A Solstice Gone Awry
I recently attended a Winter Solstice celebration here in Northern California. Held at a local community center, it was well attended by an enthusiastic crowd. A first glance indicated a growing and healthy NeoPagan community.
A second glance was not as reassuring.
Every new spiritual movement faces the challenge of enabling people unfamiliar with it to partake of its message, its approach to celebrating and connecting with the sacred. What is important is what is new, and what is off-putting and most easily misunderstood to others is also what is new. The more familiar the practice the more accessible the tradition – but at the same time in promoting greater accessibility the tradition might lose what it truly once had to offer. This dilemma is unavoidable when a tradition grows.
How a religion handles this task is vital to its future. History is replete with people seeking to institutionalize their spiritual tradition to make it “more relevant” to ever more people, and in the process losing track of its initial message. This case could easily be made for both Christianity and Islam in general, but is hardly unique to them. I have heard Buddhist friends make similar complaints about institutionalized Buddhism. Worse yet, as popularity grows some might seek to use the new tradition to further nonspiritual objectives of their own, as Constantine most definitely did with respect to Christianity and Japanese rulers did with Shinto. Such efforts can come both from those wielding power and from those who oppose them.
During this Solstice Sabbat I saw this danger raise its head for the NeoPagan community. This was certainly not the organizers’ intent, and my point is not to criticize anyone by name. For this reason I avoid naming anyone although because I describe a real event, some will try and figure out to whom I refer. But doing this misses my point. I have great respect for the people whose actions I will criticize, and I hope my readers’ attention will be on the common danger that challenges us all rather than on the personalities through which this danger manifests.
I want to emphasize the danger Pagans face as our spirituality moves from the edgy fringe towards the modestly respectable. It is at this transition towards greater respectability that the danger I describe is at its greatest. The problem is not bad people misbehaving but good people not fully appreciating the challenges that now confront us as Pagans.
The Solstice ritual started off wonderfully, and the energy raised was a delight. But in retrospect it seemed the invocations were subordinated to the organizers’ aesthetic desires rather than having the aesthetics shaped by the task of invoking directions and Deities. Still, this might be a relatively minor quibble. The crowd was large and many were inexperienced, and the opening came off very well. The standards of a small and experienced group should not be blindly applied to a large public gathering. Even so, I felt the directions and deities were slighted, though this could just be the grumping of a BTW. However, it fit in with what happened next.
And my reaction to what came next is not a minor quibble.
Of Sermon and Ritual
After the Gods were invoked the ritual’s course shifted drastically. The Sabbat’s major organizer strode forward and gave a “short sermon.” This was the speaker’s own description, not my interpretation of them.
Sermons are a central aspect of Christian practice. They imply a specific kind of relationship between deity, the sermonizer, and those hearing the message. Deity is distant. The sermonizer is an expert at theological interpretation, at least compared to the audience, who are essentially passive receptacles. In the Christian tradition they often are referred to as a flock, as those who come as children, and in similar disempowering terms. They are “ministered” to. If open to the sermon’s message, they will be uplifted and fulfilled by the preacher’s words.
Like any viable spiritual practice, sermons have their strengths and weaknesses, but their strengths are not in keeping with Pagan approaches to relating with the Divine, and their weaknesses undermine the vitality of Pagan spirituality.
As soon as the sermon began, the room’s wonderful energy plummeted. The reason is obvious to anyone used to ritual work. At least in the white Protestant form in which this one was delivered, a sermon immediately shifts us from ritual awareness to intellectual cognition: Do I understand the message? Do I agree with the reasoning? And so on. Intellect pushes aside experience.
Christian services with such intellectual sermons do not try and bring their audience into a personal experience of the sacred. They seek to impart a deeper understanding of the meaning of scripture. (Other styles of sermon do seek to elicit a spiritual encounter – and while I believe they are also not appropriate to a Pagan ritual, the issues they raise are different.)
Anyone who reads my blog knows I have no problem with intellectual reasoning in its proper context. But Pagan ritual is an improper context. We do not gather to hear someone expound on the Gods or on anything else. We gather to honor the Gods, and if possible, to personally encounter and experience Them. This process generally works best when we are fully immersed in the ceremony, and not relating to it as observers (though the Gods can intervene with anyone).
Pagan rituals seek to bring a person into greater harmony with the Gods at many levels, to offer honor to them, to encourage their actual presence among us, to seek their teaching, and in some cases to do magickal workings. These goals are difficult if not impossible to accomplish within a critical rational state of mind. Rituals work with and through our poetic and mythic consciousness not with our rational analytic consciousness.
There is a time for intellectual reasoning regarding Pagan ritual, and that time is afterwards. That is why so many of our traditions urge that no ritual be discussed for 24 hours after its occurrence. Then we will have some perspective as to what occurred there.
Of course we could remain immersed within a completely open attitude during the sermon. Perhaps some of those present did so. But this is even worse.
The Solstice sermon focused more on the political crisis confronting us today than on spirituality. For example, the sermonizer made claims about non-spiritual subjects, such as public housing being a good and important thing. I happen to agree for some approaches to public housing and disagree regarding other approaches. And this ambivalence on my part points to the deeper problem.
If I start thinking about the intricacies of housing policy my awareness is instantly divorced from ritual space. It becomes mundane. But if instead I remain as open as possible in a non-critical sense to what is being said, I am encouraged to adopt a mundane position without critical appraisal, and end up being emotionally committed to it.
