Pagan Theology

Experiencing the work:  How you treat others

In the last column we talked about what happens once we have the experience of the Pagan divine.  What evidence do we have of that experience?   Does our outlook on the world change?  Does our behavior change?

While laser beams don’t start shooting from our eyes and we don’t get assigned a Harry Potter wand (though often those show up anyway) we should change.  We should change because we have had a transformative experience, one that we seek to repeat, and often do repeat, over and over again.

Last time we talked about what happens to our desire, a desire that changes from whatever was before to one focused on the Gods and Goddesses.  Now I’d like to ask what happens to how we treat each other.  Should anything happen?  Why can’t we just behave any way we wish as long as “it harm none”?

There are two, I believe separable, problems associated with this question.  The first is the question of what, if any [1], influence transformative religious experiences should have on ethical beliefs and practices.  The second is what effects an experience with the Gods and Goddesses has on our day-to-day behavior with respect to other people.  Obviously, given my own preferences for systems and philosophies over emotion and relationships, I’ll start off by discussing the technical issue of divine experience and ethical systems.

Influence on how we think about relationships

One aspect of ethical philosophy is the search for the underpinnings or justifications for ethical systems.  What makes us be ethical?  Why must we hold one or another judgment about behavior?

Clearly most religions answer this question by invoking some sort of absolute ideal, the god that gives the law and judges you when you don’t perform correctly [2].  Believe in the god, get your instructions in a book, and don’t ask too many questions.  Problem solved.

However that won’t work too well as a basis for Pagans.  The ideal god just doesn’t exist.  Instead we have “regular” Gods and Goddesses that exist just like we do in the messy world of reality.   They have the same, or similar, ethical dilemmas that we do.  They react to those ethical challenges, and often they react in a way that some would judge as inappropriate.    As an aside, we can also note that the “one god” has similar problems if it is all powerful, but still allows all this evil to exist in the world.  But that is a digression on evil that we should save for later.

So what is the relationship of Pagan ethics to the direct experience of the divine?  Is that a path to an ethical system, or is it irrelevant?

Any ethical system derived from a direct experience will be a fundamentally practical system, as opposed to one derived from ideals or abstractions.   The other attributes of the multiplicity of direct experience of the divine also come into play.  The Gods and Goddesses are individual, and as ethically complex and ambiguous, as we are.  As individual entities they carry the same radical challenge of existence, how to make something out of nothing [3].  By “nothing” here we mean the cognitive dislocation that comes from the radical proposition that we exist, we can make choices, and we are free in those choices.

The Gods and Goddesses face the same existential dilemma as we do. While the Christian god is in itself both the beginning and the ending, the completeness of perfection that combines both the existence and non-existence, our theology places the Gods and Goddesses in a messier, more realistic, dilemma.  This choice inherent in existence that they face is what makes the Gods and Goddess diverse.  It’s where we get the Morrigan and the Dagda.  The good, and the bad.  And even within the good and bad, we have the aspect of the other side.

Because of this shared existence, we also share responsibility.  Responsibility for our actions and their consequences.  Remember the three-fold law?  It is the requirement that we be responsible for our actions that connects the Gods and Goddesses with our ethical philosophy.  Do not mis-understand, I am not saying that the Gods and Goddesses somehow impose a responsibility for action on their followers.  Instead it is the condition through which we relate to them that spontaneously creates a requirement for responsibility.

How you execute this responsibility, and what it means, to you is not determined by the Gods and Goddesses rather it arises from the nature of the world.  Hurt and suffering are inherently things we would ourselves avoid, and thus must assume others wish to avoid that as well.  So we must not impose suffering on others.  While not getting into a general discussion of ethics, I believe this leads us down the path that we are each responsible for our own behavior, and need to develop an ethics through rational and thoughtful enquiry.

Something that the Gods and Goddesses can help with, because they’ve been doing it a lot longer than we have [4].

Influence in how we treat others

Just as in the above section I skimmed over the entire discussion of how we relate the divine to ethics, I’m going to move on and skim over how this impacts how we treat others.

Again, I’m not talking about particular ethical systems here. I’m talking about a general sense of how the divine existence influences how we should treat others.  The most basic statement of Wicca is “if it harm none, do as ye will.”  This can be teased into all kinds of interpretations, but it basically boils down to “do no harm.”  Two things stand out about this, it is placed in a passive voice: making it easy to avoid any pro-active actions we might take.  And it doesn’t tell us much what it means by “harm.”

Instead of working on this rather obscure saw, we might examine the fundamental aspects of Pagan divinity to see if there are any clues there.  If, as I argue above, existence of the Gods and Goddesses implies a sort of divine responsibility on those who follow them, then other attributes of Paganism might also bring forward shaping principles for how we might treat others.

Multiplicity immediately comes to mind as a key Pagan attribute.  And not just “many” but also “diversity.”  Pagan deities come in all shapes, sizes, attitudes, and behavioral styles.  This diversity makes coming up with a prescription for behavior difficult.  What are we to make of the violent, dark Gods and Goddesses.  Ones that embody death, war, and selfishness.  If we do not accept them as mere reflections of human actions, emotions, and traits, but instead see them as existential beings making choices, then we have to ask ourselves how we deal with the diversity of the attitudes and actions we find in the Gods and Goddesses.  In some ways this is similar to the book religions challenges in dealing with pain and suffering existing in a world created by a good god.  How does evil and suffering exist in the world when the one god is good?

