Star Foster’s “13 Things I LOVE about Pagans!”
Some of these I agree with. Some of them I don’t.
Some of them I don’t, and also find troubling. I’ll focus on those.
13. Eat, Drink and Be Merry!
Blah blah blah, Pagans are fat and it’s OK. Whatever. That’s what people mean when they call someone “jolly,” right?
Re: “we’re a hoot:” a lot of fun people are Pagan, yeah. A lot of boring, easily-offended people are Pagan too. This one is more stereotype than reality.
12. Ecology is Key
No.
Pagans pay lip service reverence to ecological concerns, to be sure. But I can’t tell you how many Earth-worshippy events I’ve been to where no one carpooled.
Actually, I’d agree that most Pagans’ carbon footprints are low when compared to other Americans, but it’s almost certainly because they’re poor. But even that is an overly positive portrayal of Pagans. So let me be clear: Pagans’ ecological behaviors do not differ in any significant way from the rest of America’s.
11. Drama is Life/Life is Drama
I like this one.
10. Sensual Rites
Don’t care, no comment.
9. Words Are Cheap, Actions Count
Theoretically, hell yes! In practice…no.
I look at this one and say: is she joking? Because Pagans are really known for their punctuality, steadfastness, and respect for others, right? Har har.
Many Pagans I know do what they say they’ll do. But most don’t.
8. Yes or No? How About Both!
This one confuses me. Star seems to shift her tone often, going from the over-enthusiasm of the title (hey, HOW ABOUT BOTH???) to the nervously pedantic (“Blending paths is a difficult thing and not to be undertaken lightly.”)
I’d say this one is a huge can of worms, and I bet Star does too.
In any case, is this “how about both?” thing really all that great? Something we should encourage? I don’t doubt that syncretism is a fact of life in religion. I just think that as a whole, Pagans fucking suck at it.
7. An Harm Ye None, Do What Ye Will
Not my thing, no comment.
6. Smaller Is Better
The main reason we “still don’t find the need for large worship centers with 10,000 participants” is because what we do is not that appealing to most people.
This seems more like an attempt to explain away our failings than anything else.
5. Many Gods, Few Masters
Star phrases this weirdly, but I get her.
I was worried this would be one of those “I may be Pagan, but I bow down to NO ONE!” sort of things. Thankfully it is not.
4. Only I Am Answerable For My Soul
Very nice.
3. We Are All Priests and Priestesses
I get the point, but “priest” and “priestess” are terrible terms to use for what Star is describing.
2. Enheduanna, Pythagoras, Julian, Plotinus, Sallustius, Valiente…
Oh great. Neopagans “claiming” the achievements of ancient Pagans as their own.
There are so many things wrong with this kind of thinking. I hate this needless invocation of “pagan” history.
Geez. The general idea is wrong, but the specific examples she mentions are wrong too! Just wikipedia Plotinus. Does he sound ANYTHING like a modern Neopagan? He of the monotheism and the “inherent distrust of the material?”
Arrgh.
1. You are OK, Just As You Are
…unless you aren’t, yes? I mean, if you’re a shitty person who doesn’t keep his/her word, eats too much, is lazy, etc., then you are not OK. Sorry, but your also being Pagan doesn’t suddenly make the above character traits OK, right?
I understand this isn’t the point Star is making. But I’m not sure most Pagans are capable of distinguishing between the two. I know a lot of Pagans who take the “I am OK just as I am” mantra to mean “I am OK just as I am…thus even though I am slovenly, untrustworthy, and unhealthy, I never need to improve myself.”
TPH
Mythos and Logos, Part I
I’ve been writing a lot about the impact of Hutton. Now might be a good time to post this.
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Pagans: Witchcraft isn’t the Old Religion. We all know this.
Can we please stop pretending we’re not still deeply disappointed about that?
Aidan Kelly, Ronald Hutton, and others really dropped the bomb. Their books crumbled a lot of our worldviews.
People really need to own up to their frustrations about being wrong.
