Nature Worship, Polytheism and the "Point" of Paganism

Sophia shared a link to Stifyn Emrys's post, "There's Far More to Paganism Than Worshipping Gods and Goddesses," in which Emrys responds to that post by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus on "bringing back the gods" that I linked to the other day but haven't had a chance to go back and read. If Emrys is being fair in his characterization of the main thrust of Lupus's argument, then I'm actually a bit concerned. I used to think of Lupus as a thoughtful, respectful writer — one of those reconstructionist polytheists (in company with folks like Erynn Rowan Laurie and some others) who can be intelligent and nuanced in their own theology and practice without feeling the need to tear down others or erect straw men to legitimize their own views.

Emrys's main point is that Paganism is (and I would add, always has been) much more complex than worship of "the old gods." This is so obvious, and to claim otherwise would be so contrary to historical fact — and we're talking recent history, here — that I find it disconcerting that someone like Lupus who supposedly takes his history very seriously could make a claim to the contrary. It seems that the claim that modern Paganism's "point" is to "bring back the gods" is a fabrication almost on par with the claim that it represents an unbroken lineage of the ancient Matriarchy, or that the Burning Times killed millions of women who were secretly priestesses of the Goddess. It just simply isn't true that this is the "point" of Paganism, and no serious scholar of modern Paganism as a New Religious Movement would ever make such a claim. Hell, my thesis on the influences of modern Paganism's development over the past fifty years — which I wrote not even ten years ago — examined polytheism as only one of many different theological strands, and not even the most influential one. Back when I was doing this research, there wasn't even such a thing as "hard polytheism" in the popular mindset of the average self-identifying Pagan. If anyone had tried to make the claim that modern Paganism's "point" was polytheism, you could easily have pointed to several different statistical studies and surveys of the actual beliefs and practices of people calling themselves Pagan/Neopagan that clearly showed this just wasn't the case.

In fact, the most recent general survey of Pagan practice and belief that came out in June 2012 (barely six motnhs ago) shows that more than 87% of self-identifying Pagans said "reverence for nature" was the most important element of Paganism, whereas only 10% chose "worship of the gods." And even though 56% of the Pagans surveyed identified as polytheist, when asked if worship of the gods was a fundamental aspect of Paganism, less than half of them said yes. Now I don't think this particular survey was necessarily all that scientific or carefully controlled.... but those numbers certainly seem to confirm my own impression of the breakdown.

So what the hell is Lupus talking about? I need to go back and actually read his post for myself. It might be that Emrys is exaggerating Lupus's claims (though from the brief skim I did the other day, I don't think he is).

What's the "point"?

Lupus opens by stating outright:

I feel the need to state once again that one of the "points" of modern Paganism is to bring back the gods. [...] their reality as actual beings with independence, volition, and power was disregarded, downplayed, or demonized in many cases.

So he does say "one of the 'points' of modern Paganism," and not the point... and he also puts the word "point" in scare quotes, though I'm not sure exactly what he's trying to communicate by doing that. I get nervous when I see a lot of furry writing, with scare quotes scattered throughout a text when it's not obvious that the person is either quoting someone else or trying to be deliberately ironic/sarcastic. I'm not sure how a "point" differs from a point.

He goes on:

What I am noticing more and more recently, however, is that modern Paganism is being purposefully defined so as to not include the gods. In recent weeks alone: Jonathan Korman has defined "the pagan sensibility" as not necessarily needing to include the gods; John Halstead has discussed the four centers of modern Paganism, but has portrayed the deity-centric forms of Paganism as inherently creedal; and here at Patheos' Pagan Portal, Yvonne Aburrow has defined "theology" as "reasoning about the Divine" rather than "reasoning about the gods," which is not remotely the same thing (on which more will be said in a moment). [emphasis added]

I've already noted why I think his qualms with Aburrow's definition of theology are somewhat silly ("biology is the study of life" vs. "biology is the study of lives), but I'll be interested to see what more he has to say on this. As for Korman's and Halstead's posts, I've read both of them, and they are both clearly working towards a definition of Paganism that is inclusive and nuanced, rather than a single, monolithic statement about a community that is inherently diverse and complex. Considering that all evidence suggests that not all Pagans see (hard) polytheism as essential to the community-identity of modern Paganism, I would say that the attempts of these two to come up with a description of the community is more accurate than Lupus's so far. Even Lupus seems to be contradicting himself — didn't he just say polytheism was only one of the "points"? It might have seemed at first that he was saying there are multiple aspects of Paganism that modern Pagans share more or less in common — and that holding to any or several of these aspects might be enough to identify oneself as Pagan. But now it seems pretty obvious that what he's actually saying is that "worship of the gods" is necessary but not sufficient to being Pagan. Most people who call themselves Pagan would disagree with him on this.

He says:

For a long time now, I've been hearing modern Paganism characterized as a "nature religion" or an "earth-based religion." [...] I suspect a huge reason that it is characterized that way—especially to non-Pagans—is because of fear of being thought foolish or "primitive" for recognizing the gods. [emphasis added]

What? No.

Considering the amount of shaming "tree-huggers" and "dirt-worshippers" receive from mainstream society for being foolish, sentimental, overly-romantic, and yes, "primitive" and "anti-progress" and even "anti-human".... I find it hard to believe that Pagans are just lying to everyone about their reverence for nature because it's easier than admitting you're a polytheist. That has certainly never been the case in my experience.

Lupus then recounts an incident when he was at a university in Ireland (attending as a student? he doesn't say), when he requested the use of the campus chapel for an important ritual. The chaplaincy council rejected his request, recommending that he hold the ritual outside because that would be "more appropriate." Lupus points out that not only would this be inappropriate because of the weather of late autumn, but that there were no examples of outdoor rituals in the history of the tradition he was reconstructing, but many examples of indoor temples and ritual spaces. He concludes:

Unfortunately, my preferences and information in this regard were considered irrelevant, because the chaplaincy council knew what was best and most appropriate for "my sort" of people. [original emphasis]

This sounds like a story of obvious prejudice and disrespect, but I'm not sure what it has to do with whether or not Pagans in general should or shouldn't be "earth-centered." I have attended several indoor group rituals hosted by Pagan or Druid groups that were explicitly "earth-centered," either because outdoor space was not available or because weather made outdoor ritual impractical. Lupus seems to be making the argument that because he encountered mainstream ignorance which hindered his religious freedom, that therefore somehow earth-centered Pagans are to blame. He says:

This is one instance in which public perception of modern Pagan identity and religiosity interfered with actual practice. The idea of Pagans as "nature worshippers" fits in perfectly with the Christian conception (and, as in my case, misconception) of ancient polytheists as unsophisticated bumpkins with no place in civilized society, and therefore no business doing their rituals indoors.

