nonfluffypagans: A Plea for Cultural Coherence

Ashley (

ashley_y) wrote in

nonfluffypagans,
@ 2005-07-02 05:37:00

Current mood:	drunk
Entry tags:	cultural "borrowing", gender trouble

A Plea for Cultural Coherence

See your whole identity and your life all around you. Which part is divine, and which is not?

What I think is wrong with paganism today:

Co-optation of deities

We strip-mine cultures for deities that appeal to our modern desires and conceptions, conceptions that would puzzle natives. Can one have a meaningful relationship with a deity without participating in the culture that that deity is bound in? Is this less offensive if it's a dead culture with no clear heirs that can complain, or a culture that's long since been Christianised? Not that even that's always a consideration.
Obsession with gender

And all we're really interested in is whether our deity's a goddess or a god: everything else is secondary. Our cosmologies and cobbled-together creation myths are equally carefully gendered. Eventually all traditional ritual and mythology is expunged, and we're left with a check-list of goddesses to chant off. Which is better, the One True Male God that denies and destroys the others, or the One True Female Goddess that absorbs and erases them?

Some scholars say the Japanese sun-goddess Amaterasu used to be male. Isn't there more to life than boy vs. girl?
Attachment to the far past

Paganism has a genuine heritage from the Romantic movement in the 18th and 19th centuries, from folklore and from continuing innovation. More broadly, we have all of our culture to draw upon, but instead we obsess over details of just this one period a thousand years ago as if anything that might be influenced by Christianity is impure. But those people had very different attitudes and lifestyles than ours, and trying to live the way they do on weekend camp-outs will not help resolve the incoherence. "How to reconstruct what our ancestors did a thousand years ago" is the wrong question; we should be asking, "what is it we can do now that will be worth reconstructing a thousand years from now?"

I'd like to see unpretentious (and, please, unpoliticised) pagan ritual that speaks to who we actually are. I'm not going to dress in "garb", or use a horn if a wine-glass is available. I already have a sacred language to speak to the gods to, it's my first language. I'll cut runes (or do anything else) knowing that their meaning comes from modern consensus, which only happens to derive from their ancient origin. I relegate ancient lore to the category of Untested Cultural Practice until I or someone has actually tried it out. The sacred places are here in the landscape I live in, and the sun and the moon are divine in their unmediated presence in the sky, whether above or below the horizon.

Can I get an Amen?

(Post a new comment)

	sannion 2005-07-02 12:41 pm UTC (link)
	Amen! (Reply to this)

caelidh
2005-07-02 12:51 pm UTC (link)

Very Interesting.

My spiritual/religious journey took from me from Episcopalian and Catholic Influences to Wicca to a more broad generalized Pagan practice to a practice called Sheya (I have some Buddhism thrown in there for good measure).

What I liked about Sheya was that it dropped the trappings of traditional Wicca and made it more real for my own personal development.

NO more excuses about not being able to do temple because you didn't have the right tools or temple space. You can do Sheya in a bathroom in your bathrobe or jeans if you want. .It will still work. The "deities" are merely aspects of our inner selves. Dyanna Maggah,Kyatta, Enochi. These are ASPECTS not deities. They represent the Mother Father, Child and the Unification of all. What I am getting at.. is that it has cut out a lot of the fluff of Wicca.

No fluffy pagan names were needed (Morning Eveningstar etc..)

Thanks for posting.
Peace

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	kawaiililme 2005-07-02 03:54 pm UTC (link)
	Wicca itself isn't fluffy...some people who practice it and use it as a market to make money (ie $RW) are fluffy, but the people who really know it and practice it in its most basic forms generally are just as well read and practical as any other pagan. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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	samidha 2005-07-02 01:03 pm UTC (link)
	Yes! Amen! :D (Reply to this)

winterlion
2005-07-02 01:36 pm UTC (link)

Not from here.
What's drawn me to Asatru - a rebirth in modern day of an old religion - is that a lot of the basics have survived the ages. Cultural standards as reflected in the Eddas are still present in modern society. Stories of heroes and ancestors that tell us where we are now and how we got here. My tales include my parents' grandparents' and others.
My grandparents swore by the same gods I now study - it's not far gone.
The -culture- and -language- have survived - even though the celebrations and rituals have mostly faded. The point of this religion is to reawake what has survived - and bring it back together in the modern day. But leave the blood in the past - we don't need to make the same sacrifices and blood prices our ancestors did. We have a whole new set in this day and age.

