Under Pressure

Amorella Moon in Under this Infernal Sky

“Pressure, pushing down on me

Pressing down on you, no man ask for

Under pressure that burns a building down”

– Queen and David Bowie, 1981

Anyone who has ever worked for a Deity will have a story about how deities have a way of seeping into our lives and enacting changes. Many times these changes are mutual agreements and arrangements, contracts of conduct us devotes sign off on willingly. I am a firm believer that actual contact with any of the Divine currents has a lasting effect upon those humans touched, and that the truth of those contacts are seen in the transformations unleashed within the person by that Divine spark.

This ideal of transformation as a mutual endeavor looks very pretty on paper…Too pretty, actually, when you get right down to it. And again, anyone who has dealt with a Deity will have other stories to tell as well. Stories about when a Deity decided to throw that person into a pressure cooker just to see what might develop.

Pressure cookers? Not really fun places to be. Crisis and uproar, physical pain, relationship breakdowns and breakups, near death experiences, having to re-live a personal shame for the whole world to see… The list of outside pressures that Gods can use to enact change within us (or just test our resolve) is nearly limitless. If you choose to work with Deities of the Infernal variety, you had better be ready to have your world shattered every couple of years as they blow stuff up around you for reasons you will not fully understand at the time.

I could go into numerous personal anecdotes right now, but will refrain for the time being. What is more important than my personal “What” is the intriguing questions as to “Why?” Most often for myself, that question leads me into places that most sane people just steer clear of or ignore. Places within my inner landscape that hide a treasure trove of both personal horrors and well hidden strength. Places I would have never discovered if I had not been poked by these outside events to do so. And,I’m fairly certain that that is the key.

I have told many people over the years that a frictionless environment is a recipe for mediocrity. Untested ideas, ideologies, people and philosophies are all good starting points, but that is ALL they are. It is through testing, research, and real life trials that these things are honed, refined, and turned into things of worth. Some of the things in this life that have broken me down to my lowest are also the exact things that have made me stronger than anyone (including myself) ever thought I could become.

The best example I have of this happened in the very early spring of 2012, when a specialist had to do an emergency surgery that became the equivalent of yanking half of my facial structure out. While the surgery saved my life, the next year became a testing ground not only for my own personal ideas of identity, but for just how dedicated I would remain to my Gods while everything I was supposed to be was crashing and burning under the weight of a year of sickness.

And, while it’s nice to give face time to those transformations that are mutual and agreed upon, I have to say that those times when I was thrown into the pot with pain, misery, and a helping of onions taught me far more important lessons then I could have learned the easy way. Even recently, while having old shames made very public and many a band-aid ripped off old wounds, I saw that M’Lady Night had not only a hand in it, but that She had a reason or five to do so. Was it an uncomfortable experience? Most certainly. But it also served as a platform for growth… growth that I would have hidden from forever if I would have had my own way.

And if anyone takes ANYTHING away from what my experiences with the Gods have been, I would have it be this: Spiritual growth will NOT always be under controlled circumstances. The Gods have agendas for those of us with ears to listen to them, and sometimes, the only thing that will make our ears ready for that listening is The Pressure Cooker.

Have your onions ready.

Polytheism and the Anti-Modern

Rhyd Wildermuth in Gods and Radicals

As both a fiercely leftist Anarchist and as a Polytheist, I’ve found myself often in an odd predicament. Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Statist theory is generally materialist, assessing belief in gods and spirits as forms of social control which sustain authoritarian and exploitative forms of governance and economics. In such estimation, then, Pagan and Polytheistic reconstruction appears to be reactionary, an attempt to return to false idyllic times and earlier modes of oppression.

While much of my writing elsewhere has taken up the task of showing Pagans that Marxist and Anarchist analysis of Capitalism can help liberate space for the gods, few words have been directed to the opposite task: proving the radical potential of Polytheistic religions to non-religious radicals. Part of the difficulty has been the insular nature of Polytheistic writing: most theological and philosophical debates have centered on issues of Praxis or the nature of the gods Themselves.

But another issue looms larger, one that it seems time to take up. The various Polytheisms, unfortunately, have under-developed understandings of race, the State, and the Modern itself, understandings which leave them them frightfully open to co-option by reactionary, “New Right” theorists. In response to such incursions, supporters of Liberal-Capitalism can rightly point to racist tendencies within Paganism, but they are not the only accurate critics: Leftist theorists, too, have continuously pointed to Pagan-Polytheist acceptances of racial theories and have suggested that such tendencies are inherent to Polytheism, particularly in aspects of cultural and ethnic re-construction.

