the spinner's archive – Page 8 – over 10 years of posts from Morag Spinner

30 Days of Paganism: The meaning of terms like “earth-based” and what they mean to this path

Ah, this old chestnut.

The idea of pagan religions all being “earth-based” is actually a pretty persistent myth. As in, it’s not true, yet it’s the thing that comes up most often when people are trying to explain paganism to the layman.

Of course, you need to actually examine what people mean when they say earth-based, as by itself it’s a pretty nonsensical term. (“Earth-based? you mean there are religions that are moon-based, or Jupiter-based? of fucking course we’re earth-based. WE’RE ON EARTH.”)

Generally speaking, people mean “revering nature as the central basis of the religion” when they say earth-based. And that’s the part that’s not necessarily true of all pagan religions. Do pagans, as a general trend, tend to be more into “holy shit nature is awesome” ideas? Yeah. Generally. But even if individual pagans tend to be more into the “holy shit nature” camp, that doesn’t mean their particular pagan religion is centrally based on the idea of revering nature.

Take Hellenic recon, or Roman recon. Hellenic and Roman religions were largely civic practices. They were city-based; based on people, what people needed. That didn’t mean they ignored nature; it means they took it into context as it related to people.

Don’t forget, people are part of nature. We tend to separate the two, but actually cities are as natural as tree groves.

And that’s just one example. There are plenty of modern pagan religions that aren’t, actually, super invested in nature reverence or other forms of eco-spirituality — that have it as a side part of the religion, an afterthought, or only look at nature reverence as it relates to humans.

Actually, eco-spirituality would be a much better term than “earth-based religion”. It drives home the point that people usually want to make with “earth-based”, which is that the spirituality of said religion is inextricably tied up with the state of the environment and ecology and the earth — that nature reverence is a central point to the faith.

Look, I’m not denying that environmentalism is a big deal, nor saying that it shouldn’t be. See my recent post on my province being on fire when it shouldn’t be, to levels it shouldn’t be. This is what you get when you have a gov’t that ignores and muzzles scientists and claims climate change is a hoax and does nothing to mitigate problems that are coming about from having climate change. It’s fucking bullshit, and I blogged about it on my religion blog because yes, that stuff is religiously important to me.

But I wouldn’t call my path earth-based.

Or maybe I would. Yes, my path is earth-based, and at this point we are not anywhere near being able to colonize space. Thus, I — and my path — are stuck on this planet. That is reason enough to want to see this planet continue to be habitable to me and other humans. I don’t need to be in the camp of “holy fucking shit, nature” in order to be interested in saving the environment from ultimate destruction or mitigating climate change (which is now too late to stop, but we can still hopefully make things not as shitty as they will be if we do nothing).

I don’t need to look at the full moon and feel my heart stop for a moment at its beauty in order to give a shit about the sky filling up with so much smog that my grandkids will never know that heart-stopping beauty. Wanting my grandkids to be able to breathe is enough impetus.

I don’t need to see my Father in the rain in order to want it to rain enough so we don’t all die of thirst.

I don’t need to be eco-spiritual in order to fight for the planet and our ability to survive on it. (The planet will continue regardless, by the by. Eventually, it will heal itself, no matter what we do to it — short of actually blowing it up. But I am actually invested in human survival.)

I think when people try to speak for all pagans and say we’re all “earth-based” they’re actually trying to subtly make a political point: “We revere nature, so we actually CARE about the earth.” (Or they actually believe all pagan religions are centrally based on nature reverence, in which case: no. Please stop.)

Well, that might be true for some pagans. But like I said — revering nature? Not a prerequisite for giving a fuck.

There are plenty of Christians who don’t revere nature but instead see it as the Lord’s creation, and thus are environmentalists because they believe taking care of the earth is part of their charge as followers and children of the Lord.

(Ok, I say “plenty” — I’ve met a few. I’m sure there are more, but I don’t have the numbers to back this up.)

I think if your path is actually centrally about revering nature, if it is centrally eco-spirituality, that’s great. You do you; go on with your bad self, all that.

I wouldn’t class my religion that way, but I can see how other people might think I would — I talk a lot about seeing the Morrigan in the earth, Manannan in the sea and rain, Brighid in the sun and fresh-water springs. I do. I see Them in these things.

I also see Brighid in my knitting and on the hospital gowns my Oma wore as her life ended, and Manannan in funeral homes and homeless shelters, and the Morrigan in civil disobedience and a leather, rose-tipped flogger. I see Manannan in Mary-Janes that are painted with messages of peace; Brighid in a calming cup of tea; the Morrigan in a fucking rave with glow-sticks. I see Them everywhere.

Nature reverence is part of my path, but it’s not the only part. So in that respect, no, my religion is not one based in revering the earth.

But in the respect I outline above — in the respect that I live on this earth, my path is on this earth, and we ain’t got no lunar outpost to move to — yes, it is earth-based.

So make of that what you will.

~Morag

PS: Please stop saying all pagan religions are “earth-based” or based on revering nature. They’re not. I’m really happy for you if yours is. Really. But I’m not happy when people speak for all pagans.

30 Days of Paganism: On finding a pantheon

Honestly…I didn’t really set out to find a pantheon.

Ok, well, I did. But those searches became dead ends. At first I thought I might go Hellenic, but then I didn’t, and gave up on that path — until the Hellenic gods came into my life and were like HELLO, CAN WE BE PART OF YOUR RELIGIOUS LIFE? And I was like, sure, I guess? I thought you guys didn’t want me…. WE WANTED YOU. YOU WERE NOT READY.

