People. What a bunch of bastards.

Brendan wrote a post criticizing deep ecologists and environmentalists for being misanthropes. Sigh. This was my response:

Thanks for this post, Brendan. I see where you're coming from, and you're definitely not the first person to accuse ecologists and environmentalists of being misanthropic or anti-human. But I do have a few problems with your characterization of the deep ecologist's position on this.

First of all, I've never heard any environmentalist or deep ecologist seriously propose killing or sterilizing individuals as a solution to the population crisis. (Except maybe out of frustration or despair, speaking in an emotional and intentionally hyperbolic way. Do you have any citations for where you've seen this claim being made as a serious proposal?) There's one very good reason for this: the study of population dynamics in the science of ecology clearly links population growth to resource availability. This applies to humans as well. In other words, the problem of human over-population is directly related to our ability to, and even our obsession with, extracting increasing value out of our available resources. An organized campaign to kill or sterilize humans in order to decrease our numbers would be just as ineffective as similar attempts to control animal and plant populations through limited hunting or harvesting (in other words, not very effective at all).

Second of all, as Naess says in his principles of deep ecology, the flourishing of human life and cultures is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. Since no one seriously believes that a society that sanctions organized killing or forced sterilization of individuals could be considered a flourishing culture in any respect (and, by definition, human life cannot flourish if it is prevented or prematurely ended), this to me immediately suggests that Naess has in mind some other solution than the one you ascribe to him. (In fact, your claim that he is a misanthrope is directly contradicted by his very first principle, which affirms that human life and well-being have value in and of themselves.) He talks at length about what this alternate solution is, namely a fundamental change in our worldview from one that sees resource extraction and endless growth as the primary goal of human society, to one that sees the natural world as valuable in its own right and emphasizes quality of life over quantitative measures of "progress." He is explicitly concerned for the quality of life for humans as well as nonhuman beings and believes that the quality of human life can be greatly improved by adopting principles of deep ecology; that by adopting these principles, the human population will naturally bring itself into proper balance with its supporting environments (just as happens with every other species on the planet). This does not sound like misanthropy to me, unless we assume that misanthropy means promoting a philosophy or worldview that happens to be at odds with the one that is currently held by the mainstream. In other words, if this is misanthropy, then we might as well say that refusing to let a child have ice cream every night for dinner is child abuse.

Thirdly, you rightly say that "the idea that curbing or reversing population growth, is all we have to do to fix global warming, species extinction, and climate change, is pure misanthropy." But you yourself point out that, among those ecologists and environmentalists you quote, over-population is only one concern among many and that curbing over-population is only one of several different suggested changes that need to be made. Naess, for instance, lists changes to "policies [that] affect basic economic, technological, and ideological structures" in his sixth principle. Foreman mentions the problem of over-population only once among his sixteen principles, and even when he does so he does not make any explicit suggestion about how this problem should be dealt with, only that it must be acknowledged to be a problem. So again, I am not sure who you are referring to, other than a straw man, when you argue that we can't reduce all environmental issues to the problem of over-population. I'm not aware of anyone who says that we can or should. Even your very first quote, from Ehrlich, does not suggest that all of these various problems, which can be traced back to over-population, therefore have only one single solution -- rather, he is pointing out what he sees as being a common cause. To use another emotionally charged metaphor, this would be like saying that because we can trace STDs, unwanted pregnancies and rape back to sex, that sex is therefore inherently bad and the "only solution" to all of these problems is abstinence-only education. We know that this kind of simplistic thinking does not work. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge a common thread that runs through all of these related issues; in fact, acknowledging what these problems have in common can give us the perspective necessary to approach these related problems in more practical ways.

Fourthly, in general I think that the accusation that nature writers in the American tradition are "anti-civilization" is problematic because it takes for granted that American society is the prototype of civilization. It's important to place these writers in context and realize that they were critiquing the society in which they lived, and not necessarily "civilization" as a whole in all its possible forms. Many of them were in fact challenging their contemporaries to work towards new ways of living in society. Again, Naess explicitly points this out in his principles of deep ecology by stating that we need to rework the way we imagine human culture and that, if we are successful, society will look very different from how it does today. I tend to give these writers and thinkers at least enough credit to believe they are intelligent enough to recognize they are writing from a particular perspective and in a particular context. I also happen to agree with many of them that we should be critical of certain aspects of our current society. Again, this is only misanthropy if we assume that criticizing the way humans currently live in some cultures (namely, Western industrialized cultures) is equivalent to rejecting all possible forms of human society.