What’s truly depressing are all of the half-assed rationalizations for continuing to believe/practice the same way we always have. Recently, I’ve talked about the (futile) tendency by non-academic Pagans to lambast credentialed historians. While annoying, this is not how (I believe) most Pagans deal with the basic untruth of our myths.
The most popular way Pagans that I’ve met deal with Hutton et al. is this: they make what historians of religion call a “mythos/logos” distinction between their religion and “the mundane world.”
For context, I’d like you to listen to episode 63 of the Wigglian Way. It’s a great podcast, and the interview with “Uncle” Fritz Muntean shows that this is one Elder who’s really worthy of respect.
He does this weird “mythos/logos” thing though: he says we should continue to put stock in our (utterly-discredited) myths, rather, our “sacred story cycle,” because…well, it’s our “sacred story cycle.”
Huh? So…it’s…wrong….but we should continue to…what? Find inspiration in it? Laud it as poetry? Continue using elements of it in our rituals? Why? I don’t get it.
It’s a very popular idea though. Karen Armstrong, a leading historian of religion, is a famous…err…proponent? of the distinction between mythical knowledge (mythos) and scientific knowledge (logos). Mircea Eliade was all about it as well (maybe he created it, I’m not sure.)
I’m very skeptical about this idea. I think that most people, when confronted with objectively-true information that conflicts with their previous beliefs…revise their beliefs! I don’t think they, instead, split how they view the world into separate, exclusive components.
I’m not arguing the above never happens. But I have no idea why we should accept, much less advocate, this behavior. Come on, the less charitable way of defining the “mythos/logos” distinction is “cognitive dissonance. “ It’s avoidance, it’s a defense mechanism designed to shield your religious beliefs from uncomfortable truths.
Just change your stupid beliefs already!
Certainly, there’s a lot of pain that goes into throwing out wrong, cherished beliefs. If you want to see this process in action, listen to the above podcast. You can feel Mojo’s disappointment right through your earbuds.
It affects him so much that he starts naming all the books he’s read, hoping that one or two of them will still be “right.” His relief (near the end of episode 64) that Karl Kerenyi’s book on Dionysus is still well-liked, is obvious.
Clearly, Moj is not making the transition from logos to mythos smoothly. In a recent episode, Moj woefully remarks: “I really wish I could still call Wicca “the Old Religion”….but I just don’t feel right saying it anymore.”
But really, why would anybody? It’s not like we can suddenly turn our backs on academia. They’re the ones who spend their lives finding out the truth about these things! Plus, we used to be able to appeal to them whenever someone criticized our past. We could just point them to Murray or other formerly-influential scholars and say “Look, read these. It’s all right here.”
But we can’t do that anymore.
And yet, it seems like most Pagans I know acknowledge that our myths are bullshit…and don’t change a thing in their practice.
I say: be honest. Are you avoiding the implications of Hutton?
Maybe you should cut that shit out.
Validation
I continue to be wary of slamming a book I haven’t read, but not wary enough to stop posting. I mean, none of the idiots I cited in this post read the book before posting either.
Another great way of deciding whether a particular book is worth investment is:
“Do people I know to be intelligent like it? No?”*
So:
Chas Clifton’s “Arguments with Evidence – or Ethos?”
Peg’s “Trials of the Moon: a brief critique”
Fun stuff.
TPH
*I’m being persuaded by ethos, here 🙂
Dar Williams – “The Christians and the Pagans”
It’s that time of year. I love it.
I don’t love how Yuletide always seems to bring the self-important, chastising nature of many Pagans into greater relief, though.*
There’s tons of great examples of this sort of childishness among Pagans. But since it’s the season, let’s talk Dar Williams’ mewling crap-fest “The Christians and the Pagans.”
To me, this song is the typical Pagan prodigal-son wish fulfillment fantasy: family kicks out Pagan for being Pagan, Pagan convinces family that Pagan’s religion is real and magical and beautiful, family accepts Pagan for who s/he is.
Oh wait I forgot the part where the family TACITLY ADMITS THAT BEING PAGAN IS BETTER THAN BEING WHATEVER THEY ARE. Examples from the song: the presence of magical Pagan girl reminds the uncle to call his estranged brother, the innocent kid wants to be a Witch too by the end of the song, and of course, “now when Christians sit with Pagans, only pumpkin pies are burning!”