Ok, well. I guess that makes sense.

Before Them, Thoth was in my life for a bit and I kinda thought I might go Kemetic. But I didn’t seek out Kemetic gods until after Thoth had left and the Morrigan and Brighid and Manannan had appeared, at which point I reached out to Nut and got a very firm SORRY KID, YOU’RE NOT OURS.

It took me a while to realize that pantheon didn’t have to refer the worship of one culture’s entire gamut of gods. It could be a personal designation. At that point, I realized that the Three — tM, Brighid, Manannan — were my main pantheon.

When I refer to the Hellenic pantheon as being among the pantheons I honor, I’m not talking about the entire gamut of Hellenic gods. I’m talking about the ones that I specifically honor, who get a shared shrine (mostly due to space, and Hestia actually gets Her own spot in the kitchen, because then I will actually remember to give Her daily offerings). There are gods who are, yes, Hellenic, but They are not part of my personal Hellenic pantheon and some never will be.

So you could put it this way: I worship gods in the Hellenic pantheon, but when I refer to “my worship of the Hellenic pantheon” I’m only talking about the gods within the broader pantheon that I actually worship.

Which made a lot more sense in my head.

Anyway. Soon I realized that two pantheons wasn’t enough; I needed to include the D’Angeline pantheon as well — and even that is a misnomer, as some of the gods from the Kushielverse that I’ll be exploring in my own brand of fictional recon are not actually D’Angeline. For example, Asherat-of-the-Sea is not from Terre D’Ange, yet She is a goddess within the fictional universe created in the book series, and so could become part of my D’Angeline Recon work.

And then a little bit later, I discovered that yes, I’m joining the Otherfaith. I am an Other person now. And that means exploring the Otherfaith pantheon more fully — which includes not only gods, but spirits as well. I still have a lot more reading to do on them all and it will take me a while.

In the end, I guess you could say my overall personal pantheon includes these 4 groups — but I’d rather look at it as having 4 different pantheons that I interact with/worship/read learn or write about. Saying I have one big personal pantheon that includes deities from 4 different ones makes it seem like they have relationships with each other — which is clearly not always the case. (Yes, there seems to be some overlap and at least friendships among them — see Aphrodite-Naamah or the strong sense I get from Manannan that He and Hades are spiritual brothers — but mostly, They have their own separate groups and I feel I really shouldn’t mash them all up into one.)

But yeah, finding a pantheon? I don’t know. They kinda just fell into my lap, one after another, and then I was like “Ok I guess I have 4 pantheons now. shrug”

~Morag

30 Days of Paganism: Pantheon — Otherfaith

My relationship with the Otherfaith and the gods of that faith is still new, budding. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, as much as I can, and trying to understand things. It’s slow going, mostly because I am very tired these days and the day job has sucked away most of my time and energy.

Anyway. I feel a strong pull to two particular Otherfaith beings — the god Ophelia and the spirit Epiphany.

Epiphany is about creative frenzy, writing, reading, learning, the fire of inspiration, the consuming passion of creation. That consuming passion is something I hold in my life, in tension with extreme depression (and sometimes in collusion with it).

Ophelia is a river god; she is sadness, and sorrow, and rebirth and purification. She is a god associated with depression, too, and appears veiled in blue. She is about duty and responsibility.

I think I’m drawn to these two outright because they represent a tension in my own life — those extremes of creative frenzy and explosive passion and duty, responsibility, and depression — repression, really, of that creative passion. Most of the time I feel like I’m drowning in depression, in real life, but when the creative spark gets lit it’s like a river on fire, and I’m both within the flames and the water, burning and drowning at the same time.

I want to find a way to control, to tame these extremes; to find a manageable middle. I’ve felt a pull from Ophelia to start veiling and I think that’s a way for me to work on controlling my emotions, or at least my outward expression of them. I’ve always had the problem of taking on others’ emotions with my limited empath capabilities and I’ve found when I cover my hair it dulls the cacophony of feelings around me.

The Ophelia is associated with recovery from depression, and Epiphany’s flames are about rebirth. Right now I burn until I burn out, and drown until I’m too tired to do anything. I want to break out the other side; I want to find the rebirth in fire; the purification in water.

Right now my creative frenzy is dulled, extremely so, for many reasons. I’m quietly building up the fire, stoking it, and finding a way to do a controlled burn, a manageable blaze. When I let it burn, I’ll let it burn for Epiphany, and walk through the flames to come out the other side stronger.

Right now I’m underneath layers of water, drowning at the bottom of the river. I’m learning to swim, learning to breathe under the water, and soon I’ll paddle to the surface and emerge, the rocks that dragged me down left at the bottom.

There’s a way to break through this and I think that Ophelia and Epiphany can show me those paths.

-Morag

Jumping on the Deily Bandwagon

So I just joined the site Deily. It’s an offshoot of Patheos, which I have my issues with, but Deily isn’t really a blogging platform. It’s sort of a social and education network where people can talk about their different religious beliefs and traditions.