I agree with you that there are underlying class and race issues here, and that the problem is not how many of us there are, but how resources are distributed. I find it kind of weird that you are criticizing some of the very writers who have put principles of simple living and voluntary poverty at the center of their critiques of current society, for the very sake of emphasizing a better quality of life for everyone. (There are some people who would claim that simple living is itself misanthropic, because it represents a withdrawal from society and a refusal to engage in relationships of trade via the market economy that dominates most social interactions today. Needless to say, I think those people are full of shit.) There's plenty of evidence that principles of simple living, coupled with access to education and equal opportunities (especially for women) along with adequate medical care, play a very big role in decreasing population growth naturally. In fact, projections of population growth have repeatedly over-estimated -- back in the 1980s, for instance, it was believed that we were going to hit 10 billion people three years ago. It turns out that providing for the health and well-being of humans is a far more effective curb on population growth than any campaign of killing or sterilization. (And this is true among other animals as well -- for instance, the hunting of cougars in the Pacific Northwest in order to curb the population actually resulted in an increase in injuries and deaths during human-cougar encounters because such hunting destabilized familial and territorial relationships, whereas when the cougar population was left to regulate itself without the interference of human hunters, the result was an increase in the cougar population but a decrease in human-cougar encounters because there were fewer "rogue" young male cougars wandering into suburban neighborhoods in search of new territory.)

Jeff tells me that I really need to end this comment by emphasizing that I value our friendship and that your blog is one of the only ones I actually still read these days. :) Seriously. Sorry for the comment-dump. It's just, deep ecology has been a bit of an obsession for me over the past few years, and it seems to me that accusations of misanthropy leveled at environmentalists outnumber actual instances of misanthropy among environmentalists by at least 100 to 1 (but probably closer to 10,000 to 1 or maybe even 1 million to 1). So.... it made me a little sad to see you doing it. :( Again, I value our friendship. Please don't be mad at me.

Seriously, though. Who takes potshots at John Muir or Arne Naess? Naess spent the end of his life basically living in a hut on a mountain -- hardly an example of extravagant living at the expense of exploited developing countries. And Muir actively worked to establish a national parks system that would preserve natural wilderness environments all over the country and make them available for free (or almost free) to everyone. There are way better targets than these guys if you want to complain about classism and racism in modern Western society.

Thought Scatterlings - On Prosperity and Opportunity

Yesterday I ran headlong into writer's block when I sat down to work on my upcoming column for SageWoman (I think I wrote about two and a half sentences, literally). Last week was an intense week of writing for me, with more than 10,000 words of spiritual journaling on top of the blog posts for Meadowsweet that I was working on. So it's probably natural that this week all I want to do is sit around and window shop online for pretty things. Because, did I mention, Jeff is officially out of debt!

Okay, not exactly. His last payment to the debt consolidation folks for the joint debt from his previous marriage was this month. He's still paying off the debt for the time-share (plus the idiotic monthly maintenance fee), so our next project is to start on the legal paperwork to get rid of that white elephant. And of course, I'm still paying off my student loans. But still, it's a huge weight off. I actually had a bit of a breakdown last night, for the first time crying about money because I felt good about our financial situation. I'd spent much of the afternoon daydreaming about someday being able to build a Tumbleweed Tiny House, and looking at the cost and realizing that, yes, it actually is in the realm of possibility to someday be able to do that. Not for a good five to ten years, but the way things are going right now... I might actually be a homeowner by the time I'm forty. The thought boggles the mind. I know the American Dream/Promise/Lie is that everyone can get a great job and become a homeowner with a little suburban spot with a yard and a white picket fence, but that's never been my goal and part of me never really believed that I would ever get there. (When you grow up wanting to be a poet, you kind of reconcile yourself to poverty and obscurity right from the start.)

The suburban home is not my dream now, either, but what is my dream is to have a small cottage (like, if we took our current apartment and squished it to make it two floors instead of one, but with the same basic square footage) with an outdoor deck and small garden (with maybe a fire pit and small stone circle) and, beyond that, some forested land that is part of a larger green belt or park. I imagine myself sitting in that cottage with the windows open, drinking tea and working on my writing while listening to the sounds of the natural world outside, or going out onto the deck at dawn to do some yoga in the fresh morning air, or taking a walk in the forest in the late afternoon... And I'm noticing that not many of these daydreams involve Jeff, so I guess he'd still be going in to the office to work! Or, another thing we talked about, was having a kind of "community" of tiny houses, so that he could work from home but still go out to his "office," a separate little shed furnished as a study and/or library. Because, you know, I still need my solitude, and I think I'd get restless always having him hanging around the house... (Also, having a separate office space would be better for tax purposes, since then you could count that as a business expense; we can't do that now, even though I work from home, because all the rooms I use for my work are technically "multi-purpose".) And maybe I could have my own little "study" too, and they could then serve as guest rooms for when we have family visiting, so the kids have somewhere to stay and, once they're grown up, could even come and bring their partners. That way, we could reduce our carbon footprint by only heating those spaces when they're in use, or only using them during warmer weather when we don't need heat, instead of having a sprawling house with all the rooms always being heated whether or not we're using them. Since it never gets all that cold out here, we wouldn't even have to worry about pipes freezing or anything, like Melanie does with the farmhouse up in New Hampshire when it's not in use during the winter. The point is, we could start small and then slowly add on one tiny house/shed at a time -- and when we're older and retired, if we don't need them anymore, we could even end up renting them out like B&B rooms (or like that yurt that we stayed in this past summer).

But all of that is way down the road. The point is, there is a road and we're on it. We're not pulled over stuck in a ditch anymore. And if we save money and get a little bit of land where I can garden and a little house that we own, then no matter how old and poor we get, at least we'll have a roof over our heads and a place to grow some food.

