a careful and close reading of the Vedas.   Again, as with both Christian and Hebrew exegesis, the emphasis is on the question of what the “law” or sacred book requires followers of the religion to do.  In this sense exegesis of sacred books can be seen as a proto-legal exercise, whereupon those interpreting the text make rational and reasoned arguments about what the texts’ (laws’) say a proper follower should do.

And, lest we forget, exegesis can be a secular activity as well, with a good recent example being the Tea Party’s relationship with the Constitution [2].

But what does all this mean for modern neo-Paganism? There are a couple of ways we can approach a modern, Pagan, exegesis.

The first is to remark how silly it would be for us to attempt to derive rules from text because we don’t really have either.   We don’t believe in rules, and we certainly don’t have sacred texts in the same way that other religions do.  Why worry so much about something that means so little?  Fair enough.  But the same argument could apply to Pagan theology in general, lets call it the “just do it” argument.  And I don’t buy it [3].

After all, we do have some rules to think about.  We have covenants between group members, oaths to the Gods and Goddesses, and “laws” of witchcraft and magic.  We actually have quite a few more rules than you might think.  The recent spate of discussions on “harm none…” and “threefold law” are examples, in my opinion, of exegesis about Pagan rules.  These enquiries attempt to construct a more complex set of rules out of these basic ones by using rational analysis.  While we don’t have the quality and quantity of rules about behavior that the book religions do, we do have enough rules that we can work with them.

And we do have some texts, though how sacred they are is open to discussion.  The text that comes the closest to a founding document would be Gardner’s original book of shadows.  However those papers are squirreled away with the Gardnarians’ in Canada and Spain who bought the Ringling collection and are unavailable for general study [4].    Otherwise all we have are the legends and other writings from European late indigenous traditions [5].   Other than the Northern traditions, and some of the reconstructionists, we don’t do a lot with these texts.  Many of these texts are narratives of heroic actions or conflicts, stuff that requires thought and some understanding of context in order to properly analyze.   It would be very useful to have a detailed discussion about the origin, meaning, and context of texts like the Ulster cycle, however those discussions seem to be elusive, at least to me [6].

Even more elusive when we consider ancient texts is the Pagan context of those texts.  Take, again, the Ulster Cycle.   The manuscripts we have are 12^th to 15^th century, written by Christian monks.  The cycle documents a lot of things that might be associated with Paganism, such as druidry, but scholars debate how realistic and accurate the cycle actually is.  Many of the translations date back to the 18^th century, and so do many of the commentaries.  Some say that the texts are actual representation of what life was like during Pagan Celtic Ireland, others don’t.  We could (but we won’t here) develop a detailed narrative of these texts, how realistic they are, and how they apply to modern Paganism.  However the layers and layers of meaning already laid on them, starting with the 12^th century monks who wrote them down, will greatly complicate what we would need to do [7].

Of course we don’t necessarily have to go all the way back to original texts in order to develop a rational enquiry into written “scripture.”  If we define a Pagan “scripture” (itself a bit of an oxymoron) as the key texts that are used to inform and form our faith, we have a whole bunch of 20^th century texts that can be the subject of a Pagan exegesis.  Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance is perhaps the best example of a 20^th century canon for Paganism.  Similar arguments could be made for Buckland, Farrar, Valiente, and, of course, Gardner.  Gains could be made in overall Pagan thought and faith if these and other texts were read closely and trends and themes developed.  Already we have a growing body of exegesis on the work of Hutton [8], for example.

Rules and texts are available for a more detailed exegesis, and the long, complicated process of developing them can be done.  But to do so we’d need an interested audience, or at least an audience forced to listen to part of it.  My suspicion would be that the audience would be quite small.  Quite small.

But there is a third response to the question of exegesis.  As Pagans we find meaning in the natural world, in our direct experience.  This is different from the book religions, which have a mediated experience through their Priests and their texts.  We seek meaning directly in the world, both as an end in itself as well as a way to get closer to the Gods and Goddesses.

So what would an exegesis of the world look like?    Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that deals with questions of existence and what is in the world.  What is an object?  What is time?  How is the world constructed?  A world exegesis might look a lot like metaphysics if we defined the scope of our enquiry broadly enough to encompass the more fundamental questions of existence and reality.