They’ve got a lot of different sections for different religions. There’s no Paganism section, but there is an “Other” and so far I don’t see many pagans on there. (There’s a “pagan” tag, though, which leads to a splash page on paganism.) I think that if more pagans hop on and start talking about stuff, they might expand to having a generic paganism section. And if there’s a concentrated amount of Wiccans they could have a Wiccan section, a Kemetic section for Kemetics, a Druid section…etc. It’s just that there’s not much point in having a dedicated portal to a certain religion (or even group of religions) if there are very few people contributing content to that portal. The point of Deily is about education and sharing — sharing your faith with other religious people, fostering understanding, celebrating our diversity.

Which is why I am on it, and can get behind it. I think a space dedicated to sharing religious ideas and understandings with people all over the world is a great idea, and better yet if pagans can carve out a space there. We can educate not only non-pagans but ourselves on our many different paths.

I think it’s important to get more education out there, and to also foster a sense of legitimacy. You might find that attitude a surprise coming from me. I admit to being pretty strongly in the “screw the mainstream” camp. I am definitely all for letting our freak flags fly, and I have issues with people telling us to conform to some specific vision of “safe” paganism so that we’ll be flung crumbs by the dominant society.

On the other hand, a sense of legitimacy and structure can help in a lot of mundane areas in life, especially if we don’t have huge pagan communities around us. Let’s face it, creating your own religion, or even being a solitary in an established religion, is fucking hard. Living in an area with no one around you who actually understands, even a little bit, where you’re coming from — that’s hard. Heck, even living in an area with a fairly good sized pagan community can be hard, if their meetups are consistently too far a drive, if they’re consistently sticking to the same scripts and not acknowledging the diversity of pagan religions (we’re not all Wiccan, guise), if they don’t make efforts to make themselves accessible.

I’ve reached a point in my life where building community — especially locally — is important to me. It’s important to me to have get-togethers with a pagan focus; to cultivate a pagan community so it’s easier to raise my future kids with pagan ideas. To have a community that will have my back when I die and want non-traditional funerary rites.

So, ok, let’s just look at holidays. Say I want to have get-togethers on the 8 main holidays of the Wheel of the Year that aren’t too formal and aren’t too Wiccan — that go the generic paganism route instead of the highly Wiccan one that most get-togethers around these holidays do. I want these get togethers to be friendly not only to the very religious, but also the not-very-religious, sort of spiritual, want a chance to get together and chat on a regular basis and likes the idea behind these 8 holidays type of people.

There are no gatherings like this in my area, or even in areas that are a hell of a drive from my area. Anyone getting together for the 8 holidays are doing so to do super-serious rituals with a highly Wiccan basis, and that’s just not my bag. So, what’s the alternative? Hosting? Not possible, where I am now — there’s no room in my place to hold a gathering like that, and hosting them outside would only work for half of the year (if I’m lucky). Besides, I’d probably get evicted for being so blatantly pagan.

So, do I rent a space? No. I don’t have that kind of money, and I’m not part of any established group that has any sort of funds put aside for events like that. Basically, when it comes down to it, I’m kind of screwed. I can go to the more serious, Wiccan events, or I do something solitary — but there’s not really any structure in place for me to have the sort of gathering I’m envisioning.

This is where “legitimacy” comes in — legitimacy and structure can give us the benefits of organized religion without so many of the drawbacks.

What if there were a pagan or polytheist community center in my area? That had rooms available for rental at low rates for exactly the type of gathering I’m thinking of. That had classes on various pagan subjects — not just Wiccan ones. That had a dedicated space for children, and maybe even dedicated classes for children to learn more about the religions of their parents and their parents’ communities. Wouldn’t that be awesome? A place where I could connect with other polytheists or pagans, learn from our diversity, and hold gatherings that aren’t explicitly Wiccan?

Or, hey, let’s tackle another point I made in my post that legitimacy could solve: my fear of being evicted.

I am actually the most in the closet I have ever been in my life — not just with my religion, but with my queerness, my kinkyness — fuck, even my sarcasm. I try not to do anything that might tip my landlords off to the fact that I’m not quite the “normal” young woman in a heterosexual marriage they think I am. I live in constant fear of them finding out that I am pagan. (And yes, queer and kinky and unmarried, though on the first point I would have a better fight in the courts. On the second point I would have no fight, as kink is kind of not legal here. On the third point I have no idea, and it will be moot in 3 months anyway.)

This legitimacy and abundance of education on the topic of pagan religions could make it so that even if my landlords still believe I’m a devil-worshipper*, I would have better recourse if they decided to evict me over it. Not the best recourse, this is true; we definitely need to fix the current system when it comes to evictions and discrimination. People get evicted for things like being queer all the time, but there’s often little they can do about it.

However, as we make more and more strides in queer rights, it will be harder and harder for that sort of thing to occur. It is a slow process, but we are getting there. We are making headway.

Shouldn’t we be working on that for pagans, too?

All of this very long tangent/ramble is to say — I think Deily could help with fostering a sense of legitimacy for us, and not only that, it can be a great resource to pagans who have no options for meatspace learning, or no community in which to raise their kids as pagan and no idea where to start. There’s a “Deily for Kids” section, where you can share kid-friendly teachings about various religions. Not only can you add content, but you can add explanations to other pieces of content, so there’s always a conversation on-going.

There’s also a spot on Deily for teachers, so things that are added to the paganism bits might get used in comparative religion classes. That’s pretty cool.

Honestly, when I was first learning about paganism, it wasn’t the easiest to find good sites or books, or even accumulations of knowledge. I was lucky to find TC, but I only found it years and years into my journey, after I’d been searching for a very long time. Deily could make things easier for people who don’t even know where to start except the word “paganism”. They search it on Deily and boom, a bunch of content on various pagan religions, and links to other places where they can learn more.