Because I do get a little worried about what it will be like to be old. I plan on living a long time, and so does Jeff, but he is ten years older than I am to begin with and women tend to live longer than men in any case. And as much as his kids are awesome, it's not like I expect them to take care of me when I'm old once he's gone. And I don't really think my own family, like my brother or cousins, would feel like it was their responsibility to do that, either. And in any case, I'd feel a bit bad about being a burden on them. (The one exception being if Dan goes on to be a millionaire fancy-pants and never does end up having kids, in which case, hello, Mr. Millionaire, it's your big sis, who always loved and supported you... ;)

Speaking of Dan, he emailed me this morning to brag about this really cool course he's taking this coming semester, the Sociology of Consumerism. It looks fascinating! In his email, he said, "You'd be proud," and damn it, I am. Super proud! When he was little, he always wanted to be rich and he was always fascinated with money.... but as he's grown up, that part of him has really matured into a thoughtful, conscientious person who wants to understand other people and their aspirations and how they define and conceive of wealth and success... I get a little bit teary-eyed at how awesome he is, and how much I admire him for leaving a crazy-well-paying job to go back to grad school to study this stuff.

And of course, I'm also jealous. I would love to go back to school. But I think during those seven long years of always being broke, something in me got broken. I feel such resistance against and disdain for academia and how they fleece people, even though I love the atmosphere of those kinds of centers of learning and the opportunity to devote my time to reading and discussing with other people who are also there to learn and think. Every time I think about going back to school, I immediately shut that idea down because it would be insane to take out more loans to finance my education, especially when I'm mostly just interested in learning, not necessarily how a higher degree could help me get a better paying job. Case in point: there's an amazing ecological and wilderness awareness program at a school only about forty minutes away; the program is a year-long study of various aspects of wilderness survival training, hands-on naturalist training and a study of the philosophy and spirituality of nature-centered indigenous and modern cultures. It's pretty much perfect (and the school is accredited, unlike some of these Pagan-based programs). But my immediate reaction is: well, I could never do that, because I can't afford it.

There are a lot of things that I have that reaction to, and I wonder when I started to respond to life that way. I know that living below the poverty line for so long was, in many ways, very good for me and helped me to ground in who I really am beneath all the "stuff" of modern consumerist culture, helped me to ground in simplicity and see the beauty of the world just as it was. I lived a very happy but monkish life for quite a while (that should qualify me for something or give me some street cred, shouldn't it?). But at the same time, I look at my brother and I see how he's getting to pursue his dreams because he put money first when it mattered, and now he has the luxury and resources to do what he wants with it. (Granted, as a grad student who is now deeper in debt than I ever was, I have a feeling he'll be getting a good dose of the simple, monkish life himself.) But I'm not even talking about the money, so much as the attitude. There's an attitude that anything is possible, that you can take risks and it won't be that bad, because you'll always have a support system, something to fall back on. Except, I've never had that. (Moving back into an abusive home where people treat you as a burden and a failure even if you're just visiting for more than a few days... that's a no.)

Maybe it also has to do with the fact that I don't drive, so I never had this sense of freedom that, no matter how bad things got, I could just break away from it all and go do something else, even if only for a little while. I never got to go to any parks or "escape into wilderness" all those years when I was poor, even though it would have only cost me a tank of gas to get into the mountains. Instead, I had to take every opportunity to go when others would be willing to take me along -- like family vacations -- and hope that I would get a chance to spend some alone time in nature. So in some ways, I guess I trained myself to put other people's needs ahead of mine, or at least to put their dreams ahead of my own and be practical about what I could or couldn't do. I got used to being treated like I couldn't really take care of myself or be independent if I didn't drive or didn't have a lot of money. There was no point in trying to make plans for myself, beyond very modest plans, because I didn't have the means to act on them in any case.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like the choice not to drive -- which was largely because I couldn't afford a car or the insurance, and my parents weren't willing to give me a car and pay for my insurance like they did with my brother -- played a very large role in whether or not other people saw me as an "adult"... And the only time that wasn't true was when I was waitressing, since a lot of the people I worked with either used public transportation or couldn't afford a car. But then, a requirement of being promoted to a management position was having a car, and I was once offered a promotion only to have it taken back because I didn't.

And this brings me back to those thoughts I've had before about living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in a settled, consumer culture. Between waitressing for tips and having to rely on the chance opportunities that came my way, I very much had to learn how to see bounty and prosperity where others might have seen scarcity or restriction, and to find ways to embody generosity precisely because I knew how much I relied on the generosity of others. But I also got used to seeing restrictions where other people saw potential because I couldn't afford to plant seeds and sit and wait for them to grow so I could harvest them later... because in the meantime, I'd starve. (This is a convoluted metaphor.)