However there is also the possibility of a narrow exegesis of the world, one that concentrates on the phenomenology of experience.  The relationship we have with our and other’s ideas of the world and our emotional and physical experience of the world.  This is more immediate and “practical” than a metaphysical enquiry, and more suited to the grounded, world-based, magic that Pagans engage in.  But if it’s a practical sort of enquiry, then we should be able to define it much more easily than we can with text-based exegesis.

What questions would a world exegesis ask?  Each individual would have their own answers, and their own questions.  Everyone has their own way of seeing and reacting to the world.  However some example questions might include the following:

• What emotions occur within me as I experience the world?  Do specific things or sights cause those emotions, or are they an excitement that translates across my experience?
• How do I see or feel the presence of the Gods and Goddesses in the world?  Do I have a direct experience through meditation or contemplation, or is my experience an internal emotion or thought?
• What do I see in the world that is beyond the world?  Is there more within what I see that is hidden and requires a certain attitude, preparation, or foresight to find?
• How does my magic work within the world to shape my and others perceptions of both reality and what is beyond reality?

The answers to these and other questions can begin to piece together an exegesis of the world, a drawing forth of concepts and ideas that shape our faith and experience.  The world becomes our text, and our reading is the time we spend contemplating it.  By drawing out the meaning in the world we can better understand the Gods and Goddesses and their, and our, place within the world.  Which, ultimately, is what faith is all about.

[1] Should you doubt, and I doubt you would, you can just go here:  http://www.clerus.org/bibliaclerus/index_eng.html or here http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_INDEX.HTM

[2] For a nice article on this subject go here:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/weekinreview/14liptak.html

[3] As I explained very early on in this column, I believe we can get something out by reasoning about Paganism.  And I believe the more thoughtful and considered discussion we do have the richer and more interesting our faith will become.

[4] We have a lot of books that claim to be original, and several who have worked from the original manuscripts (e.g. Steward Farrar and Janet Farrar, The Witches Way, Phoenix, 1984), but no facsimile (that I know of) of the actual book.  See, for example, the discussion in Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon, Oxford, 1999 about the Toronto text.  The reference to Spain is from Janet Farrar, personal communication.

[5] The whole European “first peoples” question seems complicated to me.  Who was first?  The peoples who made the stone circles and dolmens?  Or those who followed with their own, Celtic, traditions?  Or the Romans who influenced a large part of Pagan England when they ruled it?  Or even the late Anglo-Saxons and others who maintained a lot of early traditions while at the same time adopting Christianity?  Modern neo-Paganism seems to draw a lot from all these sources, which really complicates the decision as to which legend/theology to examine.

[6]  A proper exegesis of certain historical writings would be extremely useful, but I have yet to find anything that resembles a helpful discussion.  For my area of interest, ancient Irish stories and documents, there are a lot of texts, most of which don’t get discussed much on this side of the Atlantic (see, for a really good example, http://www.ucc.ie/celt/, a project of the University College Cork (UCC) to put online a large number of historical Irish texts).  We tend to either have books that say “here it is, good luck with that” or meta-analyses like Joseph Campbell which look across texts for meta-themes like the hero.  Detailed discussions of individual texts, with the authors talking about provenance, details of what they do and why, and the cultural context of the time seem to be missing.  I have had a bit of trouble finding something that does this clearly.  Academic journals may be a possibility but can be difficult if they are in Gaelic and you don’t speak the language.  Another potential source of interpretation is older academic texts, many dating to the 18^th and early 19^th centuries, but the feeling is always that these are out of date and must be somehow supplanted by more recent scholarship.

[7] This problem of various layers of interpretation and historical fiddling with texts is most on exhibit in the Bible itself.  Recent (19^th and 20^th century) scholarship has done a lot to unpack all the various versions of the bible, and how and why changes occurred as it was passed along.  See, for example, Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, Harper One, 2007.

[8] Hutton’s history of Paganism and Witchcraft, Triumph of the Moon, is perhaps the most important Pagan work to come out since Starhawk and Adler.  It has also generated a lot of discussion, specifically:  Ben Whitmore, Trials of the Moon, Reopening the Case of Historical Witchcraft, Briar , 2010 and Dave Evans and Dave Green (eds.), Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon, Hidden Publishing, 2009.  While these texts are mostly focused on the historical and sociological issues points raised by Hutton they fall squarely into the academic tradition of discussing the sources and accuracy of a text.