Not all polytheists make cultural and ethnic revival a central aspect of their practice; however, for many of the Polytheistic traditions, the culture of those who once worshiped our gods is an essential part of reviving, reconstructing, or resurrecting devotion to them. Within both Heathenism and Celtic Reconstructionism (CR), for example, adaptation of cultural and societal norms is considered a point of ethics: adopting the concepts of Frith within Heathenism and Hospitality within CR; learning the languages of the ethnic and cultural groups which worshiped those gods (often considered a pillar of religious devotion within CR, particularly), as well as adopting or reviving old technologies from those cultures (spinning,weaving,
smithing, etc.).

From a perspective outside Polytheism, such adoptions and cultural reconstructions hew dangerously close to similar projects by racial-Nationalists. Political and philosophical theorists have commented repeatedly on such reconstructions as a [false] “search or authenticity” or an embrace of the anti-Modern. Neither of these claims should be dismissed outright, however, for the embrace of older forms of relationality does present us with an important question: is there something deficient within Modern society against we should react? That is, is the embrace of older cultural and ethnic modes a form of protest.

Authenticity and Alienation

By Modern, we shall mean the current constellation of political-economic apparatuses, along with the apparent dominance of Capitalist, Liberal-Democratic and Secular ideologies which characterizes life in societies colloquially classified as “modern.” The term itself certainly means little, or nothing at all, but it isn’t enough to respond to criticisms of the anti-modernity of Polytheisms by merely claiming that “the modern does not exist.”

I’ve elsewhere described the displacement of peoples and the destructions of older social forms through the process of Capitalist transformation, so a quick summation of the matter should suffice. The most significant upheavals which caused migration and loss of tribal and ancestral lands have occurred in the last five hundred years through economic activities. The trade in African slaves to the Americas is estimated to have displaced approximately 12 million people from ancestral lands across an ocean; 10 million Irish are said to have left their ancestral homes since 1700, mostly to escape poverty; and while more American citizens claim German ancestry than any other ancestry, the descendants of the First Nations of the Americas now number only 5 million (or 1/60th of the population). Massive displacements previous to the beginning of imperial colonization occurred mostly due to famine or war: after the 1700’s, particularly, slavery, industrialization and the privatization of lands became active presences which have brought us to our current, vastly intermixed modern societies.

A Celtic Reconstructionist (of which the most active and publicly-populated groups appear to be Irish Reconstructionists) in America faces certain questions of authenticity and certain difficulties not present in one still living in the same land as the culture they are attempting to reconstruct. Irish is not a common spoken language in the United States, nor is America littered with the graves or holy sites of ancient Irish peoples. Likewise, the Heathen attempting to embrace ancient Northern European social forms is faced with similar difficulties—archeological troves of Heathen artifacts cannot be easily visited without the use of a boat or airplane. I worship primarily Welsh gods and goddesses, and it should be self-evident that Welsh social forms are not easily reconstructed from threads within American society. For the Hellenic or Kemetic to visit ancient temples, they must rely on shoddy reconstructions in theme parks or take a transatlantic flight.

This is the same difficulty faced by other cultural and ethnic groups, and this point cannot be overstated. For the indigenous American (First Nations), systematic governmental policies, forced displacement, and Christian missionaries significantly eroded and erased continuous connections. Likewise for the descendent of African slaves—what little survives of ancient African traditions in America has quite often been syncretized into Christian forms and is not always easy to reconstruct.

These gaps are not insurmountable, of course. While reconstructionists of European traditions can rely upon textual survivals and those of the African Diasporic Religions have more significant bodies of oral traditions (and oftentimes continuously-practiced iterations of Animist spiritualities in Africa), and many traditions accept some degree of personal revelation (often dubbed “Unverified Personal Gnosis”) which often succeeds in later becoming verified through practice or eventual discovery. But in all cases, though, one must again ask why “reconstruction” is important at all That is, since most polytheisms accept as an unstated axiom that ancient gods persist into the present, why place any sort of importance upon the older forms of worship and belief when those same gods reveal themselves in the present?

Reconstruction as Resistance

Many Atheist and Liberal-Humanist critics have suggested that the search for authentic historical identities are in some way a regression to pre-modern times or a rejection of the Enlightenment. These criticisms are often based not only upon the belief that the state of modern Democratic, Liberal-Capitalist society is a preferable situation to all previous forms, but that modern notions of Freedom and Human Rights require the social and cultural forms which have been engendered by modernity. In this conception, ancestor worship, tribalism, worship of and sacrifice to gods, and non-Capitalist economic forms (trade, gifting, barter) were either symptoms of societal relations which led to misogyny, authoritarianism, slavery, and violence, or they were to some degree the cause. Sam Harris and Stephen Pinker, both popular Atheist writers, have significantly contributed to this conception, but they did not themselves originate these ideas, which have their roots in writers of what we have called “The Enlightenment.” Voltaire, Hobbes, and even anti-Capitalist writers such as Marx and Proudhon were foundational in the notion that human freedom required the abandonment of “primitive” or pre-Enlightenment social relations.