My first language (a blend of Dutch, German, French and English) helps me read the Eddas in their original language - and get a better feel of context that's lost in translation. There's much I have learned there that help me deal with who and what I am.

Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.

IMHO mead tastes better from a horn (or from a nice ceramic mug *g*) than from a wine glass. Difference in texture. Runes are for reading and writing, and roman alphabet with þ,ð,ä and the like are much easier to read and write. I don't do fortune telling and thus this is the only use of runes for me. (barring next subject)

As a hobby I do re-creation of a person who could have lived in 11th century Sweden. I also do re-creation of a person who could have lived in 11th century Arabia. I'm not too specific and I do it for fun. This is not my daily life or my daily celebration - but it's still something that's important to me. Research here nicely crosses over to historical study of family and culture - but they are kept seperate in my life.

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winterlion
2005-07-02 01:42 pm UTC (link)

aside - I find the gender trappings of a lot of pagan groups rather silly. I find the alchemical and astrological fascinations even more silly. Hence my dissillusion with Wicca. I got involved in the first place because Starhawk's writings helped me deal with a lot of stuff - but when faced with local pagans I mostly met with superstitions feardriven people who couldn't handle my long fight with being a berserker. When by shear luck I fell into a group of Asatru I found home.
And funnily enough a culture I'd grown up in.

Good or bad, easy or hard - it's home. A home that already knows how to deal with my lifelong "curse".

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kawaiililme
2005-07-02 03:52 pm UTC (link)

Amen to winterlion. While I do agree with the strip-mining comment, and the idea that if you're working with a group you learn about that group and stick with that group, for the majority of the time or for a circle it doesn't matter but if you're calling a Deity you better KNOW your Deity.

However, what winterlion is saying rings true. Maybe it's easier to connect to these gods by working in their culture. Maybe learning gaelic, or dutch, or runes are worth it because you can understand what your ancestors wrote, and what they believed. I enjoy the use of paganism as a means of getting back to the simpler things, archetype gods, seasons, the earth, birth and death, war...all the baseness of human nature that gets forgotten in a modern setting.

As far as dressing up and the necessity of tools go...I think that's more by the person than any one group or belief system. I'm a pretty strong believer in Wicca, for my own reasons, but I also enjoy practicing the old systems and studying theory. I recognize the idiocy of people who can't cast circle without an athame, or who refuse to call elements without colored candles...tools are just that, tools. We use and manipulate them to make it easier on ourselves but the energy that we use isn't within them, it's within us or around us.

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samidha
2005-07-02 01:36 pm UTC (link)

Also, I've got in my head:

Yes, and I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.
Oh, yeah. You tear your history down, man! “30 years old, let's smash it to the floor and put a car park here!" I have seen it in stories. I saw something in a program on something in Miami, and they were saying, "We've redecorated this building to how it looked over 50 years ago!" And people were going, "No, surely not, no. No one was alive then!"

--
A THOUSAND YEARS? *gasp* ;)

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	wibbble 2005-07-02 02:37 pm UTC (link)
	I've lived in houses that are older than the city my wife grew up in. ;o) On the other hand, I consider the 50 miles to Glasgow to be quite a distance. (Reply to this) (Parent)

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blackstone
2005-07-02 01:47 pm UTC (link)

To quote Rob Brezny:

A-men, A-women, and halleigh-fucking-luiah!

