Sharing and Silence
9 July 2018 11:42![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haptalaonHow do you make decisions about what parts of your practice you share? Welcoming comments and response posts from all x
Some thoughts:
A core part of my religious philosophy is openness. I associate secrecy in religion as inextricably twined with abuse: be that financial exploitation, sexual exploitation, or just generally being in a manipulative environment where secrets are kept to shore up power for the people at the top of the hierarchy at the expense of those at the bottom. My understanding of Luciferianism is not "anti Christian" - Christianity is perfectly lovely in many ways. It's rebellion against organised religion, and the domination which inevitably comes with it. For that reason, I am committed to share and over share what I'm thinking and doing.
I think about the generosity with which the 90s pagans shared their information online, which got me started on this path. And the generosity with which ive benefited from reading Thelemic texts and Golden Dawn material, and similarly how useless ultimately it is to fetishise Cochraine when whatever he was died with him, no words recording his work. I've learnt so much from others, both trad secrets and general articles and writings on sacred topics. I want to pay thst forward. Especially because the last two places i found the synthesis between trad craft and ceremonial I seek were secretive, and there ought to be at least one trad of thst type people can experiment with on their own terms.
And yet. Mystery traditions and initiatory steps are powerful. They work on the psychology of the initiate. They have an effect.I have often wished for such things, as one has to work twice as hard to "make real" when you are the only one in the temple. I think about how hollow Scott Cunningham's books made Wicca feel, compared to how alive and intense reading about Gardener's cult with its initiatory steps is. How being able to read all there is to know produces a lack of engagement, I guess - if you read about rhe Goddess you've "done it", and it seems shallow and false. If you have to work towards an understanding, as you do in say high magic traditions then doing the work is "built in" to the system, and from the outset you accept that there are things which you can only learn with time. People are obsessed with Cochraine because it was NOT written down - because we can project onto him a genuine power, whatever it is we want out of magic, a mystery to yearn for, a sense that his initiates are still out there keeping the faith and perhaps one day we might meet them.
(The very projection thst I fear to encounter in groups. I'm afraid of projecting, even for a moment, "this person has more seniority, knowledge and power than me", for that sets up the context for religious abuse. It's so powerful a feeling, and so violent when misused)
And on another hand - I've lost count of hands, I'm sorry - perhaps nothing sacred is lost by writing everything down. After all, paganism and the occult is by and large experiential - I can write what I know of the Ninefold God, but simultaneously say nothing because it must be felt. Nothing of value or power is really encoded in an image or a name, it's how those things are used and worked with and ultimately encountered. Sharing what I have isn't revealing the Mystery, because that can't be put on paper. Just as giving someone's address is not a substitute for taking afternoon tea with them.
Plus, perhaps it is flawed to see sharing practice as inherently non-abusive. I have a desire for my words to be not only read, but used and followed by someone. Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to lead a religious community, but quite a lot wrong with many people who do - perhaps the personality characteristics of those who wish to lead are those who tend towards domination and abuse, and therefore I ought to be suspicious of the tendency within myself. In short, sharing my practice can be as much of an attention-seeking and unhealthy act as not sharing. Perhaps the abuse comes at the point when I decide my words are Important and ought to be listened to. Perhaps the only way to safeguard against it is cultivating the humility to not need or want that kind of attention from others, but to do my work in private - not because it is an important initiatory secret, but because it is NOT important or interesting in any way. Perhaps there's something not sacred, but secular, in rejecting the Internet invitation to make important our recipes and hair tutorials and music and whatever it is we can now share which we've gone centuries without putting on display.
Yet perhaps there's something very healthy about just throwing it up online in full, and relinquishing "ownership" of it. That fits with my open source values - the faith would not be "mine" and I would not be its prophet or high priest to whom people had to go for information, it would just be stuff online others could remix or adapt or ignore. Because I've been around enough bloggers in my time who relentlessly hint and humblebrag about the parts of their practice they cannot share - and that is another form of hierarchy creation, of power taking, of secrecy as a method of attention-seeking rather than in response to need.