In thinking about recent world events and the terrible suffering many are facing, I found myself asking, “what would a ‘Pagan’ make of all this?”  What would, or should, our response be?  I kept thinking that my answer would be: “we are a practical path.”

What do I mean by saying we are on a practical path?  How might that relate to what is going on in the world, not just in Japan but also in North Africa and the Middle East, and, to a far lesser extent, within the US and our economic difficulties?  How might a “practical path” give us courage and strength amongst so much suffering?

The term “practical” lends itself to many different interpretations.  We could mean simply that we are a path of practice.  It is common to say that one is a “practicing” such and such, meaning that you are actively engaged in worship.  I am, for example, a “practicing Pagan” because I go to circle (at least) once a month and keep an altar at home.  But, theologically speaking, Paganism is also a practice, or a craft, that you do.  Instead of just attending someone else’s work, Paganism and Witchcraft allow you, yourself, to actively become engaged in the process of deific action in the world.  In other words:  we do stuff.  We do magic.

I think that doing stuff as part of our religious practice makes us different than many other religions.  While many Pagan traditions have a Priest and Priestess responsible for running the circle, once an individual is accepted in the circle they are expected to carry their weight.  Without all of us working magically and practically such a numerically small faith would not have progressed very far.  At the same time the ability to practice magic and invoke the deities independently of a Priest or Priestess gives each and every Pagan the opportunity to practice first hand what happens within circle.

We could also mean by “practical path” that Paganism is a “common sense” religion.  On the surface that really appears to be the opposite of what Pagans are.   We do tend to spend a lot of time with flowing robes, incense, magical devices, and mystical ideas.  We seek the Shaman’s experience of travelling with the Gods and Goddess.  And because we can do magic and interact directly with the deity, we are closer to the other side of the veil than many other religions.  But by “common sense” we can also mean “close to reality.”

Our deities are in the natural world.  They are our friends, our mentors, and our guides.  They are in the land and the air, in the sky and in the fields.  They are within us, and all around us.  We are grounded in the world, not in some far off divine paradise that may or may not come to us through good behavior and considerable luck.  We are here.  Now…  We are close to the world and the world is close to us.  We feel the cycles of nature and the comings and goings of all things.  We are part of the world, the same world as the Gods and Goddesses.
This practical aspect of faith grounds and ties us to the world.  What happens in the world, for good or ill, is part of us.  And so we know that when the earth shifts or an ill wind blows that it is not a judgment against us, it is not alien or different or “unworldly” but rather it is what the world does.  This acceptance of the world and all that is in it gives us a practical base from which to defeat despair.  The same world that changes and touches us can be changed by our touch.  Our actions, magical or temporal, change the world just as it changes.

The “practical path” says that, while you cannot, and should not, fight the world, you can work it and change it to the better.  Circumstances that are given can be changed, but those changes require our energy and attention and work [1].  We are not the busy, industry-focused, Puritans by any stretch of the imagination, but when it comes to setting up camp, pulling up the Maypole, or cooking a collective dinner, we get it done.   Spiritually we have a faith that encourages change through positive action, its called magic.   I will claim that the belief we can change the world through magic will makes us a very optimistic, pragmatic, and centered religious practice.  We believe we can shoulder the burden and change the world.

A practical path can also be interpreted as one that does not brook much nonsense.  And I would also argue that Paganism is a pragmatic religion.  Guilt, sin, and all of the other features of self-blaming are not part of the Pagan tradition.  Paganism tends to emphasize the positive virtues of loyalty, doing no harm, and respect for life.  Instead of telling us what we should not do, Paganism points us toward what we should do.  Instead of making us feel guilty, Pagan traditions empower us to create and change.

This tendency to emphasize positive action may arise from the underlying acceptance of duality in nature.  Instead of seeing disasters or misfortunes as punishment, imposition, or “something that god let happen,” Pagan theology would interpret misfortune differently.  Misfortune is not “evil” in the sense that it is created and deliberately directed by the will.  Instead the world contains within it both dark and light, both suffering and happiness, and one always changes into the other through the cycles of the seasons.

