Resacralizing Our World

Galina Krasskova in Wyrd Ways

I recently read an exchange online between a polytheist (what type, I do not know) and a Heathen that to my mind, highlighted what I consider to be the biggest issue in Heathenry. The exchange was a simple one. In the course of the discussion, the Polytheist commented that he was seeing a lot of people talking about human sentiment and human feelings but he didn’t see anyone considering what the gods might want, or what They might feel about the topic at hand, one that had the potential to significantly impact ongoing religious praxis. The Heathen fired back that this errs into the realm of UPG — unverified personal gnosis– and was better left undiscussed.

I could not disagree more strongly. Those are precisely the questions we ought to be asking, ever and always: What do our Gods want. This is where divination comes into play. This is where your mystics and spiritworkers are essential. This is where we are all served by cultivating a strong practice of prayer and discernment. Whenever I hear Heathens disparaging UPG — and this happens quite a bit–I just shake my head. All religion is unverified personal gnosis, if we look at it objectively. Of course community practices evolve out of a need to find some way of approaching and engaging with the sacred as a community. If enough people are having the same experiences then we might get a common range of accepted, mainstream praxis. Those community practices, however, will only ever be the reflection of the lowest common spiritual denominator, those areas of experience where the most number of people can participate with the least effort expended. Personally, I’m deeply ambivalent about this. I’d like to see that bar held higher, but that too comes with its inherent problems not the least of which is alienating a number of otherwise good folk. That being said, personal gnosis is sacred. It’s the fuel that keeps a religion vital and alive, relevant, and sustainable. It reminds us that the point of what we’re doing is right relationship with the Holy Powers. It places Them at the center of the equation, and encourages us to fuel the fires of our own devotion.

I often think that part of the ongoing hostility toward gnosis, i.e. toward direct experience of the sacred unmediated by community ritual, is the mere fact that one person is having experiences that another isn’t. It’s often a matter of ‘you’re doing something I can’t, so you must be wrong, bad, perverse, not Heathen, or [insert epithet here]. It comes down to two equally vexing things: spiritual envy and having one’s personal prejudices and world view challenged. I tend to think that if the latter isn’t happening fairly regularly, then maybe something is amiss with the depth (or lack thereof) of our spiritual praxis; the first however, is one of the most hurtful and destructive spiritual issues that I’ve encountered; and it’s hurtful not for the one being envied, but to the emotional and spiritual integrity of the one consumed by it. Given our Protestant-influenced worldview, it seems that we all too often we ascribe moral superiority to intense gnosis, we impose a hierarchy of value where in fact, none exists. There’s a lovely story told by St. Therese of Lisieux in her autobiography that touches on this. She recounts that as a small child, she asked her sister if God loved saints more than regular people. The sister — in a moment of inspired brilliance–got a wine glass and a thimble and filled them each to capacity and asked the little Therese, ‘which is more full?’. The child got the point that we each experience the sacred to our capacity and “more” is a very subjective matter.

I also believe that part of the aversion is a problem with authority. Someone having direct engagement with the Gods is a danger to human structures of authority. A mystic, a spirit worker, a shaman, even a priest who has a strong devotional life (as all priests should ,but sadly don’t) is a specialist. A specialist is, by experience and training, an authority in his or her field and that is problematic when that field is religion, a field where we’ve been taught to eschew standards in favor of subjectivity. If something is subjective then it doesn’t really lend itself to external evaluation and challenge. Beyond your specialists, someone, — your average jane and joe– having direct engagement with the sacred has the potential to challenge the comfort of our unexamined practices, to argue for piety over dubious ‘progress’, authenticity over personal comfort, and engagement over ego. Those direct experiences upend our value system, the value system of middle working class *Protestant* America, the value system mired in its own lack of vision.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I think part of it also comes down to the inherent distrust our modern, post-Reformation world has with the deeply spiritual, particularly when it touches the emotions. Devotion is not only déclassé, but suspicious. We’d rather pathologize it as a culture than accept that the Gods are powerfully real and can and do interact with Their devotees in ways that mirror every bit the mysticism experienced by some of the ancients. Instead, we all too often avoid the experiential, fearing to look foolish, primitive, fearing to make the mainstream uncomfortable and the result is that we cull the depth out of our practices until what is left is at best a shallow shell.

With this restoration, we are charged with resacralizing our world. Personal experience, what Heathens call UPG and what many other religions refer to as mysticism is central to this process. An anti-experiential attitude goes hand in hand with a desire to purge every bit of mystery out of our traditions, to render them as dull, mediocre, and ultimately as shallow as we possibly can, to render them innocuous, to render them profane.(1) It is our mystics who keep the rampant desacralization of our world from devouring the budding flower of our traditions wholesale. It is those who embrace their own potential — however great or small–for experiencing the sacred who hold a line with their very minds, hearts, and spirits against this excision of the sacred.