Well friends, strangers, all. Give my some thoughts. How do you make decisions about what to share and keep silent?
Some thoughts:
A core part of my religious philosophy is openness. I associate secrecy in religion as inextricably twined with abuse: be that financial exploitation, sexual exploitation, or just generally being in a manipulative environment where secrets are kept to shore up power for the people at the top of the hierarchy at the expense of those at the bottom. My understanding of Luciferianism is not "anti Christian" - Christianity is perfectly lovely in many ways. It's rebellion against organised religion, and the domination which inevitably comes with it. For that reason, I am committed to share and over share what I'm thinking and doing.
I think about the generosity with which the 90s pagans shared their information online, which got me started on this path. And the generosity with which ive benefited from reading Thelemic texts and Golden Dawn material, and similarly how useless ultimately it is to fetishise Cochraine when whatever he was died with him, no words recording his work. I've learnt so much from others, both trad secrets and general articles and writings on sacred topics. I want to pay thst forward. Especially because the last two places i found the synthesis between trad craft and ceremonial I seek were secretive, and there ought to be at least one trad of thst type people can experiment with on their own terms.
And yet. Mystery traditions and initiatory steps are powerful. They work on the psychology of the initiate. They have an effect.I have often wished for such things, as one has to work twice as hard to "make real" when you are the only one in the temple. I think about how hollow Scott Cunningham's books made Wicca feel, compared to how alive and intense reading about Gardener's cult with its initiatory steps is. How being able to read all there is to know produces a lack of engagement, I guess - if you read about rhe Goddess you've "done it", and it seems shallow and false. If you have to work towards an understanding, as you do in say high magic traditions then doing the work is "built in" to the system, and from the outset you accept that there are things which you can only learn with time. People are obsessed with Cochraine because it was NOT written down - because we can project onto him a genuine power, whatever it is we want out of magic, a mystery to yearn for, a sense that his initiates are still out there keeping the faith and perhaps one day we might meet them.
(The very projection thst I fear to encounter in groups. I'm afraid of projecting, even for a moment, "this person has more seniority, knowledge and power than me", for that sets up the context for religious abuse. It's so powerful a feeling, and so violent when misused)
And on another hand - I've lost count of hands, I'm sorry - perhaps nothing sacred is lost by writing everything down. After all, paganism and the occult is by and large experiential - I can write what I know of the Ninefold God, but simultaneously say nothing because it must be felt. Nothing of value or power is really encoded in an image or a name, it's how those things are used and worked with and ultimately encountered. Sharing what I have isn't revealing the Mystery, because that can't be put on paper. Just as giving someone's address is not a substitute for taking afternoon tea with them.
Plus, perhaps it is flawed to see sharing practice as inherently non-abusive. I have a desire for my words to be not only read, but used and followed by someone. Now, there's nothing wrong with wanting to lead a religious community, but quite a lot wrong with many people who do - perhaps the personality characteristics of those who wish to lead are those who tend towards domination and abuse, and therefore I ought to be suspicious of the tendency within myself. In short, sharing my practice can be as much of an attention-seeking and unhealthy act as not sharing. Perhaps the abuse comes at the point when I decide my words are Important and ought to be listened to. Perhaps the only way to safeguard against it is cultivating the humility to not need or want that kind of attention from others, but to do my work in private - not because it is an important initiatory secret, but because it is NOT important or interesting in any way. Perhaps there's something not sacred, but secular, in rejecting the Internet invitation to make important our recipes and hair tutorials and music and whatever it is we can now share which we've gone centuries without putting on display.
Yet perhaps there's something very healthy about just throwing it up online in full, and relinquishing "ownership" of it. That fits with my open source values - the faith would not be "mine" and I would not be its prophet or high priest to whom people had to go for information, it would just be stuff online others could remix or adapt or ignore. Because I've been around enough bloggers in my time who relentlessly hint and humblebrag about the parts of their practice they cannot share - and that is another form of hierarchy creation, of power taking, of secrecy as a method of attention-seeking rather than in response to need.