I wonder to what extent our online lives are pushing us in this direction, too. It seems like the people who do manage to make a living being "online content creators" do it in a kind of hunter-gatherer fashion, relying on viral memes and the chance that people will buy their t-shirts or donate on their webpage or share their links to earn them ad-sense royalties... It's a much different model than someone who goes into the office everyday, works normal hours and gets a reliable paycheck as a result. Sometimes I feel like a hunter-gatherer who married into an agricultural family — Jeff with his 9-to-5 and the kids he has to support whether he has a job or not — and so I find myself sometimes feeling oddly restless and wanting to just move and do whatever inspiration urges me to do, and other times feeling somewhat panicked because I don't know how to settle down, focus on regular consistent work and trust the harvest to come in, because part of me doesn't think I'm very good at it.

Maybe I should find a harvest goddess or god to help me out with these issues. Maybe this is why my relationship with Brigid has been weird over the past few years (because I think she is much more a settled, harvest kind of goddess than a wild goddess like Artemis). While I trust in the fecundity of the earth to provide me what I need, I don't necessarily trust the other people I'm in community with to portion out something that is fair, because I've almost never been in a familial relationship where that was the case. I've always been the runt who gets the leftovers, and while as a kid I could get used to it and make do on what little I did have, as an adult who is now supposed to take those leftovers and hand them over to the stepkids because, you know, children are the future or whatever... It's the worst of both societies, in which scarcity is forced on some so that others may prosper, but with no expectation that those who are prosperous will also be generous in their turn.

So, I think a goal for 2013 for me should be: re-learn how to drive. I'm on Jeff's insurance already, anyway, and during the week his car just sits in the garage while he bikes or takes the bus to work. I'm not a huge fan of driving for lots of reason (many of them ecological), but maybe as a symbol of independence and freedom within this particular society I need to prove to myself and to others that I don't always have to put everyone else's plans and needs before my own, that I can go after the things that I want in my life and I have the means to get there. (And that goes for biking more around the city, too, though I was starting to do that a lot more last fall anyway and now I'm just waiting for the weather to get a bit better again so I'm not driving around in the dark and/or cold.)

Okay then.

Problem solved, writer's block? Can we get back to work now?


~
ETA: Obviously this whole "feeling good about money" thing wasn't meant to last... Figures today we'd get a bunch of bat-shit-crazy emails from the EW stamping her foot and demanding impotently that Jeff spend his money according to her whims. ::eyeroll::

PAGANS..... IN..... SPACE...

Someone on G+ this morning shared a link to this post on "Bringing Back the Gods," with the comment that if Pagans are "nature worshippers" that see the gods merely as extensions of natural forces, then when humans begin to travel extensively in space we'll have to leave our gods behind.

(a) I had no idea that there weren't any natural forces in space! I guess the astrophysicists are all going to have to get new jobs. ::headdesk::

(b) Contrary to what this commenter and another (who responded to him in agreement) seem to suggest, "culture" is not necessarily any more portable than "nature." Culture is not a purely human phenomenon but arises from our relationship with place, and it is to a certain extent inseparable from our sense of place. When our place in the world or the universe changes, our culture changes and adapts accordingly. Whether we want to admit it or not, traveling in space extensively is going to fundamentally change how we live as human beings and what our relationship with the universe is; it should be no surprise, then, that this would have an effect on our relationship with the gods. We may even feel a sense of exile or diaspora that far surpasses any experience of an immigrant who has moved from the homeland of their ancestors to a new country or continent.... And understanding the gods as aspects of nature (or at least as having natural aspects) may help us articulate and grapple with that reality far more than a simple insistence that if we can bring our portable cultural trappings with us, then everything must be the same.

This idea needs more unpacking. I'll have the chance to do that later this month, since we're doing an FF&C episode on "nature-centered spirituality in space," thanks to an awesome prompt from Finn:

Space! That is, can earth-centered spirituality transform into cosmos-centered spirituality? Also, what new myths will emerge now that we're even closer to finding similar Earth-like planets (I mean, think of all the stories we've told that take place in space since we landed on the moon)? And if you want more weird news, there's always crazy stuff happening in astrophysics and cosmology.

These are all really good questions, that deserve more thoughtful answers than "nature is, like, rain and shit, and humans are entirely separate and separable from it, right?"

Notes for following up:

• Several directions we could take this, some of which would require simply too much prep for an hour-long episode, but could provide some good jumping off places...
• Begin the discussion by looking at the effects on religion and culture more broadly of diasporic and nomadic communities here on this planet.
• What do we know of the effects on religion/culture of places that were largely insular until brought into contact with the rest of the world? (I'm thinking probably mostly of isolated tribal groups, but also Japan could be an example of this...)
• Look at the spirituality of the desert — what impact will the vast apparent emptiness of space have on the human psyche and our perception of the gods? Our relationship with "nothingness" and "emptiness" are themselves relationships with aspects of nature.

A few years ago, I got Jeff that book on "desert spirituality" because the desert has always been such a powerful place for him, so maybe I can get him to revisit that. Meanwhile, I might be able to look into the topic of diasporic/nomadic cultures a bit more. I've already started collecting resources on "religion in science fiction," since many sci-fi stories (whether books, TV or film) involve religious aspects, some of them even polytheistic. So looking at that subject might also help us think about how religion might be "out there," or at least think about how we think about it.