That's exactly how I construct my rituals. Garb? Nah. I like to dress cute, but I save garb for SCA events. Wine class-absolutely. I giggle, I make mistakes, I make jokes. My athame is a camping knife. My expressions of faith and devotion are sincere, thoughtful, and goofy.

You will never hear 'thee, thou, or thine' coming out of my mouth. You won't hear me using 20 words where 5 will do. I am SO with you on this post, which puts me at odds with some of the folks I practice with, who tend to kitchen-sink everything.

I do feel the need to know the history of ancient cultures, study the art, and learn as much as we can. I consider this to be an intellectual pursuit that informs my spiritual practice.

Great post. Well said.

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	kawaiililme 2005-07-02 03:56 pm UTC (link)
	Aw come on...even thee, thou and thine come in handy when you're trying to make a rhyme for a chant...lol (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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glenmarshall
2005-07-02 02:21 pm UTC (link)

A qualified Amen.

My chosen pantheon is Celtic, as that is my heritage.
What I strongly object to is "cafeteria paganism" -- a melange of pantheons and cultures, without regard to what is being blended. I like your strip-mining analogy.
The use of gender as a barrier to celebration.
Gender polarity and the creative force it represents is part of what I celebrate. But to require that rituals and the roles one plasy in them be somehow attached to one's genitals or gender identity is at best annoying.
Ignorance of the here-and-now
The historical roots of my spiritual experience are not as important as it's relevance to the world I live in and, thorough my spiritual practice and its daily application, plan to leave better than when I came.

I prefer wearing a tunic-type thing and have some special items that I only use in ritual, as that is a way I set the time apart and gain focus on the celebration. "Garb" is for SCA. Ancient lore is for recreational reading; history is for learning from. Sacred space is the here-and-now.

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	boy_pastiche 2005-07-02 03:09 pm UTC (link)
	"Garb" is for SCA. Ancient lore is for recreational reading; history is for learning from. Sacred space is the here-and-now. META!! Can I steal this quote for my personal notes? Should I use "Glen Marshall" to credit you? (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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boy_pastiche
2005-07-02 03:07 pm UTC (link)

I like what I think you're reaching toward, but have several points of dissent:

We strip-mine cultures for deities that appeal to our modern desires and conceptions, conceptions that would puzzle natives. Can one have a meaningful relationship with a deity without participating in the culture that that deity is bound in?

I personally believe that the gods are not culture-bound, but present within the subconscious of all, possibly varying by genetic memory. Thus they can not be bound by culture, as culture is fluid and evolutionary in nature. Have you read American Gods By Neil Gaiman?

And all we're really interested in is whether our deity's a goddess or a god: everything else is secondary.

Unless you practice VooDoo or Voudon, in which case the Orishas are multi-gender/genderless. Also, in my trad there's a myth that females can invoke female gods or male gods (the latter by strapping on a coven sword), but males cannot invoke female gods. Ever. I think that's bullshit, personally, but I'm gender queer to begin with so that may be true for some people. *shrug*

Which is better, the One True Male God that denies and destroys the others, or the One True Female Goddess that absorbs and erases them?

Not all Wiccans are Dianic, I believe strongly in balancing god/dess/es. To do what you mention is more or less putting YHWH in drag. And how can one part of the mind absorb or erase another?

I'd like to see unpretentious (and, please, unpoliticised) pagan ritual that speaks to who we actually are. You can't really have one that everyone relates to. Pagans are as varied as... life. Have you tried writing one that you relate to?

Paganism has a genuine heritage from the Romantic movement in the 18th and 19th centuries, from folklore and from continuing innovation. More broadly, we have all of our culture to draw upon, but instead we obsess over details of just this one period a thousand years ago as if anything that might be influenced by Christianity is impure.