While this in no way endorses misfortune, it produces a mindset that says misfortune today will be followed by fortune tomorrow.  Perspective gained through the knowledge of the circles and seasons of the Goddess stops us from despair or hopelessness.  Instead we know that the Goddess reshapes the world constantly, and we suffer because we are in that world, not because She wishes us harm.  We, and She, fall under the rule of the world, and the inevitable changes that are required means sometimes we suffer, sometimes bad things happen, but always we remember that everyone is in it together.

Knowing that the Gods and Goddesses are in it with us and we all have the power to constantly remake our circumstances gives us the basis for a pragmatic response to tragedy.  We help those who have been traumatized through our words and rituals.  We give our time and resources to help those who are rebuilding to recover.   We can do our spiritual and practical work in order to keep things going and help everyone muddle through the event.  But we don’t see shifting plates or runaway reactors or despotic responses to attempts at freedom as something personal.  Tragedy is never the fault of the victim, never something brought on willingly by those in control of their fate [2].  Instead it is the nature of the world to shift and change and sometimes bring birth and sometimes bring death.  But it is how we respond to those shifts of fate that really defines whether they are ultimately “good” or “evil.”  If we respond in faith and charity with loving hearts and strong arms, we know that the circle will turn and good will come again.  We are a hopeful people that look forward to the next cycle, to the next turning, even as we mourn for what is lost.

So what might a Pagan response to all this tragedy be?  First to acknowledge suffering and send energy, prayers, and workings in support of those harmed, in harms way, or who have been indirectly harmed by the events; fate speaks, people suffer, and we console, support, and mourn.

But it also means we should get involved.  Do something.  It could be as simple as speaking truth about what is going on in Bahrain or Saudi Arabia [3] or as complex as travelling to the disaster in order to lend a hand (as many have done in New Orleans).   It might be sending our prayers or positive energy in support of recovery efforts or protestors [4].  This positive, optimistic, aspect of Pagan practice is something that the world could really use right now.  And we could benefit from acknowledging that it lies deep within our faith.

[1] An example of such a pragmatic approach is the Pagan Japan Relief effort, which can be found here: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/Pagan-Community/doctors-without-borders

[2] Obviously people with mental conditions that prevent a realistic assessment of their situation often bring harm to themselves.  For them the tragedy begins earlier with the onset of disease.

[3] They don’t much like Witches in Saudi Arabia http://blog.amnestyusa.org/deathpenalty/saudi-arabia-set-to-execute-soothsayer-for-sorcery/ and Bahrain, and the entire region, is struggling with freedom http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_bahrain_protests

[4] Like Selena Fox from Circle Sanctuary did (see http://wildhunt.org/blog/2011/02/pagan-community-notes-protecting-a-sacred-altar-in-athens-selena-fox-in-madison-american-mystic-and-more.html or http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150097997169285&set=a.104902039284.95857.50006939284&comments&ref=mf)

A Unitarian Universalist minister I know recently said that one of the purposes of religious practice is to empower us so that we may go out and bless the world [1].  That idea of empowerment as a vehicle through which we both are blessed and bless the world intrigues me.  How do we Pagans bless ourselves, so that we may be powerful enough to bless the world?

As Pagans we talk a lot about blessings.  Blessed be.  House blessings.  Blessing the working or tools.  We even use “blessings” as an address when closing out letters or e-mails.  But what, exactly, is happening when we bless?  Who is doing the blessing, and what happens?  In the Christian beatitudes there is a whole list of people and traits that are blessed, like the poor in spirit.   When we bless what do we place in the recipient of the blessing, and what do we retain for ourselves?

One way to understand blessings is that they are given and received, thus establishing a relationship between the giver and the recipient.  Blessings create a social contact between those involved.  They are an exchange of magical energy that empowers both the giver and the recipient.  The giver is empowered through the creation of the blessing and the contact with the other, while the recipient is empowered by the acknowledgement of a relationship between the giver and receiver, and by the happy generosity that is received.   Without the exchange, without the giving, there can be no real blessing.

But we can bless ourselves, can’t we?  Of course.  You can do anything you want.  But it may not be all that effective of a blessing.  After all you can give yourself twenty dollars, but when you do you won’t have an extra twenty to spend.   If you believe that there is something special exchanged in the social interaction between giver and recipient [2], then blessings require that someone give, and someone else receive.

