I recently had a dream, one of those that start with little fanfare but gradually become almost more real than waking life. In it, I was witness to a mystery play based on the Eddas presented by the members of a close-knit Heathen spiritual working group. It was very engaging and well-done. Afterward, most of the audience dispersed, but a handful or so of others remained in the hall as the strike of the production space got underway. There was no indication from the group that they wanted people to leave, but no encouragement to stay, either. I’d enjoyed and been very engaged by the show; I’m not sure what I was waiting for, but I wasn’t ready for the experience to be over, so I stayed with the others, among whom there was something of a mood of anticipation.
Eventually, it seemed that a few people broke off from the cleaning efforts and started doing some kind of divination to decide the group’s responses towards those of us who had remained. More of the group members stopped what they were doing and got involved as some audience members were called forth and welcomed as new members of the group.
It didn’t seem that I’d come there with such a purpose particularly in mind; I didn’t have a sense of anxiety or expectation, but I was very interested in watching all that happened.
At some point in the middle of all this – there were a number more audience members still waiting and watching – I heard a declaration like “Skadhi speaks for that one,” and someone pointing at me. Well, okay, dream-self hadn’t been expecting that but it was certainly plausible. There was a lull in ambient conversation, and people turned to look. “We’re very sorry,” I was told, “but you can never fully be part of the frith (this word literally means “peace”, but in context seemed to be an advanced level of group membership) . You can be an honored ambassador, though.” They did seem genuinely regretful to have to exclude me, and rather fascinated. I was something of an exotic exception, apparently. There was a sudden murmur, somewhat of surprise, somewhat of titillated gossip, somewhat of admiration. Someone started to sketch me.
It all seemed kind of an over-reaction to me. On some level I was disappointed – aware of it or not, I’d had some desire to be included. One another it made perfect sense; they’d never explained the parameters of the group membership, but if it was an Aesir and/or Vanir oriented group, someone spoken for by even a peacefully allied Jotun could very reasonably be considered outside the usual membership ranks. If Skadhi speaking for me meant my exclusion, I’d rather be excluded than NOT have Skadhi speak for me. It all left me very unsure, though, of what to do next.
It seems worth noting that this dream occurred a few weeks after my return from a week in Iceland. Before, during and after I had been deeply immersed in the study of Icelandic history, literature and culture.
It’s also worth noting that this dream occurred shortly before a trip to the East Coast. This is where I grew up, where most of my family is (with ancestors in the area over almost four centuries), and from which I moved away a decade ago.
Cultural Ancestors
Last month, my husband and I took a road trip from Seattle down to Reno by way of the Oregon Coast, Redwood Country and Lake Tahoe.
One of the things I particularly wanted to do as we crossed into Nevada was stop at Donner Memorial State Park, which hosts the Pioneer Monument and the Emigrant Trail Museum.
Having grown up in New England, the history of the settlement of the western United States was a low academic priority. All the early local events for which we had battlefield sites and museums to visit were covered in great detail, then the Civil War was addressed in some depth, with the discussion of Manifest Destiny left until just before finals. Then it was time for modern 20th century studies.
I’d never had personal motivation to look further on my own – my ancestors boarded ships in Europe and settled close to where they made landfall, and most of my family is still within a few hundred miles of there.
Chance was taking us within a few miles of this landmark, however, and I wanted to take the opportunity to learn about what happened in this place that had made such an impact and helped shape the identity of this part of the country I now call home.
The main feature of the museum is a 40 minute documentary, a simple voiceover relating the story of the Donner Party as the camera slowly scans over photographs and paintings and maps. It describes day after day of challenging travel, with very little information to go on and most of it bad, one decision leading to another without a clear point of no return. Exhausted almost past endurance, they took a few days to rest before tackling the greatest hurdle of the trip, a delay that trapped them in the middle of nowhere with almost no supplies and very few people with any skill in hunting, fishing or foraging. How bad the disaster was doesn’t seem to ever have been clear except in hindsight – it turned out to be the worst winter in fifty years, and a great many of the men in California who might have helped save the group were tied up in territorial conflict with Mexico. The rescue parties that were finally mustered were often delayed, or sometimes gave up, or only made it through with enough supplies for a few weeks, or could only bring the most able-bodied back with them, or consisted of men more interested in looting the goods of the settlers who had died than in assisting the ones who still survived. . .