Uhm... Christianity's influence began in the heydays of the Greeks and Romans. That was WAY before the Romantic movement, and the Inquisition was in what, the 1400s? I think you're thinking of hedge-witches, which weren't so much pagans as neighborhood doctors/pharmacists. Some of them may have practiced witchcraft, but modern anthropologists are beginning to doubt that (some theorise that the old boys' club worked to discredit them and root them out because there was more money to be made in being a "proper doctor". Don't get me started on the bullshit ideas early medicine had, and how they're finally beginning to admit that herbal cures can be very effective when judiciously applied.)

But [early pagans] had very different attitudes and lifestyles than ours... "How to reconstruct what our ancestors did a thousand years ago" is the wrong question

Right, except there is wisdom gained in studying their culture in order to understand those attitudes. One gains a better understanding of superstitions, folklore and even the subtext of the speech of the gods and heroes of that partcular culture that inform the pieces we are using to evolve a very new religion. This is true when studying the fragments of ANY religion, actually.

oh--and "Amen" is a Christian word. I won't say it :P But "Hear, hear!"

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	holmes365 2005-07-02 03:35 pm UTC (link)
	I love your icon! I also agree with you on a number of points. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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boy_pastiche, 2005-07-03 07:57 pm UTC

medancer
2005-07-02 03:49 pm UTC (link)

I grew up in America The Melting Pot. The culture I was exposed to was 50's, 60's, and 70's television in a stereotypical white suburb of San Francisco - in other words, no culture at all, if you take away the bits that Hollywood made up.

Guess that kind of leaves me SOL if I care to step outside the kind of Christianity my "culture" offers for my conspicuous consumption.

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	wibbble 2005-07-02 06:32 pm UTC (link)
	Pretty much, yes. Or you could look at what affects the real lives of people around you, and come up with new traditions that match it. Americans desperately clinging to 'Celtic' traditions (which are usually completely made up, anyway) is pretty pointless. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

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chaos_rose
2005-07-02 03:59 pm UTC (link)

We strip-mine cultures for deities that appeal to our modern desires and conceptions, conceptions that would puzzle natives. Can one have a meaningful relationship with a deity without participating in the culture that that deity is bound in? Is this less offensive if it's a dead culture with no clear heirs that can complain, or a culture that's long since been Christianised? Not that even that's always a consideration.

Deities evolved as human kind did. The strongest complaint that I have had about religion is that no matter where one turns there is orthodoxy, holding to 'pure' traditions that are anything but. All religions, all faiths are likely so changed from their 'seed' that we could not recognise that 'old time religion' if it came over and stole our french fries.

The universe we live in is not a static place, why should the gods one worships be unchanging? Cybele likely started out as a Phrygian mother goddess of caverns and the wild earth, somehow wound up being a bee goddess, and the goddess of fortresses, and obtaining a vegetation-god consort named Attis.

Poor Attis, you don't hear much about him today.

So, since her origin as the mother of mountains and caverns, through Cimmerian, Lydian, Persian, Greek, and Roman conquerers, then Her export to the west, and the west's Christianiztion we cannot truly observe Her in a cultural context, as the culture from which she originated is no longer extant. The Anatolian plateau is now a part of Turkey, the Phrygian language survived - according to my sources - until the 6th century CE by which time the culture was Christianised, and that very likely changed from the bronze-age Indo-European language spoken in 1200 BCE.

I wonder if it was offensive to conduct her worship in Latin? After all, they Phrygians and their language were extant.

I believe just as much in quantum physics, unified field theory, the Big Bang, and hyperspace as I do in Bast, Kwan Yin, Inanna, and Hecate. One doesn't negate the other, any more than having a Christian ritual (which was influenced by the Romans, Greeks, the worship of Mithra, and so on) negates the value of the ritual to a Christian.

So, I disagree heavily with the assertion that we strip-mine our deities devoid of cultural context. Our entire culture is from somewhere else, linked back to the dominant cultures of the past - evolved from those cultures co-opted by others, assimilated, and changed again. Even our own culture is changing, bits taken off here and there, rearranged or replaced with something from somewhere else entireley.