It’s always the magical Pagan girl that heals families and teaches children, isn’t it? And WHY GOD WHY is there always a pussy little jab at Christianity at the end?
It’s never enough for these Pagans to just be accepted. No, they must ALSO CONVINCE OTHERS of their cool enlightenment-cum-pathos-laden-victimhood-cum-generosity, don’t they?
I declare a moratorium on all Pagan/Christian dialogue. Not until we get our act together, I say. This song and all the others like it (the “no, the REAL Christmas is Pagan!!!!1!!1one! ‘Santa Claus is Pagan Too’” comes to mind) demonstrates to any outside observer with half a brain that our religion is just a shallow Mary Sue reworking of Christianity and nothing more.
Fuck this song. Joyous Yule!
TPH
*That article makes no sense, but feel free to indulge in its many gems of territoriality-as-interfaith-dialogue (“Let us remember…that we were here first”) and other puffery, if that’s your thing.
“Taking Down” Ronald Hutton
This guy, and his moronic view that people care about for some reason
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I don’t care deeply about the case for witchcraft survivals, so I’ll be quick.
I’m completely, 100% sure that Ronald Hutton made some mistakes in Triumph of the Moon. The book came out over 10 years ago, and scholarship has moved forward since then.
But:
1. I don’t remember Hutton ever closing the book on witchcraft survivals as soundly as his Pagan detractors make him out to have done.
I remember Hutton investigating and discarding very specific claims about some Pagan religions (Wicca) and withholding conclusions on others (1734/Robert Cochrane).
Read the goddamn preface: “The subtitle of this book should really be ‘a history of modern pagan witchcraft in South Britain (England, Wales, Cornwall, and Man), with some reference to it in the rest of the British Isles, Continental Europe, and North America.’ The fact that it claims to be a history and not the history is in itself significant…”
Seems like Hutton was more than willing to label TotM an “exploratory and tentative” work. Only an unsubtle reader would take it as gospel.
Commenters, please learn about how history is done. It’s not about black and white distinctions, it’s about research, argumentation, and debate.
2. Ben Whitmore seems like a good writer. I’m not going to read his book though, at least not immediately. Why? Because he is “an Alexandrian High Priest, Co-Freemason, Morris dancer, artist and software engineer,” and I’m sure all sorts of other things that don’t help me determine his academic credentials, experience, or qualifications.
I’m supposed to trust this guy WHY?
A Wiccan priest, a Mason, a Morris dancer…exactly the person I DON’T want teaching me Pagan history. Confirmation bias much?
3. Guys, what do you EXPECT Hutton to be wrong about exactly? That Wicca is the Old Religion? That there once existed a Pan-European Witch Cult? That everything Gerald Gardner said was true? That all civilization was once matriarchal? That well, maybe Gardner DID create Wicca, but OTHER witch traditions ARE unbroken magical traditions that go back to the Paleolithic?
All of these claims are stupid. They will always be wrong. They’re not wrong because Ronald Hutton’s secret agenda approves or disapproves of them.
They are wrong because they are absolutely nonsensical.
My head hurts.
TPH
Pagan “Unity” – why so forced?
Have you ever been to a Pagan Pride? I did, this year. Mine was extraordinarily divided: excluding the main rite, people only attended their own tradition’s rituals and events.
Commercially-speaking, Pagan Pride had universal appeal: everyone certainly shopped at more than one vendor booth. But religiously, most people seemed perfectly happy to just do (and see, and hear) their own thing.
Much lip service, however, was paid to “Pagan Unity,” despite the fact that clearly (judging from people’s actions) we’re not all the same anymore and we don’t want to be.*
Sorry.
(I’m not sorry.)
Asatruar don’t believe in the reincarnation that the Celts do. The Celts don’t believe in the elemental attributions that the Wiccans do. The Wiccans often don’t believe in the hard polytheism that the Reconstructionists do. The Reconstructionists don’t care about the Divine Feminine like the Reclaiming witches do. The Reclaiming witches….well, who cares what they think.