The base of the monument is 22 feet high, the recorded depth of packed snow in the camps that winter.
My husband has asked me why I was so deeply moved by our visit to the museum. I am still trying to figure that out for myself. In part, it’s a sense of fellowship with people who set off for the far side of the continent in the hopes of a better life. The two of us drove across the country in 2001, in late October, the same season that saw the earlier emigrants stranded. We had to cross the Rockies and the Cascades, and we had neither snow tires nor chains. We decided to take the risk and go for the direct route rather than the detour that was likely to spare us bad weather. As it happened, for us there turned out to be only a dusting of snow in the high passes, rather than enormous drifts piled up by a blizzard, but that isn’t due to better planning or preparation on our part, just sheer dumb luck.
The situations are emphatically not parallel. I do not mean in any way to minimize the enormous difference between their dire circumstances and the many safety nets in place for us should things go wrong. The century and a half of technology and transportation infrastructure development between the trips meant that we were never truly in danger of anything greater than inconvenience, expense and delay. Nevertheless, I do feel a similarity at the core of the two journeys, as though our experience was somehow a faint, distant echo of theirs.
Something that has surprised me when talking to people about our visit to the museum is how uncomfortable the conversation tends to make them. Most of the time they’ll look away, shuffle their feet, and jokingly ask if there’s a cafeteria at the park and what’s on the menu. I have to admit I’m very puzzled, frustrated and disappointed by the juvenile and disrespectful attitude, especially when it comes from people I know to be intelligent and compassionate and interested in history. Maybe it’s me that’s out of step with what’s normal, though; perhaps I’ve been doing ancestor work for so long that I can’t really remember or imagine how it feels not to do it.
I believe that the bravery and terrible suffering of the members of the Donner Party should be honored, rather than made the punchline of a tasteless joke. These people deserve to be remembered as human beings no different in nature than ourselves, rather than caricatures or monsters. Thinking about how it must have felt for them to face the challenges they did and asking ourselves what we might have done in their places is uncomfortable, but it also seems to me that it is our duty. I’m not sure we can fully inhabit our own humanity if we don’t make the effort to understand and acknowledge the humanity of the people who came before us and made the life we live possible by their work and choices and sacrifices.
I intend to light a candle for the members of the Donner Party when I host Samhain next month, and to claim them as cultural ancestors, and honor them from this point forward. In choosing to move West, I chose to take on a debt to them as people who tread the path before me. There are innumberable others who have done so, of course; I can’t form a relationship with all of them, but when I come across people whose story calls out to me, I listen and thank them for what I learn, and strive to remember and share it.
Moving On
I’ve been quiet, and I’ve been cautious, and it’s pointless. I’ve always been of the “stick your finger in the light socket” school of mysticism; I’m not good at being timid, and I doubt it’s interesting watching me try, so forget it.
Went to do some trance work with Lugos last night, for the first time, after it being suggested *cough* that I really should. I suddenly get why people talk about there being multiple layers of subtle bodies; the way He wanted me to do it was very different than anything I’ve done before. In the past I’ve had. . . an intellectual projection of myself going out and about, and it was me, but at something of a remove, abstracted. He had me trying to inhabit and manipulate a level much closer and more connected to my physical self.