Mini-Subpost on Collective Nouns

I haven't read the P. Sufenas Virius Lupus post the G+er linked to, but I did skim the first page or so fairly quickly and it seems to be brimming with some weird oversimplifications (including the conclusion that those of us who are "nature-centered" Pagans are just trying to hide our polytheism because we're embarrassed by it.... wtf?). But one bit I did notice was his complaint about someone referring to theology as "reasoning about the Divine" instead of "reasoning about the gods."

I use terms like Divine and Spirit and Numinous, sometimes capitalized and sometimes not, often enough that I feel like I can at least address this issue. (Jeff probably has more expertise on this than I do, but these are my thoughts.)

It's perfectly possible to use a singular collective noun to refer to a collection of individuals.

See, for example:

"I love chickens."
vs.
"I love chicken."
vs.
"Scientists believe the chicken evolved from dinosaurs, coming before the egg."


Let's be clear here: The reasoning that "Christians have stolen everything but our polytheism; polytheism is now the only thing that makes us different, and therefore it defines us" is not a good reason to be a polytheist. There are lots of good reasons to be a polytheist (especially if you don't feel the need to let everyone know how "hard" your polytheism is — that's becoming as distasteful to me as the guy who's always going around asking people to feel how ripped his abs are — ew, no thanks). But I digress.

There are lots of good reasons to be polytheist. But that isn't one of them. That is a crappy, immature reason.

More on Reconstructionism as a Religious Methodology

Seren,

Thanks for your response! I was hoping someone with more "insider insight" would jump into the conversation. :) A lot of what you say makes sense and helps to put my impression of CR as an outsider to the community into some perspective. I think perhaps it's the lack of books written by CRs about what CRs "actually do," as you point out, that can sometimes leave those of us not immediately part of that community with the impression that a lot of CR is all talk and little actual living practice. (There's no reason why CR has to prove itself or make its practices available to people outside of the community, of course! I'm just saying that I wonder if that's one of the places where the confusion arises.)

I'm also interested in what the general principles for the CR approach are, exactly, and if there's somewhere where these are actually outlined and explored in detail. In the CR FAQ there are references here and there (usually when answering questions about who does or does not count as CR) to a community with a shared set of principles.... but I haven't been able to find a place where those principles are actually explained and clarified. You yourself mention how Rua's book "doesn't represent CR, and at times represents concepts and ideas that are antithetical to it." I haven't read the book, so it might be hard to answer this question: but I wonder if you'd be able to actually say what those concepts or ideas are that are antithetical to CR? Is it the methodology he uses, or the conclusions he comes to, or both?

The Fomorian issue is a good one of what I was talking about when I said that some of the criticisms seem to be theological rather than historical in nature. My own academic background is in comparative religious studies, and I've done field work that involved observation and interviews with people in various religious communities, as well as primary and secondary source research of historical traditions (for instance, I worked as a research assistant for a time with a professor studying the propagandist literature produced in Germany during the Protestant Reformation). In my experience in the field of comparative religious studies (and this may be different from the more historical/archeological approach), it is notoriously difficult to extrapolate theological concepts from cultural artifacts alone. Your review of Rua's book (thanks for the link!) goes into a bit more detail about why you think some of his conclusions are wrong and what evidence he doesn't take into account that you think he should have.... but it still seems to me that the question about whether or not the Fomorians are "evil"/adversarial or not is a theological question, and not something that can be definitively settled purely through academic examination of the remaining historical evidence. It may be that there were different opinions and approaches to that question even among the ancient Celts themselves. There is very often a distinction between the "official" view of a tradition's clergy or educated class, for instance, and that of the lay or working class, and in both cases some or even most of the evidence for these differences may be lost to time, with perhaps only the preserved "official" version or the wide-spread lay version surviving, or enough of both surviving as to leave us with only a vague and seemingly contradictory view. Sometimes the very same cultural artifacts (like sacred texts, ritual objects, designated sacred temples or spaces, etc.) were interpreted in vastly different ways by different members of the same religious community. And this makes drawing conclusions about the specific theologies of religious communities that are no longer accessible or able to speak for themselves often extremely difficult.

I'm inclined to agree with the idea that viewing the Fomorians as "evil" is a simplified and probably inaccurate view.... but that's in part because of my own contemporary liberal tendencies towards inclusivity and tolerance (you could even accuse me of being a bit P.C.) that makes the concept of "evil" in general distasteful and not very creditable to me. I'm completely willing to admit that I have no way of definitively proving if my ancestors held that same view, and they very well may not have. It is possible, after all, that even without taking all of the evidence into account, Rua may have inadvertently come to the correct conclusion. My impression is that the legacy of modern historical research is actually full of that kind of thing happening, while historians with very sound methodology can still end up with the conclusions that were in retrospect wrong or biased in some way.

Which again brings me back to the question of what exactly are the shared principles or approaches that CR uses? I've read through the CR FAQ and nothing there is all that different from the approach that I take - but clearly, I find my own balance of scholarly research, community feedback and personal interpretive and experiential engagement. (I am definitely not just haphazardly throwing together whatever bits and pieces I happen to like, which seems to be CR's biggest beef with non-reconstructionist folks.) To what extent, in your experience, does the CR criticism of non-CR approaches depend more on the conclusions that are reached than on the actual method of reaching them? I'm not so much saying that CR seems restrictive - but that it seems [i]selective[/i] in a very specific way. And I'm interested in what actually guides or informs that specific way of being selective.