My point is that religion and worship are not neatly lined up along cultural lines. It is something felt deeply, in the heart and mind - a calling, if you will. If it comes out of the grave of a dead culture, across the bounds of culture, or out of the Google search engine, I don't think it matters as much as the intent in the heart of the celebrant. It means that the deity in question invokes something within the being of the celebrant, and moves the celebrant to worship. I can't imagine a Roman deciding to worship some barbarian goddess from the provinces without Her divine intervention, actually.

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bluestetson
2005-07-02 04:50 pm UTC (link)

Wow, you're so amazingly eloquent.

And I completely agree with you. This is sort of how I work. No, I may not know all that much about the cultures that produced Athena or Frey, nor do I know much of anything about the rituals of the past used to honor them. Mind you, I don't actively 'worship' any deities, really. It just isn't my style. I respect them more as guides or helpers along my particular path in life. Yes, I commune with them every now and then, and yes, I give small sacrifices, even if only mental in nature, to them every now and then, but I don't really consider it worship. I also offer sacrifices and ask for help from my ancestors, but I don't consider myself a practictioner of ancestor-worship.

In any case, I'm completely rambling and my writing is horribly disjointed. I apologize.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though I haven't researched in depth the cultures that produced the two main deities that I associate with, I still feel connected to them. After all, they came to me first, and they offer help to me without my asking from time to time. I suppose that goes along with the last sentence of your comment. I didn't so much choose to follow them as they intervened and chose me. And honestly, I really don't think that Athena cares that I don't practice the traditional ancient Greek rituals in her honor. To me, the only thing that seems important is the fact that it's in her honor, regardless of the cultural contexts.

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pinkpolarity, 2005-07-05 04:55 am UTC

missysedai
2005-07-02 04:25 pm UTC (link)

Can I get an Amen?

From me, you most definitely may not.

"How to reconstruct what our ancestors did a thousand years ago" is the wrong question;

Well, no kidding. But why are you trying to drag the SCA into this?

I'd like to see unpretentious (and, please, unpoliticised) pagan ritual that speaks to who we actually are.

Who are you to tell me that my private interaction with my deities is pretentious and politicized? What makes you so certain that my ritual does not speak to who I am? Oh, wait, you said "we". Well, I don't really care if my interactions with my deities speak to who you are.

"Pagan" is not a religion, it's a collection of different religions, and there just isn't a one-size-fits-all ritual that is going to speak to everyone.

Thanks, no. You can keep your standardized ritual. I'm content in my practice of Asatru, in the core values that reflect who I am, what I value, how I live and how I interact with the world around me. I am happy with pouring Freya her libations and communing with her without your tutelage or approval.

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wibbble
2005-07-02 07:54 pm UTC (link)

Well, if your practice is pretentious, then it's fair comment.

And if it's not pretentious, then he/she/it's not talking to you. :op

I mean, it's really not uncommon for Pagan ritual to be both incredibly pretentious and /high/ politicised. Radical feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, &c. are all often dredge up by idiots who claim that you can't be a Proper Pagan if you're not also feminist, an activist, &c.

If that's not you - and in this community it's not going to apply to a lot of people - then where's the problem?

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tanlwythbuddha
2005-07-02 04:41 pm UTC (link)

Obsession with gender
And all we're really interested in is whether our deity's a goddess or a god: everything else is secondary. Our cosmologies and cobbled-together creation myths are equally carefully gendered. Eventually all traditional ritual and mythology is expunged, and we're left with a check-list of goddesses to chant off. Which is better, the One True Male God that denies and destroys the others, or the One True Female Goddess that absorbs and erases them?

Some scholars say the Japanese sun-goddess Amaterasu used to be male. Isn't there more to life than boy vs. girl?

Are you talking the physical make-up or the mental make-up because the word gender has diddily-squat to do what sex organs a person has, it is more in how they perceive themselves. The word for what you are talkimg about is sex, my that words has a lot of meanings.