These are big, core differences. You can’t be a unified religion if your divisions are this deep.
I would think that if you were a real (in the sense of “historical”) Pagan, this wouldn’t bother you. Paganisms were local, not universal.
Maybe people are confusing our common past (our Neopagan one, the one that came from 19th and 20th century Romantic writers, magicians, and mystics entranced by the ancient Pagan past) with our much more diverse present?
Who cares about the reason though: division is healthy. We aren’t all one religion any more because we’ve come to very different conclusions and we are exploring them further. Case closed. So why are Pagans so excited by the idea of pagan “unity?”
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Probably the main reason we portray Paganism as unified is because we want legitimacy. We’re a little too invested in the idea of being taken seriously as a world religion.
Example: The Druid Network recently convinced the UK Charity Commission that they are both unified enough AND influential enough (lies) to be recognized as a charitable organization (apparently in the UK, this is paramount to “government recognition” of your religion). Despite the fact that TDN is actually a pretty small, inconsequential affair, Pagans worldwide are lauding this as a victory for our side.
I wonder whether a group of 300 or so people who really, really like Emma Restall Orr should be called a “charity” (although I guess some of them plant trees sometimes?). To be clear, it’s a group that has a mailing list and does rituals. It’s not a charity. But most of the Pagan coverage focuses on the religious recognition piece anyway (not that charity one) so we clearly care about showing the outside world we’re here and we’re queer more than anything else.
Even the interview with Phil Ryder on Meadowsweet and Myrrh barely mentions charity. Ironically, most of it is about defining Druidry. Or maybe it’s that Druidry can’t be defined. Or something.
What a triumph.
Apparently Pagans will do all sorts of things to be recognized as “official,” so if we want to be recognized as a real religion, that means we have to be unified. Unity will win us legitimacy, “official” recognition, and cool stuff like Pagan Pride, Pagan stores, Pagan sections in bookstores, etc.
I can see why people find unity valuable or psychologically comforting, but it’s dishonest. Just read that interview above: nothing unifies us all. Not polytheism. Not magic. Not the Goddess. Not even deeper things like similar values, mindsets, or worldviews. Just…nothing.
TPH
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*For a hilarious discussion of what happens when some Pagans don’t want to get unified, listen to episode 27 of Raven Radio. The funny stuff kicks in after about an hour.
Margot Adler on Elemental Castings 37
http://www.thorncoyle.com/podcasts/ElementalCastings_37_FPG_111110.m4a
41:00: “I would never have been a Gardnerian Wiccan if there had been a Hellenic Pagan group that was in my neighborhood.”
Ha!
TPH
The Myth of Paganism’s “Growth”
UPDATE:
From a member of the ARIS team: “ARIS was published in March 2009. The data were compiled in 2008.”
Post amended to reflect his corrections.
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We all know that Wicca will never be a popular religion, right?
Paganism won’t either.
People talk about the 2009 ARIS data a lot. Honestly, the oft-cited version released on the website wasn’t that useful for our purposes until recently, since it didn’t define Paganism using the terms our community recognizes (…or rather, the terms our community has failed to impress upon anyone.)
Instead, it lumped Wiccans, Pagans, and Druids in with:
“Scientology, New Age, Eckankar, Spiritualist, Unitarian-Universalist, Deist, Indian Religion, Santeria, [and] Rastafarians.”
Apparently statisticians think we’re all New Agers. Ouch.
People also talk about the 2008 Pew Forum data a lot. I don’t think it tells us there are 1.2M pagans. I think it tells us there are 803,040 Wiccans and Pagans, and 401,520…somethings (probably adherents of the New Age religions above) that none of us would call Pagan.
But anyway, in July I called the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC, the guys who did the ARIS survey) and got the breakdown of adherents by religion. I couldn’t tell anyone at the time, but now that the Statistical Yearbook is out for this year, I’m allowed to talk about it.
The broken-down ARIS data says…
There are 342,000 Wiccans in the US. There are 340,000 Pagans. With a standard of error of 0.5%, but the numbers agree with the pared-down Pew Forum ones, so I’m not too hung up about it.