With the exception of Post-Colonial writers, most theorists on the Left have perpetuated this notion, though in a different form. Slavoj Zizek and Jean Baudrillard have both criticized attempts to reconstruct ancient cultural practices as a symptom of societal alienation, ineffective protest, and commodified lifestylism. While there’s much to argue against in their estimations of Polytheistic reconstructionism, their analyses hit closer to a more accurate understanding of the desire to revive ancient cultural forms.

While I’ve never truthfully been labeled a “centrist,” a dialectal synthesis of these two criticisms is precisely what I’d argue we should embrace. The Liberal-Humanists are certainly correct: many of our modern, “progressive” ideals require the destruction or transformation of older social forms. The Capitalist market and the modern Nation-State supplant, subvert, and ultimate diminish local-based economies, regional autonomy, and community-derived value systems (an occasional critique from European conservatives, evident in the writing of political critic John Gray and Catholic theorist G.K. Chesterton). Likewise, modern Leftist theorists, though perhaps heavy-handed in their conflation of proto-fascist and fundamentalist movements with reconstruction, are nevertheless correct in their estimation of reconstruction as a response to alienation and a form of protest against the universalization of experience inherent in modern Capitalism.

The resolution of these two polarities is, quite simply, this: attempts to revive older social and cultural relations is an act of protest against Modernity. But it is not enough merely to label it thus without speaking to precisely what it is about Modernity that is insufficient, alienating, and “in-authentic.”

It is this where we must tread carefully. There exists a significant trend within both Heathenism and Celtic Reconstructionism (as well, to some degree, within Hellenic Reconstruction) unquestionably to adopt modern notions of identity and transpose them into the reconstructed past, a process historians and philosophers call “re-inscription.” Re-inscribing modern political and social ideas into the past is quite often critiqued, particularly within CR, but less susceptible to rigor are nearly-invisible notions of race, genetic ancestry, and cultural exclusion. It is incredibly common to hear unchallenged (and vigorously defended) negative statements regarding “non-Celtic lineated” peoples speaking about “Celtic” gods, as if the gods in question were subject to modern conceptions of race and lineage. Worse, some even pervert anti-Imperialist and Post-Colonialist theory into a defense of racial deities, linking criticisms of cultural appropriation of subaltern peoples to CR insistence that worship of Celtic gods is either more authentic or appropriate by Celtic-lineated peoples.

Affective Anti-Modernism

The difficulty lies precisely in the re-inscription. Race-theory is a very new (that is, Modern) idea, birthed during the very Enlightenment which anti-racist Liberals praise. Iterations of such classifications of peoples have always existed in multiple cultures, but, as Hannah Arendt argues in The Burden of Our Times, these ideas don’t become ideologies until found useful by State and political actors. That is, the division of peoples into racial classifications did not become a “thing” until it proved to be a practical ad hoc justification for European imperial ambitions. An intriguing aspect of this is the notion of “whiteness;” those of European descent did not see themselves as “white,” but rather as part of specific cultural and ethnic groups (Slavs, Welsh, etc.). National identities did not exist until the creation of the modern nation-state: there was no “German” people until there was a Germany, nor American until there was a United States of America.

The implications of this to polytheistic-aligned cultural movements should be clear. Re-creating or reconstructing an Irish or German cultural framework based on modern notions of what is an Irish-people or German-people become re-inscriptions, a re-writing of the past in order to seek an authentic tradition. That is, many of these attempts, while certainly fulfilling and honorable, do not go far enough in their challenge of Modern notions and their reconstruction of older ideas.

At this point, one must re-examine the notion of reconstruction as a critique or protest of Modernity, which will also be the subject of future columns. I’ve written elsewhere regarding the problems of the Liberal Capitalist Hegemonic order, but I’ll restate more succinctly: Capitalism flattens experience of its subjects and participants in order to perpetuate reliance upon the market. European peoples were displaced from their lands (and ancestral customs) in order to force them into a consumer/producer state, just as the process in Africa, South America, and Asia continues to do. Without access to authentic (that is, self- and community-created cultural forms), subjects of Capitalist orders became reliant on the market (and later, media) for cultural fulfillment.

That search for authenticity within modern reconstruction movements is linked to the one-sided (that is, consumer) aspect of cultural creation within Hegemonic Capitalism, for the alienation from the means of cultural production is not just a theoretical mode—it’s a tangibly-felt Presence, the power of which even Materialist-Atheists such as Marx and Weber acknowledged.

