Being Pagan

My discovery of paganism has played a huge role in my spiritual growth and healing over the past year, and so I wanted to make a post about what being a Pagan means to me and how I follow this path in relation to commonly accepted ideas on Paganism. This is not intended to be a fully fledged, researched essay on all aspects of Pagan thought. There are gaps and I am aware of this. This is simply a summary of what constitutes my Pagan path.

Paganism is a hugely varied and eclectic path, and as a result pretty much anything goes. Many pagans struggle with this as it makes it difficult to explain their beliefs and ideals to others. Beyond “revere the earth” there isn’t any real hard and fast rule. There are a number of particular branches of paganism. These include Wicca, Druidism, Heathenry and Shamanism. I personally do not belong to any of these traditions, although I continue to research as much information as I can about them and indeed any other strains of pagan thought. Being bound by the rules imposed by such groups, being told what to believe and how to live my beliefs, doesn’t gel with me. But I do encourage anyone who feels out of touch with the world to investigate Paganism, as it is a very open and welcoming spiritual path with a whole array of solutions to your spiritual aches and pains should you put the work in.

Lets start with the definition of a pagan as stated by The Pagan Federation. A pagan is a follower of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion.
Na, this isn’t me. I do not follow or worship anything, nor am I religious. I’m very spiritual, but I am not religious. I follow my own creed and conduct, and I am not about to place responsibility for my actions on a deity, sprite, or any other ethereal being (that may or may not exist) who is trying to mind its own business. I follow the basic rules required to be a decent human being, and I do this better than most religious people I have come across, and that’s good enough for me.

If I was to attach a label to my beliefs as a pagan, I suppose they would most closely echo the belief statement of the World Pantheistic Movement http://www.pantheism.net/manifest.htm. I revere the earth as my sacred home within the cosmos, and do not imbue the cosmos with any form of consciousness. I do not believe that the cosmos thinks and feels as I do. I believe its is a bunch of rocks and gas, although an amazing, highly important and fascinating bunch of rocks and gas. My belief system is bound within scientific thought. I am a scientist by trade (or will be soon, yay!) and it is the theories and ideas generated within science that I deem to be the closest thing we have to reality at the moment, although there is no ‘scientific proof’ for what I am about to state as my belief system. An oxymoron I know, but I justify this with the following. Just because there is no proof now, does not mean that science will not prove it in the future. Once upon a time germs spontaneously generated out of nothing and the world was flat. What is magic now can be tomorrow’s scientific discovery.

So, what do I believe? I view the earth and all that lies within it as a whole, a wondrous natural machine that is all carefully interlinked and full of connections and communications. All organic matter (that is, from the earth and not man made) hums and thrums with the energies and rhythms of life. If you practice active meditation, you can feel this energy. Its like a caress on your skin, and makes you all tingly. It’s a lovely feeling. It is this energy that connects all living things. As an integral part of nature, living within it and not apart from it, I feel it is my duty as a more evolved life form, to help preserve the earth and all it contains. Even if it wasn’t my duty, evolution has created so many wondrous designs, colours, bodyshapes and life strategies that are simply amazing, how could I not want to help protect them? So, I eat organic food, support local farmers, support conservation groups, am training to be a conservationist, try and reduce my carbon footprint, and love sinking my hands into rich fertile soil. My paganism is more the practical version, I try to make a physical difference to the earth with my behaviours and actions. Nature fascinates me, it supports me, it enriches and enlivens me. It is most definitely worth tipping my hat to, but I do not worship it. I do not view the earth as above me or bigger than me. It is part of the cosmos, just as I am, all linked by the same natural energies. I to am a wondrous result of millions of years or evolution. So, the earth does not need me to bow to it, but it certainly deserves a lot of respect. At the end of the day, no earth = no paganhorsegirl, and that sucks!

What about deity? Nearly all branches of Pagan tradition involve the worship of deities of some sort, with particular focus on the Goddess. Some practitioners follow a single pantheon, others pick and choose deities from a range. Some view the Gods and Goddesses as literal beings, others view them as aspects of the one God and Goddess, and others still view them as archetypes. I am of this final persuasion.
For me, deity and divinity are religious concepts grounded in superstition and dogma, grounded in the need for humans to not realise their full potential and therefore take full responsibility for their actions in this world. The number of times you see stories about people who suddenly become eco warriors or dash off to Africa to save the children because of some divine intervention. Please, you just suddenly realised what a selfish little s**t you were and felt guilty.