We need our mystics desperately. We also need those who are not mystics, but who have a deep piety and desire to maintain right relationship with the sacred. We need that tension to force our own evolution and healthy growth. We need our mystics to remind us to keep the Gods central to our praxis, to ask “what do the Gods want here?” and we need our devotees, who may not be having deeply intense religious experiences but who love the Gods and ancestors, to remind us that there’s a human equation too. This organic balance isn’t happening in Heathenry. Instead, the mystics (and I’m using this term broadly as a gloss for those whose praxis is primarily informed by direct experience with the sacred) are marginalized and the human-centric raised up in place of the sacred to the extent that I’ve even seen it posited that the Gods don’t interact with us anymore, that this was something that happened only to our ancestors, long ago and far away.

People who are intent on venerating the Powers and on active, experiential engagement have the potential to be living windows through which the sacred may seep back into our traditions, and ultimately into our world. Not only is it important to ask, as we go about restoring our traditions, what the Gods want, it’s crucial; and if that upends the world of many gnosis-phobic Heathens out there, then so be it.

Notes:

1. I use the term profane in a similar way to Mircea Eliade: as the mundane balance to the sacred.

Animal Spirits: Shapeshifting, familiars, companions.

Grant Guindon in Primal Spirits

Its been quite a while since I’ve shared on the topic of animal spirits and what they are to me personally. Throughout all my travels, apprenticeships, teachings and overall exposure to the spiritual realms I’ve experienced countless perspectives on the subject of animal spirits.

The first of which I would care to touch on is the idea of a companion ‘spirit’ of an animal that is present with a person much like a caretaker or a guide throughout parts of their lives. The idea of this sends off a subtle alarm in the back of my mind as a warning that often makes me question the reasoning behind why a person wants to believe that for instance they walk with a companion spirit of a badger. Some would claim that this spirit assists them in their lives and often states that the badger helps them understand human problems. I personally am not fond on this idea that a legitimate animal spirit would bother with something like finding ways to pay your bills, fixing your car and all variations of our human plights. Though I am open minded and I can understand how there would be some overlapping similarities in the life of a human and a badger, it leaves one to think just how deep that rabbit hole goes.

Another way of working with the spirits seems much older to me, where instead of assisting us with our human conditions, they would rather reveal wisdom of living much in the ways an animal would, Seeking of food, building of shelters, reactions to conflict. We have all met someone on our journey who we can definitely associate their behaviours to a certain type of animal. The connection is real, it is tangible, primal and ancestrally bound to our being as those who once lived in harmony with the animal kingdom and depended on that alliance for their daily survival.

On a more physical plane it’s interesting to consider how the idea of the Familiar applies to our relations to the animal spirits. In particular I find it helpful to discover what a familiar is by looking at the meaning of the words associated with it. I think number one is my favourite and is hilarious.

1. A demon supposedly attending and obeying a witch, often said to assume the form of an animal.
2. Well known from long or close association
3. In close friendship; intimate

Looking at these we can get an idea of how an animal “familiar” becomes associated to having a deep spiritual connection to an animal that is living in and around your daily existence for precisely the same reasons as one would be associated with the incorporeal animal spirits that were mentioned earlier. We desire to have a connection to our totemic beasts on a level that is both primal and intellectual. As the modern era of spirituality takes hold of these age old connections that our ancestors cherished I take a great deal of comfort in the fact that my relationships with animal spirits remains relatively void of anything unreasonably modern. For instance I do not want a spirit of a wolf assisting me in building a house, I have ten thousand ancestors that are far more up to the task of advising me on the ideal way to swing a hammer. Although when it comes right down to the deeds of survival I would welcome nothing more then the guidance of that wolf for when tracking a deer or navigating wild terrain.

Having long considered what all of this means, I found myself one day asking my ancestral spirits: “How is this knowledge best applied in my life?” I knew that it was one thing to receive the information but it was quite another to apply it effectively. Sitting in a dark room filled with smoke ponding the path towards a stronger connection to these spirits the answer was unanimous.