Therefore, we should embrace the search for authenticity and attempts to reconstruct older social and cultural forms as a liberationist project, but we must do so whole-heartedly. Every aspect of Modernity must be critiqued and acknowledged, particularly problematic (and violent) notions of Race and The State. We endanger the revolutionary and liberatory potential of Polytheism if we allow unquestioned modern doctrines to inform our attempts to create another way of life, one which is unapologetically new-old and old-new and fiercely anti-Modern.

A Cup of Wine: Reconstructionism and Spirit Work

Tess Dawson in Spring and Stone

I stayed up to “too early” one morning, watching the movie The Exorcist, while hanging out with an adorable cupcake-scented unicorn named Kissymuzzle. Her wide-stitched eyes poured over the movie which I had on in the background as I read a recent skirmish-of-words about reconstructionism and spirit work. I love a good classic movie, and I had forgotten how intense this one was, from the scene where the little girl is traumatized by well-intentioned people who put her through a spinal tap, through the scene of demon-induced guacamole-colored vomit. In between listening to English-spoken-backwards and the cries of a helpless mother, I read comment after comment of people communicating completely past one another and evading actual useful concerns.

There were some missed opportunities here in conversations about reconstructionism and spirit work in polytheist settings. Both viewpoints in the conversation that I read online had valid, important matters to discuss. Both viewpoints (which are not always separate and need not be separate) had deep concerns, which potentially support and enhance each other.

Reconstructionism

Reconstructionism, a useful way to honor the deities, relies on researching the cultural, religious, social, temporal, and local contexts that a deity was once worshipped in, as best we can within the limits of scientific and academic disciplines. These disciplines provide extensive, vast, and multifaceted information. The information available is just as limited as it is vast and just as vast as it is limited. A person employing a reconstructionist methodology will use this information to provide better structure and context in which to honor the deities and make up for the structures and contexts which have been lost since antiquity. In regards to research and academia, certainly we human creatures get things wrong from time to time but we also get things right, or at least not completely erroneous, often enough. Reconstructionist methods are particularly useful because if we know a deity valued or preferred something in the past, the chances are that the deity will still value or prefer the same or similar in the present.

Despite the critiques of reconstructionism very few people who engage in reconstructionist methods actually believe that they are engaging in worshiping the deities exactly as it was done in ancient times, or believe that this is possible when it is not, nor do they typically want to regress and push civilization and technology backwards. We do not live in ancient times, and we cannot pretend that we do—and most who employ reconstructionist methods have no illusions that this could be done or is that it would be desirable. Despite the critical refrains from others, only a few who engage in a reconstructionist methodology would actually want to bring back entire ancient cultures wholesale, or demolish modern technology, or both. Some folks who rely on reconstructionism may sometimes employ in rites activities that look like or are much like reenactment, while many others do not. Full-scale reenactment of some sort is not at all required or necessary, and isn’t something that happens all that frequently.

Also, many people who use reconstructionism do not engage in rites which are sometimes compared to Civil War reenactment weekends or live action role playing games.* Sometimes some rites (not always and not all rites) can end up devoid of the very deities folks claim to honor, and the rite can end up being more like a pageant put on for other people rather than an actual rite to honor the deities. When this happens (and it does happen sometimes, not all the time and not all rites, and not all rites that are heavy on pageantry), then the critique that a rite is more like theater with props and acting and less as an activity that honors the deities, is apt. Yet it is helpful to keep in mind that this concern is not just limited to reconstructionist-based rites.

Some critics worry that the structures created using reconstructionist methods are stagnant and dead and inflexible, or that the rites are little more than empty theatrics, or that people who employ the methods want to live in a fantasy-land of the past. Although these things are sometimes true, they are not always true. Is the concern that these things can happen valid? Yes, absolutely, but it doesn’t happen all of the time in all rites and with all people who employ a reconstructionist methodology.

Spirit Work

There are many ways to engage in spirit work and many different activities can arguably fit under this category—activities anywhere from a skilled divination reading, to trance and possession work, and many more. I’ve seen increasing pressure on individual polytheists or assumptions that a polytheist must be a spirit worker. This isn’t true: not every polytheist must engage in spirit work—it is by no means an expectation or a prerequisite to honoring the deities and should not be assumed as such. It’s totally ok and normal not to engage, or want to engage, in spirit work, just as not everyone who employs a reconstructionist method could, would, or can learn an ancient language. Different folks have different skills sets, talents, inclinations, and strengths. Not everyone has to do spirit work, and not everyone who engages in some form of spirit work engages in or is skilled or knowledgeable about other forms of spirit work. Experience differs greatly and across different skill levels and different talent levels, different groups, different individual people, different modalities and systems, and connection with beings or Beings. Spirit work, because it can provide a direct communications with the deities and the ancestors, is an important part of engaging with the deities and of restoring our veneration of them.