I wasn’t very good at it. I was supposed to do it anyway. My continuing to wonder why was not apparently very reverent of me. *sigh*
Once past the initial “Hello, yes, We want you to work with Us!” fuzzy warm NRE vibes, working is clearly the defining term in the relationship right now. I get the impression the beings I’m connecting with have not really been in touch with average on-the-street sorts of people for quite some time. I’m not one for the “my spirituality is for my own self-empowerment and healing, I will summon powers and order them about as I see fit” school of thought, but I’m getting the message that my general attitude and behavior is, well, shockingly and dismayingly modern for these gods. I am not responding as They expect me to respond, and it’s kind of disorienting for both parties.
On formulaic daily morning/evening prayers:
Them (Lugos as Spokesgod): “We made clear We wanted them, a week or more ago! Why aren’t you doing it?”
Me *startled*: “Well, I’ve never really done anything that seems to fit, and I was doing some research to write something to try out. . .”
Them: “?!?. . . just start somewhere and improve as you go! It doesn’t have to be perfect to begin with!”
I’m not sure They really get how much context has been lost.
Things to learn on both sides. . . I just have to focus on mine.
Conflicted
I’ve been much more quiet here than usual over the last month. To be blunt, I’ve found myself in a situation where I am much more willing to accept and work with information derived almost entirely from UPG than I am to openly state that I am doing so.
I’m uncomfortable with that realization. As with my initial post on the subject, Reconnecting with an Acquaintance from my travels in France, I’ve repeatedly tried to write about the further happenings and hit a wall, hard.
As I’m focused on wrestling with this, I’m not progressing any further in developing my new spiritual relationships.
So, short simple words: I’m feeling called to work with the Gaulish god Lugos. In particular, a manifestation of Him that is specific to the area around modern Lyon and the Rhône/Saône valley that falls between Provence and Burgundy. I feel that He wishes to be honored in a consort pair with Souconna, the goddess of the river Saône.
Souconna is attested in a few places, but there is no connection known with Lugos. Lugos is not much better attested; much of what we “know” is based upon His suggested syncretism with Mercury. Lugos/Mercury is very often paired with Rosmerta as a consort. Souconna and Rosmerta aren’t known to share any characteristics that would suggest a possible historical syncretism.
It’s quite plausible – and rather Celtic – that a wide-traveling god of trade and communication would be paired with a locally specific river goddess. There is no evidence as-of-yet discovered to show these particular ones are historically associated together, and one of them *is* associated elsewhere through syncretism. . . (though deities could be shown with different consorts).
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but a Lugos-Souconna pairing is simply not supported by any historical or archaeological materials yet known.
That being said, They seem to be an absolutely well-matched and happy couple. They are both wonderful, and I have no wish to refuse Their offer of relationship with me.
I’m just having some problems at the moment being okay with venturing out past the point where I can still see the shoreline on the horizon, as it were.
(There’s another Gaulish goddess in the mix, but that’s a different story, and not as troubling.)
What I Am Not: Godbothered
[If you need context, please see the intro post to this series.]
In the wider Pagan mystical community, some people choose to label themselves as “godbothered”. The common connotation appears to be “sometimes insistent and inconvenient communication from a multiplicity of deities on a routine basis”. (The usage implies an affectionate, tongue-in-cheek sort of irreverence, rather than being a sincere complaint.)
With all due respect to people who like the label, I do not.
At one point, I aspired to be godbothered; I think many Pagans do. It implies a level of rapport and familiarity with deities that many people long to have in their own lives, triggering an “I wish I had your problems” sort of response.
I don’t know how many people get what they wish for in this regard, but I did. After an oracular session where a deity I’d never encountered in a pantheon I didn’t work in had expressed interest (through a seidhkona) in having me get to know Her and maybe establish a relationship, I was trying to explain to a friend how much of a shock this was to me. I casually used the word “godbothered” for the first time in reference to myself, and it felt wrong.
There was a lack of graciousness in it, a jarring tone of cynicism, an attitude of presumption feeling put-upon. I came face-to-face with a glimpse of hubris in myself, and felt immediately diminished by my momentary pettiness and self-absorption.
