by Emma Restall Orr
The understanding that Western neoPagansim is a widely diverse system of beliefs and practices is well accepted. Even within particular and distinct traditions, there is a growing acceptance of diversity, an acceptance that tolerates less intolerance, so allowing less bitchcraft and pedantry.
Within my own tradition of Druidry, the existence of Pagan, Christian and humanist Druids (among others) is an element that requires perhaps more overt tolerance than in other mainly or fully Pagan traditions, and that tolerance is growing as the tradition itself grows, as in turn its diversity grows. Indeed, the definition of the word Pagan which I find most poignant is that based upon the Latin ‘pagus’, a words meaning a village or community; it is a definition that not only explains but encourages localism within the tradition.
However, it is the specific differences within Paganism itself that I would like to address here, differences that are not and cannot be labelled as differing traditions, yet which occur fully across the spectrum of Paganisms that I have encountered. They are differences that exist within the wider faith community, differences evident within English-speaking neoPaganism, urban and rural, virtual and tangible, all around the world; they are differences in fundamental beliefs, in attitudes and assumptions, about the nature of the world. The lines between such differentiations can easily be blurred; indeed, I sense that many Pagans lie comfortably stretched out across them. Nevertheless, they raise some important issues.
Despite the title of this article, and simply because Paganism is so diverse, the perspective I give here is in no way an attempt to define what Paganism should be. All I can hope to do is to offer the view from where I sit, pondering upon what I have seen as I’ve journeyed through the tradition over the past twenty years, pointing out the areas which inspire optimism within me, and those areas that provoke feelings of uncertainty. It is with the former that I begin in an attempt at describing those different fundamental beliefs.
The first I would call spiritual Paganism, or the aspect of Paganism that is our spirituality.
Questing and acknowledging the sacred energy within all creation, both seen and beyond our perception, in Paganism we consider that energy to have a consciousness, a purpose and an evolution, indifferent to the extent to which we can perceive or comprehend it.
This is animism, a powerful spiritual tradition that lies at the root of most native or earth spiritualities across the world. It encourages respect for the spirits of the environment within which we live: the spirits of place. In most cases it also includes the honouring of ancestral spirits, again both seen and unseen, as existent entities that continue to watch and guide us. It is what the majority seems to believe to be a definitive Paganism, or the foundation of the tradition.
The next is the religious aspects of Paganism.
Despite many feeling unable to dismiss negative connotations of the word, I use it to describe that aspect which goes beyond animism, to an understanding and reverence for deity. Within religious Paganism there are monotheists and duotheists, practical and radical polytheists; there are those with direct experience of deity and those whose belief and determined questing sustains the vigour of their devotion despite a lack of evidence. The spectrum of visions is boundless. The very idea of what a deity or god may be is equally indefinite, not restricted by any parameters that hold it within the label of Paganism.
While for the purpose of this article, specific definition might be irrelevant, I would like to suggest however that for practice to be religious, a god needs to be more than a mythic concept. This leads me onto the third type of Paganism. Beyond here, we move into mistier landscapes.
Firstly, the philosophical aspect of Paganism.
A good many of those who quest a deeper meaning to life begin at this point. After reading a stack of books, gently, as practice takes over from theory and experience washes energy through dry ideas, they find their way into one or other of the above. Indeed, many would agree that the philosophical, theological and academic/scientific perspectives of the tradition are not only an essential starting point, but also an ongoing part of their spiritual or religious practice, deepening their beliefs and enriching their devotion.
Philosophical Pagans, however, sometimes remain as such. Humanists or thinkers, profound environmentalists, scientists or historians, these folk have a respect for the natural world based on an understanding of co-existence, a flow of history and tradition, of beauty, order and entropy. But they go no further. Though the idea may be useful as metaphor, spirit as essence or spirit entities of separate and individual consciousness do not exist for them as a reality.
Here is where I begin to question whether this is truly Paganism.
The psychological aspect of Paganism is another profoundly important part. The quest for self-development, self-awareness and growth is an integral part of most people’s spiritual or religious practice, allowing us a way of finding meaning, value and confidence.
However, for the psychological Pagan this healing and empowerment is the central focus. Spirits of place are no more than reflections and projections of the psyche; elements and creatures of nature are omens to read, signs that can be used for the purposes of divination. Ancestral spirits and guides are aspects of one’s own psyche. Indeed, to consider these as otherwise is to reveal a deep wound in the soul, a crisis of separation, a lack of wholeness and integration of self: a need to be healed.
Because so much of our human fear is related to rejection, to being outcast even in the smallest way, it can be frightening to express anything that might be seen as weak or peculiar. If the act of questing relationship with spirit is seen as odd, to talk with these separate entities (to dance, love and learn from them, to journey with them into otherworld ... ) is surely then to express an irrefutable insanity.
As a result, very many people, natural spiritual Pagans, stumble along their life-path, filled with self-doubts, sometimes quite terrified. Half the time they are seeking to reassure themselves that they are imagining it all (the sense of presence in a river, the vision of a dead friend, the music in the wind ... ), yet deep down their experience is too profound to accept such denial. They continue desperate to find confirmation that what they see and feel is real.
Secular culture again and again yells that it is imagination and ludicrous delusion. Yet when people within the Pagan community appear to agree with this secular perspective, affirming only that the visions are simply powerful aspects of our own human minds, the confusion is only intensified. There is no relief in this pacifying hand of social normality; having failed to support the spiritual being with all its senses, it only leaves the person feeling even more acutely alone.