Recent experiments involving brain imaging of very strong political partisans encountering discordant views indicate the rational part of the mind is virtually switched off when strongly held views are challenged by contradictory information. The attitude of mind most appropriate for participation in ritual is not appropriate for considering complexly nuanced political issues. They are best addressed within two different contexts of awarenss, and while an integrated human being should be capable of both, that does not mean that both are equally appropriate in all contexts.
I do not mean to argue that political or other mundane issues can never be legitimately addressed within a ritual context. They can. The famous case of Gerald Gardner’s New Forest Coven and other Witches working to prevent a Nazi invasion of Great Britain is a clear example (famous among British Traditional Pagans anyway). You can read about it in Philip Heselton’s Wiccan Roots.
The Journey to Where?
At some point the sermon drifted into a “trance journey.” But it was unlike any trance journey I ever experienced. Perhaps it could be called a guided meditation. But it dealt neither with the symbolism of the Solstice nor with the Gods. It consisted of hearing a recital of the origins of life on early Mother Earth that, save only for the gendering of the planet, Richard Dawkins would have enjoyed. (For a post of mine on Dawkins see here.)
Perhaps I witnessed an attempt to demonstrate that Pagans are smarter about science than many Christians, given so many of the latter’s ignorant attacks on evolution, geology, and science in general. And I do agree Christians have a more difficult time dealing with science than we do. But there was nothing Pagan about this “meditation” – and worse, mixing spirituality and science in this way invites trouble.
Spirituality deals with the superhuman and ultimate contexts, science with phenomena that human beings can hope to predict, understand, and often control. At its root science is always a work in progress with inevitable errors being weeded out through rational analysis of empirical data. We never know when new research will require modifying, or even a large scale rebuilding, of parts of science’s imposing edifice of knowledge. So linking any specific scientific proposition with a spiritual proposition addressing ultimate contexts is always very risky.
The speaker described how life arose from molecules in water. That is the most probable likelihood at the present time. But clay has also been suggested by competent scientists as another context where life may first have arisen. I have no idea, and whether life on earth originated from water, clay, came down by panspermia, or arose in some other way, is irrelevant regarding my Pagan practice. Mixing the two realms is a mistake because doing so associates spiritual claims about ultimate contexts with empirically based rational arguments that may later be understood as errors.
If science discovers a more adequate explanation that renders an older view obsolete, does that also render the spiritual perspective claiming kinship with that older view not only obsolete, but also mean it was in error? Science and spirituality address different kinds of knowledge. Science addresses questions of “how.” Measurement, experiment, and prediction can answer scientific questions, but do not address issues of meaning. Spirituality addresses questions of intrinsic meaning. Pagans could be good Pagans whether they believed that the myth of Tiamat and Marduk adequately accounted for our world, or whether the scientific proposition that the Big Bang and evolution does a better job. More complexly still, we can find valuable truth in the Tiamat and Marduk myth as well as accept the scientific evidence for the Big bang and evolution because the former addresses issues of meaning, the latter issues of how.
We can reasonably discuss whether a particular scientific view is compatible with our form of spirituality, and if not, how to deal with it. This is very important, but is hardly the stuff of guided visualizations.
Further, no time existed for people to journey into personal contact with the numinous. Instead they were continually guided, often in detail, through a part of the story about life’s evolution on earth. Perhaps as a result they later gained a better appreciation for Deep Time. But they were very unlikely to have experienced deities or other entities in this kind of thing. In fact, I would argue, as Mainers are wont to say, that you can’t get there from here. Visualizing “how” does not take us to “why.”
Now again, given that the crowd was quite large, many people likely naïve, and with the presence of many children, I believe a genuine trance journey would have been inappropriate. But what took its place seems more to have been an effort to demonstrate Pagans can harmonize their views with modern science rather than any celebration of the Winter Solstice. It would have made us more “respectable” to the secular world, but less Pagan.
If the sermon tried to bring our practice into closer harmony with Christian traditions, the “journey” did the same with respect to secular modernity. Whether either effort succeeded or not, the loss was of anything approximating specifically Pagan spirituality. What was most specifically “Pagan” disappeared from this Solstice celebration. People sat passively and listened, or, like me, they sat unhappily and wondered what the hell was going on.
Conclusion
I remained troubled by what I had experienced long after the event was over. If it had simply been a bad ritual, I would not be writing this post. Anyone with much experience in our path has encountered their share of bad rituals.
But what I had experienced was a ritual grounded suddenly by a sermon, followed by a guided visualization that replicated standard geology and biology about life’s rise on earth. I think the leader was trying to make Paganism politically relevant by shaping it to serving a laudable political goal and employing techniques from elsewhere to do so. In the process the spirit of Paganism as I have encountered it for well over 20 years of practice was eliminated.
Changes like these when repeated and institutionalized are how a religion with a new focus is gradually tamed, and brought into harmony with the status quo. If sermons become a component of Pagan ceremonies, participants will increasingly be called upon to become passive vessels filled by whatever words the preaching Priest or Priestess feels called upon to say. If the altered awareness of trance and ecstasy is replaced with hypnotic introductions to scientific orthodoxy, we end up being more dependent on the competence of those giving the sermons and less on the Gods.
As a spiritual community we need to be very careful. Popular interest in our practice is greater now than ever before. We are becoming respectable. But those newly interested in us interpret what we do from within their own framework, and it is natural and appropriate for us to seek points of common understanding within their framework to explain our ways. Yet if we go too far along this path we lose sight of where we began.