Here, he identifies the view of Pagans as "unsophisticated bumpkins with no place in civilized society" as a "misconception" when it's applied to him, but seems to be suggesting that he thinks it's a perfectly reasonable view of others who self-identify as "nature worshippers." Rather than arguing against such a prejudiced view as fundamentally ignorant no matter who it's applied to, he seems primarily upset that it was applied to him when it shouldn't have been.

I should point out that, just as I've attended indoor rituals during cold weather, I have also attended outdoor rituals (usually private or small group rituals) despite the weather being somewhat unpleasant. I also spent five or six hours this past weekend hiking around in near-freezing temperatures. I do not think that my willingness to go outside in various kinds of weather, or my ability to appreciate and celebrate the natural world in all kinds of conditions, makes me an "unsophisticated bumpkin." Nimue recently pointed out in a blog post, in fact, that our ability to go out in bad weather and then come back in and get dry and warm again is a mark of our civilized lifestyle — and I am not particularly inclined to balk at a civilized lifestyle that let's me go out to experience the outdoors in all sorts of conditions without risking life and limb. Huzzah for hiking boots and warm coats.

Moving on...

As Star Foster said many months back, polytheism is one of the few things that modern Paganism can be said to "own" almost exclusively; but, for too many, it seems like the funny old lamp inherited from our great-grandparents that we hide in the basement when the guests come over.

There go the scare quotes again. Maybe talking about Pagans "owning" polytheism makes it seem less ridiculous than actually staking your entire argument on the immature sense of ownership (sans scare quotes). The idea that certain groups can own (or "own") particular philosophical or theological concepts is itself deeply problematic. But instead of talking about that, let's just get snippy and sarcastic in the next paragraph...

Lupus then goes on to argue semantics, but at least he admits it. Turns out, he has nothing more intelligent to say about language usage than before, other than falling into the usual trap of thinking that some foreign term that he read in a book is therefore inherently more complex than a familiar English word:

As I've indicated already, polytheists are not monotheists, but, I would argue, neither are they monists. This is why I no longer use the phrase "the Divine" in talking about modern Paganism or polytheism. This may be more a question of semantics in many people's minds, and if that's the case that's fine. Still, the phrase "the Divine" does not, for me, describe the reality of the gods as I have come to know them, nor does it usefully and accurately translate the element theos in a term like "theology." Ancient Greek used theos as singular and plural (both "god" and "gods"), as masculine and feminine (both "god/s" and "goddess/es"), and as a noun or as an adjective (both "god" and "godly"), so one can choose whatever option fits the purpose when using this term.

For fun, let's look up the etymology of the word "divine":

From Latin divinus "of a god," from divus "a god," related to deus "god, deity" (see Zeus), from Greek, from PIE *dewos- "god" (cf. Latin deus "god," Old Persian daiva- "demon, evil god," Old Church Slavonic deivai, Sanskrit deva-), from root *dyeu- "to gleam, to shine;" also the root of words for "sky" and "day"

Oh noooooosss! It looks like the modern English word "divine" traces back to the ancient Greek! ::headdesk::

Anyway, then Lupus spends some time talking somewhat confusedly about how theos implies a complexity of language that is unique to polytheism, and is not reflected in monotheism or monism. So far as I can understand what he's trying to say, he is simply wrong about this because he is unfamiliar with the many different theological approaches to monotheism. As a great example, he ends this particular ramble by gleefully dangling the tantalizing possibility that polytheism might even be able to conceive of the gods as "verbs" — which means that he must at least be completely unfamiliar with the book God is a Verb, by David Cooper, which explores that very concept in a monotheistic context. ::headdesk again::

He continues:

Pagan or polytheist practice that emphasizes cultus presupposes a definite being with volition and consciousness on the other end of the interaction. (Cultus, for the present purpose, is active and deliberate interaction with divine beings.) Thus, when I hear Pagans being described or self-defining as "nature worshippers," I wonder how interaction can take place at all. "Nature" doesn't care if you make offerings, hold festivals, or sing its praises and dance and feast with your friends. Dancing at Lughnasadh will not avert global warming; singing a hymn won't stop an earthquake; pouring a libation won't prevent it from raining. The best way to "honor" nature is to do things like recycle, not drive, reduce one's carbon footprint, and so forth. [emphasis added]

Again, what?

Lupus "wonders how interaction [with nature] can take place at all" but then ends his paragraph by listing ways that we interact with nature. What's going on here is an obvious (maybe even deliberate?) confusion about the purpose of ritual. Lupus claims that he defines cultus as "active and deliberate interaction with divine beings" who are "definite being[s] with volition and consciousness." But his examples of what he actually considers "cultus" all include rituals in which people exert control over these divine beings — making offerings, singing hymns or dancing in order to exert influence over the gods. Arguably, if this is how he defines the purpose of ritual, then the evidence that he is interacting with "definite beings with volition and consciousness" is just as scanty as those people pouring libations to the earth itself. At least when I pour a libation to a tree, I know that the physical water will actually make a difference to that tree. Burning incense in order to please Zeus, on the other hand?

But the more important point is that not all ritual is propitiatory in nature. In fact, ritual is complex (I really can't believe I have to keep saying this). Sometimes ritual is celebratory, and celebratory ritual is still a way of interacting with the gods, or nature, or even the other people involved in the ritual. Do you take someone out to dinner because you want to get in their pants? Or do you enjoy the act of having dinner with them? And if they don't let you get in their pants, do you conclude that they "don't care" about having dinner with you, or that they might not even be real beings with volition and consciousness?