So, 700-800,000 Pagans in the US as of 2006-2007. Not 10 million. Not 5 million. Not 3 million.
Really, that’s not a lot of Pagans. Also, it’s 2010. ARIS was published in 2009, but the work was compiled during 2008.
It’s been almost 3 years since these numbers were collected. A lot’s happened. What if Paganism has “peaked?”
Anecdotally speaking…I’m pretty sure it has. Certainly, Paganism isn’t growing at anywhere near the rate it was in the 90s. But actually, I’m very skeptical of the idea that Paganism is growing much at all.
Here are some of my reasons:
- Pagan and New Age stores are closing. From what I see, those that aren’t are offloading the Pagan/Wiccan/Magick stuff and switching back to Buddhism and Eckhart Tolle.
- In the 90s, we had Buffy. We had Charmed. Pagans were in the zeitgeist. What do we have now?
- For the majority of people in this day and age, the issues Paganism purports to address (disenchantment of the world, anomie, secularism) seem better ameliorated by either atheism or fundamentalism. Paganism could easily have been the third option…but it’s not.
- No one cares about feminism anymore. That robs us of a lot of our past vitality.
- According to the breakdown of the ARIS data I received from the ISSSC, many non-Pagan “New Age” religions have absolutely tanked. Scientology went from 55K adherents in 2001 to 25K in 2006. Actual card-carrying “New Agers” went from 68k to 15k (wow!) in the same period.
- Pagans are not immune from shrinkage, either. The number of Druids has actually decreased by about 5k since 2001, coming in at 33k that year but down to 29k in 2006.
- Wicca is growing, but at nowhere near the rate it was in the 90s. Assuming linear growth, the 90s saw Wicca expand by 152% per year (from 8k to 134k). 2001-2006’s linear growth rate was only 51% per year (130k to 342k).
- The current momentum in our movement is with the Recons, who are (if you can imagine) even less mainstream than the Witches. I mean, who wants to read books all the time?
- Why are only small publishers publishing our books? The good ones are coming out from the smallest-of-the-small, like Immanion.
- Why are all of our print magazines going away?
- Now that the true information about Wicca is more easily available than false ye-olde-religion stuff…who on Earth would join it?
There are a ton of other reasons. Maybe you could list some more in the comments.
But my main reason for believing Paganism isn’t growing, or won’t be growing for much longer, is just that “growth” fits in so well with the rest of the BS that we believe wholeheartedly.
Pagans are dreamers whose dreams have no basis in reality. The idea of a vital, growing Paganism fits in perfectly well with Pagan hopes and dreams and not at all with reality, so of course we’re completely in love with it. Just like we’re in love every other utterly-unfounded wish-fulfillment fantasy put forward over the past 60 years whose MO is to comfort us by separating us even further from a reality we can’t stand. It’s what we want. It’s what we need.
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Let’s go back to the top of this post. I truly believe Wicca will never be a world religion. It’s complete nonsense, and at least in America, not much more than a feel-good alternative to Christianity. By it’s nature, it’s something to be grown out of.
Why will Paganism never be a world religion? I suppose it’s possible, but really, true polytheisms are personal, local, complicated affairs. They don’t withstand attacks by universal, dogmatic monotheisms very well. I just don’t see the rise of the local cult happening anytime soon.
I say, as we start addressing our religions on a deeper level, we’re necessarily splintering further and further into smaller and smaller communities. I couldn’t be happier about this, because now that we’re not so fixated on agreeing with each other all the time, we’re finally approaching a semblance of depth in our practices. But it’s a terrible thing if you ever want to see Pagan community centers, Pagan clergy, or a Pagan president.
There is no Pagan unity. That’ll be the next post.
TPH
Witch’s Wit Ale
I don’t have readers yet, and the story is over, so this may be a post without a point.
But the last post wasn’t hateful enough, so I need to get my quota up.
Anyway, my contribution to the brouhaha is an excerpt from an email I was forwarded, written by either the lady who discovered the offending Witch’s Wit label or one of her mewling compatriots.