I think the danger is particularly strong because our recent growth has vastly increased the proportion of us who are solitaries rather than coven members. There will always be solitaries. I am one due to the frequent moves I have had to make over the past seven years. But solitaries are necessarily attracted to large public gatherings when seeking spiritual community, yet it is within our covens, groves, and other small groups that we experience what is most uniquely our own.
After my long list of warnings I want to end on a positive note. I have been both a covener and a solitary, and there is no question but that the coven and equivalents groups are far the more satisfying form for practice when we can find compatible partners. Being small and easy to leave, power structures are weak and members’ opportunities to learn and grow are great. The intensity of work is on balance far stronger. Opportunities to encounter the Gods come with every Esbat and Sabbat, rather than in the occasional mass public Sabbat. Genuine community can build as a coven settles into trusted relationships. It is as if the Gods want us to form close communities.
As a larger community, I believe we should seek in every reasonable way to grow and strengthen that proportion of us that works within covens, groves and similar groups. Truly it is within the small working group that the magick and wonder of our way most easily and frequently manifests, and where we can stay in closest touch with the essence of our path.
Thanks for this, Gus.
I find it hard to watch, how in our struggles for legitimacy in the wider culture, Pagans seem often to reach out for things that will undercut what makes us who we are. This is one reason why, despite my deep and loving relationship with Cherry Hill Seminary, I have profound reservations about our moves toward creating a “professionalized” clergy–paid or unpaid.
I wonder if we wouldn’t be better served by a model closer to that of the early Quakers, who recognized no “hireling clergy”–and not so much because there was something wrong with accepting money for spiritual work (meetings even today have been known to provide the funds for traveling in ministry, for instance) as because accepting the category of a clergy caste would be subversive of the openness to Spirit Friends were trying to instill in all their members…
I have no answers here. But I’m glad you’re raising the questions. And I’m grateful every time a Pagan points out that it’s the experience of the gods, not our ideas about them, that matter to us.
Comment by quakerpagan — December 29, 2007 @ 7:13 am
The problem here is that public religious ritual is an art form, akin to theater, (indeed, theater itself had its origins in pagan religious rituals, so bringing things full circle seems somehow very apt,) but all too often it is NOT being approached in that way.
I was lucky enough to have gotten some training in this area, but many people wind up doing this sort of thing poorly because they simply don’t know any better. It would be nice if there were some way to improve things by waving a magic wand, but I’m afraid that the real solution for this problem is getting more people who are able to do ritual well offering to teach the skill to those who do not have it.
Comment by brock_tn — December 29, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
My thanks to both your comments, and I agree with both. However, my point was different from how I think Brock read it.
I agree Pagans can often improve their skill in public rituals, and that appreciating it as akin to theater can help here. But I learned the Craft in the San Francisco Bay Area, and we have been blessed with groups such as Reclaiming and NROOGD that have performed public rituals for many years, and generally have the theatrical part down pretty well. I have experienced truly wonderful public rituals performed by people in both traditions. (But remember, what keeps public ritual from simply being theater is its purpose. It is theater PLUS.)
My point here is different. The ritual I criticize started off very well theatrically as well as energetically. Its weakness was not in lack of good theatrical experience, it was in the nonPagan content around which the theater was shaped.
Comment by Gus — December 29, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
Interesting read on that ritual.
I attended that gathering……and my response to that part of the ritual was quite different than yours.
True…the person leading Did use the “S” word. But I took that more as a light remark/joke than a serious announcement. #1.
Also true, the movement into trance time wasn’t really clear-cut. A tad awkward.
But those weren’t your main points.
Part of what you haven’t mentioned in your description of the ritual…..was the movement back and forth between taking that journey thru the Tree of Life and going inward to visit for personal answers.
My husband’s trad approaches deity as always being present. That what we humans need is time/space/practice in opening up to God/dess which is w/in (they speak in ritual asking/thanking for help opening one’s eyes and the eyes of one’s spirit). I experienced that counterplay in ritual as going w/in to that deity that is w/in us all.
True, there wasn’t a lot of God/dess talk. Not everyone does that….and it’s not a requirement to be Pagan as far as I know.
Yes, there are traditions that are heavy in that kinda language. That works for them…..so that’s wonderful. But not all of us practice that way.
A celebration that was truely Earth centered……that we all (in trance) traveled thru time meeting the various emergencies and coming thru them is/was a deep reminder that while we are at a time of coming emergency as far as human impact on the earth: that doesn’t mean the earth (Goddess, mother) is ddomed.
During that part of the rite……..we went thru those dark times & moved onto the light. Again and again. God/dess is w/in and w/out and everywhere. How can we NOT be celebrating Her/Him as we traveled thru time? Celebrating Life….we celebrate the Gods.
Just because it wasn’t full of God/dess talk didn’t mean Themselves weren’t there or weren’t honored.
You pose good questions, important questions.
I just didn’t find any of that at issue in that same ritual (in a small community center in Northern CA on Thursday before Solstice)
I found that content to be Quite Pagan.
Comment by hawk — December 30, 2007 @ 12:22 am
Political sermons should be saved for after ritual during discussion and food. Or so creatively injected into the myth of the ritual as to be almost invisible as such.
But… as a NeoPagan who finds the face of God/dess in the natural world, and not in old myths and gods, I find the addition of the scientific notion of Creation to be refreshing. I did not attend the ritual that you describe, btw.