Lupus's argument here is either a deliberate straw man, or a profound ignorance about the nature and purpose of ritual in different contexts. It may also involve a deeply ingrained prejudice against seeing things other than humans as alive, conscious or possessing self-determination. It's taken scientists a while, but at least now, finally, it is an agreed-upon scientific fact that other animals most definitely are "beings with volition and consciousness." Ecologists acknowledge that even inanimate things (like rock formations, river systems, or chemical compounds) can participate in what are self-organizing, self-sustaining living systems. If it's not too big a leap of faith to believe that Zeus gives a shit about whether or not you burn incense, it shouldn't be so big a leap to believe that self-organizing, self-sustaining living systems in the natural world (of which we are a part) do have some stake in how we interact with them, both through ritual and through everyday life.

Lupus ends his post by repeating many of his previous points, and likewise repeating many of his earlier inaccurate assumptions and logical missteps, so there's not much point in going on with this step-by-step analysis. His main concern seems to be that "nature worship" in the modern sense is, well, modern, and should therefore be avoided because (to paraphrase) "our ancestors didn't do it." It's unclear if he actually thinks anyone really worships nature at all, since throughout his piece he accuses self-identifying "nature worshippers" as calling themselves that merely to hide the fact that they're polytheists. (This sounds to me a lot like monotheists who want to insist that self-describing polytheists are "really just confused monotheists.") His straw men are ridiculous enough that it wouldn't surprise me if he has trouble finding anyone who would agree with his characterization of nature worship. His last paragraph is pretty heavy-handed with "should"-loaded language, while lamenting that so few of our Pagan leaders and luminaries have seen the light and agree with him about the need to emphasize polytheism.

In general, it's mostly an oddly whiney and misinformed piece — at once trying to claim the authority to speak for the majority while complaining that the majority is too ignorant or foolish to agree with him. Safe to say, this is not a very good rhetorical approach to use in trying to win people over. But it might be very effective in preaching to the trollish choir.

My Perspective on "Pagan" - As Told Using the Metaphor of Apartments I've Rented

Alison is procrastinating. Enjoy the ride.....

How It Began

The first apartment I ever rented was the first floor of a three-story house, and I shared it with my then-boyfriend. We never really had any furniture except random pieces we'd inherited from our respective parental units and other odds and ends that we'd salvaged from street corners. The place was spacious and cheap, but we never had enough "real" furniture to fill it up, so it always felt oddly put together. It was easy to keep warm because it was wedged between a basement and the upper stories, both of which had thermostats controlled by the landlords, who lived above us. So, lots of room, cheap and easy to keep liveable.

But there were problems. The people who lived above us (yep, the landlords) were incredibly noisy at all unreasonable hours of the day and night. They didn't bother to fix things in our apartment when they went wrong — like the bedroom window, that was cracked when we moved in and was never replaced — but any temporary fixes to those problems caused huge issues — like me putting duct tape over the cracked window and then hanging a thick blanket up instead of a curtain. Boy did they bitch about that. Also, the basement flooded all the time, and the toilets tended to clog and back up. Eventually, too, the boyfriend and I broke up, and then it was just miserable, because he moved out and I had even less furniture and I spent about six months sleeping on a mattress on the floor, curled up watching hours of X-Files reruns at 3 AM on a tiny 13-inch TV (and this was before HD-TV and LCD flatscreens, people). I eventually came to hate it there, and the landlords didn't like me very much either. Even though it could have been a nice place — it had the space, and everything in it was new, carpets, paint-job, kitchen appliances — underneath is was all falling apart, and the fact that nobody wanted to talk about it or try to fix it, and they always had a problem when I tried to patch things up with my limited resources, just made it worse.

In this story, this apartment represents my relationship with Christianity.

Adorably Retro

Because I couldn't afford to stay in that place once the boyfriend moved out and stopped paying rent, I moved into my own place when the lease was up. This new place had been described as "adorably retro" by the rental agency, but I never figured out why. It had real hardwood floors that must have been about fifty years old, banged up and scratched and splintering, and its walls were covered in some sort of weird stucco plaster. But beneath the plaster was good, solid brick. I got permission to paint, and so the living room ended up being a refreshing ice blue, and the single bedroom was a deep, relaxing lavender. It had a balcony that looked out over a small gravel lot lined with trees, past which you could see the neighbors' gardens. In the hall, there was a little nook that used to house an old-fashioned telephone — I used it as a place to set up my main altar/shrine. Although I kept some of the old furniture that I'd inherited, I also got new furniture — and though it was mostly inexpensive, I got a few nice, solid items meant to last, and I picked them out carefully so that each room had a cohesive feeling, a kind of aesthetic wholeness to it. I spent some years in this apartment working as a waitress, swinging midnight shifts and feeling desperately lonely, but no matter how lonely I got, I still felt like I was home. And that meant something. The world, especially the natural world, would not abandon me.

In this story, this apartment represents my finding a home in Druidry, and wandering in the wilderness of this new spirituality, making it my own.

Townhouse Posturing

I met Jeff while I was still living in this "retro" apartment, and he did the unimaginable and moved to Pittsburgh. In part it was to be with me, but it also happened that his ex-wife's new fiancé had family in Pittsburgh and they were looking for a cheaper city to live in. (Although his ex-wife tried to dispute it in court, we have the documented email evidence to prove that she actually bought a house in Pittsburgh before Jeff ever even started looking for apartments; so it's not like Jeff abandoned his children in order to go live with his mistress.) When Jeff decided to move to Pittsburgh, I helped him find a place.

This apartment was what we could arguably call a "townhouse." It was two-stories and was one of two townhouses that made up a single building on a block of similar structures. Jeff needed a place big enough for the kids to visit every weekend, so it was a three-bedroom place, even though most of the week it was basically empty. This townhouse tried too hard to be a "house." It aspired to all kinds of legitimacy. It had carpeting, and a yard, and what could pass for a front porch. It had two whole bathrooms, and a real kitchen instead of a closet-sized space with a fridge and mini-stove shoved into it. It even had a fireplace.