Well friends, strangers, all. Give my some thoughts. How do you make decisions about what to share and keep silent?
no subject
Date: 9 July 2018 15:12 (UTC)One distinction I make is between information and relationship: there is very little information (of the sort one might share in books or individual general conversations) in our tradition that isn't out there somewhere in some form (though some of the 'this is how we put that together' is stuff I haven't seen anywhere else in that combination.)
But a chunk of the oathbound stuff is about building relationships - experiences we share as a tradition, experiences with share with the Gods and powers we work with, our reactions to those things.
Just as someone coming into the library isn't owed my life history or relationships (or even an answer to whether or not I might be single), someone asking me about my religious relationships isn't owed that information.
I arguably also have a duty of privacy to the other people and beings involved to defaulting to not sharing the details. I might choose to, but it's a choice, and often I share some parts and not others, just as I do when talking about friends or exes. Because those interactions are not just about me, they're about other people/beings, too.
The other thing I think about a lot is letting people have their own experiences in their own time.
If you dump a lot of magical/ritual/tradition information on people, a) some of it probably won't make sense (because you need to have some shared vocabulary, groundwork, and so on to have the discussion in the first place) and b) some of it will go right over their head because they aren't yet in a place where that's the thing they're thinking about.
Building a set of experiences, and letting them come to those experiences (as a relationship, not an academic class) is a different rhythm, and generally not one served by just handing over the information. But it also means saying "You know, we're not talking about that thing yet."
And then there's the time component - I've spent years writing stuff for the Seeking site regularly, and that's a fraction of my actual experience or knowledge in the Craft. As of right now, there's over 200K words there. I could write a new essay every couple of days for a year, and not hit the end of my 'it'd be nice to write this someday' list, and there's more stuff not even on that list yet.
(And even if I didn't have a day job I love, which I do, there's only so much writing in me on any given day, and other stuff I want to do with my time. My witchy experience was built up over years and hours and hours and hours of ritual and group work and personal work and random things I read and noticed connections between and blog posts I read 10 years ago and a conversation 15 years ago... and that isn't easy to distill. Pretending I am providing reasonably complete info seems dishonest to me and anything less is, fundamentally, leaving important stuff out.)
That's why I'm pretty clear Seeking is 'here is stuff I'm comfortable sharing that might be useful to others', not any kind of complete system. And then sharing the stuff that I feel is sharable info, and not the other parts.
(And with my brand new in-person students, I am very "I am an expert in this particular system, as much as there are experts. You are experts in you. There is stuff I'm not willing to do because it involves risks I'm not okay with, or commitments that take me time to decide to make, and we'll talk about that if/when it's relevant. You get to decide if there's stuff you're not okay with, and it's your job to bring that up to the best of your ability as necessary." A lot of it we just have to work out in the moment, because it's not just about the information, but how that intersects with each person in the room and our past histories and future hopes.)
I'd also add one final note: some stuff I don't share in public because I am quite aware it could be used to attack or damage me - magically, online, socially, it depends on the details. Just like I share the reasonably large town I live in, and that I'm a librarian, I don't share in public spaces exactly where I work, or my address. A fair chunk of my more personal magical info falls into the latter category: you get it if there's a need and I trust you. You don't get it if I don't.
A somewhat expanded version is on my Seeking site, which gives me something to point people to when they're curious how I handle it.
no subject
Date: 11 July 2018 18:21 (UTC)I am also a librarian, and share that value of "must make information freely available".
Part of what I'm writing down is to help get it straight in my own head, and structuring it as a "training guide for others" is a way to create a program for myself to follow. As you say about "having experiences in their own time", I'm thinking about how I can structure all my high level ideas into some kind of practice order so *I* can be having those experiences.
I like the analogy about exes. I have a similar thing from a trans perspective where, how out I am about my gender things then has a big impact on how my partners are perceived, so I can't always make that decision unilaterally. Outing myself often includes outing others.
no subject
Date: 9 July 2018 18:00 (UTC)The specifics of which I tend to hold closer - to those I work with.