“You must become the animal”

The best story that I can recount of a person doing this was of a man deep in the woodlands of England on spiritual retreat. As he sat in meditation upon the vast meadow of wild flowers and grasses, in the distance he noticed a large group of deer grazing that were seemingly unworried of his presence. He watched as they frolicked and danced about in the sunlight, often pausing to feast on the lush foliage surrounding them. The man wondered what it would be like to run with the deer and to play with them as they do, to run with and touch a deer became a thought that obsessed him. He stood and began walking towards the deer and stopped as they became aware of him. Their eyes probed worriedly as the man stood and slowly crouched to the ground where he began a gentle song calling to the spirits of the deer.

One of these spirits approached him curiously and they had a brief moment of truly seeing one another on a deep and fundamental level. The man stood back up and allowed that spirit of the deer to enter his body and he gently bounced towards the herd of deer who immediately ran away. Saddened he crouched down wondering if he was wasting his time only to realize that behind him two young deer had returned and stood not far away. He stood and playfully gave chase to the deer that no longer ‘ran’ from him but rather they moved with him. Running faster and faster as a group he laid his right hand on the neck of a full grown deer and then stopped in disbelief. He sat down again and let the deer run off into the woods at a gentle and peaceful trot.

Feeling this spirit of the deer leave his body, he became aware of a very real and ancient art of shapeshifting, the path of becoming an animal. To me this is a sacred act of such importance that I don’t think we can ever truly step away from it.

We are bound to this tradition by ancient roots that nourish our living bodies.

The next time you step into the wilderness and encounter your animal allies think long and fond thoughts of them. Consider how you would expand on this relationship and further more begin to glean from them how you can assist one another in sharing this world we call home.

Blessed be.

Fearful Presumptions by the Pan-Pagan-Community on Animal sacrifice

The Dionysian Artist in The Dionysian Artist

As a result of a pan community debate there are some ill-conceived fearful assumptions about animal sacrifice which need to be addressed. I want to focus on two:

 

1. A presumption that public relations will be harmed in regards to paganism.

I hate to break this to you, but the public already think we’re freaks. Most acknowledge this and call for education to the public, but I don’t agree. Despite what the public thinks of us our numbers grow (even though I also don’t think that should be our goal). We’re mostly an educated bunch of outsiders. We read text that most common people have never heard of, we write on blogs that most common people will never read. We perform rites that most will never understand.

Pagans (as an umbrella term) have been attracted to whatever path because *I believe* the gods have chosen them to follow that path. I know some may contest this, (“I’m a person that follows my free will!”), but that’s how I feel about it.

Lately there have been newcomers, mostly very young, who have been introduced to paganism via popular culture, ie. Percy Jackson books and films or the Viking production etc. This is when it’s our turn to become mentors and educators. Education is indoctrination and it happens in stages and the first stage is made by students want to learn. The newcomers have climbed over the wall of mainstream culture and religion and stand at the start of the long path. They also bring with them aspects of their previous culture, that’s what we have to teach them about.

Regardless of what we do, whether it be animal sacrifice or performing bloodless pagan rites at Stonehenge, someone is going to contest us, is going to try and shut us down, is going to associate us with their perception of evil.

Lastly, animal sacrifice should be for the gods, and only that. It should not be a statement to any mortals including yourself, your friends, or “the public”.

 

2. Presumption that animal sacrifice will encourage animal abuse, akin to ‘satanic’ practices.

We live in a fantasy violent culture. Last week I watched a very fun film that was a satire of sorts in regards to ultra-violence in horror films. Scenes where a pretty blond gets her head chopped off, where bear traps are used as grappling hooks lodged into peoples backs, etc. My emotional response? Laughter, fun, enjoyment.

Am I cruel, am I evil? The point that this film is quite popular is proof the general public is desensitised to fantasy violence, but we’re not violent on mass. My reaction is shared by the majority as we are generally smart enough to know that this is not real.

Reading a news article about some stupid teenagers performing ‘Satanic’ animal sacrifice that involves torture and cruelty results in anger from me. My reaction is shared by the majority as we are generally smart enough to know that this is reality.

When you read about these cases things like movies and video games are cited for being the cause. But it is not, nor is our fantasy violent culture. There is something *wrong* with these people and regardless to what they are exposed to they will do it. A movie might be inspiration but it is not the cause. There are other motivations, other influences such as sexual or physical abuse, mental illness, drug abuse that are affecting these people. They can get inspiration from any catalyst.

Given that all this discussion has been made by people who are well educated, who have dedicated time, passion, love into constructing concise arguments for our right to perform animal sacrifice I doubt a disturbed teenager is going to get confirmation to be cruel from our writing, or even have the patience to read it. Especially when there are more easily assessable media to be used for inspiration.

In the extreme case that something like this does happen it is our responsibility as caretakers of our faiths to stamp it out, and to contest mainstream media that is blaming us for the actions of someone troubled. That should be the only time we try to educate the public on who we are.

