Pagan Theology

Pagan Theology:  Yule, theodicy, and magic

Yule seems to occupy a special place in the cycle of the seasons.   It is a time of contradictions: the shortest day of the year, but the longest and happiest night.  A time of bloodshed, when the Holly King dies at the hands of the Oak King of summer, and a time when the animals are slaughtered in preparation for winter.  It is named after a German festival, but it’s commemoration of the winter solstice, a very Mediterranean idea [1].   Yule is at Christmas time, but it has not been tainted like Christmas.   It is a pure celebration of joy.  It is finding light in darkness.  It is the magic of light coming from darkness.

What could be more Pagan?

I like Yule because so many aspects of Paganism are wrapped up in the Sabbat.  In the darkness we naturally draw closer, inward, into our houses families and selves.  This focus on the interior, the family, the tribe, is inherently Pagan.  Paganism is not a universal faith in the sense of the Abrahamic religions.  We do not make claims to universal truths.   We do not gather in large groups (at least for now), and even when we did it was still all about the tribe.  We don’t proselytize because of this tribal, individual, focus.  We don’t claim that our Gods and Goddesses are everyone’s, only ours.  This interior, inward, focus for worship is strongest in the darkness, in the cold, when we draw together around the fire, in the circle, to celebrate what is ours, what is our faith.

You don’t see festivals at Yule: you see them at Litha.  When the sun is warm and the days are long all the tribes tend to gather to celebrate.  But when they are short and it is cold, you want to be with those closest to you, in small circles, celebrating the magic.

Yule also is also our answer to the problem of evil.  Because we don’t rebel against the world, but see all of it as divine, we understand that there is divinity in the darkness, as well as the light.   Evil is not something to be sought, but it is something that is accepted as part of the world.  The light and the dark, good and evil, exist in a reflexive relationship that means one cannot exist without the other.

At Yule it is both the darkest time of the year, and the happiest time.  It is the beginning of the return of light, even as we see so little of it.  Within the darkness the seeds of light are contained, just like at Litha when the longest day of the year holds within itself the tipping over into the darkness of shorter and shorter days.

While Pagans believe the darkness is just as much a part of the cycles as light, we do have to confront the theodic question of good and evil.  There is evil in the world, and we don’t need to go all the way back to Hitler to find examples.  Why would the Gods and Goddesses allow evil in the world, and how can we possible see the seeds of good within the darkest vilest evil?  How can good and evil be related at all?

The first part of this question is easily answered:  the Gods and Goddesses have to accept the duality of good and evil just like we do.  They exist within this framework of the universe, and have to abide by its fundamental structures.  The Northern Traditions call this the Wyrd, or fate, and I can think of no better term than that.  The weaving of the world is the basis of all our existences, and within that weaving there is included the idea of duality.  And in our relations with other, conscious, beings we have the problem of how to behave.  Since we have the idea of duality (or for that matter multiplicity, there is little difference between three and two choices, it’s the idea of choice that counts) and the responsibility of consciousness, we have the choice of behaving well, or poorly.  Gods and Goddesses also have these choices, and through those choices come to represent different aspects of those choices, whether good or evil, or something else.  Given that the Gods and Goddesses make choices, they cannot override choice itself.  The Wyrd applies to all, even the Gods and Goddesses [2].

But what about evil?  What about tragedy and loss?  What about pain and suffering?  Pagans tend not to dwell too much on these topics.  This could be because we focus so much on “healing” as opposed to “suffering.” But I’d like to think that the real reason is we occupy a different place.  A place that is not obsessed with pain and suffering, but instead focuses on the joy and happiness that almost always come entwined within even the most painful moments.  Yet still pain and suffering do exist within the world.  How do we reconcile a beautiful, divine, world with the ideas of pain brought about by all too human choices?

There is no joy to be found in hunting whales, for example.  Looking on the bright side we might say that the energy produced in opposition to such cruel and heartless activities is in itself encouraging and liberating.  It is a positive thing that, even though some people are dicks, many others want to be good.  But to me that is insufficient.  There has to be something else, something more than just “look on the bright side.”  There must be something other where good can still exist within evil, where the acceptance of darkness is justified.

Unfortunately we cannot solve the problem of theodicy in one column, one book, or one lifetime.  This is one of the central problems of Christian theology, and we should at least be grateful that we don’t have an omnipotent god that we have to make excuses for.   The key I believe to the problem of theodicy in Paganism is the cyclic nature of everything we deal with.  The cycle of the seasons is merely a metaphor for all the other cycles that we live within.  The cycle from birth to death, the cycle of the planets, the sun around the galaxy, the ultimate cycle of the universe.  All of these cycles imply that the return will occupy the same place as the beginning.  From darkness light will eventually cycle, just as from within light will come darkness.

This, in my opinion, is a very mature understanding of good and evil [3].  There is no pure good, because within any “pure” good there is always the possibility of an evil emerging.   Often the greater the good, the harder the fall.  Often we hear of lottery winners that would have been much better off had they not won at all [4].  Likewise, even at the darkest time, there emerge the seeds that will cycle back to life and happiness.  London during World War II was a bleak and dangerous place.  But look at it now, years later, where it is a vibrant and successful center of business and culture.  This doesn’t mean we should seek evil in order to experience good that would be silly.  But it does mean that we look at everything with the long-view, and a healthy degree of mature skepticism.  We know that the wheel always turns and the first eventually will be last, and the last first.  It happens every day in too many ways.