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tarr
2005-07-02 04:46 pm UTC (link)

I am Dianic, although not Wiccan. I believe in one ultimate Goddess, but She does not absorb or erase "all others," just as using the term "humanity" doesn't erase every individual human. I am against cultural appropriation, and I've always hated the "Isis, Astarte..." chant. This same Goddess I speak of also contains all men, transsexuals, and the genderless. When you approach any Goddess, you approach her on HER terms, and do your research and learn to understand her accordingly.

I guess my point is that divinity is genderless. And if you're more comfortable approaching the Vast Divine as a woman or man, that's your choice. I don't force anyone to practice how I do, and I don't pass out Venus of Wilendorf statues on the street. If people want to politicize their beliefs, that's their business.

I do agree with you when you say that people pick their Gods and Goddesses based on gender. I've worked extensively with Hekate over many years, and read online once that "Hades is a good partner for Hekate if you're looking for balance." Hekate and Hades are each balanced in their own rights - neither of them needs the other or any other "partner" to make them complete. It's like saying that all heterosexual single people are "unbalanced." Each God-Form needs to be seen as a unique individual, not one half of a couple or Self-Help archetype.

(Reply to this)

With those headings...

edwarddain
2005-07-02 04:59 pm UTC (link)

It might as well be titled "What I think is wrong with religion today."

Not that I feel any particular need to defend cultural strip-mining, obsession with sex and gender, or hysterical attachment to traditions that have no viable basis in the modern world...

But so what?

You now described the process of cultural drift and evolution in your first and third points - and sex/gender? I really hate to say (ok, no I don't) but I don't think you can a very viable argument that there have been many religions or spiritual movements in history at all that have been focused on gender - even if that focus is deliberately being non-gendered.

All that being written- The idea of cultural coherence in the modern United States is laughable - we have a multitude of regional cultures rather than one national culture, a fact that plagues religion and politics continually. I don't care if anyone does everything mentioned above as long as they are well-aware of the fact that they're doing it in the first place (thinking about some massive arguments with people on a Yahoogroup devoted to runes a few years ago...). If people want to dress in robes and practce high ritual it's no skin off my nose. If you want to practice an amalgamation of shamanic traditions, fine - just don't try to argue that it's authentic anything...

But don't get in my face when I'm doing consensual bloodwork, ecstatic trance ordeals, and invoking my own faces of Deity.

;-)

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theal8r
2005-07-02 05:54 pm UTC (link)

You strike me as a "fundapagan" in this sense. While I see your point, I disagree. We have such a richness of cultural knowledge available, it seems silly to reject it simply because I was born in Northern Lower Michigan where the cultural heritage options available to me were Baptist, Methodist, or, if I could find a tribe willing to admit a mostly-white girl, Native American.

I think finding connections between dieties to be liberating (although I am opposed to artificially forcing dieties into connection) and fascinating. I don't mind seeing how our various and diverse cultures touch. I don't believe that doing honor to deities who speak to you from other cultures would be necessarily insulting. This could, of course, be because I am an American in which our culture is one of blend and meld rather than a serious, independant culture one can point to and say "THIS is American."

Mythology is also fascinating, and gives insights into where we have been culturally -- places we do not want to revisit as well as places that would be good to revisit. Historical revisionism is to be eschewed, in my opinion, but touching with cultures and values that feel right to you is not.

I don't have a problem with blending into one, human culture. I don't believe, in the broadest sense, that one culture is more desireable than another (although there are definite exceptions). I see it as sad when cultures are lost, but you can keep them alive in history and study, re-creation perhaps, and in the stories we tell. There is no rule that says because my skin is white and my hair is blonde that slowly has turned dark brown over time and I was born in the West that I have to worship GOD and go to church, or follow some British-based culture (or Celtic, as a majority of my family once called County Galway, County Cork and various parts of Scotland home (and a castle still bears our family name in England courtesy of William the Conqueror). There is no law that says I have to have been born in Tibet to practice Tibetan buddhism, nor is it insulting if I wish to study it.