To end:

Even if an animal sacrifice is performed in public, it is still private. We’re minority faiths, a public rite by my understanding is only attended by people who are aware of what is going to happen, and they should be informed of the decorum to be followed before it happens. A group of people performing a sacrifice in a truly public space is not being respectful, and this is something that I would object to. Likewise I’d object to people posting videos and photos of the rite; this animal is sacred, revered, and should be respected. Its life belongs to the divine: your ego should not be part of it. You nothing to prove to anyone but the gods.

Preparing the Way of the Gods

Guest Author in Featured Voices

John Beckett, November 2014

Preparing the Way of the Gods

Polytheists are a minority within a minority. Within the Big Tent of Paganism, our numbers are small compared to those for whom many Gods are an afterthought and Gods with agency aren’t even that. But even if you lump us together with occultists, kitchen witches, and tree huggers, we’re still extremely small compared to the dominant monotheists and the rapidly-growing atheists.

From our tiny vantage point in the present, we look back to a time before Christianity and Islam conquered Europe and the Middle East and then subjugated the Americas, back to a past where the presence of many Gods was a foundational assumption everyone would grow up understanding.

We look back, but not from some anachronistic nostalgia. We see the spiritual depth polytheism has brought us, we see the philosophical and practical benefits it offers, and we feel the call of our Gods. We look forward to a Polytheist Restoration, to a time when the worship of many Gods in many ways is no longer an an oddity but a commonplace practice.

We have a role to play in this great restoration.

The Gods call who They call. They called us and They can call others. But They may not be heard. People will only hear what their belief system tells them is possible – everything else will be rationalized away so it fits neatly into their preconceived notions of reality. The loudest voice in our culture says there’s only one God. Another loud voice screams there are no Gods. Is it any wonder even our friends inside the Big Tent of Paganism often insist the Gods must be understood as metaphors or archetypes?

If people aren’t ready to hear the Gods, even a bodily appearance by Zeus Himself will be rationalized away.

It’s our job to make them ready. It’s our job to prepare the Way of the Gods.

Not Proselytization

Proselytization – the aggressive and often coercive attempt to convert others to your religion – is incompatible with polytheism. Polytheists recognize that different Gods call different people to honor Them in different ways. The idea of telling someone Who or how they must worship borders on nonsensical. Additionally, most of us have experienced the proselytizing efforts of other religions at one time or another and we have no desire to inflict that on our friends and neighbors.

This very strong and very ethical distaste for proselytization makes many polytheists uneasy about doing anything that looks or sounds like recruiting. So it’s important to remember that it is not our job to “win” converts. It is not our job to make a sales pitch for polytheism, and it is absolutely not our job to close the deal.

Our job is to prepare the Way of the Gods. Our job is to make people ready to hear the Gods when They call. What anyone does after that is a private matter between them and the deities who call.

Polytheism Starts at Home

The single most effective thing any of us can do to make people ready to hear the Gods is to be a polytheist ourselves. Even if we can’t be “out” in all areas of ours lives, simply being a polytheist presence in a monotheist culture makes a difference. Our effect on the mainstream society may be very small, but our effect on the small-but-growing polytheist culture will be substantially more. One more person worshipping the Gods makes the polytheist community that much stronger, and a strong polytheist community can prepare the Way of the Gods far better than even the most charismatic individual.

Worship the Gods. Hopefully I don’t need to say this to readers of Polytheist.com, but it never hurts to emphasize the essentials. Worship – veneration, sacrifice, praise – has been a key part of human interaction with the Gods for thousands of years. Does our worship “feed” the Gods? Some say yes, some say no, some say the very idea is ridiculous. I don’t know. What worship clearly does is strengthen our relationships with Them and make it easier for us to hear Them.

Read Their stories. Some traditions have extensive written lore, while others have little or none. Let’s make good use of what we have. These stories aren’t scripture and they certainly aren’t inerrant (in content or in transmission), but they are a great source of wisdom and inspiration. When we read Their stories, we prepare ourselves to tell Their stories.

Read Their history. What did our ancestors think of the Gods? How did they worship Them? How were their ideas about the Gods reflected in their daily lives? Mainstream history, archeology, and anthropology can help fill in some of the gaps created when our ancestors’ religions were displaced.

Academic work – even good academic work – isn’t inerrant either. A good friend likes to say “history tells us as much about the people who wrote it as it does the people they wrote about.” Read any history with the proverbial grain of salt. Frequently the evidence mainstream scholarship discovers is more helpful to Pagans and polytheists than the scholars’ non-theistic interpretation of that evidence.