But what about the whales?  The wheel may never turn into the light for them if their populations fall sufficiently.  True.  But there is nothing in our understanding of the cycles that says we just sit around and watch all these wheels turn while we go about our business.   Sometimes the wheels turn themselves, but most of the time we have to turn them.  Good may be embedded in evil, but most of the time it will take a lot of work on our parts to find it, and ensure it overcomes evil.  This, in my opinion,  is a very positive and hopeful understanding (read mature) of theodicy.  We, along with the Gods and Goddesses, have the responsibility for finding that light, nourishing it, and turning the wheel around so that good does come from evil.

At Yule we ask for the darkness to retreat and the light to come.   The message is as much for us as the Gods and Goddesses.  We need to hear the message, hear that it is we that need to put our shoulders to all the wheels that need to turn.  We can’t just rely on the Gods and Goddesses to make the wheel turn, we as divine beings ourselves need to take some responsibility for the way the world works.  We need to bring the light, as much as we need to ask for the light to return.

This is great, right?  Talking about good and evil really puts you in the spirit of the Yule season.  Lets all decorate our trees with black crepe paper, skulls, and coffins and go see the latest Harry Potter movie.  Very festive.

Yule is also a time of magic.  The veil just seems thinner at Yule, even more so than at Samhain.  Perhaps it’s the darkness, or perhaps it just carries over the magic of Samhain, but there is much wonder afoot.  This magic naturally fascinates kids, and adults as well.   Popular culture recognizes this magic with its array of talking snowmen that come to life, flying reindeer, and, of course, the Bumble [5].   Fundamentally anything that fills the darkness with light looks magical. Whether its lights on a tree, candles in the windows, or a Yule fire.  The kindling of a bright spark in an otherwise cold and bleak space is almost a fundamental promise of magic.

Magic, through our intent and our imaginations, kindles the spark of wonder within us, and those who we touch with it.  The real gift of magic is the enchantment (some would say re-enchantment) of the world through our actions and beliefs.  The whole season, minus the Christian influences, is designed to establish a sense of enchantment and wonder, particularly in children.  One of my firm beliefs is that all children and born Pagan and simply talked out of it by rational, dour, adults.  At Yule the idea of magic and enchantment is brought back from where it was banished to all those years ago.  The idea of a tree growing within our houses is enchanting.  The mystery of presents and the unknown gift, and giver.  The feast, the Yule log, and all of the special foods and drinks represent the decoration of our lives with something designed to take us beyond the ordinary, into an extraordinary state of wonderment.

While at one level this is not the same as a well visualized and executed spell, at another level it is.  It is a spell of ritual designed to take us to a place of happiness and love (though often it’s a place of stress and poverty, but what did we say about darkness within light?).  The blood we spill at Yule, whether symbolically through spending money on gifts, metaphorically through the battle that takes place in ritual between the Kings of the seasons, or actually in the animals we consume at our feasts, is a magical sacrifice that kindles the spirit of our ancestors and our memories.   We would do well to remember that spells are woven in the world not just by chants and circles, but also by our actions and intent.  The spell we weave at Yule is one that affects many, not just Pagans.

So while our Christian friends are celebrating Christmas, we can celebrate our Yule knowing that it is a time when almost everyone is brought together by the spell of a light burning in the darkness.  It is our Gods and Goddesses who come close to us through the lights, the trees, and the gifts.  They are the real gift of the season; the whisper of their breath through our houses gives us hope, hope that the cycles will turn.  And hope that we have the strength to help them turn the great wheels of justice, love, and light.

[1]  I believe that we can construct a Mediterranean/Celtic duality to our holidays with the quarters representing the Mediterranean construction around the travel of the sun and astrological positions, and the Celtic holidays centering on agricultural festivals in Ireland and Britain.   The association seems to carry over to the key Christian holidays of Christmas (Saturnalia) and Easter (Ostara), and, if you notice both are named after Germanic Pagan holidays (Yule, Ostara).  Not saying this is archeologically or historically supported (if you go there be prepared to jettison most of what you “know”), just an interesting observation.

[2]  The idea of fate controlling the world comes from the three sisters in Norse mythology who weave fate at the roots of the world trees.

[3]  I use the word “mature” here deliberately.  The idea of a “big daddy in the sky” who will punish you for doing good, or is angered by evil, is a very Abrahamic concept and not a very spiritually mature way of dealing with the problem of ethical behavior.  It is mostly reflected in the Old Testament where Yahweh is a tribal and very judgmental god.  As he, god, evolves throughout the bible he changes into a more benevolent, justice-seeking, god.  Even most of the Christian religions rely on the New Testaments teachings about love, goodness, and justice as inspiration for behavior.  But there is a tendency in fundamentalists of all sects to see a judgment and punishment as the only logical motivation of behavior.  This treats us all as kids, with god being the parent.  Which is not a very grown up way of dealing with the problem.

[4]  Perhaps the most classic case was Jack Whittaker: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/206608/abcs_2020_to_air_tragic_story_of_powerball.html

[5] http://msmindy.com/rudolph/char_bumble.shtml