Anyway. Wikipedia defines archetype as a generic form of personality, for example a mother or a warrior. The idea of archetypes was most readily promoted by Carl Jung (one of my favouritist people ever!). Jung’s archetypes were psychological organs that arose via evolution, and are limitless in their scope. There are a number of main recurring archetypes, and these include the Child, the Hero, the Mother and the Sage. They reside within our unconscious, and become actualised through myth, symbolism, dreams and behaviours. If you look into this further, we basically created the Gods. Hercules – the epitamy of a strong and noble hero. In Celtic mythology, Danu exists as the great Mother. Should you wish to delve into their individual personalities and stories, it is clear (to me in any case) that all Gods and Goddesses exist as an archetypal construct, they all represent an aspect of the human psyche at some level. As psychological products of evolution, the archetypes exist within us all within the collective unconscious. In Jung’s words: “there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

There are considerable parallels between the different pantheons, between cultures with vast expanses of physical distance between them. This alone is evidence for me of a collective unconscious, that myths and deities that actualise the archetypes are created and given life by humans are given life by humans. We do this to fulfil basic psychological needs, to fulfil the need for a Mother or Hero. Myth provides us with faces, with personalities for us to interact with, so we can ‘talk’ with our unconscious self and learn from the collective on a level that we understand. Myth makes archetype tangible. I engage as often as I can with what I call my higher self, both through active and traditional forms of meditation. I have a number of figures who I see and discuss matters with. My primary ‘guardian angel’ looks like I used to in darker days, but she is very wise, and terribly droll. She is the one who raises her eyebrow at me and, in her gentle albeit condescending manner, walks me through what im doing wrong and what I should be doing. I also talk with Pan, and have a horse called Taffy who is my transport.
Religion also makes archetype more ‘real’, but it creates something that is outside of us, not within us. It teaches that rather than working with, we should be working for. It does not acknowledge our own power and potential as human beings which can be achieved the more we learn about ourselves from both our personal and collective, but rather dictates, controls, and oppresses any sense of learning or creative thinking.

Magic is another facet of organised Paganism that attracts people to this path. It us unfortunately, the primary attraction for most. I don’t practice magic. I’m terrible at it, and I’m terrible at it because I don’t feel comfortable with manipulating natural energies for my own ends. I personally think that magic should be the ultimate last resort. We don’t understand enough about the world to intelligently and safely start mucking around with natural balances and to divert energy to places it has no right in being. We have no idea what backlash could result from magical activity, and in this case I refer to spell casting. I do practice divination, herbalism and crystal healing, and in all honesty I have no idea if these activities have a negative backlash. I do my best to be responsible, and only employ the use of natural energies to enhance what I have already begun within myself rather than to induce the change. So, whilst a believer of magic, I don’t cast spells in the traditional kitchen witch sense, nor do I practice high magic rituals (which I do believe are little more than mumbo jumbo, just my opinion, not truth, get back in your pram). I use oils, herbs and rocks to help me re balance, re centre, and understand my emotions. Other than that, I do a lot of thinking, which I personally believe is the highest form of magical power available.

Healing fairies

My life has been a bit of a mare of late. Suicidal grandfathers, narcissistic mothers and just plain psychotic but stupid at the same time stepfathers, all of whom require their 25year old daughter / granddaughter (who by the way, knows nothing, because of course anyone who is older than you is more sensible, knowledgeable, and far more clever), to make them feel better and generally hold them tight and keep them safe and sound throughout the demise of their wife / mother (my grandmother) from Alzheimer’s because they are just too plain selfish and cowardly to sort it out themselves. Phew, that feels better. Grammatically terrible, but that feels a lot better.
Now I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of this situation, so judge me as you will. I have no doubt that there are a number of readers who are wailing right now about respect for your elders and supporting families through crises etc etc. Let me make this clear. I do the supporting in this family, and I get no support back. Nothing, nada. I am fully aware that I will not be allowed to grieve over my grandmother until everyone else is fixed, and when they are all ok, they will simply turn their backs and disappear into the mist. Like last time, and the time before that……

Anyhow. So, needless to say I have been walking the edge of that oh so familiar deep dark swirling pit that I like to call *my other*. We have a good relationship nowadays for the best part, we sit and chat, and we work things through. Its all good. But lately, the edge is a little too close for comfort, and the tendrils of insanity with their promises of drunken oblivion and release through the blade are whispering seductively in my ear. But no old friend, I’m not going there, as you should know by now.
So, I have spent the past couple of weeks, feeling the gall rise in my throat, only to push it back down again, desperately trying to not give in to the despair that claws at my insides on a regular basis right now. This morning, I took a couple of moments to sit quietly and re-centre myself, and decided to draw a card from my new Brian Froud fairies oracle to see what today had in store.