Spirituality and religious devotion, philosophy and psychology are all important parts of our modern Pagan tradition. However, where there is no animism or belief in deity, I seriously question if this can truly be called Paganism. It brings me onto another term, political Paganism, which not only takes us back to the intolerance and pedantry of bitchcraft, it also leads me to the key issue of the conference at which this article was given as a talk : how green is our magic?
Where we make relationship, listening, perceiving clearly another individual, where we make a connection allowing communication, finding a shared language, individual to individual, politics does not exist. Respecting fully the situation, individual to individual, we are able to access the potential and power of the moment available through that relationship. Individual to individual, anything can be achieved.
Though of course it may help, it doesn’t matter whether or not we can fully understand or empathize with the other person. Where we do not acknowledge the other as an individual, missing any possibility for relationship, we are immediately at risk of dishonourable interaction. Communication becomes a hammered jigsaw of monologues, of projections and reflections. The pain of conflict will arise.
This is the nature of political relationship: they are based on the perception of an abstract not an individual. They are founded on a threat of some kind, one that must be addressed, whether to be evaded, confronted or used. We may see or interact with the physical form of that abstract, be it a government, an organization, a clique, yet we are not responding to the individual. We see only the abstract represented.
I do not, of course, negate the value of political environmental (or social) protest, in terms of making a perspective known, raising consciousness about an issue, screaming, “Enough!” and following through where appropriate, in an intelligent and honourable manner.
However, there is a victim consciousness in our culture, particularly amongst minority groups such as Pagans, but increasingly also in the political and social paranoia that is nurtured by (and nurtures) this new elusive and yet pervasive threat of terrorism. It engenders a defensive attitude that nourishes fear, but also anger and its inverse emotion, guilt.
Much political monotheism and the social monism of convention is based on the promotion of negatives (from ‘thou shalt not’ to ‘you can’t do that!’). Yet it is not necessary to live within this mindset, either in the landscapes of environmentalism that we walk as Pagans and as humans, nor in personal and social change. Letting go of the guilt-tangled complications that come hand in hand with perceiving an abstract authority, we can leave behind political relationship completely. We can walk in a freedom that is the creation of our attitudes, lifted from the clawing fog of perpetual threat, into a clear landscape of distinct and positive communicating relationships.
As an animist who reveres a number of native and ancestral gods, when looking at the issue of change, I would encourage us to go further still, not just into personal relationship, but into sacred relationship where not only the individual is acknowledged but the spirit too.
Within animism too, where we are considering relationship, we are not only looking at those between human beings, but those that can be nurtured between all beings ... cat, moon, butterfly, wind, spring, blackbird, badger, hawthorn, thunder, sea. Moving towards religious Paganism, we are also seeking relationship with the powers of nature as gods of love, death, potential, rage and more, forces of nature both within the human soul and the world beyond.
Where spirit (or deity) is seen to be metaphorical or symbolic, or an aspect of one’s own psyche projected, while there may well be clear thinking and sound decision-making, there may be a strong sense of personal responsibility and ethics, in reality there can be no true relationship ... and so nobody and nothing to harm ultimately but oneself. Where this perception exists, we are relying on selfishness or the strength of self-interest, in a world where self-destructive behaviour is the acceptable norm.
If we perceive the spirit of a cow, making a relationship with that animal, honouring life, can we continue to see her enslaved in the dairy industry, with its perpetual cycle of abuse and slaughter? If we perceive the spirit of the tree, can we cut into it with the chainsaw? If we see the spirit of a dog, or a child, can we bear to see it beaten? Where there is not this acknowledgement of spirit, it is a good deal easier to support the brutality of a distant war, the devastation of vast ocean fishing nets, clear cutting of forests, slavery in the cocoa fields and so on. As human beings, we are incredibly skilled at making artificial distinctions. Surely, as Pagans, our primary obligation is not to do the same.
I return then to the question: how green is our magic?
Understanding magic to be the process of activating change, my answer would be that it is as green, or environmentally and socially positive, as is our ability to develop sacred spirit-to-spirit relationship. For where our decisions are made, smothered with defensive emotion, as a political response to a situation of personal threat, and where spirit is not acknowledged, where there is no true dialogue, where the stories are not clearly heard, our creativity will always carry the risk of being - at best - unhelpful. At worse, our effort could be devastating in its blind selfishness. As magic, it will consequently be either black or white.
Yet, where we acknowledge spirit in another and in ourselves, we see always beauty - sweet, light, wild, soft, raw, brilliant, powerful, rich and dark - and where we find beauty, we find inspiration.
In the Druid tradition, that inspiration is the power of ‘awen’, which reveals to us not only the clarity of the path ahead, but offers us too the energy with which to carry it out the action needed. Powerful sacred relationships allow, and indeed encourage, the process of positive and congruent creativity, which is neither black, white or ‘dirty grey’, but richly green magic.
So how Pagan is our Paganism?
I have offered here a view of various frameworks of Pagan belief, and I have expressed my doubts about a Paganism that does not acknowledge spirit as existent beyond the human imagination.
It is my opinion that the effectiveness of our Paganism is defined by our ability to make spiritual and religious relationship, inspired relationships, beginning within the sacred valley of our homes and our faith communities, without the anger and guilt of politics, nor the self-focus that comes with the fear of rejection and insanity. This is the measure of our Paganism.
It is well known amongst those who have worked with me that my ethics and religious perspective can be extreme. I acknowledge that others may have an entirely different view from the warm stones upon which they sit in their own sacred valleys. There is music and laughter in the winds of change.
Emma Restall Orr
March 2001/February 2003
First version published in the Dragon Eco-Magic Journal
http://www.gn.apc.org/dragon