As for the changing nature of scientific understanding of how the universe works I understand the difficulty you talk about. I have solved this mythically in that each old and new understanding/explanation of the natural world is valid. Each reveals a facet of who and what the universe is and who we are within her and how we understand our role therein. Ten years ago it was understood that our corner of the galaxy was created from the explosion of one mother star. Now it is thought more than one star was involved. A scientific re-storying of the birth of the universe was written 10ish years ago by a cosmologist named Brian Swimme in _The Universe Story_ (he co-authored this with Thomas Berry). In this book he gave this single star a name, Tiamat, because the story of both the goddess and the star matched quite well. I have been honoring Brian’s Tiamat in NeoPagan ritual for several years. When I learned of the new theory I was stumped briefly. Then I restoried the whole idea to encompass the new findings. Tiamat isn’t just one star, but a large body of stars. She now has a new name Tiamat of the Many Hear(t)hs.
If in the future this theory goes away and is replaced by something totally new, then the Tiamat face of the Universe will be honored, her lessons and meaning retained, and a funeral held. While the next year will be spent helping Tiamat give birth to her new face, whatever that may be.
Re-storying creation myths to fit our understanding of how the universe works is vital to helping us remain connected to the universe in which we live. The ancestors who saw the universe as Marduke and Tiamat or Yaweh knew that the universe worked in a certain way and their relationships to those gods expressed their part in that universe. Modern NeoPagans need the same thing and that at this time can only truly be found in science, imho and many other’s.
Explore this idea here:
www.pagaian.org
Check out her links for other places to go. There will be one site, created by a Christian minister, who is all about seeing the divine in scientific explanations. Dawkins would die to know that they have taken his notion of concestors and made a religious ritual out of it. HA!
Science, in my opinion, doesn’t take away from spirit, but adds an unknowable depth to it. The more I understand how the universe created me and other humans to see and experience itself in a certain way, the more amazing life is.
In Her Service,
Rose Welsh
Comment by rosewelsh — December 30, 2007 @ 9:43 am
I agree that there is a problem here. Wicca and most other Neo-Pagan faiths are carefully based on the idea that we are all part of the Divine, and on limiting the (possible) damage and intervention of the ‘professional’ clergy. When we start listening to sermons at ritual, I am afraid that new practitioners will become ‘followers’ rather than participants in their own religious experience. I hope your blog/opinion gets a widespread reading, as this may help make others aware of the issue.
Thanks!
Comment by Darren — December 30, 2007 @ 10:03 am
Gus,
I’m wondering if part of the issue isn’t that of trying to ground spirituality in something “real” because the Gods are percieved (by some, particularly those from the late 70s/early 80s “Goddess Spirituality” movement) to be archetypes, rather than forces in the world that we can have relationship with. In trying to make the religion more “real”, science can be invoked for good or ill. After all - the argument could go - dealing with scientific explanations for phenomona and creation is part of being a “Nature religion”.
Just supposition, and half-formed at this point.
- Thorn
Comment by T. Thorn Coyle — December 30, 2007 @ 10:56 am
I think that it’s difficult for lots of folks curious or attracted to NeoPagan Craft to appreciate that it’s very, very different from Christianity. Even for some Craft adherents.
One aspect of this difference exists in the relationship of devotee to deity. In Craft, the relationship is direct. No agency mediates or acts on behalf of. Deity is not sermonized, simply known.
I’d like to think that I’d resist any *sermonizing* tendencies in NeoPagan Craft. But I don’t think that I’d disrupt a *sermon* that was part of a public ritual. I’d just find myself apart from the *sermon* and the *sermonizer.*
And perhaps from the Trad involved.
I’m not fond of the use of *Chistianizing* influences in Craft, whether for lack of other models or for the sake of making things acceptable to the masses.
Comment by Pitch — December 30, 2007 @ 12:14 pm
[…] Gus diZerega writes about a public Pagan Solstice ceremony he was distressed by. He was disturbed by a sermon in the middle of the ceremony, by the political content of that sermon, and by a guided visualization that was entirely scientific, with no mythic or spiritual content. These things (sermons, politics, science), he points out, can be good, but are at odds with the purpose of Pagan ritual: Changes like these when repeated and institutionalized are how a religion with a new focus is gradually tamed, and brought into harmony with the status quo. If sermons become a component of Pagan ceremonies, participants will increasingly be called upon to become passive vessels filled by whatever words the preaching Priest or Priestess feels called upon to say. If the altered awareness of trance and ecstasy is replaced with hypnotic introductions to scientific orthodoxy, we end up being more dependent on the competence of those giving the sermons and less on the Gods. […]
Pingback by Property of a Lady » Public Paganism and a Watered-Down Approach — December 30, 2007 @ 12:27 pm
Really interesting comments. (I have to moderate this list because I get 50 – 100 spam “comments” daily advertising drugs and pictures of Britney Spears without her panties. That is why your comments come in batches.)
I posted my original piece with some fear and trembling, but I really appreciate everyone’s comments, including those who disagree or found their experience different from mine. The discussion so far has been fascinating and instructive for me. To focus initially on the two more critical ones…
I really like Rose Welsh’s description of how she incorporates science in her work. I think so long as we take the myths and stories as pointing towards a deeper meaning within, it isn’t a problem. That is the kind of thing I had in mind when I wrote “. . . we can find valuable truth in the Tiamat and Marduk myth as well as accept the scientific evidence for the Big bang and evolution because the former addresses issues of meaning, the latter issues of how.” But I have never used it as creatively as she does.