I continued to officially live in my own "retro" apartment for a year after Jeff moved to Pittsburgh, but I spent more and more of my time at the townhouse. Eventually, most of my clothes and day-to-day stuff ended up over there. But Jeff, having been through a divorce where his ex-wife took everything except the debt she'd wracked up on their joint account, didn't really have any real furniture except for a few old pieces that were too crappy for the EW to have wanted. All of our money went into making the place liveable for the kids — we got bunk-beds and we doubled up on toys and clothing because the EW was pretty awful at getting them to pack anything for the weekend. I felt tremendous pressure to suddenly "play mom" and prove that I was "mature" enough to "handle kids" and all of the adult responsibilities that I quickly discovered the EW was fond of passing off onto other people because she herself was not very good at handling them.

My life, like the townhouse, aspired for a while to be "respectable" and "serious" and "mature" — but I only ever really half lived there, and it always seemed to be other people's ideas of respectability and maturity that did the dictating. Unlike my little "retro" apartment, which seemed to have no pretensions at all. My retro apartment had incredibly old, scratched up wood floors, but at least they were real wood. The townhouse had carpets like a "real house," but they were old, shitty carpets with random ugly stains from previous occupants and they never seemed to get clean despite Jeff's motorcycle-like vacuum. My retro apartment may have had wires randomly sticking out of the walls here and there, but all the wiring worked. It may have only had a gravel lot for the backyard, but beyond that you could see trees and gardens and even the park. At the townhouse, the front yard wasn't really a yard, so much as a cliff, but it still required mowing. The backyard wasn't a yard so much as a weed-bed, but we did our best to plant some flowers and a vegetable garden and try to beat back the tangle. It was a lot of work, and not much pay-off. This seemed to be the way with a lot of things — lots of things that seemed like good ideas, but ended up being difficult or awkward in practice. A door that led out onto the roof from the second-story seemed like a good idea because the roof could be almost like a balcony.... Except that the door didn't open unless you pulled up the cheap carpeting in the corner, and the roof sagged a bit so that it seemed to be possibly dangerous to be up there for any length of time. There was an oddly shaped nook that seemed like it could be a good place for a "library" — a nice idea, except that none of our bookshelves seemed to fit the space properly, they were either too big or too small, and the room was always freezing cold and uncomfortable to sit in. (This was generally true — the place was impossible to heat. My old retro apartment had been super-warm and cozy in the winter, and the heating was included in the rent, but the townhouse had thin plaster walls and leaky windows that never seemed to hold in any heat at all and our heating bills were huge. Also, none of its windows seemed to let in any light even on the sunniest days.) The fireplace, which seemed like such a cute, good idea, didn't work. But it somehow remained stubbornly sooty anyway even after we repainted it, and all the furniture in the living room ended up being awkwardly arranged around this sooty, cold and dead fireplace in which no hearthfire would ever burn.

In this story, this townhouse is like the reconstructionist/hard polytheistic approach.

Interestingly, my time struggling with hard polytheism coincided with this time in my life, when I was kind of half-living in a place built and furnished by and for other people, which aspired to be "respectable" and "real," but wasn't. It tried to hide how old it was while aping (poorly) the comforts of stability (epitomized, in my mind, by the absolutely shitty wall-to-wall carpeting). In the same way, my time struggling with hard polytheism always seemed to be full of other people's opinions and expectations; it seemed impossible to relax and ground in my own relationship with Spirit and with the natural world. Even though I might have been lonely and "irresponsible" living alone in my retro apartment and working as a waitress, I was home. Even though modern Revival Druidry was a bit new-agey and a bit meso-pagan and some of its wiring showed, it still worked and it had warm, sturdy walls.

Smoke Tree Condo

Then, Jeff's job moved us across the country to Seattle, and we found a small, affordable place. It's bigger than my old "retro" apartment, but it's not nearly as big as the townhouse. We have neighbors, and although we rent, many of our neighbors are permanent residents and meet quarterly as members of the condo's management team. We get so much sunlight, especially in the summer, but even in the winter on the rainiest of days, the rooms are well-lit and pleasant. We donated almost all of our old furniture except a few select pieces, and used a bit of savings to buy a few new pieces, so once again, each room feels like a real room, with its own sense of space and style. Our kitchen is smaller than the townhouse kitchen, but has so much counter space that it's perhaps the first truly functional kitchen I've ever had. We have an entire wall of bookcases in our living room, and two more bookcases in the den. All of our sofas fold out, so we have plenty of room for when the kids visit, but the rooms don't sit empty and non-functional wastes of space when they're not around. We have lots of closet space (so much, that we're able to temporarily convert our one walk-in closet into a recording studio on podcasting nights).

There are only a few draw-backs. There's no porch or balcony, nowhere private to sit outside and enjoy the weather. The floors are "wood-like" linoleum... which is a huge improvement over crappy carpeting, but still not as good as real wood. And it's the first apartment I've had that isn't within a block of a wooded park. It's so close to being a perfect fit, and it has many of the best things that I loved about my old "retro" apartment while also having some really nice things that that apartment didn't have (like counter-space and new, energy-efficient appliances and windows). It's the perfect size for us, and I feel very happy here. But I already know that I won't be here forever, and one of the main reasons I know it is because it's too far from green space — "nature" is a thing I have to go out of my way to get to, and even though that's resulted in me volunteering with the parks and learning all sorts of stuff about ecology and natural history, it's not the kind of intimate, immediate relationship that I enjoyed in my old, run-down "retro" apartment.

In this story, our current apartment is like my current spiritual path. It is so close to being perfect, and there are lots of things about it that I love. I feel at home, but I also know that I will eventually need to move on. The biggest reason I know I'll need to move on is because, right now, my relationship with "nature" is somewhat distanced and intellectual, and in this way it parallels my work as a volunteer naturalist and how that's different from being a poet wandering in the wilderness. Eventually, I want to be the poetic ecosophist, the wise sage who can wander in the wilderness and also teach practical, useful wisdom to those who come to seek her out; who has both an intellectual understanding of her gods and their theology, and an intimate and ecstatic relationship with them in way that allows both perspectives to enhance each other.