This is not all that hard, given that many things can give a blessing, and many things can receive.  We can bless objects in the world, or, in the case of a circle casting, we can actually bless the world.  We can receive blessings from the Gods and Goddesses if we ask.  We can send blessings to our ancestors, or ask to receive them.  But the idea of blessing seems inherently related to the philosophical concept of encountering the other, the “not me,” who humbles us and reminds us we are not the center of the universe.  Blessings tell us others are in the world, that they are part of a sacred whole, and that they are related to us, and we must relate to them.

“Blessed be” as a neo-Pagan expression probably derives from the fivefold kiss [3].  But it’s an intriguing expression, one that perhaps deserves more analysis than it has been given [4].  While the original intent was pretty clearly to bless, or acknowledge the already blessed status, of the vessel into which the Goddess would be drawn, the expression in isolation seems to convey a lot more intent.  The archaic language, typical of early neo-Pagan rituals, would suggest that the statement is more of a declaration than a blessing, in effect saying that the bits being discussed (feet, knees (knees, really?), womb, lips, etc.) are already blessed and the kiss is simply a way of acknowledging that fact.  In this sense the expression is saying you are already blessed, and you should exist in that state in peace.  The fivefold kiss is also a way, theoretically, for the High Priest to acknowledge the presence of the Goddess in the Preistess.  “Blessed be” acknowledges that everything is sacred, including the person you are addressing.

If that were the case, that everything is sacred and blessed, then where would the exchange of blessings come in?   In this case the Goddess has already blessed everything by the act of creative existence.  She exists, and is constantly creating and destroying and in the process blessing the world.  Then nothing needs to be done by us, other than to acknowledge the sacredness of that which is.   Blessing becomes more of an acknowledgement than a gift or a magical act.  We are simply reminding ourselves and others of the fact that everything is blessed.  This is a very static form of blessing, one that does not compel any action to be taken in the world, including the act of blessing itself (because its redundant).

However “blessed be” has another, more existential, interpretation (which is why I like it so much).  Instead of a static declaration of fact, we can emphasize the verb “be” and see it as an imprecation to “exist in the state of blessedness.”  The “be” that just hangs out there at the end of the expression suggests a lot more than “you are.”  Instead it suggests that in making the statement we are recognizing the existence of the one receiving the blessing, the “existential otherness” of another conscious being.  Someone who receives the blessing just “is,” exists as an independent actor in the world, one who we are attempting to relate to through the expression.

In this sense when we say: “blessed be,” we are creating an existential dialog between ourselves as subject, and the recipient as subject.  We are actively blessing instead of acknowledging merely a static blessed status.  After all if everything is blessed, then Fred the Druid is not much different than Barney the dog or rocky the field stone when it comes to being blessed.  Somehow I suspect we mean something different when we say: “blessed be.”  It is an address to an independent consciousness in the world, one that is the same as the Gods and Goddesses, and different from the rocks and trees, one that makes decisions, feels, and needs our blessing.

This makes the expression “blessed be” a complex, three-fold, blessing.  At one level it does remind us that all existence,  all “being,” is blessed by the Goddess.  It also is a way for us to acknowledge the special “otherness” of those we are addressing, acknowledging that we hold the responsibility of treating them as a subject, as an equal, and not merely an object.  And, finally, it is an exhortation to the recipient to “exist in a state of blessedness.”  It is a magical expression that tells the recipient they are not alone, but that there are others who wish them the greatest happiness and fulfillment and will (hopefully) work with them toward that goal.

But wait, that last statement, that we need to do more than just state the blessing, that we need to work toward creating the effects of the, suggests that we can’t just bless and go, that we need to stick around and do something more.   To better understand how blessings work in the world we probably need to go to their polar opposite in order to understand how Pagan blessings work in the world.  Curses.

For some reason ancient Pagan blessings are less well preserved in the archeological record than curses.  Perhaps this was because curses were often written down on lead tablets [5] made of lead and buried.  Or they were buried in bottles or under thresholds, which makes it a lot easier to find them.  The curse tablets covered a lot of different topics, ranging from stolen property to legal disputes.  What is most important is that, by appealing to the Gods and Goddesses (of the underworld), people thought they could affect the world through their magic.  The magic of the curses empowered them in the world, either directly by intimidating the victim, or indirectly by giving them a sense of assurance that their path in the world was being overseen by another.  They had the power to affect their own outcomes, even if it was magical.