Critiques about spirit work include “it’s all faked,” or “it’s not what the ancients did.” Many, if not most, of us have seen spirit work gone amuck, and sometimes this occurs from lack of discipline or structure.** There is a lot of stuff that passes as spirit work which is done with little to no standards, without a check and balance, or without an unbiased second opinion—it’s sometimes not as easy in our circumstances to fact-check spirit work as it is to fact-check history. Also, our spirit work traditions are broken: we struggle to reclaim them, haltingly, fumblingly, and we struggle to find language to express these matters. Sometimes, unfortunately, some folks take an easy way out of assuming a level of competence and relativity where “each person does it right for them, no one can do spirit work wrong” when this is not the case. An observer can easily take one glance at these problems and a proliferation of awkward spirit work, and assume that it is all the same and all poorly done.

Many activities included in spirit work are indeed what the ancients did. But sometimes (not all the time, just sometimes) the manner of going about doing these activities can differ today from what was done in ancient times. If there is evidence that a deity has demonstrated that the method of communication is accurate, real, and appropriate, then this is acceptable to that deity in that situation. The critique of “all spirit workers have an ‘anything goes’ mentality” comes into play here. Some spirit workers may have this attitude and problems can result, so in some situations these concerns are valid, but not all the time always with all spirit workers and all spirit work. Also, just because an observer isn’t aware of the rules, the structures, or the disciplines, it does not mean that there are no rules, structures, or disciplines.

Furthermore, critiques are heaped on spirit workers as a group—and a very diverse non-cohesive group at that—as a blanket whole. Some critics accuse some spirit workers of living in a fantasy land of their own mind; although this is sometimes true it is not always true. Is there bad spirit work? Yes, absolutely, and concerns are, but it is not all spirit work all the time everywhere with every spirit worker that is problematic.

Both Together

A person who employs reconstructionist methods but completely discredits spirit work, or a spirit worker who completely dismisses reconstructionist methods, are both run a risk of missing an opportunity to address very real and useful concerns.

One who leans more towards a strict reconstructionist methodology is often concerned about structure, discipline, standards, and making certain that the deities are honored appropriately. Where spirit work falls short, or is less-skilled, reconstructionism is one technique which can help provide correction. For instance perhaps an inexperienced spirit worker suggests to me to make an offering of pork to a Canaanite deity. I know from research that the Canaanite deities do not receive pork as an offering, and a broader cultural reference flags this as potentially insulting. Thus reconstructionism just provided a useful check and balance. Also, if one doesn’t have much experience working with a particular deity or access to spirit work or a spirit worker, reconstructionism can provide an excellent default setting that helps a person make one of the best approaches possible towards particular deities and ancestors. Because I may not know the level or quality of work a person claiming to do spirit work actually does, I will often quite strongly suggest utilizing the standards uncovered through reconstructionist methodology. Reconstructionism is among the best methods to actively honor the deities well, especially for a layperson and / or a person who does not engage in spirit work and /or a spirit worker who is experiencing fluctuations, difficulties, or shifts. What spirit work can gain from reconstructionism is structure, discipline, a greater depth of context, and a deeply rooted connection to that-which-came-before-us in time and space.

A spirit worker often wants ensure that the deities have the opportunity to interact with people as they chose to instead of being treated as fossilized remnants of a bygone era. Spirit workers typically have concerns that some reconstructionist-based rites can become stagnant or be simply a pantomime without depth and substance. What reconstructionism can gain from spirit work is the opportunity to experience the deities’ presences, and to engage with the deities and ancestors actively. Sometimes there are gaps in research and errors, misinterpretations, mistranslations, or misrepresentations. Spirit work can help add the guidance of the deities and the ancestors themselves to correct these problems. Spirit work also helps deepen the relationships of people with the deities in the modern day—and this is vital if we are to continue to honor the deities in the modern context that we are in and to ensure that these ways endure.

Both spirit work and reconstructionism add meaning, depth, value, and usefulness. We require both skill sets and the wealth of talents of the people who employ them if we are to revive the veneration of our many deities. This is an “all hands on deck” situation, what with the degeneration and destruction that our polytheistic ways have suffered through the centuries. Both spirit work and reconstructionism ideally are ways to make certain the deities are honored well and appropriately: this common goal is the most important goal of all as we re-learn how to engage with our many deities. Reconstructionist methods provide a cup—not the only cup, but a very good, very useful and appropriate cup—while good spirit work provides the wine. A cup, a structure of some sort, is needed to drink the wine, otherwise the wine spills. A cup without the wine, spirits, is empty. When one person says “wine is better than cups,” or “cups are better than wine,” one is missing the point, and likely missing out on a good drink.