But it’ll only be that great if we actually make it that great, which is why I’m working on adding stuff. So far I’ve added two prayers that I wrote, the devotional ones to the Morrigan and to Manannan Mac Lir. I’ve also added explanations as to why I chose certain words for the prayers and the meaning behind them.

I plan on adding much more content as time goes on.

Is Deily perfect? No, it’s not. I have some issues with it — for example, when you go to add content, it asks you input the original author of the content, but then doesn’t display it prominently for people to see. It also doesn’t ask for a link to the original content, so you can quote and link back, or quote and add your own explanation. I’m guessing this is an oversight because of the focus on more mainstream religions, which have a different way of generating info than pagan religions do. We rely quite a bit on blogs and the idea of intellectual property seems to be pretty important to us. From what I’ve witnessed of more mainstream religions, much of their info comes from holy books, and what does come from blogs doesn’t seem to be as guarded.

Another issue I have is that it doesn’t show tags with the content, so people can’t easily click through and find more things on Paganism and the Morrigan or whatever.

Instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I plan on emailing Deily and letting them know about these issues, and suggesting ways to fix them. I also plan on letting them know that a paganism portal would be nice, if we get enough pagans on there talking about stuff.

But, you know, overall? I have high hopes for Deily and its possible positive influence on pagandom. Crossing my fingers that it all works out.

-Morag

*To be fair, I have no idea what my landlords believe about pagan religions. But they are heavily and obviously more right-wing Christian enough that I don’t dare ask. If they ever do ask about my religion, I am saying I’m Buddhist and hoping they find that okay. Which is partly true, after all.

Worthy of Worship

This topic comes up because of a post on a forum somewhere. I’m not going to link it, but the gist is that a self-identified anti-theist asked a bunch of pagans what makes a deity “worthy of worship.”

This idea, or question, is not a new one (at least not to me). I’ve seen it come up here and there in my pagan travels. I think that the reason this question comes up is probably because in Christianity, you’re taught about the omnipotence of the one God. You’re taught about his miracles, the great and mighty things he’s done. He’s the deity of everything, ever; he is massive and awe-inspiring; he is unfathomable. And the idea that comes across with that is that a god who can produce such miracles is worthy of worship.

(I’m not a Bible scholar, but I seem to remember some stories about Jesus where people derided him until he performed miracles. Same concept.)

If you come to pagan polytheism from Christianity, you will come face to face with many different gods — none of whom are omnipotent, omniscient, or even omnipresent. (I’m excluding pantheism from this generalization and just tackling the way we view and talk about specific pagan deities.) They’re not the gods of everything — some may be gods of creation, yes, but that doesn’t make them all powerful. At first glance, they seem smaller, less powerful, more relatable.

So yes, you might ask why any pagan gods would be worthy of worship if they can’t even measure up to the Christian god. It might even be a fair question.

Let me give you my answer.

My relationships with my deities are much like my relationships with mortals. Many of them are based on love, and it is love that is the basis for all my worship. Others are more transactional — I give Them something, They give me something in return.

So the question “what makes your deities worthy of worship?” becomes, for me, “What makes anyone in your life worthy of attention or love?”

What makes Ogre worthy of my love? Despite sometimes being an asshole, he is a good person. He is good to me; he makes me laugh; he is kind, generous, smart, courageous, willing to change. And yes, while he can be an asshole — for the most part we hate the same things. So we are able to bond over our common misanthropy. His presence improves my life so much I can’t even count the ways.

What makes my mother worthy of my love? She birthed me, raised me, protected me from my father’s abuse, taught me about feminism…we have our differences, but nothing is going to convince me she’s not worth my time, my attention, my care. Without her, I wouldn’t be alive today (and I mean that in more ways than one).

When I’m shopping, what makes a store clerk worthy of my attention? Well, besides the fact that they are a human being and deserve civility from their customers, it will behoove me to pay attention to them and what they say or do so that the transaction goes smoothly for both of us, and everyone is happy.

For that matter, what makes me worthy of love from my mom, or the Ogre? I’m certainly not the easiest person to love; I’m fractious and thorny, and I have no filters. Yet there must be something about me that they have found worthy of their time, their care, their attention. Somehow, I improve their lives.

The truth is, if you were to point blank ask me “Why is the Ogre worthy of your love?” I would only be able to stammer “I dunno. he just is?” Because off the top of my head, all I know is that I do love him and this is right.

If you were to ask me “What makes the Morrigan worthy of your worship?” I would probably respond with “Well She hasn’t been a complete asshole to me, and Her presence in my life improves it.” I likely have a better answer prepared because not many people ask me to prove that Ogre is worth my love, whereas my deities’ worth or even existence are constantly being questioned.*

I mean, maybe that’s all it boils down to. The equation for worthiness (of love/devotion/worship): “Not a complete asshole; presence improves life, does not make it worse.”

And, of course, there’s a second part to this answer. That part is: at first glance pagan deities may seem smaller and less powerful, but they’re not. They are every bit as powerful as the Christian god (whom I don’t believe to be omniscient or omnipotent anyway), and just as unfathomable. As I’ve come to know the gods in my life more and more, I know that the human faces they’ve put on for me are just faces. There is so much more to them than that, and I will never be able to grasp it all. I consider myself lucky to be able to know them in their easier to digest forms, to even be able to grasp at the smallest parts of their mysteries.