The ability to find some way to connect individually with a divine being, and the existence of divine beings interested in doing so, are extremely profound and precious gifts. Or, not gifts exactly, more like rare treasures offered for trade: the price is paying attention.
“Bother” is a verb that implies a power differential; bluntly, it’s most often applied to behavior of an inferior being towards a superior being.
Why would you offer service or honor to a being you didn’t believe to be at least equal, if not superior in some way?
That having been said, after politely paying attention you don’t necessarily have an obligation to agree with what a deity says, or comply with a given request of Theirs. We have proof that our ancestors often held their relationships with the divine to be open to negotiation, and there’s no reason I am aware of to think the gods’ opinions on the matter have changed substantially.
Whatever agreement eventually comes to pass, I do believe in respecting that there’s a good reason for specific requests being made, even if you can’t see it at the time. If nothing else, exercising imagination in thinking about the whys and wherefores may give some deeper insight into Their perspectives and values.
In the end, I consider myself far more of a “godbotherer” than “godbothered”. I hope over time that I’ve improved my communication skills – and that I continue to do so – but when I started seeking connection I certainly didn’t have very good Otherworldly manners. Since a variety of beings have had the good grace to tolerate my sometime pestering and work with me anyway, I feel I owe them the debt of not describing Their presence in my life as an inconvenience – not even in jest.
My Involvement in the Ekklesia Antinoou
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon
I’m not always very good at recognizing this in the midst of it happening to me, but when I do remember, it takes a bit of the sting from the clarity of hindsight. ;)
I have a friend who a few years ago wanted some help putting on a ritual, of a sort that I think is valuable and done too rarely. I said I’d pitch in if it would be useful. It was a fairly positive experience, but I expected to be a one-time deal. Then the ritual was going to be performed a second time that year at PantheaCon, and since I was going to the convention anyhow, I agreed to help again. Then there was a different ritual the group was doing at the same convention, and I figured it would be reasonable to attend, just to be supportive.
Some three years later I’m still around. . . and still trying to figure out how a straight female hard polytheist with Old Kingdom Egyptian ties, a strong resistance to blending pantheons/cultures, and a deep resentment against the Romans is involved in a queer Graeco-Roman-Egyptian syncretic cult honoring the deified male lover of the Emperor Hadrian.
If I had been looking for a group to join, I doubt it would have ever occurred to me to consider this one; even if it had, I’d likely have quickly dismissed it. If by some chance I did wind up somehow attending a ritual, I would have been paying intense attention to analyze the proceedings and to assess how it compared to my ideas of how things should be said and done. Afterward, I might have mentally weighed pros and cons, and evaluated how much the effort to be involved would cost me in comparison to what I would get out of it.
My continuing attendance isn’t due to logical reasoning, so to expect it to be rational is pointless.
I went to that first ritual with no firm expectations, and I experienced it for what it was, without critical judgment being engaged. I went to another, and another, and absorbed what happened on those occasions, apparently found value to it on some level, and was motivated to continue.
It’s essentially an emotional connection – I find the core story appealing, I enjoy the liturgy and symbolism, I like doing ritual with my friends, and I stand behind the intents and messages the organization supports. I don’t personally have a rapport with Antinous, but people that I care about do, and I willingly honor Him for the meaning and enrichment He brings to their lives.
It’s a small enough community at the moment that the choice of each individual to participate truly helps to sustain its existence. That something so simple has such an impact is amazing, and I am pleased to be able to contribute something meaningful through my presence.
It’s probably the closest I’ve ever come to what’s presumed to be one of the “standard” American experiences of religion – being content as simply a part of the community, enjoying it for its social value, without being deeply self-reflective or attached to the theology.
In many ways this experience is very refreshing to me. I’ve historically been very spiritually driven – ardently pursuing research, wrestling tough philosophical problems, and struggling to lead the creation of a sustainable organization (large and small, more than once). As passionate, idealistic and noble as that all may be, it’s the highway to spiritual burnout. I’ve been there, and I’ve come back, and I’m happy to find a group in whose company I am unlikely to return.