Talk to Their priests and devotees. Ancient polytheism was very concerned with the family, the community, the tribe, and the nation. Though we see some of that group emphasis in some modern restorations (Heathenry and Hellenism come to mind) contemporary religion is very much an individual thing. Many of us live in places where there may be no other polytheists within driving distance, much less members of our tradition. The reinforcement of polytheistic concepts and practices and the mutual support of other members of the community simply isn’t there (yet).

Sites like this and the many excellent polytheist blogs help to a certain extent. But there’s still no substitute for talking live with someone who shares your beliefs and practices and has had similar experiences. If you can make it to conferences and retreats, go. Use e-mail, social media, and Skype to talk remotely. And for the love of all the Gods, if there are other polytheists near you, reach out to them. Even if they don’t follow your tradition, if they succeed they’ll make it easier for those who come after them to succeed as well.

A Polytheist Presence

Just being a polytheist helps. Being a polytheist presence in the mainstream world helps more.

The Gods never really left Western culture. They’re enshrined in our planets, days, and months. They’re in our place names. And perhaps most importantly, They’re in our stories. Tell Their stories. Storytelling is a wonderful art form practiced by virtually every culture in the world. It’s also a non-threatening art form.

The goal of storytelling is not to persuade people to become polytheists. The goal of storytelling is to make people ready to hear the call of the Gods.

Support Your Local Groups

If you’re fortunate enough to have a local group, support them. If they aren’t your preferred tradition, participate with them to the extent you can and maintain your private practice on your own.

Don’t ignore generic Pagan groups. Denton CUUPS (my local group and spiritual home) has always had a bit of polytheism in it. One of the founders had a life-long relationship with Isis; when I came in I was already moving in this direction. We’re still a CUUPS group and we have our share of folks who prefer Wiccan and other Mystery Tradition rites. But at least half of our open celebrations are explicitly polytheistic – this year it’s six out of eight.

That means that people who come to a Pagan event who don’t really know what to expect are going to see Gods worshipped, ancestors honored, and land spirits invoked. They’re going to see statues of various deities and offerings made to Them. They’re going to walk away with some different ideas than when they walked in.

Will those folks begin their own practice of honoring the Gods, ancestors, and land spirits? Many won’t, but some will.

Not everyone can be “out” on an individual basis, but groups can have a public presence. They can have websites, Facebook pages, and e-mail lists. They can have contact info, if necessary, guarded by pseudonyms. Make it easy for people to find you.

And when new people come in, practice good hospitality and welcome them! Nothing will send people running back to the “spiritual but not religious” camp faster than religious folks (polytheists or anyone else) who ignore them.

A Long Term View

Some day there will be Hellenic temples and Druid groves in every city. But it’s important to keep our priorities in order. We aren’t trying to grow our religions so we can afford infrastructure, we’re going to need the infrastructure to serve the communities that grow up around the worship of many Gods. That’s going to take time – I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime.

And that’s OK. Polytheism is a multi-generation thing. We’re participating in a process that will take many generations. We don’t have to have temples tomorrow – we just have to honor the Gods today.

It’s not our job to recruit or “win” converts. That’s the job of the Gods. They call who They call.

It’s our job to make people ready to hear Their call.

It’s our job to prepare the way of the Gods.

About the Author:

John Beckett grew up in Tennessee with the woods right outside his back door. Wandering through them gave him a sense of connection to Nature and to a certain Forest God.

John is a Druid graduate of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, the Coordinating Officer of the Denton Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans and a former Vice President of CUUPS Continental. His blog “Under the Ancient Oaks” is part of the Pagan Channel of the multifaith website Patheos. John has been writing, speaking, teaching, and leading public rituals for the past eleven years.

John lives in the Dallas – Fort Worth area and earns his keep as an engineer.

Continuing the Conversation on Sacrifice

River Devora in The Web of Blessings

I received a thoughtful and respectful comment in response to my article on animal sacrifice, disagreeing with my stance. I am grateful to the writer for being willing to engage with me on this topic, and I felt the response to this comment deserved its own article.

The comment in question read:

“I applaud the author for trying to write about this topic with a sense of compassion and an authentic intention of trying to promote understanding. However, not all of us who disagree with animal sacrifice think that it makes someone “savage” if they practice it. Instead, I think that it shows a lack of interest in moving on from something that can and should be left in the dustbin of history. Tradition is no excuse for cruelty, and we really need to move beyond the idea that animals are tools or objects, whether for our faith practices, for food, for clothing, etc. Is there no other way to honor the gods without enslaving and killing animals? Those are the conversations that I wish we could all start having. Holding ourselves to higher standards of ethical practice is possible, especially with all of the many wonderful an innovative polytheists out there. Let’s work together for peace for all beings.”

