29 September 2019

haptalaon: A calming cup of tea beside an open book (Default)
It's a real problem, I think, for new pagans not having anyone to pray to. They've got a sense of wanting to do witchcraft and loving the natural world and feeling connected to the ethos and community of paganism - but a religion without gods lacks a certain everything. Like Stephen King said about the Shining movie: "a big shiny cadillac with no engine inside".

Now I have gods, everything is easier: prayer is spontaneous, sincere and I feel its genuine benefits in return. There's a reason why rituals happen and when and why, and that makes them easier to write and remember; they have an internal logic.

What we generally say to new pagans is that the journey is the point; thst the act of seeking is as valuable as the destination. That's kinda true, in the sense that, I don't think anyone ever arrives at a finished faith: even followers of the book find their spirituality developing over time, becoming more rich & organic.

But equally - we say that Paganism is orthopraxic, not orthodoxic: created by what you do more than what you believe.

And you really can't...do anything meaningful without that faith being real. Like, you don't know what to ask for or to celebrate or why you take certain actions and not others.

Even basic actions, like washing your hands before ritual or doing the Qabalistic Cross, or doing a meditation which empties the mind vs one which stills it or teaches it to visualise - all of these have meaning, have purpose, and how are you to choose the reason when you don't yet have an underlying meaning? For example, Pagan meditation uses visualisation, but Zen meditation says that visions and dreams are false illusions and not the goal. Which is right? Depends what tradition you're in, what the purpose of the meditation is.

I'm currently uploading the Fencraft papers which are like "how to start building your own religion", explicitly aimed at new Pagans of all paths to speed the tricky figuring out bits. My practice became so much easier and more joyous once that bit was over. And I am still seeking and tinkering and deepening what I'm doing, but it's so much better and more meaningful than the rites I used to do.

I think it's also why Paganism becomes so technique-focused. Meditations, circle casts and spells are to some extent universal, and so we focus on training up these Lunar skills. But that's not Paganism. That's a...career path *within* paganism. And similarly, I feel increasingly critical of how self-focused Paganism is. I went to an open ritual and we talked about how the waning of the year and the equinox affects *us*. We said welcome and farewell to the spirits, but the bulk of the rite was about *us* (hey, another Lunar characteristic).

Is this good? Possibly. There's nothing wrong with using metaphor and ritual to reflect on our own lives, but it does lead to a certain...shallowness, I suppose, that I sense off a lot of paganism, that it is all about the magic and the aesthetic and what one can get out of it, more than a deep and abiding sense of the divine.

These past few months are the first time I've felt able to see what I do as a religion, because there's gods in it now. Not just a desire for the numinous, but some actual numen.
haptalaon: A calming cup of tea beside an open book (Default)
 'm feeling increasingly critical of a lot of New Age ideas.

"Don't use tools, you can just use your willpower"

The original urge here is good - we should never cripple ourselves by imagining we are without power when we don't have a wand. And yet, when you look at the sources, everyone uses tools. Even if those tools are occasionally just the spoken word; or if it's clear that the practioner's will is of equal or greater importance than the tool he brandishes (ie Gandalf on the Bridge of Khazad Dum). The tool is there to make physical your will.

"There's like energy everywhere, this abstract coloured light which you can do whatever with"

This is kinda the opposite of sympathetic magic, and it again asserts you can do things with your imagination without moving from your chair. Again, in our lore and history, I've not found any examples of this: ancient kings made models of their servants or killed people to be buried with them, to ensure those servants passed with them into the next world. You dance for rain, you make poppets to hurt people, you grow and pick herbs and apply them to the body. Why do you think any traditional folk practice puts such effort into these things, if they can be bypassed so easily?

I think even if you're "on the astral" or whatever, having made the cape magical artifact in the material world backs up its power and authority.

"Draw the energy from inside you. You are powerful"
Again, like the wands, this seems partially correct and like it can work. It also seems dangerous and exhausting, creating a link between you and whatever you're doing.

And believing in your own power is clearly critical to a lot of spellcraft. And yet, our sources again are generally clear that power is given to you - think about Gandalf, whose spell begins "I am the servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor". In other words, he first threatens the balrog with the name of the one who gives Gandalf his authority, and then with the tool he intends to use. Power comes from the gods, and resides in certain stones and plants. We draw energy, to the extent that it exists, from these stones. We petition the gods to back our actions.