Participating in the Ekklesia has also opened my mind on a few spiritual issues where I’d previously had very strong ideological stances – in particular, the value of syncretic practice, and respect for the traditions of Rome. I’m not sure where else or in what manner I would have come to reassess my attitudes regarding these topics. It’s recently become clear that my path forward requires not only these changes, but also a greater willingness to engage with ambiguity, and the ability to absorb information in a neutral manner rather than judging it in the course of receiving it. My experiences in the Ekklesia so far have helped me establish a pattern for facing these issues in a positive manner, and I hope will continue to provide the means to grow and mature spiritually. In turn, I hope that my involvement helps the Ekklesia to develop and expand.
(For anyone interested to learn more, there is a Yahoo! Group for the Ekklesia Antinoou, and the blog of one of the leading founders is Aedicula Antinoi.)
Reconnecting with an Acquaintance from my travels in France
A lot of interesting spiritual stuff has happened this week, apparently “all of a sudden”. . . but not really. I’ve sat down to try to write about it three times from three different angles, and simply run aground each time. It’s important to me, though, so here I am trying again. Maybe if I try telling it simply, without lots of detail or digressions into various pieces of backstory, it will work better.
I bought a deity statue last Monday. This was unusual for me in a couple of ways. I don’t have many, for one thing. For another, this was of a god I’ve barely ever contacted in a pantheon outside of my general work. It had just been. . . tugging at me each time I visited the store for several months.
Per the manufacturer, it’s Hermes with some Etruscan styling. Despite knowing that, it feels really Gaulish to me. I finally gave in and bought it with the idea that I would use it as a representation of Lugos, who is very often syncretized to Mercury in Gallo-Roman artifacts.
That really opened the floodgates. I spent most of the rest of the week in compulsive research, with occasional bouts of abstracted light trance/deity connection.
I don’t know what I can coherently say about the relationship at this point; it’s really been an experience unlike any I’ve had before in my numerous years of practice. It’s definitely a strong connection on both sides.
I’ve had issues in the past of “needing” to have deity contact fit a clear pattern right away, demanding full exposition so that I could see where things were going, and pushing for matters to go the way I thought they should.
I’ve also been very rigid in the boundaries I’ve set and the terms I’ve used to build my spiritual identity. I am a this-and-such, so I will interpret my experiences in whatever light I feel necessary to affirm my remaining a this-and-such. If something big enough to shake my paradigm comes along, I will rush to construct a new identity centered on my initial impressions of the new thing that is the focus of my attention, so I’m not left out in limbo without a clear idea of who I am supposed to be.
Maybe an increased tolerance for ambiguity and a willingness to finally surrender some degree of my grasping for control has opened the way for something new and interesting to come into my life. Or, rather, for something that’s been in my life and waiting for the right conditions to begin to manifest.
I visited the city of this god – ancient Lugdunum, modern Lyon – three years ago. It’s clear that what’s happening now follows on from my exploration there, even though at the time I wasn’t aware of establishing contact.
I’ll be very interested to see where this all leads, although I’m not in any rush to get there. That might be exactly what’s necessary for there to be any possibility of ever arriving. I find it rather ironic that it was in Lyon that I learned to loosen my white-knuckled grip on the American definitions of how time should work, and started to understand the cultural relativity of urgency and importance. I thought that just applied to everyday life, but perhaps the true lesson runs deeper. . .
Contemplating Issues of Gender/Sexual Identity: Postfeminism Has Been Indefinitely Postponed
I hit puberty in the late 1980s, and came of age in the 1990s. I grew up in a politically liberal and intellectually elite part of the US. The issue of religion was totally ignored in our household; my mother had left the Catholic Church over their stances on women’s issues and never looked for a replacement, and my father simply never expressed an opinion. I have one sister, no brothers. What kind of clothes I wanted to wear or what toys I played with were up to me. (I do remember that my family thought it was strange when a boyfriend of my sister’s expressed incredulity that I asked for a model backhoe as a gift. There’d been recent construction on our street I found interesting – duh!)