It is when the authority of science is used to strengthen the validity of our work that trouble can arise. And that, alas, was my experience.
But it wasn’t Hawk’s experience. That she found that the Sabbat worked is testimony to the value of spiritual pluralism! I am glad it worked for her, even if it didn’t for me (and some others - I did some checking to make sure my reaction was not simply idiosyncratic grumpiness). I didn’t experience the counter play Hawk describes, but she did.
No size fits all.
Even so, I wonder whether there isn’t another level we can explore.
T. Thorn Coyle suggests that there is a significant division in how Pagans see the divine, with those entering our tradition more recently tending to view the Gods as archetypes and such. I’ve noticed this distinction within our ranks as well and it may be that I am reacting to a more psychological view of deities bleeding into ritual form while I take a far more concrete view of them. There is certainly overlap – Charles Whitmont’s Return of the Goddess is one of the few books I’ve bought and given to people outside of holidays and birthdays. But they are different.
I also wonder whether the diminishing role of covens in our community may play a role in this change in how people perceive the Gods. It is in coven work that we seem most frequently to have “close encounters of the third kind” and when our experience is more rooted in public festivals, Sabbats, our own reading and our more casual kinds of experience of nature, those kinds of encounters are less frequent (though by no means absent).
For those with little direct personal experience of the Gods, that kind of ritual may be very fulfilling whereas for those of us who have had considerable experience it is much less so because the Gods are why I am a Pagan. I am NOT arguing that people who have not (yet?) experienced the Gods are inferior in any sense to those of us who have. I do not know why the Gods contact some people more than others. Conceivably it is because those of us They contact are thicker-headed than those they do and so we need it more…
Still, those of us who have had personal encounters with deities and other entities (in my case repeated ones) take their existence very seriously, those who have not, reasonably enough, see them quite differently as poetic metaphors, archetypes, or what-have-you. I would to had I not experienced them.
In my view Paganism is closer to its shamanic roots than any other spiritual tradition, though Tibetan Buddhism may come as close. That is why “God talk” or at least “spirit talk” is central to it.
But often the shamanic element has disappeared into a priest/priestesshood, and eventually even from there as rituals get institutionalized and routinized, the practitioners professionalized, and the rituals lose their juice. Some cultures seem to have been able to perpetuate opportunities for many people to have a direct experiential encounter with the spirits, not all of whom were originally human. The Plains Indians and the African Diasporic traditions and their African predecessors seem to be among the most successful. Others at least connected experientially with the world of once-human spirits - such as the ancestors in Chinese popular religion. But this kind of thing has long been absent in the West.
Covens offer a means for accomplishing something similar. At a time when our society is doing extraordinary harm to the rest of our relations, personal experience with the more-than-human world seems to me vitally important, especially that world of numinous nature. We offer a corrective to the West’s turning away from relationship with anything but the human world. But to accomplish this we need to reach a “critical mass” not just of people who celebrate the Sabbats but of people who know the Gods are real, that Nature is alive in more than a purely “physical” sense.
Hence my sensitivity to that Solstice Sabbat.
Blessings
Gus
Comment by Gus — December 30, 2007 @ 1:42 pm
Gus’s speaking of covens making a difference in perception/experience of deity is an interesting point.
And one that speaks to my experience…..in that coven work has never (so far) been something I’ve done. Not thru lack of trying, mind you.
Just never been able to find 12 like-minded indivduals (heck even a few semi-like minded) to work w/…….let alone train w/. And, not being a youngster, that means a LOT of time looking. To the point of letting go…..since the results have been negligible.
And I live in Northern CA……ya’d think (what w/ a Pagan explosion at least as far as being public is concerned) it’d be easy. Finding Pagans under every /eaf/bush, so to speak.
So…..his point may be well taken (about covens making a significant difference in experiencing of deity). I don’t know…..not having been able to find such.
Comment by hawk — December 30, 2007 @ 2:55 pm
What originally attracted me to Paganism/Wicca was the experiential and participatory nature of the spiritual practices. The feel of “between the worlds” is an important part of that. And to digress from ritual activities to a lecture or sermon just breaks that feel. It takes the focus away from the spiritual or magical (”younger self”/”deep self”) and brings it back to the intellectual (”talking self”).
I’m not sure I can object as strongly as Gus does to the science in the guided visualization. If it’s at least “metaphorically correct” enough that I can flow with it rather than being knocked out of trance to critique it, it would’ve been adequate for me. Again, you want the guide to lead you in introspection and evoke feelings, anything else is extraneous and perhaps even mood-ruining.
Comment by kyril — December 31, 2007 @ 11:17 am
Gus, I really appreciate your later reflections on this thread. You have reminded me of one of the reasons you’re one of my favorite Pagan authors–because, like me, your Paganism is rooted in direct ecstatic experience of Spirit. And I think that you and T. Thorn Coyle are both right when you say that there are Pagans whose idea of the gods is much more “notional”, in Quakerese, because their experiences have been more with ideas and theory than with having the top of your head taken off. Neat ideas, metaphor that is conscious and crafted (as opposed to the kind of metaphor that all myths inevitably are, just because they’re trying to express truths that are bigger than denotative language can hold) and even sermons are a logical result.