So even if being unfathomable and incredibly powerful were prerequisites for a deity to receive my worship (which they aren’t), it wouldn’t make a difference.

-Morag

*As for that question…it doesn’t really matter to me if they’re “real” or not. I believe they are, but the bottom line is — they make my life better. So if they’re hallucinations that make my life better, then, um. Where is the problem exactly? And if they’re not hallucinations, then I’m right, and they still make my life better. But it doesn’t really matter either way. No one else is obligated to believe in their existence. Heck, you’re not even obligated to believe in my existence. On the internet, after all, no one can tell you’re a dog.

30 Days of Paganism: Pantheon — Elua & His Companions

I am only now really starting out on a path of relationship with Elua and his Blessed Companions, though I have felt a strong connection with them for years now. I think I was afraid to explore it because of how people might perceive me, worshipping fictional gods.

I don’t really give a fuck now.

I’m going to talk about each of them as best I’m able to, this early. Each entry will be a mix of headcanon and canon. I feel a need to reread the books I’ve read already, and to read Moirin’s trilogy as well. There’s only so much info on the Kushiel wiki, and really not enough to build any sort of practice around the Companions. So as I reread those books I will likely post more here about the Companions and how I’m working to honor them in my life. Also my practice might expand to include non-D’Angeline deities portrayed in the books, though I’ll likely still refer to it as D’Angeline Recon.

A woman sits on a bed, with a red skirt flaring out behind her. Her back is bare and facing the audience. A tattoo of a thorned rose rests on her skin. — Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève by jibril84 on Deviant Art. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Naamah was first to be truly acknowledged by me as real, I think. She appeared as part of Aphrodite, and yet separate. I understand Them to be sisters, syncretized, and yet Their own beings. Deity individuation is complicated. Where Aphrodite wants me to focus on loving myself in all forms, Naamah seems to be telling me to find back the sacredness in physical pleasure — whatever emotions are associated with it. To find the sacredness in slow lovemaking sessions with my partner, the sacredness in quick and dirty fucks, the sacredness in saying ‘no, not tonight’, the sacredness in surrender, in sacrifice. All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals. Love as thou wilt. Sex as sacred. These are the lessons I am learning from Naamah.

Naamah’s servants bear a marque, a tattoo signifying their service, and I have been thinking of creating one for myself for a long time now. It wouldn’t go on my back, because that space is Reserved, but there are other places it would work. Right now I’m leaning towards an Eglantine based marque, but that may change.

Kushiel I think arrived with Naamah, or perhaps before, back when I was still too scared to approach fictional deities. Back when I was still practicing BDSM with mortals I found a cleansing in being whipped or flogged. The pain was a release for me, an act of forgiveness for my sins. It was always spiritual for me, on some level. I no longer feel safe practicing BDSM with mortals, and so keep it to my religious practice. I have flogged myself for the Morrigan, but not yet for Kushiel. It’s a different thing when I flog myself for the Morrigan; there are different feelings associated, because there’s a different relationship there.

Right now flogging of any sort is impossible where I live, because it makes a pretty distinctive noise, and I can’t risk getting evicted for practicing BDSM or paganism (either of which is possible). But I am having ideas about milder forms of purification in honor of him. Whipping lightly with branches dipped in salt water — a combination of flogging and asperging that will make far less noise than the former.

Shemhazai, as mentioned in my post on Patrons, is all about knowledge and learning. All knowledge is worth having is his creed. Something I didn’t go into on the Patrons post is that his shrines sometimes have mechanical statues of him, so it wouldn’t be so far of a stretch to see his purviews including things with moving parts that have been built by humans — cars, computers, etc. Computers make sense doubly — moving parts, and written language.

Cassiel I find the hardest to relate to, personally. He chose to obey the One God’s laws, he remained celibate, and it is said that when the Companions walked to the Terre-D’Ange-that-lies-beyond, he is the only one who looked back in sorrow. Yet there is something compelling about his devotion to Elua, and something I can feel in myself. So it is with that devotion I start: this year, for Longest Night, I will be holding my own version of Elua’s Vigil, in honor of Cassiel and his devotion.

Anael taught D’Angelines the secrets to growing things, to animal husbandry. He led them out of the wild and into cultivation. He’s known as the Good Steward and the Star of Love. To work with plants and animals is to honor Anael. Give thanks to him for the growing green things of the earth, and he will reward your diligence with life within your hands.

Azza stands with a sextant in hand and teaches D’Angelines about navigation, about finding their way in the world. According to the Yeshuites his sin is pride, but there must be some pride if you’re to find your way across the wilderness. Pride lifts you up, keeps you from self-doubt and despair. Know what you’re good at, and feel no shame in excelling.

Followers of Azza try to sublimate their individual pride before his. This doesn’t mean falling on the ground and shouting “We’re not worthy!” It means learning to balance your pride with humility.

Camael carries a flaming sword and protects the borders of Terre D’Ange with his martial nature. He is the marker of boundaries, in my eyes. He draws a line in the sand and says “Up to here, and no further.” He founded Terre D’Ange’s first armies, because even a land that lives under the motto of Love as Thou Wilt will have enemies, and he knew that. He is a protector.