Thank you for your thoughtful and respectfully worded comment. I very much appreciate the opportunity to delve further into these complex issues. I wanted to address a few of the points you brought up here, because I think these are important.

You said:

“…and we really need to move beyond the idea that animals are tools or objects, whether for our faith practices, for food, for clothing, etc.”

I respect that many folks have strict vegan ideologies, and I absolutely support your right to have these principles govern how you make choices. This is not my personal ideology, though emotionally I have sympathy for it. I abhor suffering, anyone who knows me knows this about me. I have been a professional healer for 14 years, and before that I worked in crisis intervention. I have no more stomach for the suffering of humans than I do for the suffering of animals, plants, nor the planet. But there are several factors that for me have made a vegan lifestyle not feasible nor desirable for me.

One factor is my health. I was vegetarian for about 8 years, largely because I felt that, if I could not bring myself to end an animal’s life with my own hands, I didn’t have the right to eat one. But then I became seriously ill. I developed a debilitating autoimmune disorder that included severe multiple food allergies. I no longer had the luxury of having my ideology dictate my dietary choices, I was simply too sick. I began eating some meat at that point, after a great deal of introspection and prayer. I decided that, if I were to eat meat, I needed to become more comfortable with the entire process of death. For me, participating in animal sacrifice helps to put me in direct responsibility for the death of an animal. I try to have my diet choices guided by ethical guidelines as much as my health and my budget allows, and working professionally as a clinical nutritionist, I have a good sense of what works for my body and what doesn’t. My 14 years of clinical experience shows me that most people don’t do well health-wise long term on strictly vegan diets (some people do just fine long term, but most get sick after about 5 years), though I support anyone’s right to adopt this lifestyle choice for themselves despite this fact.

Another factor that for me is an important consideration is that, ultimately, I am an animist. I believe that plants, animals, land features, spirits, gods, humans, even sometimes things like cars and computers have sentience and some type of consciousness (whether or not I am able to understand or communicate with that consciousness). For me, I believe plants are as sacred as animals, and both are as sacred as humans. We are all equal in my mind, in this way. And yet, life feeds on life, and we all need to eat in order to survive. Plants are able to find their nourishment from sunlight and water; animals (including humans) cannot and must consume other beings that are alive. But even plants require the decayed remains of other living things (plants and animals) in order to live, in the form of soil. For what is soil, but the decayed remains of things that were once living, along with a whole vibrant microbiome of fungi, insects, single celled organisms, water, and minerals from evaporated water and eroded rocks?  I find the idea of the web of life to be one of my most important and central sacred spiritual concepts, hence the name of my column.

There is a prayer I say frequently as part of my regular practices. Part of the prayer says, “every breath I breathe in, breathed out by another. Every bite of food, every sip of water, nourishing and sustaining me, connecting me to the great web of life. Every breath I breathe out, every bit of waste and matter that leaves me, returning to the web to nourish and sustain others.” When I eat, whether my food is plant based or animal based, I am participating in this most holy interconnected relationship. I see myself as part of the great web of life – not higher nor lower, but interconnected and part of the great blessed web. Why should I value the life of an animal over the life of a plant?

Plants know when they are being eaten. Plants know when other plants are being attacked – new science is emerging that examines these forms of communication and consciousness. For some absolutely fascinating reading on the sentience of plants, check out the following articles:

You say:

“Let’s work together for peace for all beings”.

I would love to see greater harmony and balance for the entire Web, but attempting to avoid death does not bring balance, in my mind. When apex predators are removed from ecosystems, it spells disaster for the entire ecosystem – I remember growing up in NY and there being a tremendous State-wide problem when all our wolves and coyotes were killed off when I was a kid. The deer, having no remaining predators, became so numerous that they ran out of food that winter. The forests where this was being a problem became tremendously defoliated, which put the entire area in serious imbalance as the forests began to die, which impacted all the other animals living there. The deer began to starve to death. There were dead deer everywhere, which caused an increase in scavenger activity, including rats which were spreading diseases. It was a nightmare that went on for several years. The park and game management agencies in my State began issuing a tremendous number of deer tags to hunters, because humans had to step in to the gaping hole left in the local ecosystem that wolves and coyotes had previously occupied. This tragedy was entirely human-wrought, because we shortsightedly believed that removing these predators would somehow make the area “safer”. Death is a part of life, and death, in balance, is required to maintain balance. I don’t think that attempting to avoid participating in death is possible, nor do I think it ultimately results in peace for all beings. Certainly, removing apex predators from an ecosystem does the exact opposite of providing peace for all beings. And I don’t believe that humans are somehow exempt from our participation in the ecosystem – we are not “smarter” nor “more ethical” nor more spiritually evolved nor superior in any other way to other beings who are also part of this planet’s complex and interconnected ecosystems. For a thoughtful article on this subject (which mentions the ecological tragedy in NY during my childhood), read this:

Truly avoiding causing death is not really possible, even if we wanted that. Eating a vegan diet does not actually release the eater from responsibility in the death of other beings, whether those other beings are plants or animals. There was a fascinating study done evaluating the “least harm principle” in dietary choices, and the author’s conclusion was that, ultimately, fewer total animals die when a human diet includes large herbivores. The author looked at the number of animals killed during agricultural activities, and the list of killed animals simply from harvesting plant foods was significant. A quote from the study:

“Animals living in and around agricultural fields are killed during field activities and the greater the number of field activities, the greater the number of field animals that die.  A partial list of animals of the field in the USA include opossum, rock dove, house sparrow, European starling, black rat, Norway rat, house mouse, Chukar, gray partridge, ring-necked pheasant, wild turkey, cottontail rabbit, gray-tailed vole, and numerous species of amphibians (Edge, 2000).  In addition, Edge (2000) says, “production of most crops requires multiple field operations that may include plowing, disking, harrowing, planting, cultivating, applying herbicides and pesticides as well as harvesting.”  These practices have negative effects on the populations of the animals living in the fields.  For example, just one operation, the “mowing of alfalfa caused a 50% decline in gray-tailed vole population” (Edge, 2000).  Although these examples represent crop production systems in the USA, the concept is also valid for intensive crop production in any country.  Other studies have also examined the effect of agricultural tillage practices on field animal populations (Johnson et al., 1991; Pollard and Helton, 1970; Tew, Macdonald and Rands, 1992).”

He goes on to cite one other study that showed that up to 52% of all animals living in a field used for agricultural purposes are killed. Organic agricultural procedures do not necessarily reduce this number, either.  Here’s a link to the study in question:

Animal-derived products are used in many items, including food, clothing, personal care products, and medications. My father is an insulin-dependent diabetic; I am very grateful for the advances in medicine that enable my father to live an otherwise healthy and quality life, and his insulin is derived from animal sources (for information about the use of animal products in medications:

I generally prefer to use products that have not been tested on animals when possible, and I prefer to know the sources of my products, so that I can make informed choices around what products I use. But in my mind, it is not really possible to live in the world as it currently exists and to not participate in some way in the death of other beings.

For me, I try and be thoughtful and intentional about the ways in which I participate in this larger web of life. And for me, animal sacrifice allows me to sanctify the death of an animal in such a way that I can guarantee that the animal has had a humane and sacred death, and maintain a carefully chosen place in the larger Web. I don’t eat meat often, and when I do, I eat the meat left over from a sacrifice as often as I can. Because for me, I feel more comfortable knowing that I was there when the animal died, I know how the death occurred, and I had a chance to say thank you to the animal before it died. If I don’t have access to such meat, I try and stick to humanely hunted, wild-caught, grass fed, or otherwise humanely raised and slaughtered meat. We all wrap this stuff up differently, and this is how I have made my peace with these important and difficult questions.

I know I have been lengthy in this response, but I feel that the discussion is an important one to have, and I am grateful that you have chosen to engage with me in this discussion.

Polytheism and Metaphysics (II): Divine Production (1): Hermeneutics

Edward P. Butler in Noēseis

Just as polytheism is the theology of relation,1 by that very fact it must be the theology of positive divine production. That which the Gods generate must have its reality and its relative autonomy, indeed, its own causal efficacy, or else Their act of production has been impotent. That which the Gods make, They release into genuine being.

In itself, this already means that our own human intelligence and our autonomous ethical judgment must operate to their fullest capacity in the encounter with the Gods, even when at the same time other faculties of ours, of a different, intuitive character, also come into play in that encounter.

For the Gods to really exist as producers demands that their products really exist too, and not as mere illusions or semblances of being. Any communication delivered from the Gods to us thus possesses a necessary surplus above and beyond its reception. Our understanding of it cannot be without remainder, because it is not identical to us or to the Gods. Moreover, in existing between the God and ourselves, our understanding of the theophany is a cooperative work between us. Our own being does not permit that we are wholly passive in receiving it, nor does its being permit that another understanding of it, another interpretation, is not always possible. In this respect, furthermore, there is never only ourselves and the God in the interpretive encounter, but always some other, not present but potential, who would hear and understand differently.