That, by the way, is one reason I always get a little queasy when I start hearing people discuss ritual as theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah… ancient Greeks, Dionysus, etc. But too many Pagans turn to stagecraft, rehearsal, and showmanship as a substitute for ecstasy, in my observation. We begin to confuse moving performances with the real goal, which is not just to honor gods, but to dance with them, touch them, be terrified and embraced by them. That kind of occurrence does not always make for good theater, and too much attention paid to musical cues, props, and precise timing can actually ward off the times that the gods are trying to really show up in our rituals.
It doesn’t have to be like that, of course. Theater can be a wonderful tool to allow large or mixed-age/initiatory groups to come together to encounter the gods. I’m especially fond of the way that Penny Novack, on the East Coast, has for decades crafted family-centered ritual theater that is all about putting on a simple seasonal pageant for the kids… but can roll along with quite a little ritual punch underneath for the adults and initiates in the audience. I think the key is to keep things simple–and for the folks pulling together the ritual to have had a personal encounter or two with the gods themselves. Otherwise, it’s too easy to let theater degenerate into a polished performance.
Who worries about how well memorized or expressively recited the Charge of the Goddess was when the Lady herself comes to circle and starts talking to us directly?
I realize I’m sounding a bit dismissive of ritual craftsmanship. I don’t mean to be. It really is tedious to wait 25 minutes, shuffling from foot to foot, for a chalice to make the rounds of a large group–and then, of course, you’d be a fool to take a sip from it, since 120 other people in various stages of possible viral infections have sipped from it before you. There’s a place in the world for making sure the ritual structures are in place and suit the situation at hand.
It is interesting to note that hawk got a lot from a ritual that left you cold, of course. And it’s always worth staying a little bit humble about these things. Just because something did not speak to me doesn’t mean it didn’t speak at all. People do differ. And I think one place where my own experiences may differ from yours, Gus, is that I’ve had some of my strongest direct experiences of the Gods at large group Pagan ritual. Not, generally, in the ritual itself… but at large gatherings, of several hundred people, it’s not unusual for there to be a lot of undirected energy raised–if quickly lost or dissipated by the ritual itself. Not a problem for me, usually, since I tend to not attend those large rituals, but stay on the outside, find a quiet place of my own, and surf the energy raised by the crowd. I find the unpredictability of large groups, especially when they are not familiar to me, makes me uneasy in ways that push me closer to the kind of altered state that lets me encounter spirits. There’s less of a safety net, and, weirdly, that helps.
Coven work is great, too, and trance work is good in a small group of supportive and loving intimates who are also working in the same way. But I can go deeper quicker (though less safely) at the edge of a crowd. Perhaps this is because I’ve been an HPs for quite some time now, and I feel the need to monitor and nurture those in my coven that I don’t feel for anonymous strangers at a large gathering?
To some degree, it’s moot. Since becoming Quaker, I have other (non-ritual, obviously) ways of encountering Spirit. But I retain my distaste for direct participation in large group rituals, which usually disappoint me, while still relishing my memories of working my own rituals, on the fringes of the crowd.
Comment by quakerpagan — January 1, 2008 @ 7:57 am
I completely sympathize with Hawk as to the problems in connecting with people enough to form a coven. But much can be done and learned with even a single working partner. (One of the best reasons for group work is that it gives us structure, so we do not put off doing something because we are doing it with another. And repetition is in my experience a vital part of growing in the way we are discussing.)
The tricky part has to do with the ecstatic dimension. Some traditions, usually the older ones, incorporate an ecstatic element. Others do not. But for me – and as can be seen for others, it is this part that gives us our root reason for being Pagans. At the same time, ecstatic work should be approached with considerable respect.
I have one suggestion for experienced people such as hawk who would like to find compatible others. As we grow we are held back by a serious lack of teachers. Whenever I move somewhere for very long – and as a visiting academic that is often – I put out posters offering to teach “Wicca 101” for next to nothing. Sometimes it is just the cost of materials, and often not even that. I do charge though – because in our culture what is given for free is often not appreciated, and I am not training someone in my own tradition (where it is always free) but in a “generic” BTW style. But I usually give that money back as working tool gifts at the end of the class.
Interestingly, the Gods do sometimes come even to a generic BTW circle. But I introduce my students to that kind of personal encounter slowly, though if the Gods come on their own, well, that is between Them and the person involved.
What I get for my efforts are interested students, people to work with, and from them, some that I will find I really enjoy working with. I know that some at least will have a strong Pagan foundation for where their journey may take them. Some later become Gardnerians.
Quakerpagan’s comments are close to my own experience. I am NOT down on public rituals. In fact I volunteered labor to help the set up for the one I just criticized. Further, my strongest encounter with the Goddess was during a public Midsummer Sabbat conducted by people in the NROOGD tradition. And like Quakerpagan I love the energy that can rise in large public gatherings – in fact I was happily flowing (maybe even ‘wallowing’
) with it at this gathering - before the ‘sermon’ brought it down. That is why I said that covens were on balance the best and not the only places for having these experiences.
And then there is the issue of safety. A purely devotional and non-ecstatic ritual seems to me very safe because we do not go very far from our mundane consciousness, if indeed we leave it at all. When we begin moving beyond it there is increased potential for unpleasant experiences. But that seems the price to pay for genuine transformational experiences.
By the way, I did a post on theater and ritual here: http://www.dizerega.com/?p=52. If Quakerpagan (or anyone else) has time I’d love comments! (Comments here, not there.)