(One example, for instance, is the very idea that the starting point is the question, "how did they [our ancestors] do it?" [i]Why[/i] is that the starting point? What assumptions about the the concept of authenticity itself underlie the belief that ancient cultural traditions are more authentic than modern ones, or that academic scholarship is more authentic than UPG? You have to start somewhere, sure, but I'm really curious about the reasons for starting there in particular. My guess is that trying to thoroughly answer that question will give more insight into the more subtle, less conscious ways in which CRs balance methodology, UPG and community-identity.)

Again, sorry this is so long! Thanks for indulging me with all my questions! :)

---

Sunflower,

Thanks for these links! I've now spent a good hour reading through a bunch of these old threads - with the result that I feel like maybe I'm being a bit redundant. ;) A lot of the points that Catja brings up really hit the nail on the head as far as what I'm trying to get at. I'm not at all a professional scholar like she is, but my experience in academia pretty much jives with her experience: that (a) modern scholarship thrives on "the gaps" which open up new possibilities for exploration and study, (b) a working, living religion will inevitably have to make certain leaps in order to overcome such gaps, and so (c) modern research is not the same process as reconstructing a religion, and you're going to run into contradictions and conflicts if you try to make them the same. Since my academic background is actually in the comparative study of religions, I tend to like to poke at "the gap" represented by point (c) in CR and other Recon communities because the scholar in me is like, "Oooh! Unexamined assumptions that guide the evolution of a unique religious community! Fetch me my research poking stick!" Which I guess can make me seem kind of obnoxious. :-/ But really it's just because I'm really fascinated by those questions and, regardless of what my own spiritual tradition is, I really enjoy finding out what other religious communities do and why.

Seren is taking the brunt of my questions right now, unfortunately, because I tend to bombard the people who will tolerate my questioning with demands that they explain all those other people who won't. ;) But like I said, I hope I'm not being too clumsy or hurtful in my enthusiasm.

---

Finn,

That may well be, and I definitely didn't mean to imply that CRs don't ever have authentic relationships with deities. I guess I was just saying that, for me personally anyway, it would be a real stumbling block to have to constantly worry about how my relationship with deity measured up against the expectations of the community and the standards of academic research, especially when both of those tend to be moving targets a lot of the time. Perhaps this is actually why CRs tend to be quieter and more careful about sharing their personal practice? And maybe a few folks (like Erynn Rowan Laurie, f'ex) being a bit bolder and willing to share would help mitigate the misconception and even alleviate some of that anxiety? It's a delicate subject, and very personal, though, so....


I think you're probably right about the role that the clergy (in this case, the Druids) played in establishing and maintaining a structured religious tradition in ancient Celtic societies - though, like I mentioned to Seren above, there is almost always also some discrepancies and differences of opinion between a community's educated class and its lay/working class. My point is more that, even with the Druids acting as a class of informed tradition-keepers who built up a collective body of practice and theology (or at least, theology to the extent that they did) - this is still very different from the way modern academics approach historical/scholarly research today. Very different. Sunflower's links to Catja's stuff above says it way better than I could, though, but that's basically my point.

---

Darkhawk,

I think this is a really good point - and that your footnote is also right on track. I think it's also important to remember, when striving to be "scholarly" in one's approach, that actual academics go through 3 - 7+ years of additional training and education above and beyond undergrad in order to be accepted members of the academic community. Much of that additional study is learning the processes (and limits) of the academic community itself. For that reason alone, academic work is not [i]really[/i] available to absolutely everyone - there is always going to be a lot of reliance by non-academics (even in, or especially in, Recon) on what academics are able to make available to the general public in ways that can be readily and widely understood, let alone practically applied to reconstructing a religion.

But depending too much on the divine inspiration of those who have a god-phone is a big problem, you're absolutely right. It's the other extreme that you can too easily swing towards. One of the original draws for me about Paganism was that it put a good deal of emphasis on making the tools available to anyone and everyone to kind of "build your own god-phone" (to overstretch the metaphor ;)) - in other words, to give you the tools and practices to help you cultivate a direct relationship with the divine for yourself. I'm of the belief that this is something anyone can do, and that there aren't just chosen individuals who have a better connection to the divine than others.... But it is, like academic work, something that requires a certain degree of training, practice and on-going commitment. For that reason, it doesn't [i]really[/i] avoid the same problem as the scholarly approach. There is the same caveat to divine inspiration as there is for academic work - in theory it can be available to anyone, but in practice not everyone will be willing or able to make the necessary commitment.



This is one reason that I really dislike the term "UPG" and how it's used, and tend to avoid using it myself if I can. I like to refer to a person's "interpretive and experiential engagement" instead. Why? Because there is really no such thing as an entirely individualized, private "UPG." All interpretations and experiences are interpretations or experiences [i]of[/i] something - and they are always influenced in one way or another by the socio-cultural contexts of the people having the experience or making the interpretation. That is why it is an interpretive or experiential [i]engagement[/i] - a person is engaging with something else, either a deity, a landscape, a human community, a cultural symbol, or some combination of these things or any number of others. An experience or interpretation might be more or less unique to that individual, but it is never entirely and purely solitary.