For now, I finally feel like I can start grounding in my own path again. I have a happy, truly stable place to call home that gives me the time and support I need to prepare for that next step, and I know that the next step means lingering for a little while in this place with "nature" is a little more distant. I also know that, wherever I end up, it's not going to be the metaphorical "respectable single-family suburban house with white picket fence" that the townhouse, in this metaphor, was trying so hard to pretend to be. It's not going to be the respectable, structured, organized religion that reconstructionism/hard polytheism tries so hard to be. I have a better sense of what works for me and what doesn't, and I no longer feel pressured to apologize for not wanting that kind of life, or that kind of religion. So now it's a matter of figuring out what kind of spiritual (and physical) space I do want to live in, and spend some time daydreaming, saving for and working towards my dream-home.

The Moral of The Story

All of these places, despite their differences, were still apartments.

All of these paths, despite their differences, are still Paganism.

(Except, of course, for the first example of Christianity.)

(Damn it.)

(Shut up.)

The Dance of Will and Surrender (Part 2)

I admit, I have largely lost my train of thought about the nature of will and our relationship with the gods (in no small part due to the intervention of scavenging trolls all over the original comment thread — but I've already digressed on that point enough). I'm going to try to recapture some of what I was thinking last week when I wrote Part 1 of this post, but it's likely to be somewhat messy. In the meantime, there have been several other ideas bumping around in my head, and I'd like to make more of an effort, on a regular basis, to get these thoughts down in some form before they fly off again.

So.

It would be easiest to jump back into this conversation by looking again at the example of Elani and the way she describes her relationship with her gods within the context of Hellenismos. I don't mean to pick on her, or to pass some sort of judgement on her relationship with her gods in any general sense since I am admittedly working from only a very brief familiarity (and I can appreciate that you can't possibly say everything in a blog post, so I'm sure her spiritual life is much more complicated that that brief glimpse afforded by blogging).... But she provides a useful example of some of the stumbling blocks that I find presented by an asymmetrical approach to deity relationships within hard polytheism.

I should also mention that Elani did respond to the barrage of questions I left in a comment on her blog post, and while she didn't really address some of the stickiest of my sticking points, she did bring up some interesting things to consider, in a roundabout way.

The first is that she says, for her, religion "always has a foundation in one or more asymmetrical relationships. Although the level of asymmetricallity varies within Traditions, and even more so within individual practitioners, the very nature of the Gods (as non-human, and often more powerful) disallows symmetricallity."

This was a very helpful way of putting it, because it made me see immediately that we were taking for granted different assumptions about the nature of asymmetrical v. hierarchical relationship. I was assuming (and I don't think I'm wrong) that when Elani speaks of "asymmetrical relationship" with the gods, she always means a hierarchy, in which the gods are superior to human beings. It seems to me that, for her, the only alternative to this hierarchy is "symmetricality" [sic], a symmetrical relationship.

I don't think I really agree with this dichotomy. It seems to me that there are many different kinds of relationship that are neither hierarchical nor symmetrical, and many of the examples I listed in my last post, drawing on analogies from ecology, would probably be considered neither. I am making some assumptions here, again, but to me the idea of "symmetry" suggests a certain kind of sameness — not simply equality, but furthermore a very specific kind of equality. Just looking at the most common definition of symmetry: "the correspondence in size, form, and arrangement of parts on opposite sides of a plane, line, or point; regularity of form or arrangement in terms of like, reciprocal, or corresponding parts." In other words, symmetry implies not only equality, but similarity. If we imagine a line that divides humans from the gods, a "symmetrical" relationship would see the gods as reflections of humanity "corresponding in size, form and arrangement." It would make sense, then, that the only way to avoid this kind of symmetry between humans and the gods is to insist that the gods are more powerful, bigger, better, superior; in short, to insist on hierarchy.

And this is where I differ from Elani most basically, and perhaps the place where all my stumbling blocks with hard polytheism come from. It seems to me that, although hard polytheists like Elani (and it's hard to say how widespread this particular conception is, but gods forbid I be accused of "over-generalizing"!) insist on the separateness of the gods as distinct, discrete beings, they tend to imagine the gods in very anthropocentric terms. (It seems to me that even this insistence on separateness has its roots in anthropocentrism, actually, since a defining aspect of human experience -- perhaps the first recognizably "psychological" event we experience after birth -- is the experience of our separateness, our perceived individuality.) In some ways, I see the gods as much more "other" than these hard polytheists do, and that otherness is not merely a matter of possessing a greater degree of power, knowledge, etc. It is an otherness that is deeply and numinously Other, and so does not conform to our expectations of what it means to be separate or individual or discrete entities.

I'm reminded of Thomas Nagel's famous philosophical essay, "What Is It Like To Be A Bat?" In which he says, "The fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism." He goes on to argue that there are insurmountable obstacles to us being able to effectively imagine the subjective experiences of (i.e. "what it is like to be") life forms that are vastly different from us. Personally, I think he goes a bit too far and maybe doesn't appreciate just how flexible and variable consciousness (and its many diverse altered states, including imagination) can be in both humans and other animals. And I'm going to hang this article link here, which provides a better break down of some of the other problems with his ideas. But this conversation about the otherness of the gods reminds me of Nagel mostly because, in the end, Nagel is arguing against reductionism and materialism. In a weird way, although I think probably hard polytheists would disagree with me, I'm trying to do the same thing. To me, the hard polytheistic approach to the gods is reductionist and limiting. It also reminds me a bit of that episode of Star Trek the Original Series, when Kirk meets Apollo, who turns out to just be an alien who pulled a fast one on the earthlings a few millennia ago. It also reminds me a bit of the amusingly nonsensical Ancient Aliens theorists who see in every description of ancient polytheistic gods the evidence that aliens from another planet visited earth and literally instructed humanity in some of the earliest evolution of civilization. In both cases, you have a vast underestimation of the human capacity for creativity, adaptation and invention, and a vast oversimplification of the source of those capacities which would rather suppose some external but basically anthropocentric entity than a more complex understanding of consciousness.

And if comparing hard polytheists to a bunch of New Age nutjobs doesn't explode a few heads, I don't know what will.