* There is nothing wrong with either U.S. Civil War reenactment weekends or live action role playing games—neither of which are the same thing, and neither of which are polytheistic religions. However, sometimes this comparison is apt especially where acts of devotion are little more than elaborate theater; and sometimes it is not apt. I caution against using the term “LARPer” specifically as a silencing, derailing, and/or discrediting tactic towards not just those who use a reconstructionist methodology, but to those who do not use a reconstructionist methodology, and to those people who are polytheists and actual LARPers as if a LARPer could not distinguish her religion from her gaming. (I’ve seen LARP-comparisons used as a derailing tactics in all three circumstances.) To use the term “LARPer” as a tactic in polytheist conversations can potentially reinforce bad stereotypes around LARPing and, more importantly in this context, also shut down what might be a useful conversation amidst polytheists. I object where the term is used as a derailing tactic, or a tactic meant simultaneously to end conversations and discredit the other party in the conversation, or both. It reminds me of how the term “fluffy bunny” is thrown around in some Pagan and New Age conversations as a similar tactic. This term and comparison is not always used in the manner of bad tactics and as such it is fine, but when it is used as a silencer we need to be observant and mitigate foul play in otherwise constructive conversations.

**Not all undisciplined spirit work is necessarily bad spirit work; not all unstructured spirit work is necessarily bad spirit work. Sometimes things just crop up spontaneously—such is the nature of spirits. However discipline, or structure, or both, tend to yield useful results, and working without them can be a risky, even dangerous, act beyond what is already a risky venture.

Hearts of Fire

Khi Armand in Hearts of Fire

With the altar ablaze in our kitchen and offerings set before the mask he’d crafted when she’d first revealed her countenance to his seeking eyes those many years ago, we set about to honor Hekate, Queen of Witches, on this her noted feast day.

We sang. We chanted. We prayed for ourselves and we prayed for our friends. We prayed for her help to do that which we’d come here to do.

“And Hekate,” my partner pleaded, “please help the people in Ferguson who are being tear-gassed while exercising their right to protest. Go there, Hekate, and protect your children.”

*insert sound of record needle scratching*

Call me unimaginative.

But black people? Hekate’s children? Low-to-median income dark-skinned folks living in the Midwest?

Hekate’s kids?

Who knew?

I’m all for ascribing an unconditional love sentiment to the Universe / Great Oneness / Great Goddess and what have you. It’s commonplace as we try to make sense of the world modern multicultural interfaith Golden Rule standpoint. I frankly don’t know if this trickles down to the many gods of our world with their many mysterious agendas, not to mention having risen out of specific cultural contexts that may indeed speak to specific ethnic and political affiliations despite worldwide globalization.

At this very unique time in human history, who are we to say what’s important or not to the gods except that which they’ve revealed to us?

Still, despite my partner following up with appropriate epithets and prayers – “Hekate, You who care for the marginalized and oppressed. Hekate Brimo, You who tend and avenge the restless dead, keeper of the roads, nurse of the young” – it was not a connection I would have made.

Call me bitter.

I wasn’t so into “African stuff” back in 2006, but my Cuban boyfriend’s love of Florida Water had definitely rubbed off on me and was a mainstay on my solitary Neo-Wiccan altar. I mean, I’d heard of the orishas and knew basic things about them, but I hadn’t felt any connection and generally blamed it on the climate.

Of course, the reason was a mixture of internalized Afro-phobia and Them not having introduced themselves to me as of yet. But in the meantime, truth be told, that Celtic-American-Loreena-McKennit-type shit? I was *alI* about that life. I saw myself reflected in those images of windswept red-haired girls gracing the covers of books written by the likes of Scott Cunningham, and I felt a stirring in my heart knowing that I, too, could wield the power of the olde ways to cast a spell calling back my black kitten like the one so courageously provided by Ellen Dugan in her Elements of Witchcraft were I to someday adopt such a familiar. (Never again the burning times, kitty.)

Now, I knew those girls didn’t look like me just as well as I knew Dugan’s Garden Witchery wasn’t written for city-dwellers. But I knew I was a witch even when other Long Island witches couldn’t conceive of me as such and needed me to bring the Starhawk-heavy jargon before accepting me into their fold.

After years of scholarly research, I have new words in my vocabulary that speak more closely to what someone who looks like me, has the powers and obligations I have, and has energy that runs the way that mine does would have been called in times past, and might still be called in faraway places. Nadleeh. Ganga. Shaman. In fact, these aren’t new words at all, but this body exists in a new world, so my ability to directly identify with them is fraught with complications despite the lack of mirrors afforded me by my current context.