Happy New Year to all.
Gus
Comment by Gus — January 1, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
Hi Gus
… but I would think it odd to be doing a sermon or talk of the kind you describe within a ritual after you have raised wonderful energy. The only space we usually have for this type of talk would be what we call the “storytelling” space at the time we share food in the circle, and that is free space for anyone to speak - the only rules being that ceremonial manners are practiced .. it is not a discussion, it is primarily for listening to each other.
I wasn’t at the ritual … I live in Australia and so was doing Summer Solstice ritual here at the time
But as for the scientific type guided meditation part … well I’m all for incorporating the scientific knowing, and it can be done very well. I have been in a ritual with Starhawk where she did the Universe story as we spiralled and interspersed chanting. It was very powerful.
I know Rose Welsh … love her comments. She is very creative with her application of her extensive awareness of science to ritual and poetry.
So anyway, what might you think of this
http://evolutionaryspirituality.wikia.com/wiki/Pagaian_Cosmology%2C_Another_Evolutionary_Paganism
Cheers
Glenys
Comment by pagaian — January 2, 2008 @ 1:36 am
[…] So, the other day I was talking about public Paganism and its effect on the tenor of Paganism in general. Gus diZerega worries that an ecstatic religion is becoming staid in the process of being made palatable for a rapidly growing and increasingly public Pagan populace. […]
Pingback by Property of a Lady » Hiding in Plain Sight — January 2, 2008 @ 8:59 am
I received a comment from one of the organizers of the Solstice. For some reason she could not sign in to this site. I post it below. My comments will follow separately.
– You left very early in the meditation — you missed 5/6’s of it. So rather cheeky to be so out of joint with what you walked out on. And in fact, you so, so, so missed the point of the meditation.
We are faced with the extermination of life on this planet. The meditation was about hope, creativity, and strength in the face of this extraordinary reality. And you want flowing robes and nice, pretty, escapist crap? You came to the wrong place. I’ve seen you do ritual, Gus, and you are melodramatic, irrelevant, and boring.
– The use of term “sermon” was a joke. You don’t understand Star’s work at all — she’s been mixing Pagan spirituality and activism for decades. If you don’t respect her work, why are you so eager for her endorsement for your own book?
– In my opinion, you are conflating your own opinions/preferences with The Way It Should Be. You’re also, IMO, conflating your own neuroses with some kind of sacred “intuition.” Own what’s yours.
Comment by Gus — January 4, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
This comment was the kind I feared I would get - avoiding the issues I raised to make a personal attack. That’s what it seems to me, anyway. So some of what follows will be a bit more personal than I prefer.
Anyone reading this blog knows politics is one of its major features. I will make a separate blog post later on politics and Paganism to explore this very important issue. Suffice it here to say that while our spirituality should inform our politics, as it does mine, turning spiritual events into political ones has a long and bad history - for thousands of years and in every tradition. EVERY tradition.
I have made that case in the past.
And for many years I have taught Political Science, and in my classes on American Government have argued for the impeachment and imprisonment of George Bush and his crowd, and both taught and written regarding our need for ecologically sane and respectful relations with the other-than-human world.
Yes - it was a ritual by Starhawk. I avoided mentioning her name because as I explained, I wanted to focus on issues not personalities. Issues can more easily be discussed rationally in ways often difficult when we get to personalities. As a matter of fact I DO respect some of her work, greatly. I recommend the Spiral Dance whenever anyone wants to learn about NeoPaganism. Not just that book, but I always include it.
The specific issues I raised are what I was concerned about. And the political dimension is relevant here - if we want to become a political force we will emphasize as many points of commonality with other potential allies as possible. And we will soft pedal where we are different. That is how effective politics is done. And when that approach spills over into our spiritual work it opens the road to the problems of losing track of what makes us unique.
I have made no secret in the past of my dislike of politics infusing itself into Reclaiming style rituals while still frequently volunteering to help people in that tradition put on their events. In fact I worked about an hour helping do the decorations for this one, thinking it was a Reclaiming kind of thing. I had never been to a purely Starhawk event before and the political dimension was far greater here than any I had attended before.
Mixing spirituality and activism is fine. I mentioned an example in my post and also gave reasons why some kinds were appropriate and I believed other kinds were not. Those reasons were not addressed, sadly. Should she take the time to do so and still not be able to get onto this blog I’ll happily post them.
As for book endorsements, had I cared strongly about a possible endorsement on a forthcoming book the LAST thing I would have done is make this post. Keeping quiet would likely work a lot better. I figured I could kiss that possibility off when I wrote my piece, especially when I then notified this organizer about the blog. I tried to emphasize I was concerned about issues not personalities, but I was under no illusion that the personalities involved would never hear about my criticisms. I only hoped they would not take them personally. So I own my words completely. As I always have.
However, when Paganism and the Gods becomes “escapist crap” - well we truly do have a separation of the paths.
Comment by Gus — January 4, 2008 @ 3:23 pm
One last quick point - because I left early I sent a version of this to people who had been there. I wanted to make sure I was not speaking based on too little information. I was told by two people that my argument was appropriate.
Had I been told otherwise, that I missed the real point, I would not have made it.
Comment by Gus — January 4, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
I appreciate greatly your critique and questioning of the ritual you attended. Reading it, I guessed that it probably was a Reclaiming ritual. I have been part of Reclaiming since soon after it’s inception. I was in two covens with Starhawk and am one of the few “elders” of the tradition. I know it well, in both shadow and light.