Eisheth gave healing, music, and story to the D’Angeline people. She also rules over children, and, indeed, the very continuation of the D’Angeline people — a D’Angeline woman will not be able to conceive until she lights a candle to Eisheth and asks her to open the gates of her womb, and once this is done, it is done for forever. As well, her purview over story and music is part of the continuation of D’Angeline culture. She gave them things to pass on; she gives them the power to continue.

I saved Elua for last, because I think it might be easier to talk about him once I’ve talked about his companions. Elua is the child of Yeshua ben Yosef (Jesus Christ) and the Mary Magdalene, born in the womb of the earth when the Magdalene’s tears met Yeshua’s blood. He was mortal, yet experienced apotheosis and became a god in the eyes of the D’Angeline people, along with his angelic companions. Elua refused the One God’s offer to let him into heaven, scoring his hand with Cassiel’s dagger to show the blood that dripped from his skin. Heaven, being bloodless, had no place for him. This led to the creation of the D’Angeline afterlife, the Terre-D’Ange-that-lies-beyond.

Elua travelled with his Companions from Persis to Terre D’Ange, where they settled and formed the City of Elua and the various provinces that make up the country. Elua’s temple has no ceiling and is open to the sky. Plants are allowed to grow as they will within, and you are required to walk barefoot if you visit. His precept is Love as Thou Wilt, and it is the basis for D’Angeline society.

Born of the death of Yeshua ben Yosef and Mary Magdalene’s great sorrow, Elua is evidence of the transformative power of love. He shows that, with love, there is life after death. With love, we are immortal.

Love as thou wilt.

The Morrigan Chose Me…and I chose Her right back

There’s this idea in neo-Pagan or polytheist circles that the gods choose us, we don’t choose them. Sometimes that’s correct — sometimes, yes, the gods do search us out without us needing to reach out first. In that case, They chose us; we didn’t choose Them.

But we still can.

When I first met the Morrigan I didn’t know, explicitly, that I could say no. I thought that once a god chose you, that was it. But over the years of working with Her, I realized I could say no — at any time. I could walk away. Like with any other relationship, I could decide it wasn’t for me — She wasn’t for me, and that I needed something different in my life.

And She wouldn’t try to force me to stay. I know this because I know Her. She doesn’t want someone who doesn’t want Her.

When I realized that I could choose Her in return, that my choice mattered, I honestly just sort of shrugged. Because while I’d not explicitly known I could say no, at first, there’d never really been any doubt. There’d been hard times, but no feelings of “I’m not sure I want this.” I wanted it. I wanted Her. I always have. It was lovely to know my choice mattered…but knowing that didn’t change my decision in any way.

So at that point, choosing Her was just…well, I’d already done it, and I decided to do it again. I make that choice every day. It’s a lot like marriage, actually. It’s a choice you make every day. You keep making it. Because you will hit rough patches. And believe me, rough patches with a deity can be brutal. But I still choose Her.

At first, I thought it was a bit ironic that She came to me — a War goddess, choosing an anti-war activist? I’d marched against Iraq, protested the war, protested Bush. It was all unjustified to me, and in fact I saw no purpose to war in most cases.

But I came to learn that “war goddess” is only a small part of Who the Morrigan is. It’s an outgrowth of Her more primary function: sovereignty.

When people have their land, their cattle, taken away from them; when they’re disenfranchised; when they’ve tried all they can to get it back to no avail — they need a champion. They need to ask for help from the goddess of sovereignty, to help them gain their own back. And if that means war, then that means war.

She does what is necessary.

Not for fun, not just because She can. Because it needs to be done.

She is the one who cuts things away. She prunes. You don’t go into your garden and rip branches off to see your plants bleed. You do it to help them grow.

She’s not about bloodletting for bloodletting’s sake. There is a reason for all that She does. And if She whips you into a frenzy, you best believe it’s been called for.

It bothers me to see people mischaracterize Her as a bloodthirsty war goddess, a psychopath, a goddess capable of (and willing to) possessing large swaths of people to get them to support the military-industrial complex. My Lady, as a goddess of the wild lands, of the earth, of sovereignty…well, I just. After saying that, how could you think She’d be interested in the military-industrial complex at all? Except, maybe, to help tear it down.

I think people forget cultural context when they talk about various deities, and tend to shallowly classify the gods. “Morrigan is a War Goddess,” we say, nodding sagely, because we fail to realize what that meant to the people who originally worshipped her. ‘War’ today is different from war a hundred, thousand years ago. Meanings change. And yet, somehow, we think that word still fits Her perfectly. We think ‘war’ today and we think ‘military industrial complex’ — so obviously deities like the Morrigan are all about that business!

Think a little. Dig deeper. There’s more to every deity than just the one word we’ve decided is shorthand for Them.

In fact, They’re a lot like mortal people in that respect. There’s more than just one side to Them.

And like with mortal people, we can say no to Them. We can choose Them, or not. We have that option.

The Morrigan chose me, and made Herself known to me in 2007. When I realized I could choose Her or not, I didn’t change my decision. I chose Her again, and I choose Her every day. And because I choose to spend my life with Her, because I choose to listen to Her, because She matters to me, I know that there’s more to Her than war and blood and death.

There’s life, and sovereignty, and choice.

There are hard decisions.

And there’s love. Always.

~Morag

British Columbia is Burning

A photo of a waterfront landscape that is covered in a smoky haze. — The water, this evening. You can’t even see the Island.

Everything is burning. We have nearly 200 wildfires raging in the province right now. Fire bans across the board. The hottest, driest summer on record so far. Drought.

