Does it matter what I am?
Written by Amanda Moore Tuesday, 31 August 2010 03:33
Until twenty or so years ago, I had no problem announcing to the world that I was a Witch, that I was a solitary witch at that, and expecting people to look at me sideways and mind their own business. If I came across someone who actually knew what I was talking about – genuinely knew – they tended to be respectful. I'd have the occasional enthusiastic outburst from someone who thought they were the only one on the path and had never had a good reception, but generally people just smiled and nodded and not much else.
Then things changed in what should probably have been a good way. We 'caught on' and lots of people suddenly seemed to want to put me straight on how I 'should' be doing this or that, or worse, how I 'should' be thinking and exactly what I 'should' believe. All this on the strength of a book or two, and then the Internet. So I took muttering under my breath that I was Pagan and leaving it at that. I started to dress more conservatively and tried to learn to love consumerism and eat food full of nasty chemicals and weird ingredients. (Personal rule – if you wouldn't eat it with a spoon and it's got too many syllables to pronounce without practice, why would I want to eat it at all?)
Now don't get me wrong, when it comes to the Net, I'm the biggest geek I know, but it amazes me how many people still believe that Wikipedia holds some inviolable, arcane set of truths and are horrified when I point out that it holds a thoroughly violable (if that's not a word it should be) set of opinions. Some of them are fabulous, thoughtful, well researched opinions, but you tell most people that 'wiki' stands for 'what I know is' when they've just 'set you straight' on something that you really do know, then they tend not to like it so much!
I try not to be snotty but that doesn't seem to occur to everyone! One of the biggest strengths I think we as Pagans have is our eclectic-ness. I don't want to belong to a religion that tells me I'm scum if I don't want to do something or toe some particular party line, but I worry that we're in danger of being sucked too far into the mainstream and ending up as a book religion as a consequence. The very thought makes me shudder. OK, we wouldn't have a book, we'd have a reading list, but I don't want to be part of something that is rigid and dead, and I don't want to be part of something that revolves around a power structure – that's not a spiritual path, that's politics. When I was first on my path, we were hidden, we learned what we learned from people who genuinely, deeply, really knew what they knew and if we read, we read critically and with an appreciation that meanings were layered and coded and, well, hidden. The word 'occult' itself means hidden not, it's on the telly tonight but if you miss it you can see it on the internet for a week or two.
On the other hand, it's nice to know that social workers won't appear at dawn if our kids announce that they've been to a gathering and left offerings to the Goddess tied to a tree. Not that we'd just leave them, anyway.
I was in Wales last week and feeling disconnected. I was raised by a possibly English mother (long story) and a Welsh father, in Kent. When I was in England I was foreign, when I was in Wales, I had an English accent and my pronunciation of Welsh and my inability to count past ten was hilarious to my cousins, so I was foreign there as well. Everywhere I went, I didn't belong. It occurred to me though, that my disconnectedness is my strength. There is nothing in my ethnicity that I can take for granted, everything has to be considered, thought through, personally decided as a matter for my own conscience. Over the last twenty years, the world has changed so much, that surely our strength as Pagans rest in that same personal conscience-driven decision making. May the gods save us from finding our 'book'.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Comments
Politics is in and of itself, so this is kind of like I mentioned the sea and everyone started talking the pros and cons of a hydro electric dam at the mouth of the severn. Related but not the same thing. That's a different discussion.
Interesting though. I've got an old fashioned politics degree - lots of classical philosophy and dead white guys - and it's interesting to see that people gravitate towards interpreting politics as the acts of the state.
Btw, the fundies I mentioned are a homogeneous lot, as is the nature of a huge (global) cult. That's researched, not opinion. They epitomise what I mean by religion becoming politics - a set of rules used to control and abuse. Nothing spiritual about that, and we're all suffering from the dominion thing. Like yahweh gave MAN ownership of the planet. Nothing to do with the rule of law or who's in office. Pure politics.
Those kinds of things are pretty useful, aren't they? :)
Quote:Perhaps, although I'm not entirely sure that is how democratic politics works. Certainly, the political discussion that empowers all entities to be able to present their 'case' would fit in with a democratic political system. That is one of the things we're still fighting for in some quarters.
Quote:Me too. :)
Quote:Sounds like a distortion of their 'Book' to me. 1 Corinthians 7 is an interesting section.
Quote:Ah, now there is no accounting for individuals within a faith community. It's an example of how there is actually a lot of diversity in other faith communities as well as the Pagan community. Generally those faith communities tend to hide behind a visage of unity.... the Nicene Creed for example. But get individuals to go into personal detail of what the words in that actually mean to them and you start to discover the extent of the diversity that really exists. Getting them to recognise that can be a challenge mind you. :)
Quote:Another interesting interpretation of their scripture.
Quote:So is it specifically Inter Faith politics that annoys you? I got the impression that your initial article seemed to lean more towards either Intra faith politics (between different groups of Pagans and different Pagan paths) and maybe secular politics.
Quote:Oh, I completely agree that religion BECOMING politics is most definitely a bad idea. It's one of those topics you see cropping up on internet fora from time to time... 'What if the government were a Pagan government?'... . quite a worrying thought, that.
BB
Mike
That's a different thing. Politics itself is the exercise of power by one entity over another. I'm in a mixed marriage, religiously speaking and despite the surface respectability of my oh's path, they start with the 'power over' psychological abuse from the cradle, authentic femininity is distorted and you only have worth when you obey without question and he would have been thrown out if they eve knew we'd snogged before our 'civil' marriage. One of the guests even proselytised me after she'd eaten the food. If they knew about me, his family would be supposed to reject him. That's the politics I mean.
As for the state as such, when our lot were the ruling class, I think there was some unpleasantness with some lions in an arena, and some general cultural genocide. That tends to be the end point, not when religion engages with politics, but when religion becomes politics and setting rules for how, when and why to push each other around is where that begins.
BB Amanda
I would agree that our diversity is very much a strength. But within our own community, I wonder if we should shy away from dialogue where we continually explore that diversity, where we question and posit our theories, opinions and differing world views. If we shy away from doing that then I would have to wonder if 'Pagan' actually means anything. I have to wonder if we have anything at all that might identify us as a community.
We most certainly should avoid proscribing 'Paganism'. Any attempt at a 'Book' that might accommodate all who self identify as Pagan would be doomed to failure as the level of diversity within the Pagan 'community' (see above comment concerning the existence or lack of a Pagan 'Community') can be taken down to a personal level (as it should be in an experiential collection of spiritual paths). However, avoiding attempts to explore a selection of 'commonalities' to pick and choose from would make it rather difficult to identify 'most, many, some', leaving us with 'who the heck knows or cares?'
BB
Mike
RSS feed for comments to this post