And what a lovely card I drew! A certain, poignant reminder that my higher self always knows what’s best for me, and tells me what I need to know. The card was Losganna (http://www.worldoffroud.com/www/online/oracle/oracle/card-39.htm), and the images screamed at me before I had even read the accompanying lesson.
A fairy, with the legs of a frog and the upper body and face of a young woman. She sat serenely on a toadstool, gazing forwards at the path ahead. The scene spoke of change, evolution, and metamorphosis. The transformation from a lesser to a higher state. This gave me a real sense of hope. Everything might just be ok! Albeit potentially with a lot of upheaval (but in all honesty I hadn’t expected anything less), but the end of this journey would be a positive one, and I will have grown as a result.

Upon reading the lesson the card made even more sense. It advises an exploration, of both inner and outer realms. I have to not be afraid to wade and roll around in the muddied waters of my tumultuous emotions, and whilst yes I will find a lot of dirt, I will also find the odd speck of fairy gold.
I have been endeavouring to do this, as if I had not, I would have just shut down by now. I find a lot of comfort in searching and knowing myself, as it helps me to realise just how much potential I really have, and it helps me to help and understand others to a far greater degree. And I have learnt some lessons about myself, and they haven’t really been ones that I like. Firstly, I am a total control freak. One of the big reasons why I’m not coping with my grandfather’s complete hissy fit is the feeling to total helplessness that I have. He is 5 hours away, and I have to work so I cant just go down there, not that he would let me anyhow. He just wants to dump on me, he doesn’t actually want my continued support or to share anything. So, I have created scene after miserable scene of his plight, and have to constantly remind myself of the facts to stop myself from breaking down. I just cant sit and do nothing, and cant accept that listening compassionately and making suggestions on how to improve things is actually doing the thing that is probably the best for me and my grandfather. If I had my own way, id be down there, mothering him like a child, watching his every move, organising everything for him. How’s that going to help anybody? I know, better than most, that in order to get back into the light it has to come from within you. But, I can’t bare the thought of anyone suffering on their own, coz it hurts. I know how much it hurts, and I don’t want him to have to go through that.

Second lesson – I appear to have taken it upon myself to suffer everyone’s pain for them, like some damned martyr. I cant cope with others hurting emotionally, and at the expense of myself, do everything I can to try and make it stop. But again, as mentioned above, I cant make it stop. Only they can make it stop. And because despite all my efforts, they still hurt, I then end up cross, frustrated, and feeling rejected of all things, like ive failed, and that my words of advice simply aren’t good enough to listen too.
Stupid or what huh?

On a far more pleasant note, the idea of exploring outer realms. Losganna advises us to create, try new things, expand our horizons and learn new ideas. Wonderful! Recently I have delved into a number of creative projects, which have really helped my focus. I have a large sewing project on the go, two new online courses in aromatherapy and herbalism that I plan to start next month, and have also thrown myself into my writing a lot more. It’s good to know I am doing the right thing, and they have certainly helped me keep my mind of things. In fact I can feel a poem coming on now… I think things will be ok.

Modern Day Hysterics

After checking, and re-checking, and then re-checking again, the various details, footnotes, and required documentation that Universities require for mere mortals to apply to Master's Courses, I came up with the following.
Seeing as I am lacking the time for a proper post right now it will have to do, but it is a fine representation of how bureaucracy makes me feel!

begone!
oh foul insects
that scrape and scrabble within me
how you chew and knaw
at my brain and hands
demanding, incesantly demanding!
that i do your will and yours alone
No!
I shall not pick up that pen
I shall not submit myself
to the tortuous and agonising
drone of dear sirs and to whom it may concerns
I am not here to please you
I am a child of the cosmos
free to fly and roam as I see fit!
I will not be chained by your societal needs
I will not massage the ever growing ego
you may pluck and pull and taunt and tease
but I am free
and this dammed form
shall be completed tomorrow
SO MOTE IT BE!