For us the challenge is accepting Gods and Goddesses who might not be “good” by our definition.  They may be angry, greedy, warlike, or have a general tendency toward misbehavior.  This requires a deep acceptance of the neutrality of nature, the underlying neutrality of the world, towards good and evil, light and dark.  The nature of the Gods and Goddesses show us the great diversity of our own natures, and the ambivalence of the universe towards what we choose to do.  I believe this diversity in what we honor and worship requires that Pagans bring an acceptance toward others and others behavior.  We might wish to limit behaviors that harm or cause suffering, but we also understand that such behaviors are reflections of darkness that is contained in all of us, including the Gods and Goddesses.  We might not condone it, but we approach it by condemning the behavior and its suffering, not those who for whatever reason engage in it.

Another attribute that derives from the existence of Gods and Goddesses is the joy that comes from living in a world that is inhabited by magic and magical beings.  If we bring joy and love to our approach to the social world then we will value whatever we see, we will honor whoever we are with, because we know that behind it all is a divine intrigue, a puzzle, an interest, that calls to us constantly.  This knowledge of the divine in the world is always with us, because the world is always with us.  Thus the joy in perceiving the Gods and Goddesses should also be with us as we travel in the world and relate to others.  If everyone and everything is touched by the divine, then it demands our care, respect, and love.

This divine joy, a reveling in what the world is and how it exists, is a fundamental separation of Paganism from other religions.  We do not seek to deny the world, for there is really no other place to go.  Instead we seek a profound connection with the world.  The Gods and Goddesses provide that connection, for, like us, they too are part of the world, just beyond and slightly to the left of it.

While I’m sure there are many more attributes that can be derived from serious thinking about the existence of Gods and Goddesses, I believe that these two, diversity and inner joy, go a long way to shaping Pagan relationships.  Diversity demands that we respect all beings that exist, and remember that, just like the Gods and Goddesses, they may have behaviors that require understanding, perhaps even avoiding or controlling, but they are still inherently worthy of acceptance [5].  Joy demands that we treat the world as if it is divine, that if we see the Gods and Goddesses in it, we need to work to build on that underlying joy, and bring it out in our actions and relationships.

These and other concepts can, with time and effort, be expanded into a general ethical philosophy for Pagans.  While I’m only touching the elephant here, with more work and time, we can develop a way of being that has us striving to build joyful, accepting, relationships.   We may not always behave as if we’re building joyful, accepting relationships, but at least we know what we should be trying to do!

Obviously these concepts are different from the standard moral and ethical proscriptions and concepts.  They should be.  Most ethical thinking in the West has grown up under the shadow of the book religions, where proscription and prescription are the norm.  Where backing up firm rules is the role of ethical and theological thought.  Had Paganism won over Constantine, I suspect that the way we think about right and wrong would be very different today.  Acceptance, honor, respect, and an endorsing of that which brings joy would be some of the foundational assumptions behind ethical thought.  Starting with joy will lead, I believe, to very different places than if we start with sin.  We should remember those influences as we think about right and wrong, as we think about what we should do and why we do it.  And realize that simple prescriptions like “as long as it harm none” are simply resetting the system back onto the territory of the book religions by developing simple prescriptions to complex problems.

We can do better than that.

[1] I don’t want to go into a detailed discussion of ethical frameworks and philosophy.  I want to understand the relationship between experience and ethics, not dissect the entire connection between Paganism and ethics.  Suffice to say as background, for now, that I believe the most successful, practical, and inclusive ethical system that we can use will most likely be borrowed from somewhere else, not invented through Pagan religion.  Ancient ethical systems are obviously way out of date, and it would be silly to come up with a new one when there has been so much work done on humanistic ethical systems already.  But, I believe, an even more important point is that ethics deal with the relations between people, not between people and deity, and thus should be founded on practical and realistic measures of right relations between people.  Deities can referee, or can stand as judges or guides or helpers, but they are mostly on the sidelines of any ethical system.

[2] Because we have many Gods and Goddesses, some light, some dark, this becomes a bit of a problem for Pagan ethics.  Which particular God or Goddess sets the law?  And if they’re all different, how do they come to a consensus?  One way around such difficulties is to assume some sort of unifying God that hangs around in the background and sorts things out.  I think that’s a cop out, but that’s for another column.

[3] This is a very existential argument, and I must confess to being more taken with the existentialists than the Kantians.  Why shouldn’t Kierkegaard’s radical proposition of faith “what are you going to do in the face of the reality of faith” apply to Pagans as well as Christians.  In fact I think we see it applying all the time.  Pagans get out and practice the faith, in circles, at festivals, and all over.  What would drive that trouble if it were not for a sense of radical faith?

[4] This gives us an expanded humanist/existentialist approach toward ethics.  Choice, responsibility, individual use of reason to search for truth, but also added on we get the Gods and Goddesses to help us with our search for truth.  Sort of a humanist program with a bonus.

[5]  This does not mean that we can look evil in the face and do nothing.  Remember, that our ability to choose implies that we choose responsibly.  A humanist framework can, I believe, be built which results in strong arguments for treating people as worthy and having dignity.  However the radical departure between Paganism and humanism comes in the inclusion of the Gods and Goddesses as part of any ethical framework, and the role that knowledge of them plays in shaping the world, and how we behave in the world.