"Spirit"

The ancient world was physical. The idea that there was a soul, a ghost like attribute which left the body on death, wasn't really a thing. The Anglo saxons and celts seemed to believe that their ancestors were like, alive in the barrows somehow. And that otherworld's like Avalon and Valinor and the Isle of the Blessed weren't, like Heaven, an imaginary realm existing somehow on a higher vibrationary level in spirit, but places you could theoretically walk to.

The ancient world didn't have a ghost/zombie distinction. Their vision of the dead was a combination of the two: the body of a zombie, but the mind and memory and malevolence of a ghost. Definitely physical.

I was talking about this with my heathen husband and saying, I don't think there's anything in the lore which would preclude a mortal slaying a god. They slay one another all the time (Greek, Mabinogion, Eddas). And he agreed - it would clearly be a tough fight that you'd likely lose, but I don't think there's any doubt in, say, the Eddas that the gods have a kind of physical reality. They are gods, and they are magnificent, but you could still touch, kiss or stab one.

Could you stab Jesus? Like, probably not. Only when he was manifesting as a mortal which most of the time he is not. I think this idea is coming heavily out of Christianity, that "spirit" exists as a general concept, and that heaven, the gods and the otherworlds all exist there.

~*~

What I'm seeing here is a very modern dominance of the mind over the body, and man over the wild.

We assign occult practice and rhe New Age, and anything with spirit or energy to the Lunar - which, I have just noticed, also governs the mind. The Solar governs the body, as well as reconstructionist polytheism and religion.(The Stellar is the imagination and senses, as well as mysticism and the "shamanic")

I feel like this Lunar work has its place, but it is a *place* in a constellation of spell working techniques, not the apex or purest distillation of them. I think bringing these Lunar attitudes into worship is kinda anathema to what worship *is*, and that's why ideas like the body, the material, the gods, and prayer, and an external-facing focus all cluster under the Solar together. There are other, older magics.

In my experience, Lunar craft is a bit like sticking your fingers in the mains. It definitely works, with a kind of laser-like efficiency. But it also lacks weird, and it lacks a kind of mellow intensity which work with the land spirits or the divine provides.

And when you add up all the things in this post: you're using imaginary tools, and imagined gods, in imagined otherworlds with imagined magic. You're putting a lot of eggs in a single basket, as well as consistently using the term "imagined" to relate to what you do.

I think the conclusion of this post is something like: Lunar magic works, and there's a sound reason why all these beliefs have come to be. However, they're not really consistent with reconstructionist polytheism, the ancient world, or even folklore, all of which are pretty insistent about the primacy of the physical, and the fact we draw power from elsewhere. Therefore, these forms of spellwork are apt to be rediscovered and pushed far more loudly than they currently are. Ancient and traditional ritual technologies were developed by people who relied on magic for far more primary and important needs than us modern folk, and we should therefore take their focus on the physical very seriously and ask why they needed this if we do not.
haptalaon: A calming cup of tea beside an open book (Default)
I struggle to concentrate when there's a second person in the house; it's like a kind of chaos static distorting everything. I can't concentrate; I'm unable to do anything or start anything, like I'm waiting to hook onto their actions or hide when required.

I've wondered before if I'm like, "sensitive" or whatever, and if this isn't a problem I could solve with better grounding and shielding. Mostly, I assumed, it's a neurodivergence problem, my necessary patterns being tripped and disrupted by the presence of a second pattern.

My beloved has just started taking anti-depressants. Last night he was making dinner, and he suddenly vanished. There was a silence and stillness in the house. I had to call him over,  just to check he was still there. He was, kinda. But that noise had gone. And the same is true this morning. It is f a n t a s t I c, and clearly also terrible because he's not happy taking them, and because I can sense a huge part of his mind has just been switched off. But somehow, imperceptibly, it's the part of his mind that's been disrupting mine. I can't even begin to understand what is happening here, without recourse to a magical explanation.
haptalaon: A calming cup of tea beside an open book (Default)
My husband's suggestion for our flyer slogan:

"The Landweird: because life is a disorganised mess, and you can be too!"

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haptalaon: A calming cup of tea beside an open book (Default)
Haptalaon

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