I'm getting off the point.

As for the rest of Elani's response, she describes the kinds of physical and psychological sensations and impressions she receives that she interprets as messages from the gods, noting that she's never "heard voices" or anything like that. These are... less than convincing, but she admits as much, so we can leave it there. In the end, her opening remark sets the tone for her entire response, when she says, "I'm going to try to answer them as logically as I can, but a large part of my practice is not based on logic. Faith, on principle, lacks a certain logic, but that has never held me back from having it." (emphasis added) Hello again, you old Cartesian dualism! For the record, I think this dichotomy between "faith" and "reason" which sets them at odds with each other is nonsense. There is no reason why trust, devotion and a sense of mystery (that is, in other words, what I mean by the word "faith") cannot also be logical. In fact, the radical doubt of Descartes is itself illogical on close examination, and a certain degree of trust (for instance, trusting in the truth of your premises, or trusting in the process of logic itself) is necessary in order for logic to even function. I can't say for sure what Elani means when she says her practice is "not based on logic" or that faith "lacks logic".... and part of why I can't say what she means is because I don't think she actually knows what she means, and that is precisely the breakdown that she is trying to describe and excuse. What this sounds like, however, is the recurrence of New Age warm-fuzzies in hard polytheist/Reconstructionist garb. This would be fine — I'm all for a deeper appreciation of intuition and the complex role that nonrational forms of knowledge play in our understanding and experience of the world — except that far too often I see hard polytheists and Recons setting themselves up as anti-New Age, as more grounded in facts and scholarship that we "neo-Pagans." Scratch a hard polytheist, and you find her blood as warm and fuzzy as any New Ager (she is, perhaps, just more embarrassed about showing it and slaps the bandage of piety and "UPG" on it in an attempt to hold herself together in some sort of respectable way).

That's a rather mean way of saying it, though. A better way of saying it is that we have a lot more in common than we often like to think, and I suspect it's more ego than logic (or faith) that interferes with our ability to meet on common ground to have actual fruitful conversations about our differences. I have to admit, though, it bothers me that when Elani writes that she would not want to presume to define anyone else's relationship with the gods, this is taken as an example of humility, whereas when a "neo-Pagan" (i.e. someone who is admittedly not a reconstructionist or hard polytheist) says the same thing, they are accused of fluffiness, relativism and romanticism.

Zeus and the Umbrella

In any case, if I can't get Elani to think critically about her practice, I can at least try my hand at it myself, admitting that I'm working from limited information. Let's take her example of her relationship with Zeus. When talking about her relationship with deities, she writes:

This means that--when it comes to the Theoi--I say 'how high' when They say 'jump', regardless of what is requested of me. It also means that I put my faith in Them. When I pray and sacrifice to Zeus the Thunderer for a day without rain as I do my rounds outside, I don't bring an umbrella. I trust that Zeus will either honor my prayer through kharis, or will have good reason not to. Who am I to go against His wishes and stay dry, regardless? To me, that is hubris.

There are several things that bother me about this example.

(a) Who's directing who? Elani's example seems like it's meant to illustrate how she puts her faith in the gods and trusts the instructions and messages she receives from them. And yet, in her own example, she is the one giving the orders. Or rather, making the request. She may not expect her request to be granted, but she obviously hopes it will be. There is no indication that Zeus told her to leave the house without an umbrella. It doesn't even seem like she has any particular reason for not taking an umbrella with her (I don't know what her "outside rounds" include, maybe there's a reason she can't bring an umbrella? in any case, she doesn't specify, so I can only assume that it's not relevant to her point). In other words, it seems like this is not so much an example of trust in the gods' guidance, as a deliberate test of their kharis (benevolence or grace).

(b) What is the lesson in being wet? I can think of several, of course, only the first of which is learning to be more grounded in my body and in touch with the seasons of the natural world and all their patterns and moods. (And I've certainly been caught off guard in enough rainstorms to appreciate when the gods feel a need to make this point if I wasn't getting it through my thick head voluntarily.) But I'm interested in what Elani thinks is the point of her potentially getting wet. Let's pretend Elani lives in, say, Texas (I don't know where she actually lives, but this will make for a useful thought experiment). Supposing that Zeus is more concerned with alleviating the crippling drought in the midwest than making sure one of his worshippers stays dry, he may decide to let it rain regardless of Elani's offerings. But does that mean that he specifically wants Elani to get wet? I don't see why. It seems to me, supposing that things work as Elani seems to believe they do and Zeus really does have this kind of direct control over the weather, that whether or not Elani gets wet is totally irrelevant and beside the point from Zeus's perspective. If Elani assumes that there is some special reason why Zeus would let it rain despite her offerings and prayers, doesn't that again place herself at the center of Zeus's concerns? And isn't that more than a little arrogant?

(c) Are petty deeds really examples of piety? Because in the end, she's not the Wicked Witch of the West and she's not going to melt if she gets a little rain on her. She most likely won't even catch a cold. But let's assume some other example of this kind of thinking: The mother whose child gets sick but refuses to take him to a doctor because she believes that God (or Apollo) will keep the boy alive or let him die, according to his divine plan. That's pretty extreme, and I think a lot of people find this kind of "faith" dangerous rather than admirable. (The classic counterargument to this one is, of course: Who's to say that God didn't inspire doctors to develop various medicines precisely so the boy's life could be saved?) How about another example: The Hellenist who doesn't replace the batteries in her smoke detector but leaves offerings (and lit candles) on her altar to Hestia, believing that if her house burns down it must have been Hestia's will. Or who makes offerings to Hermes and then drives around at night without a seatbelt, or headlights? Or who makes offerings to Aphrodite and then has unprotected sex, risking pregnancy or a sexually transmitted disease? Or who makes offerings to Zeus, and then not only leaves the house without an umbrella, but goes golfing near a bunch of tall trees in the middle of a thunderstorm? My point is, when facing real potential risks, I very much doubt that Elani (or most people, regardless of the strength of their faith or who they have faith in) allow faith to trump common sense precautions. (On the other hand, she seems to be saying otherwise in this post — apparently she'd be willing to risk someone else's life, if not her own.) I've never had any indication from any of the gods that they feel honored by recklessness, or that it is hubris to guard against potential harm. Wearing a seatbelt, using contraceptives, having a working smoke detector, and carrying an umbrella with you when you think it might rain.... I find it hard to imagine that any of these things are offensive to the gods. In fact — and maybe this is just me imagining the gods in my own image — I'm more inclined to think they're offended by deliberate recklessness and stupidity, than by common sense. After all, if you're taking risks that might harm you, don't you think the gods who enjoy your worship (and may, depending on your beliefs, even have created you and have something invested in your future) want you to take care of yourself?