And the smoke has spread out to areas that aren’t on fire, has descended onto towns, has filled our lungs and made us cough and choke on the ash.

It looks like the end of the world outside.

An empty street in a small town. Trees in the distance. The sky is a yellow-orange color, covered in a thick haze of smoke. — The sky as I headed to dog park.

This morning I woke up to yellow light streaming into my mother’s bedroom, where I’m sleeping while I stay with her. This morning I woke up to our cars covered in ash; to white flecks falling like snow through the sky. Things only got worse as the day went on. What was mildly irritating smoke smell in the air in the morning became unbreathable by mid-afternoon.

We closed all the windows and doors. There’s no AC, no fans, and it got up to 26C today. But it was better to suffer in heat than to damage our lungs.

A young person with long hair wears a green bandana wrapped around their face. They resemble a stereotypical stagecoach-robbing bandit from an old Western. — Me, leaving the house, wearing my hair bandana around my face so I could breathe.

This evening, we made a grocery store run, thinking we’d at least spend some time in an air conditioned, smoke free environment. We got one of those things right. The haze had even penetrated the fortress walls of QF, hanging like some ineffable doom over the aisles of cereal and coffee and bread.

BC is burning. BC is burning and we can’t breathe.

People are losing their homes. Firefighters and tree fallers are losing their lives. The province is burning and bleeding and suffering.

When I look out onto our ghost town street, normally fairly lively on summer days, even Sundays, when I stare at a landscape that could be taken from Silent Hill, half of me feels despair.

The other half feels a deep, fathomless anger.

Fires are raging all over BC and last year the province spent NOTHING ON WILDFIRE MITIGATION. NOTHING.

A backyard filled with trees and some sheds. There is a patch of sky through the trees; it is a cloudy, yellowish hue. — More morning sky.

Because that is what happens when your government destroys scientific knowledge, muzzles scientists, and ignores FACTS about the world around us. This is what happens when you have an ultra conservative party in charge that won’t be content until it’s completely destroyed your country.

Harper fiddles while Canada burns. Christie plays back up on the triangle.

Fires are raging all over BC and California and the rest of the Coast is suffering drought and still corporations steal our water; still people deny climate change.

The hottest summer on record. The HOTTEST. Is that global warming fucking hot enough for you yet?

Temperatures rise ACROSS THE GLOBE but because there’s a cold spot in Eastern and Southern US during the winter, people deny the truth that is SLAPPING THEM IN THE FACE and crawling into their lungs, choking them with the ash and soot.

We are burning our planet alive. BC is just a small part of that.

BC is burning. The West Coast is drying up. We are dying.

Wake the fuck up.

A picture of the ocean, taken from a car. There is so much smoke and haze over the water you can barely see the dock or the wave break. — What view?

30 Days of Paganism: Pantheon — Hellenic Gods

I don’t honor all the gods of the Hellenic pantheon. There’s some evidence that They prefer you take the pantheon as a whole, but I have a geas on me from my Father that I shall have no interaction with Poseidon, unless I am absolutely forced into a situation where it is unavoidable — at which point I am to remain civil but give Poseidon none of my devotion.

So you can see how I can’t exactly worship the pantheon as a whole.

At this point none of my original gods have issues with the rest of the Hellenic gods I’ve made contact with, had interactions with, or given worship to. I don’t know if there are other gods in the pantheon that either Brighid, the Morrigan, or Manannan might take issue with my worshipping. The only clear note has been not Poseidon.

When I first came to paganism I always thought I would default to the Hellenic gods. I’d spent my childhood reading the Greek myths; they were as real to me as the Coast Salish creation story I’d learned in my youth, or stories of Night Marchers or choking ghosts in Hawai’i (which, yes, have always been real to me). It was partly because of my extensive interest in reading classical mythology during childhood that polytheism always seemed more natural and right to me than monotheism. That, and being raised by a Buddhist mother.

But when I finally came to paganism, namely NeoWicca, I didn’t immediately gravitate to the Hellenic gods. I didn’t really feel any pull from Them. It wasn’t until I first went to Spring Mysteries Fest that They really came into my life, with the exception of Aphrodite, who was there a bit earlier. (And, of course, my first trip to SMF included SURPRISE POSEIDON that got me in serious trouble with my Dad. We’re good now, but it was pretty shitty for a while.)

Of course, prior to SMF I had always resonated very strongly with Persephone, and Her story of descent. The Descent to the Underworld has always been a story that plucked at something deep within me — first as a metaphor to explain access weekends with my bio-sire, and then as a way to describe my depression. When I was a kid and reading Persephone’s myth, it was the sanitized, no-sex version — so it was quite easy for me to see myself in Persephone, and my mom in Demeter, and my bio-sire in Hades.

Over the years this changed, especially once I read the non-sanitized versions of the myth. There was never any sexual abuse from my bio-sire, so it seemed inappropriate to graft on the characters of Persephone, Hades, and Demeter to my own life. However, there was still resonance in the myth for me, especially as I began to think of my depression as a descent to the underworld, and as I started to interpret Persephone’s descent as a choice.

Persephone, Hades, and Demeter are thus important figures to me in the Hellenic pantheon. I may not hear much, if anything, from Them, but They have been there for me since childhood to my ritual to cut my bio-sire’s cords from my life, and I will continue to worship Them.