Coming into an understanding of who I am, what I am, and what I actually look and smell like in the face of the gods is a daily unfolding discovery as they know things about me that I do not at the place where myth and history intersect with my soul.

(But perhaps they, too, watch Cops and have been influenced thusly.)

No matter what we’re talking about – gods, traditions, politics – at the end of the day, we’re talking about their implications on bodies, with varying degrees of inclusion.

Many gods. Many bodies. Many centuries. Many needs.

Call me naïve.

I believe we’re ready to ask the deeper questions.

In a globalized world, what does a polytheism arising out of both a highly privileged and painfully ignorant Western worldview value? Where do our beliefs and practices as self-proclaimed animists remain in service to a system hell-bent on destruction and erasure of our kin? Of our selves?

What prayers to make? To whom and on whose behalf?

What are we taking for granted within our worldview?

At a time when notable pagan authors have to actively ban racists from their Facebook pages while raising awareness of the prison industrial complex, practitioners of African-American folk magic are caught in debates about whether or not to call it what it is, and light-skinned members of African Traditional Religions tell their darker-skinned friends that institutionalized racism is all in their head– things do seem rather grim.

But then there’s Alley Valkyrie and her bee project, not to mention her inspiring article on race, class, gentrification, and the lwa.

And there’s Rhyd Wildermuth’s continued deconstruction of capitalism from an animistic perspective.

And Courtney Weber’s multi-year anti-fracking efforts and Climate March endeavors.

And me? I’m actively forgiving a world that drank the Kool-Aid – a 400-year old agenda to eradicate the brand of Afro-indigenous-faggotry that I came into this world to embody.

My polytheism is rooted in a journey of picking up the pieces, like bodily limbs, scattered and dismissed along the margins but all too easily assumed as included within Eurocentric universalist narratives. Because, as my gods have told me, I matter, and I need some ground to stand on.

My polytheism is messy. My polytheism is month-long internal debates. My polytheism is an altar-shaking, art-making, selfie-terrorizing conundrum.

So, for now, I say prayers to ancient gods native to countries that are foreign to me, and I send up prayers on behalf of the indio and pre-white European fighting dead via which I could come to know these magnificent entities. I send up prayers for the living priests, whose names we might not see on the labels of our botanica candles, though they remain the wisdom-keepers. I send up prayers to my gods on behalf of my loved ones, and, perhaps, on behalf of my gods’ peoples too.

In Guatemala.

In Palestine.

In Iraq.

In Ferguson.

Editor’s note:Alley Valkyrie’s “An Outsider at the Crossroads” can be found at The Wild Hunt. Rhyd Wildermuth’s writing is featured here, Courtney Weber blogs about her work here.

I am one with my Ancestors

Grant Guindon in Primal Spirits

Greetings to all! It’s a pleasure to be given the opportunity to share thoughts and ideas here on this new grand project.

I had often thought long and hard about what experiences or knowledge could be shared about the self realization of being ‘one’ with our ancestral lineage. There are many thought forms and understandings of exactly what it means to have “The Ancestors” as part of our spiritual practices. In this article I’d like to brush along an experience that have helped me weave the Ancestors into an integral part of my working the affairs of spirit.

It was hard at first to understand how I could possible work with long dead individuals who once stood on this earth in my bloodline. The first realization I had was in my early 20’s when my Father and both of my Grandfathers suddenly died within 6 months of each other. It was shortly after this that I began to have an intense dream of swimming in a churning river which flowed endlessly backwards in time.

This river was filled with weapons, artifacts, and clothing all from various time periods. I would have this dream over and over until one night it became lucid and I swam backwards through this river and there around the bend was my father standing tall and grounded in the swirling water. I continued and there were my grandfathers and it continued further and further back with the river widening to accommodate all manner of peoples whom I had never met before yet still I felt an overwhelming feeling of respect for.

I could see their faces and their lives play out before me. What they worked, how they died, who they loved, I saw their children flow forth from their bodies in endless directions forward until I could not bear to look anymore. The song they all seemed to sing was so loud and cacophonous that ground began to shift.

It was then that the river turned red and the world began to slowly spin to the intense beating of a drum which had a deep and primal bass that rung my ears so loudly they could burst at any moment. The red waters flowed and swirled I was washed down stream through twists and bends I thought would never end. Suddenly the dream began to fade to that mighty sound of the drum and I was lifted up out of the river and down below I could see how it twisted and ran for eons in all directions and it was then I realized that this river was my blood, I was witnessing my own ancestral river inside of myself.