“Merry Meet All,
The Lost Abbey brewery released a new beer this month called “Wtch’s Wit”, and on the label is a picture of a Witch Burning at the Stake. I mean REALLY???????? I do not drink, and do not know this Brand anyway. But REALLY, A Burning Witch. And Again, WHERE does the HATE STOP?????????
Let us all Boycott this beer, and this Brewery for this Hate imagery they are using to sell there product, PLEASE. Below is some Links to the site and to write them a letter, and or call them with your/our message.”
I loved this mail so hard.
Let us all…be required to take a first grade Language Arts test before being allowed to practice “the Craft of the Wise.”
TPH
Defining Paganism
Many people have tried to “define” Paganism recently, as though the definition is in dispute.
If you look up “Pagan” in the dictionary, you will see a lot of definitions. Most of them are not useful.
Most are polemical, or require non-Pagans to start a research project to figure out the terminology. Even most Pagans can see that the more benign definitions, like “earth-centered religion” or “animistic religion,” clearly don’t apply universally.
But one definition of “Pagan” is common to all: someone who worships multiple gods.
That’s really it, in my book.
Nothing about spells. Nothing about archetypes. Nothing about witches or healing or oppressed minorities or the divine feminine principle.
“Someone who worships multiple gods” is the definition used by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and other experts. These are the people who know what they are talking about, and whose professions require them to term things clearly. When these people talk about “ancient pagan cultures,” they are talking about the polytheistic cultures that existed in many parts of the world before the coming of the various monotheisms.
I wish we could all agree on this simple definition and move forward.
I really don’t think this is so hard. The problem, as I see it, is that many people would like to use the word “Pagan” to mean something it doesn’t.
New Age is not paganism. Witchcraft is not paganism. The many non-devotional components of Wicca are not paganism. Ceremonial magic is not paganism.* Often, they may be components of someone’s pagan religion, but they certainly aren’t the same thing.
Now, the meanings of some words do change. I’m not debating to the contrary. Let’s be honest though: the meaning of “pagan” HASN’T changed.
Why? Because while many people know the scholastic definition of Pagan, the one used to describe ancient peoples as worshipers of multiple gods, no one knows what a (modern-day) Pagan is. No one in the general public, anyway: they probably know that ancient Romans were Pagan because they had a lot of gods, but I guarantee you if you start talking about any of the modern day Pagan religions (the ones with the magick and the Goddess and the vibrations), effectively no one will know what you’re talking about.
Whatever silly little additions we’ve tried to tack on to the definition of paganism haven’t been accepted by the culture around us. It’s at the point where you pretty much have to be (or have been in the past) a Wiccan to know what a Wiccan is in the first place, much less to know that most Wiccans also consider themselves to be Pagans.
Meanwhile, we have a simple, elegant definition, used by academics and other smart people and at least recognized by the public…that we just have to try and fiddle with.
We can choose to make up our own definitions of commonly-understood words, as we seem to want to do with “Pagan,” but we can’t expect to be understood outside of our tiny, tiny community. Why not just use words in the normal way? The scholarly definition of “pagan” is probably the most positive, unbiased definition that the general public is capable of understanding anyway. Why not use it?
If you worship a plurality of gods, you’re a pagan. If you, as a long-time Wiccan High “Priestess” recently told me, “have always had a problem with the concept of Deity,” you aren’t Pagan.
I say, as a movement, we should be past this. We know what we are, and accurate terms exist if we choose to use them. I think we’re looking to redefine the meaning of Paganism because we want a word that unifies us and “builds our community” or whatever. Newsflash: we don’t believe, act, or worship the same, so we aren’t unified. But that’s another topic.
Use Pagan if you worship multiple gods. If you only use the terms you personally “resonate” with, as opposed to accurate terms, remember that you’re quite possibly giving someone else (who doesn’t “resonate”) the wrong impression.
And if you can’t be understood, why bother defining in the first place?
TPH
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*As well, having liberal political views is not a necessary part of paganism. Having sex-positive views is not a necessary part of paganism. Positivity and “light” are not necessary parts of paganism. Pro-choice views are not a necessary part of paganism. Even acceptance of homosexuality is not a necessary part of paganism.