The tendency towards “sermonizing” - and whether it was a joke or not, we all know when we are being preached to - has certainly been growing. I think your critiques have merit, and it’s a damn shame that there is probably few in my old tradition (at least locally) who would thoughtfully reflect on the points made in this blog.
The response of the organizer unfortunately is all too common in Reclaiming. It dismays me more than any long winded and self righteous sermon of Starhawk’s. How did a tradition that has part of it’s principles of unity the invoking of the “questioning attitude” become one where any questioning is met with not only defensiveness but downright aggressive hostility? In Bay Area Reclaiming, it is abundantly clear that if you question either structures or practices, you will be not only personally attacked, but your questioning will be called a personal attack.
Gus, I have no doubt that although you named no names, focused on issues rather than personalities, the organizer and her ilk will be accusing you of personally attacking Starhawk.
How my beloved tradition has come to this sad state of affairs is a question that I can’t really answer, but one thing I know for sure…. I am against sermons and sermonizing. I think it’s part of it.
Comment by deborahoak — January 20, 2008 @ 12:52 am
Sheepishly late on the uptake here, but finally have managed to read thru all this. Lots of excellent points, Gus, Cat, Thorn, Pitch, Rose, Oak!
I must admit I’m dismayed by the ad hominem attacks from one attendee (whose identity I suspect). I don’t see this as respectful dialogue, I don’t think it’s helpful to intra-Pagan relations, I think it’s divisive and hurtful — even tho I doubt you’re as thin-skinned as some of us when it comes to nasty personal remarks.
I have experienced that exact same thing — sermonizing at public Reclaiming rituals, and for the most part, I don’t attend. I’ve been showing up at the Samhain Spiral Dance and contributing as I’ve been asked, and as the organizers have preferred, rather than as I think best given my personal talents and proclivities, but so be it. I can always decline. I attend that ritual to connect with community, not to do much in the way of my own spiritual process. I must admit, however, that there’s nothing juicier than a Reclaiming spiral dance. The whole rest of the ritual can be sloppy crap entirely lacking in conceptual sense, artistic standards and aesthetic integrity. The sense of connectedness and community for the dance outshines everything else, IME.
Pitch and Cat, I really hear you about the potential compromise of institutionalization. It’s something that informs everything I’ve been trying to do, both in developing an appropriate-for-Pagans public ministry program at Cherry Hill Seminary, and in my interfaith work. It’s a fine line to walk, and I do it gingerly.
It’s writings like Gus’ and Cat’s that help me remain true to our uniqueness as a spiritual path. Besides, it’s Cat’s fault I’m doing this work in the first place.
Comment by Macha — January 26, 2008 @ 4:48 am
No-one has yet mentioned what, to me, is the biggest problem with sermons. (Well, I think Gus touched on it in the actual blogpost.)
A sermon is an expression of opinion and an opportunity for teaching. I have discussion sessions with my coven, in which all opinions and questions are regarded as equally interesting (some of my contributions to these discussions might qualify as sermons, as they’re a bit long). The sermon format does not permit questions and discussions, though it may invite the hearers to think about a question (as many Unitarian addresses do), rather than telling them the speaker’s answer to the question. And many Unitarian chapels have replaced the sermon with a discussion.
I happen to like Unitarian sermons, because they are often like Zen koans - but they wouldn’t sit well in a Pagan ritual. As Gus says in the post, we get the ethical implications of a ritual on later reflection upon it, not by prescription.
Also the expectation of what happens at a Pagan ritual doesn’t include sermons; the expectation of what happens at a Unitarian chapel does include them. Unitarianism satisfies a different part of me than Wiccan ritual.
(By the way, I have been Wiccan for 17 years and Unitarian for 6 months, and the numerous connections and cross-over between Unitarianism and Paganism are most interesting.)
Comment by yewtree — January 29, 2008 @ 9:02 am
Sorry to have found this discussion so late.
Thank you for this post. I am a solitary living in the South who has attended few public rituals, and I was glad to see you noting the ‘theatrical’ element which characterizes such meetings. I was always a bit put-off by it because to me it diminishes the real purpose of the ritual: to facilitate communion with Deity. However, being a Solitary sometimes creates a hunger for contact with others of like mind; therefore I have always been grateful for these experiences.
I would be very uncomfortable should a public ritual such as you described include anything even approaching a ’sermon’ imbedded within the ritual. You did a good job of delving into the problems and issues raised by such a practice and I agree with your assessment I especially agree with your observation about the remark concerning the “flowing robes and pretty escapist crap”. How sad for the poster to view ritual in that light.
What I find *most* disturbing, however, is the puerile, unwarranted hostility of the response you received. I can understand a defense addressing the issues you raised, but this response did not even approach a semblance of a dialogue/rebuttal; it was a personal attack. Seeing it come from someone in the Pagan community who presumeably should know better is distressing.
When I first self-initiated back in 1991, I ran into this kind of behavior almost as soon as I had signed up to my first Internet group, looking for community and information. I was so surprised and disgusted that I withdrew from the Pagan community for several years, wondering- as a neophyte sometimes does- just *what* I had gotten myself into. I’m glad now that I learned for a good while on my own, without all the drama. But it’s a shame and yes, a disgrace to the Pagan community that this goes on on the level it does.
Comment by Violette — February 21, 2008 @ 10:34 am