So the distinction between UPG as private or solitary, and academic/scholarly work as the primary corroborative approach to developing a shared community understanding is, I think, a false one. There are many, many ways in which communities can build a shared spiritual tradition that does not rely on or borrow from the methods and processes of academia. I bristle a bit when Recons/CRs talk about UPG as though it were entirely private and solitary in distinction from the community approach of academic scholarship. To me, this seems to ignore the fact that an individual's interpretive framework of their experiences is always going to be shaped by their membership in one or more communities, and so the way they integrate and understand these moments of personal "gnosis," inspiration or imagination cannot be entirely separated from the cultural or communal contexts they belong to.

Rather, I think it's more likely that those moments designated as "UPG" just tend to be more deeply influenced by modern culture than by the ancient pre-Christian cultures that the Recons/CRs are striving to reconstruct. When a person has a sudden inspiration about how modern physics and Jungian psychology (both modern, scientifically-grounded theories)might work together to explain a dream they had recently, it's called UPG. When a person has a sudden insight into how the connection between two pieces of archeological evidence help to explain the meaning of some ancient text (which may itself have been a poem or dream recorded by some long-dead priest), it's called research. The difference is in the relative value that the Recon/CR community places on the cultural artifacts and perspectives involved.

That said, I don't have much experience with non-CR Recons, and only a little bit of experience of CR at that. But I totally agree that CRs, IMLE, tend to be the most UPG/mysticism-friendly of the Recon communities.

Brighid and Otherworld Goddesses

Soliwo left a message in the Meadowsweet Commons asking a bit more about Brighid in her dark aspect, and possible connections with Persephone. Below is what I wrote in response:

Soliwo, It's good to hear from you!

And what a wonderful synchronicity that you've shared about Persephone! A couple weeks ago, I received a new DSLR camera as an early solstice present, and one of my first projects with it was experimenting in low light conditions to test the limits of its settings and sensor quality. Inspired by some of photographs I'd seen recently and an impulse purchase of a pomegranate at Whole Foods - I decided to do a series inspired by Persephone's story! I've shared the results here if you want to see them. :)

It's interesting, because I don't really have a relationship with Persephone at all. Maybe it's because of being woefully over-educated in the Greek myths when I was younger, but for me the Greek deities have that same "abstract" feeling as you describe feeling towards the Celtic gods. For a long time, I felt that abstraction about the Celtic gods, too, and it was only after shifting my perspective that I realized maybe there was a different way of approaching Celtic gods than Greek ones.... if that makes any sense. I'm still exploring, so I'm not sure I can go into detail about what that difference might be, but in my experience the Celtic deities are much more like complex, multi-faceted people with overlapping roles and relationships (and all of them very closely tied into the natural world), whereas the Greek deities seem more like personifications of cultural movements, forces or aspects (and more "civilized" or urban than wild or connected to the wilderness).

I think the gods, like ordinary people, are influenced by the cultures they belong to and the landscapes they inhabit. And like people, they can also change and adapt over time. It's good to be wary of cultural (mis)appropriation, but I wouldn't worry too much about eclecticism and syncretism. We have lots of evidence that this kind of cultural blending and exchange was going on all the time in the ancient world. Heck, half of the archeological evidence we have for the Celtic deities comes from the Romano-Celtic period when the Romans began writing things down and carving human-looking statues of gods that had once resided only in abstract designs and natural earth formations. (And the other half comes from the lingering folk traditions and reinterpretations of Celtic Christianity!) In my experience, striving too hard for some kind of purity in adhering to the "original" beliefs and practices of our ancestors can be unhelpful and even stifling for our spiritual relationships.

So I guess part of my advice at this point - if you're looking for advice! - would be to explore widely and pay attention to how you feel when you're trying to connect with the gods. You're bringing your own modern cultural assumptions and patterns to whatever relationship you have with them, and they have their own cultural foundations as well. How those cultural patterns interact will shape your relationship with them. And some of it will be on an intuitive or subconscious level. When I first started studying Celtic mythology and culture, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of unfamiliar, unpronounceable names and nonsensical stories. It felt like I was dialing an old phone number given to me by a friend of a friend, and only getting the dial tone of a disconnected line. But I kept reading and exploring, and letting my subconscious work its way through all the information and start making those connections. I paid close attention to when I felt closest to the gods, and could see how important ritual and physical interactions were for me. (F'ex, physically cutting into and handling a pomegranate down in the dank atmosphere of the basement brought home to me the personality of Persephone more than any story about her I'd ever heard.) After years of that kind of exploration, slowly the Celtic culture began to feel more and more like a natural place to be. Instead of drowning in unfamiliar waters, I was swimming like a fish! :) That's when the gods stopped being abstractions for me - though there are still times when I feel distant or disconnected from them.