(d) Who's making it rain anyway? My final problem with Elani's approach is that, as a hard polytheist, I assume that she not only believes in Zeus as a distinct and separate being, but also believes that so are all the other rain and thunder gods — among them, Thor, Indra, Set, Oya, Lei Gong, and the Thunderbirds of Native American traditions. So let's imagine, now, that Elani lives out here in Seattle, and she makes a petition to Zeus to keep it from raining. But I make offerings to Thor because I want it to rain (make up a reason, I don't know, I just like rain). Regardless of whether or not it rains: which god gets to decide? According to the hard polytheistic view, Zeus and Thor are two different deities, but according to the traditions to which they each belong, they are each responsible for thunderstorms. So, are Zeus and Thor battling it out to determine who gets to turn the great water spigot in the sky? If it does rain, does that mean that Zeus wanted it to rain on Elani, or does it mean that my offerings to Thor were more effective? If it kept raining on Elani every time I petitioned Thor, would that be enough evidence to convert Elani to Heathenry?

This is also the issue with Recons who are cultural purists while also being hard polytheists. I was devoted exclusively to Celtic deities for most of my time as a practicing Pagan — partly because those are my own ancestral roots, and partly because I believe in the vital importance of understanding cultural context — and then Artemis came knocking on my door. And it was definitely Artemis. And like plenty of folks who think of themselves as hard polytheists, I had to accept that I couldn't wedge her into the role of a Celtic moon/wilderness goddess just because I wanted to stay within the tradition that I was comfortable with. (And to be fair, the very first thing I did was start studying up on the cultural context of ancient Greek religion, so that I could better understand Artemis and her new place in my life. But I'll be damned if that means I'm embracing patriarchy or hierarchy for the sake of historical accuracy.) So.... if Reconstructionists are, by and large, hard polytheists who believe that the different gods from different cultures really are unique and separate deities, then how can they at the same time believe that the gods of their specific tradition have control or power over universal forces or events, like weather, or disease, or fire, or any of the other areas for which most cultures have deities of one kind or another. Back when I was a monotheist, it might have made sense for me to believe that the rain was a sign from God, because there was only one and he could do whatever he wanted. It may even have made sense back in the days before very much international travel, when deities were worshipped in particular locations and were believed to have power over that particular land or cultural group, but not necessarily any further. (This was, lest we forget, the main reason that the Hebrew god Yaweh was so controversial -- he wouldn't stay put, but claimed to be mobile and to go with his people into disapora. The only way this made sense to the polytheists at the time, including the Hebrews themselves, was if they supposed that he was therefore more powerful than all the other gods.) When you're dealing with multicultural and/or diasporic hard polytheism, which is what most modern Pagans are dealing with, it becomes much more difficult to accept a literalist view of the nature and powers of the gods.

To be fair, I may be vastly oversimplifying Elani's view, not to mention the views of other hard polytheists. But these are the kinds of questions that I can't ignore or overlook, and I suspect that they are the kinds of questions that Elani avoids in declaring that her practice is "not based on logic." There is nothing wrong with admitting when we run up against mysteries and paradoxes when grappling with these huge questions, but it is during those times that I think reason and critical thinking can be invaluable tools (so long as we don't turn them into weapons to be wielded violently to force the world to conform to our expectations). This is also the time when poetry and metaphor and mythos become incredibly important, but these too suffocate and die under the weight of literalism.

Returning to Natural Polytheism and the Question of Will

In a roundabout way, this brings us back to the question of free will. We are talking about the powers of the gods and their influence over the natural world, of which we are obviously a part. This challenge of a multicultural world is one reason I include animism and pantheism along with polytheism as descriptions of my particular approach to theology. In the same way that I might be able to provoke a forest fire by striking a match, I do believe that the gods have a relationship with the natural forces of the world, and that through the medium of the natural world they manifest and express themselves just as an artist might express themselves through clay or paint or music. But I do not usually equate the gods directly with those natural forces, and if I want it to rain, or I feel bitten and beleaguered by the wind, I'm just as likely to address the storm itself. Where my animism shades off into polytheism is a bit murky, made murkier by the fact that I do also believe in the Song of the World, a kind of harmony running through and uniting everything in a single pattern (hence, my pantheism). I do not necessarily believe that the gods are all merely manifestations of a Single God, but I do believe that the melodies of their existence are dominant harmonies in this World Song in which all of our melodies have a part. For me, the Song of the World is very similar to the Daoist concept of the Dao or Way, which is both a guide and "just the way things are." The gods are just as beholden to the Way as we are, and they cannot violate it any more than we can.

But if this is true, then what of free will? Is there even such a thing, if we are all being guided and shaped (and stuck in) the Song of the World?

This question came up in a slightly different way with Dave, in the comment thread in response to John's original post, and it's what inspired the title of this too-long two-part post. The issue was, if someone claims to have submitted willingly to some external authority, isn't this itself an act of will? In other words, is it even possible to give up one's free will?

So we're coming at the question from two directions. On the one hand, if we are inextricably enmeshed in the Song of the World, an endless web of relationship and interconnection, of cause and effect, beholden to powers greater than ourselves and even to our own powers and capacities of which we might not know the full extent.... then in what sense do we have "free will"? But on the other hand, if every action is a manifestation of will, even the choice not to act or to allow another to dictate our actions, then how can we ever say that we have relinquished our will? From one perspective, we never had free will at all; from the other perspective, we can't ever be rid of it.