I went off to college in a place that was even more intellectually advantaged and culturally progressive than the area I’d grown up in; “10 square miles surrounded by reality” has become a popular city slogan. My parents and I first came to visit on Columbus Day weekend of my senior year of high school, and the local buzz was all about how the city made national news for having had people wandering around the commons offering all and sundry chocolate cake to celebrate Size Acceptance Day a week or so earlier. I thought that was pretty awesome; I was sorry to have missed out on the cake.
Yes, in hindsight I realize I was incredibly lucky and privileged. I’m not one bit sorry for that; what I regret is that it is strange and unusual rather than a universal experience!
When the topic of feminism came up in sociology, history or literature classes, my general impression was that it was a once-useful but now outdated and quaint idea. Sure, there was more work to be done, but the tide had definitely turned, and we’re just in the clean-up phase, right?
I certainly didn’t consider myself a feminist. At this point, it seemed like it would be raising the concerns of women higher than those of men, and that’s not the goal, is it? The point is to come to equality and move on, not to swing the pendulum the other way into male persecution.
Can we move beyond gender dualism and get into the universal nature of human potential on all spectrums now please?
Apparently not.
Under the administration of Bush II, I used to “joke” that I was concerned the day might come when my ATM card would suddenly stop working, a la Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
Frighteningly, there seem to be even more instances of misogynistic legislature proposed under the Obama administration, which I hoped would at least provide a bulwark against further insane political policies and opportunity to retrench for future corrective measures, if not actual progress.
It’s surreal and terrifying and astonishing and enraging and unbelievable.
Not to be immodest here. . . but I am not a stupid person. I’m really quite intelligent. And I keep looking at various arguments for revoking properly established recognition of long-denied women’s reproductive rights, and I do not understand them. I just don’t.
I was born with a body, and as a competent adult I have complete sovereignty over it. End of statement. No deviation of the myriad individual features of said body changes that.
Oh, so your body has a book? Good for it. It contains thoughts on bodies written by people with bodies a really long time ago, and you find them meaningful to you as suggestions to what you do with your body today? That sounds like it could be a positive thing. You think those same suggestions should impact what I do with mine, whether or not I find them meaningful? That is not okay.
I know I can’t afford the luxury of being a postfeminist in today’s American society; it would be delusional at best, and quite possibly destructive. I suppose what really gets to me about being dragged back into the fray re-contesting previously conquered territory of female autonomy is this: it’s boring! I was raised to believe this stuff was settled already. I had set my sights on whole list of other societal issues where I would have liked to have dedicated my efforts, but no! Back to the gender wars we go. It doesn’t seem to matter how cogent or time-tested or persuasive our arguments are – our opponents have stuffed wax in their ears to avoid being subjected to the influence of insidiously seductive information that doesn’t agree with the conclusions they were given and apparently embraced without any kind of logical analysis.
I’m back on the barricades because I have no choice in the matter. I don’t belong here, but my papers were confiscated and I find myself in hostile territory with no clear way to get back home. I truly, deeply resent the necessity, and the wastefulness, of having to fight to get back what was mine.
Due to the fact the page got linked to in a column on Patheos.com, I brought my original, unedited essay “About Mystic Reconstructionist Paganism” online again, despite my reservations with the current contents. Dead links are not hospitable!
So, behold, it is anti-climatically present again, but please note, the concept has evolved much since the initial writing and so it reflects my present intentions and understanding very imperfectly. I am happy to pursue discussion on it, but be prepared for me to potentially take a different direction on some points than stated therein!
Tangentially related, many warm congratulations to P. Sufenas Virius Lupus on the inauguration of his column “Queer I Stand” on Patheos.com!