In blessing something similar is happening.  In giving a blessing we are giving ourselves the power to affect others in the world.  By blessing the circle through casting we are giving ourselves the power to create the sacred in the world.  By smudging a house we are giving ourselves or the owners the power to live in a blessed state.  And by creating the sacred, we bless the world through our own actions.  Likewise by blessing others, even if it is a simple “blessed be” in ritual or in an e-mail, we are empowering ourselves through our willingness to give some of our sacred self to others, and we are empowering others by telling them that they do not walk alone, that we are giving them some of our magical energy in support of who they are.  In the case of “blessed be” we are giving this to them not only with respect for their own place in the world, but we are also telling them to remember that they are and are in a place that is inherently blessed.

This inherent nature of blessing in the Pagan world means that Pagan blessings are not simple.  They are individual exchanges of intent that occur within the broader landscape of a sacred existence.  Everything is sacred, while at the same time we create the sacred within the sacred through our actions.  By choosing to bless we are stirring the sacred cauldron in new ways, creating new weavings of connection between the blessing and the blessed.

And once these blessings are out there, we never know where they may end up or what effect they will have.  They empower us by opening up our hearts and minds to the other.   They give us the confidence that we actually can create the sacred, that we can stir the cauldron of the sacred with confidence and good intent.  At the same time our stirrings touch others and the world, and cause effects we cannot see.

Thus a Pagan blessing is the magical invocation of the sacred within what is already sacred.  It is an absurd task, absurd because it is unnecessary.  But this inherent absurdity, that it is being done without needing to be done, that makes blessing a great gift of power.  We are doing something for another that does not need to be done, but that connects us by transferring our good intent.  We ask for blessings because we need that connection, we need to have the other tell us that we do not journey alone, that in our journey we are blessed by the Gods and Goddesses.

As Lisa Theil says in her song “Invocation of the Graces” [6]:

Bless me with good means

Bless me with good intent

Bless me with good estate

Finer than I know to ask.

[1]  Do not get me confused with a Unitarian Universalist.  While I am a member of a UU church, I’m a Pagan member of the church.  UU is what I would call a very externally focused religion, despite its small numbers and tendency toward becoming an intellectually and socially isolated enclave of NPR listeners.  Paganism tends to be an internally focused religion, dwelling on personal empowerment and growth vice social justice or righting the wrongs of the world.  Its not like there are no externally focused Pagans, or internally focused UUs, but in general the things that Pagans talk about are magic and meditation and connection with the Earth while UU’s talk about social justice, cultural equality, and connection with the Earth.  The question inherent in all this is how “blessing” works in these two environments.  The UU focus would be on blessing ourselves and each other so that we can do great things out in the world.  The Pagan approach would be for us to bless ourselves and the world, with little focus on exactly what we are going to do in the blessed world.   This dichotomy is important, in my opinion because it makes us ask how our Pagan blessings change us and the world.

[2]  Throughout this essay I’m going to talk as if two people are involved in giving and receiving the blessing.  However all of the same discussion applies to the Gods and Goddesses giving and receiving blessings, they are, after all, existential entities that act in the world like we do.

[3] Blessed be thy feet… Blessed be thy knees…Blessed be thy womb…Blessed be thy breasts…Blessed be thy lips…  The fivefold kiss is part of the Drawing Down the Moon ritual where, in classical working, the High Priest draws the Moon down on the High Priestess.  The fivefold kiss, in addition to being a nice way for HP Gardner to work with the young ladies, is done immediately before the actual invocation of the Goddess and represents a symbolic blessing of the vessel into which the Goddess will arrive.  See, for example, Janet and Stewart Farrar, A Witches’ Bible, Phoenix Publishing, 1981.

[4]  While everyone likes to focus on the threefold law and the Rede as the foundation of Pagan religious ethics, something I think is a terribly weak foundation, perhaps if we mine other aspects of the early neo-Pagan religion, like the expression “Blessed be” we can come up with sufficient material to build such a foundation.

[5] Curse tablets are found throughout the Greek and Roman Mediterranean.  For a nice discussion go here:  http://www.pinktink3.250x.com/essays/tablets.htm or see John G. Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World, Oxford, 1992.

[6] http://www.amazon.com/Lisa-Thiel/e/B000APYA2E