My understanding of will is that it is very much like a muscle. It is something that is innate to us in potentia and to a certain extent manifestly, but it is also something that we have to develop and maintain in order for it to be effective. Like a muscle, the will is not exercised either from being always lax and passive, or from being always tensed and resistant -- instead, we develop our will and keep it strong by learning how to dance. A dancer knows when to tense a muscle, and when to allow it to go limp, and either or both are often needed in order to accomplish a particular move or to avoid an injury. A dancer is in a constant conversation with gravity, and in the same way, our will is in a constant conversation with the World Song in which it is enmeshed. It is against the World Song and the many other beings around us that we exert ourselves when we tense our will, and it is to the World Song and those others that we surrender ourselves when we relax. For that matter, this is true of everyone else as well — we are dancers whose hands are not only linked, but sewn together, and so the surrender or resistance of others has a direct bearing on our own expression of will. When we are in relationships that demand that we always be limp and relaxed, we find our wills growing weak, atrophied from disuse; likewise, when we are in relationships in which others are always limp and submissive, we find ourselves constantly under the pressure of supporting their weight, and our wills, like muscles, lock up under the unrelenting strain. In both cases, such relationships cause us and others harm. (And I'll note that, from what little I know of dance, the partner being lifted needs to be as strong and sure in her movements as the partner doing the lifting.)

A healthy will is one that sometimes offers resistance and sometimes relaxes. It is also flexible and able to be stretched, and like a muscle, stretching can often seem to be a strange, even paradoxical combination of tension and relaxation. (My favorite example of this is the breathing technique that Jeff taught me for yoga, in which during the in-breath you "push" your body into the proper alignment -- f'ex, pushing your heels into the floor, or your hips into the air -- and during the out-breath, you deliberately relax your body as much as possible while maintaining that position. When done correctly, you do not seem to move at all, but the internal rhythm is there.) Healthy muscles do not "submit" to gravity, but work with the reality of its existence in ways that honor the appropriate place of both tension and relaxation. The same is true for a healthy and well-developed will.

As for the gods... they play us like instruments. When we are rigid, we cannot respond to their touch. When we are limp, we cannot sing. The same is true for everything in the world; the gods play the world itself as an instrument. Brigid plays fire with her fingertips, tripping her toes across sunbeams like a harp, stirring deep earthy tones from the rising waters of the hot springs. Artemis calls in the wind that howls like a baying hound through the trees, or places her hand on the drumhead of the moon to mute the sounds of midnight for a moment of rest. This is poetry. This is metaphor. This is the Song of the World.

Virginity, Schmirginity

I've been trying to get a straight answer from folks over on TC regarding the theological implications of virginity for goddesses like Athena, Artemis, Hekate, etc. So far, the only direct statement I seem to be able to get from anyone is: "the ancient Greeks thought about virginity differently than we think about it today" and every once in a while the slight expansion, "for the ancient Greeks, being a virgin just meant 'unmarried'."

Which is all very well and good, if I were a middle schooler who didn't know how to use Wikipedia. But since this is pretty much the first and most obvious information I was able to find on my own with the very limited resources I have (Wikipedia aside, a bit of Googling brings up some reliable academic sources and a few articles by modern Pagans as well)... it is kind of frustrating. Sometimes it seems that these kinds of general all-purpose responses triggered by key words (virginity? I know I have my pre-formulated reply about virginity in here somewhere...) are used by modern Pagans to prop up a semblance of expertise while covering a multitude of inconsistencies and downright contradictions.

In my short time looking into this, I've found "hard" polytheists who insist on interpretations of the virginity of Greek goddesses to mean everything from "since women in patriarchal ancient Greece were not allowed to have sex outside of marriage, virginity today means you literally have to abstain from sex" all the way to "virginity was about female empowerment, and therefore today it means you should have tons of sex because sexual liberation is how we express our female power." Since I happen to think both of these extremes are poor excuses for feminism and female empowerment, I'm baffled that somehow this whole debate has been carefully managed by resorting to the same basic response, "ancient Greeks thought about virginity differently than we do today." That response leaves me asking, And.....? It's a masterpiece of social cohesion in the face of mind-boggling diversity. It's basically a way of avoiding confronting the fact that your theology says you worship distinct, separate deities, and yet these same deities seem to manifest to you (plural) in such incredibly different ways that from an outside perspective it seems odd to claim that Greek-Virgin-Goddess-X-let's-have-sex is really the same as Greek-Virgin-Goddess-X-no-seriously-cut-it-out, but Goddess-Y-let's-have-sex-oh-by-the-way-I'm-Norse just simply can't be the same deity at all, no way, no how. What I'm saying is, as someone who is not a hard polytheist in any way, the lines that get drawn seem pretty arbitrary.

Hard polytheists crack me up sometimes.

Since I'm not a hard polytheist, I don't have much of a problem is there's a huge diversity in how people relate to and interpret deities that they call by the same name. But it's seems to be that intellectual integrity could be better served by asking hard questions and laying bare that diversity in a way that can give us insights and spark new ways of relating to deity, instead of trying to act the expert. I used to buy the line that Hellenic Recons had so many more sources and resources available to them for their efforts at reconstruction than those interested in CR. But now I'm starting to think that's a load of bull and HR folks are just as deep in the process of cobbling things together from half-understood academic sources as CRs are.

In any case, here are some of my remaining questions about virginity in ancient Greek society (keeping in mind the answer could be and most likely is, "ancient Greek society was diverse and evolving, so the answer to your question is going to be complex"):

• Why would a goddess choose to be virginal? (Is the act of choosing significant, or only the state of being virginal itself? Is there a connection between the two?)
• What is the spiritual or theological significance of virginity in both goddesses and human worshippers?
• If the ancient Greeks merely equated virginity to "being unmarried," then why do so many of the myths involve women who lose their virginity through rape or trysts outside of the context of marriage?
• Why did the Greeks use the same word (nymphe) to describe both "nature spirits" of a local landscape and its features, and a "bride," i.e. a woman who is married but has not yet had children?
• In light of the answer to that question, what is the theological and/or ritual significance of descriptions of Artemis as having nymphs as companions and priestesses?
• How do modern Pagans approach and understand stories of Artemis punishing not only rapists but also the victims of rape and sexual assault?