Theophany—the revelation, appearance, manifestation, intervention of the Gods—is, then, that which demands interpretation. In turn, whatever truly demands interpretation, in an existentially decisive sense, is theophany, for as Proclus puts it, whatever a person posits as primary according to nature (ta prôta kata physin) is what the Gods are for such a person.2

Proclus’ argument goes on to show that any theology that makes the divine out to be anything other than the persons of the Gods, the very individuals that the Gods are, is reductionistic. Only the Platonic position is essentially non-reductionistic; this is the theology of ‘radical’ polytheism, insofar as it posits the unit as primary, and hence the Gods are units, and units of the primary kind, namely unique units or ‘whos’, as opposed to ‘whats’, as I have termed it elsewhere.

Whatever a person takes as primary is going to demand of them an interpretive labor. In a reductionist ideology, or in the reductionist moments internal to non-reductionist thought, this will be the labor of reducing the diversity of merely apparent phenomena to fewer really existent principles. In non-reductionist thought, however, the labor of interpretation will instead be the labor of generating from really existent principles further really existent things.3 The labor of interpretation within polytheistic thought, therefore—for polytheism is the only truly non-reductionistic method of thought, I would argue—is additive, and a direct continuation of the process of divine production itself, which the polytheist conceives as the releasing of things by the Gods themselves into their own genuine being. The Gods do not, in other words, act only through intermediaries, but are available directly at every level of the cosmos as well as through the ongoing activity of powers they have already released into being at every stage.

Theophany thus demands interpretation, not because we are merely human, but because the Gods exist and are really Gods. The Gods stand behind and beyond intelligence, and therefore knowing them requires a process that goes beyond and behind what is given explicitly and exoterically, in no matter how intimate an encounter. This is true even of our fellow mortals, of whom we recognize that there is always more significance in what they do than even they themselves can understand. Where we generally think of this in our fellow mortals as a product of a certain incapacity, however, I would not attribute any incapacity of this sort to the Gods—nor, in the absolute sense, to ourselves either. It is not that the Gods are unconscious of themselves. The opacity, rather, is generative, it is the demand to produce more meaning, to carry forward the divine impetus. And so we go behind and beyond by going forward, by producing something new, something additional to what was imparted to us.

The Gods as Gods are productive, generating form and bringing new things into the world, and therefore the interpretation that comes from theophany necessarily manifests a further stage of their activity beyond the passive and literal reception according to preexisting habits and cultural norms. This has a particular relevance for theophany via mantic work, divination. When we take what is received through the mantis literally, passively, at best we enter into spiritual communion with them, that is, we share in the spirit through which the mantis experiences their God, or, when we divine for ourselves, we continue ‘in the spirit’ we have established between ourselves and the God through the whole tenor of our previous practice. But it is when we apply active interpretation, hermeneutics, to the mantic utterance, rather than resting with either the literal or the received interpretation of that utterance, that we approach the mantic event afresh as itself a divine production, for then we gain the opportunity for the Gods to foster in us a new and distinct connection, which is like the beginning of a new tradition, though it may well never proceed that far. Releasing the mantic utterance into being in its own right, with the causal efficacy to continue to provoke interpretations, is therefore to sustain its divinity.

1 http://polytheist.com/noeseis/2014/09/03/polytheism-and-metaphysics-i-divine-relation/; http://polytheist.com/featured-voices/2014/10/01/religions-of-relation-dynamics-in-modern-polytheism/

2 Proclus, Platonic Theology, book 1, chap. 3 (Saffrey and Westerink, eds.).

3 In addition, although Proclus does not mention them, there are ideologies that are not reductionistic so much as fundamentally aporetic, that is, issuing in some basic, global doubt or impossibility of solution (from Greek aporos, lacking resource, or a way forward, or a way out of an impasse). Such ideologies are not necessarily unstable for their aporetic character. In fact, it is far more stable for an ideology to own its aporiai, its moments of aporia, than to blunder ahead with insufficient resources, which results in crude attempts to make reality fit a narrow framework. The aporetic ideology, then, just like the reductionisms, recognizes the basic role of interpretation; it sees its ultimate outcome as negative, however, demanding a lack of closure to the interpretive engagement. In this respect, the aporetic ideology is closer to polytheistic thought than any reductionism can be, but where the aporetic posits the negative lack of closure, the polytheist affirms the positive, i.e., additive, lack of closure.