Holding this realization I awoke in a haze like state and when I would move my arm I was aware of all of my ancestors moving with me. My heart raced and I could still feel the burning beat of the drum in my ears when a voice spoke in my mind.

“I am my Ancestors.”

This thought will never leave me now and has become an integral part of the way I work with the spirits of this world and the other.

I’ve often been asked “What is the value of working with Ancestors”

For me that answer is easy for they are the only reason I am here. Any gifts that I possess in this world are theirs which they have given to me through their bloodlines. It’s almost as if by looking backwards and acknowledging our roots we allow ourselves to finally drink from an untapped well of spiritual potential that has the ability to make all facets of our lives more in line with our destiny.

I once asked a Christian man if god spoke to him and he replied, “Sometimes”.

The Christian man asked me, “Does God speak to you?”

Without thinking I replied, “My Ancestors speak to me.”

He nodded and continued his meditation and I sat for a long time holding this idea of what the ancestors are when you consider the multitude of individuals who have come before us. If all of them felt, spoke and expressed themselves as one, what would the significance of that be.

I have my own thoughts and feelings on this and welcome any of your own.

Polytheism and Metaphysics (I): Divine Relation

Edward P. Butler in Noēseis

To recognize how fundamental polytheism is to Plato’s metaphysics, one need only reflect on the Timaeus, in which the cosmos itself comes to be from one God beholding another God. One must let go of the notion that the significance of this lies in these being some particular Gods; approaching the text in this way is a monotheistic hangover, and a deafness to metaphysics, but it’s curable. Metaphysics is all about forms, and it has no force of its own but the unforced force of being itself. A formal structure or formula is active over however wide a field to which it can apply, that is, over however much it expresses formally. A form as such therefore is most potent when taken at its most universal or abstract, while in its specificities its activity is more localized. Hence in the truly cosmogonic application of the formula of Demiuge and Paradigm in the Timaeus, these are any two Gods in any conceivable relationship with one another, every relationship in any myth you can think of. Every myth, understood in this way, is cosmogonic. Beholding is to be taken as the universal relationship here because consciousness, awareness of appearing, can accompany any action whatsoever, and therefore it represents or formalizes any action.

Nor need the cosmogonic relation be a relation between just two Gods—a concrete relationship involving any number has the same value. By ‘concrete’, I mean that a merely categorial relationship, class membership, won’t do, except insofar as that intellective act by us is traced back to its conditions of possibility, which lie in concrete cognitive acts of the Gods themselves. Membership in a class such as the class of all Gods is not the same logically as, for example, being an Olympian, which is a concrete relationship among individual Gods, and thus ontologically prior to formal classes. A cosmogonic relation can also consist in one God relating to Him/Her/Eirself as Another. Monotheists have obviously taken advantage of this possibility in order to make use of Plato’s Timaeus, though not without some discomfort, but polytheistic theologies have always been capable of this move as well.

In Egyptian theology, when Atum masturbates in the precosmic waters, there are immediately five, at least, who emerge from His solitary act: Atum, who has affirmed Himself in the chaos, Nūn, from which He distinguishes Himself; His children, Tefnut and Shu—ejaculate/cosmic substance and void/cosmic space; and Atum’s hand, Iusāas or Nebet Hetepet (‘Mistress of Offerings’) or Hathor. In Heathen theology, Odin sacrifices Himself to Himself to receive the runes, that is, to render the cosmos intelligible. Atum and Odin both in some sense sacrifice an Eye: Odin sacrifices His eye to Mímir’s Spring (cp. English memory), while Tefnut, known as Atum’s ‘eye’, which is also His ‘agency’ (two senses of Egyptian irt), becomes alienated from Him in the Nūn, and returns to become the uraeus cobra on His forehead, symbol of all the forces that defend cosmic order. In this way, both Gods have made independent an element of Themselves, a ‘vision’ in which all beings, as a result, participate, a sight no longer subjective but objective or intersubjective.

The cases in which the cosmogonic relation is internal to a single divine individual are thus in some way those in which the focalization, or viewpoint quality, the subjectively oriented nature of the relation is emphasized. But this serves the purpose of making the entire field of relations objective. Hence the point of these myths is still the fundamentality of relation, even if it is a relationship between potencies in a single individual. Thus the cosmogonic relation is framed in the Timaeus as an intersubjective relation, and this is its primordial state, because the intersubjective relationship is the richest in content, and it is from the intersubjective relation that everything requisite to cosmogony can be inferred. This becomes especially apparent when in the Phaedrus Plato speaks of the divine symposion. The symposion, alongside its richly specific Bacchic associations, is also a formal structure, standing for any place where the Gods, in being together with one another, behold in each another all that truly is and all virtue, a vision which spills over to dazzle and inspire the souls of mortals.