So.... you asked about Brighid as a possible Underworld goddess. This is one of those times when the answer is a bit complicated because Greek and Celtic cultures are different. The Celts didn't exactly have an idea of an "Underworld" in the same way the Greeks did. For one thing, the Celts believed firmly in reincarnation - either into this same world, or into a paradisiacal otherworld often referred to as a Land of Summer, Land of Youth or Island of Apples. There were gods associated with this Summerland, but the ones I know of are male (for instance, Manannan mac Lir, god of the sea). Also, the Celts didn't just have one Otherworld, though you can generally refer to all of the other worlds collectively by the singular term. The Otherworld for the Celts wasn't above (like a heaven) or below (like an Underworld) but right here, just on the other side of our reality, separated only by a thin veil or mist. It was the realm of the Sidhe or the Faery folk - but who they are is also a complicated thing: some think of them as gods, some as the beloved dead, some as (fallen) angels (a Celtic Christian concept). My impression is that the Celts weren't very keen on clear-cut hierarchies, so trying to delineate deities from Sidhe from the dead isn't always easy.

Okay, so - could Brighid be associated with the Underworld/Otherworld? Yes and no. She is definitely a goddess of the threshold and the liminal spaces, like you said, and she has that connection (through marriage to Bres) with the "darker" forces of chaos and wilderness. As a member of the Tuatha de Danann, she is also one of those who withdrew into the Sidhe (burial) mounds when the Milesians came and conquered Ireland. On the other hand, she has tended to be associated more with the light, order and structures of culture and civilization (for instance, through her ties to poetry, healing and smithcraft, which all held important cultural significance in Celtic society), rather than with the wilder, darker aspects of death and dying. In my relationship with her, even in her darker aspect she has a deep connection with the stars, points of light in the darkness that give guidance and direction, and that spin through the emptiness of space in a fairly orderly fashion. ;) So I think that Brighid could definitely help you work with Underworld/Otherworld relationships and aspects of your spirituality - but she'll bring a particular perspective and energy to that work that will be different from Persephone or some of the other Celtic deities. Does that make sense?

If you want to explore some Celtic gods and goddesses that might have more obvious ties to the Underworld/Otherworld, there are a couple I can recommend.

- Caer Ibormeith. She is a Sidhe who transforms from a
maiden into a swan every other Samhain and back again on the next. The swan - as a water fowl - has connections to the three realms of land, sea and sky and is thus considered a particularly powerful Otherworld animal who can pass between the worlds. Caer Ibormeith's name means "yew berry." The yew tree has many associations with death and resurrection, and the seed of the yew berry is poisonous to human beings (another connection between death (poison) and new life (the seed)). Samhain, obviously, has connections with death and the beloved dead, and as a Sidhe Caer Ibormeith occupies that ambiguous place between the gods and the dead. I worked with her for a while several years ago, and through my relationship with her eventually came to my relationship with Brighid. (Some of the shared UPG of some folks I've talked with online point to the possibility that the swan is also a sacred animal of Brighid's, and so Caer Ibormeith and Brighid might share a closer relationship or even be two aspects of a single goddess.)

- Rhiannon. In Welsh mythology, Rhiannon is a Sidhe Queen who marries Pwyll (and later, after Pwyll's death, remarries with Manawydan fab Llyr, the Welsh deity who is similar to and/or the same as Manannan mac Lir). Before meeting Rhiannon, Pwyll has his own adventures, including switching places with Arawn, the King of Annwn, in order to defeat Arawn's enemy. Annwn is the closest you'll probably get in Welsh mythology to the concept of an Underworld - it is characterized as a land of the dead, though a paradisiacal one of eternal summer and youth. By switching places with Arawn and defeating his enemy, Pwyll earns the title "King of Annwn" for himself. One of his trials during this adventure is to resist the seduction of Arawn's wife (who mistakenly believes Pwyll is Arawn) - there is some suggestion in the mythology that Rhiannon is actually this same Sidhe Queen who was married to Arawn, though it's not clear. In either case, when she weds Pwyll, Rhiannon is effectively marrying the King of the Dead, as well as having connections to the Otherworld in her own right through her lineage as a Sidhe. Later as a widow, she marries Manawydan who is the only one to return from a war with the Irish - Manawydan, like his Irish counterpart Manannan, also has ties to the Land of Eternal Youth and so can also be thought of as an Otherworld "King of the Dead" type of figure. Rhiannon herself also has connections to death and rebirth/renewal, f'ex in the story of how her son is stolen from her as a baby and she is framed for his death.


I mention both of these because I've worked with both of them (though not as closely as with Brighid), and they both seem to me to have that same kind of quality as Persephone - being maidens or queens who are in relationship with "the dark" and death, but who are also able to cross the thresholds between the worlds. If you want to know more about Caer Ibormeith, I've written a short story inspired by her, and you might also want to explore a bit into the story of Aengus Og and his relationship with her. For Rhiannon, you might really enjoy reading the novel by Evangeline Walton based on the Welsh myth: it's called Prince of Annwn and it's the first book of her quartet based on the Mabinogion.

I hope some of this has been helpful and isn't too overwhelming! Make sure to come back and let me know how you're doing and what you're exploring - I'd love to hear!