Another three incredibly important deities to me in the Hellenic pantheon are Aphrodite, Dionysos, and Hecate. Aphrodite answered my prayers 5 years ago, with interest. She has my eternal gratitude, and my love. Hecate is my witchcraft patron, as I explained before. Dionysos is…well, He’s Dionysos. God of the Mindfuck. I don’t really have the words to explain that relationship, not today.

And then there’s Hestia, to whom I attempt to give a daily offering. (I sometimes forget, because human.) Lately I’ve been trying to make this offering in the morning and the evening, instead of just the morning. Hestia traditionally gets the first and last offerings, so even if I do nothing else religious in a day, I do give Her something.

I have a representation of Gaia on my shrine, but so far I haven’t really explored Her mysteries, or formed a relationship, or consistently offered worship or devotion. I’m still trying to figure Her out.

Finally, there’s Zeus and Hera. They scare the everloving fuck out of me, so I’m grateful They haven’t interacted with me outside of SMF. When I say They scare me, I mean knees shaking, going to pee myself, pretty much crying scare me. And I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why. At any rate, They get a spot on my Hellenic shrine.

So far, those are the Hellenic deities I attempt to worship/work with/have a relationship with/etc/whatever on an ongoing basis. Obviously, there is always a chance more will come into my life at some point.

~Morag

30 Days of Paganism: Pantheon — Sacred Triad

I’m an eclectic pagan, so my overall pantheon is pretty…varied. I have three gods from one culture, and some from the Hellenic pantheon, and then there’s the Otherfaith and my D’Angeline Recon…right. Four separate pantheons; lots o’ gods.

So instead of taking each of these pantheon posts as a chance to talk about an individual deity, I’m going to use them to talk about the separate pantheons I have. Which works perfectly — 4 pantheon posts, 4 pantheons.

The Sacred Triad/Big 3

I suppose it’s more accurate to say I’m working within an Irish or Gaelic context here, but so far it’s only these three, and Manannan spans some cultural boundaries in my experience. So the Sacred Triad it remains.

These gods came to me separately over a period of several years. It was only after all three had been in my life for a while that I started to realize They worked together, that Their mysteries were entwined, that I was meant to understand Them not only as individuals but as a collective. I started calling Them the Sacred Triad for a lack of a better name, and had some thoughts of building a religion based on Them.

I don’t know if I’m still doing that, but I’m still exploring the collective of The Sacred Triad, and the mysteries of each of the gods in it, as well as the mysteries of the collective.

First was the Morrigan, May/June 2007. She was the loudest of all of Them, probably because at that point I was much in need of a two-by-four to know that a god spoke to me. Shortly after Brighid poked Her head in, but I asked for Her to come back later because while I was definitely interested, I just didn’t think I could handle both tM and Brighid showing up within a month of each other (I was right; Their tag-teaming can be brutal). So Brighid came back later, in January 2010. A few months later, Manannan poked His head in.

And then my journey with the Sacred Triad really began.

I began to understand Them beyond what I’d read, either in the lore or in other people’s interpretations. I came to realize that dualisms never really worked for me, and started to see things as groups of threes. In that way, They affected my cosmology too.

It was no longer birth/death; it was creation/living/ending. It was land/sea/sky. It was birth/sex/death. It was fire/dirt/salt-water. And there is overlap.

Brighid is the sun, the fire of creation; She is birth and beginning and making something from nothing. But She’s also the fire in the water — the pinpricks of light in the deep dark of space, and that deep dark of space is Him. Manannan, lord of death, of the deeps, of rain and ocean and the endless expanse of space. Birth comes from death as much as it leads to it.

And Brighid is wells and rivers and fresh water, too — and so is the Morrigan, who is the land, who is living, who is the middle between birth and death and the moment we cross over from one moment to the next, who is the hard fast beating of your heart that tells you you’re really alive. She is all the liminal spaces; She is fairy forests. She is the queen of that otherworld, and She is the queen of the land. Sovereignty over it is given by Her and no one else. And She is salt and sweat and tears, and in that way Her areas are mingled with Manannan’s, whose ocean is salty, whose rain is like tears.

And She is blood, which is fire in the water, which is all of Them.

She is the act of cutting away and knowing when to stop cutting. She is the force between Brighid and Manannan that binds Them, that connects Them. Her land is the fabric that holds the sea and sky together.

And I feel like I’m working with primal forces, here. I feel that these forces have been around for much longer than we have, and it was only through their interaction with people in certain areas that they became the Morrigan, and Brighid, and Manannan — and that in other areas these forces might have become very different gods indeed. Those forces are still behind the gods I know, still there, simmering beneath the surface, and they are still out there in the world, doing their own thing.

Deity individuation is very different from human individuation.

It’s through my relationships with the Sacred Triad and my conversations with other polytheists that I have come to believe the gods would exist with or without us, but it is because of us that they are how they are. It is through interactions with us that they have changed, have molded their energies to become the shapes we know and recognize, and it is through our interactions with them that we have changed, have molded our shapes into what they know and recognize.

You cannot know something without changing it. You cannot observe something without having an effect — and being affected, in turn. The gods — the primal forces — were always there, but as soon as we came on the scene they became something else, sometimes many different times in many different areas, even if the original primal force was the same source.

And for me, in my experience, the three forces of Brighid, the Morrigan, and Manannan work together, as a collective, as much as They work by Themselves or within more traditional pantheons.

That’s the basic gist of The Sacred Triad. I ramble more about it and Them in the category of the same name on this blog.