I find astrology useful for the archetypical study, as I do various deities. Any of these things could probably qualify me as a fluffy.

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	happydog 2005-07-02 06:39 pm UTC (link)
	interesting points, and pretty much why I feel that Wicca is unsuitable for me. (Reply to this)

c_korone
2005-07-02 07:42 pm UTC (link)

I respectfully disagree with some of this. I think I see what you're saying though.
Re: Co-optation of deities, I agree that people should be mindful of the fact that the Gods are not just a game of 'mix and match! or collect the whole set!' and I have seen people with those attitudes! I blame the consumerism of our culture for that - people seem to expect instant gratification, but I don't think that is either realistic or respectful in the realm of religion. But I see nothing patently offensive in the act of honoring the divine.

Re: Obsession with gender, here you just get a big 'Amen' from me. Although I'd say this is more of an issue with Wicca or neo-Wicca than many other pagan faiths, where gender may have very little if any relevancy.

Re: Attachment to the far past, I actually agree with a lot of what you say here. I think the only way to foster a living religion is to make it relevant in the here and now, and to embed it into modern life. Because if we don't, then it becomes something other than what's real, and religion should relate to our daily lives, as it always has. It's not a role-playing game. But at the same time, there is much that can be said for tradition. You seem to be suggesting that we must simply create new traditions now, and people will carry on whatever's worth carrying on. But why would a rite that pays tribute to our ancestors be unqualified? Anything we do now is going to be new, because we're new people, with new ways of living. But to have some rituals that honor the past (that have that intent, whether you agree/disagree that it 'works' or whatever), this is worthy of religion. The point is actually not that it's old - the point is that it may be timeless.

I think it is very foolish to go to the extreme position that there is nothing we can learn from the past, and nothing worth honoring there. There are some things that are timeless. If we find something from the past that still resonates with us today, still has meaning, still has relevance - that is powerful, and that is holy.

(Reply to this)

chaos_rose
2005-07-02 09:03 pm UTC (link)

Hello, me again.

"And all we're really interested in is whether our deity's a goddess or a god: everything else is secondary. Our cosmologies and cobbled-together creation myths are equally carefully gendered. Eventually all traditional ritual and mythology is expunged, and we're left with a check-list of goddesses to chant off. Which is better, the One True Male God that denies and destroys the others, or the One True Female Goddess that absorbs and erases them?

Some scholars say the Japanese sun-goddess Amaterasu used to be male. Isn't there more to life than boy vs. girl?"

I am a bisexual-leaning-lesbian woman, but I know of transgender, straight, G/L, and bisexual pagans who see past the traditional attributes of their gods to find their place to worship. I choose to work primarily with goddesses - but I often feel drawn to Shiva, Bacchus, and Pan as well.

Whoops. There I go, crossing cultures again.

Since gender is something that until recently was seen as immutable, I think the preoccupation with gender roles in our deities reflects somewhat on our modern day uncertainty over gender identity versus whether one was born XX or XY. People like and crave certainty, and the idea of a man being a woman in spirit, or a woman choosing to make the transition to male identity is deeply disturbing to some, a man or woman having more than one sexual ideal, or even those of the same sex choosing to pair is seen as a betrayal, no matter how tolerant some might consider themselves.

I think the 'check list' is less a conscious choosing, rather than a search for strong female archetypes with which to identify.

Isis or Aset, was a goddess incorporated from the Nubians. Variously the daughter of Tawaret, or Ra and Hathor, or Nuit and Geb, wife or mother of Hours, wife of Osiris, queen of the underworld and protector of the dead with Neptyhys. She was later conflated with Hathor, then with Mut, and with Cerket - making her a goddess of magic, motherhood, healing, and fertility, and the added attribute of having power over the cycle of life-death-rebirth.

She is later identified with the romanized Cybele, Yemaya, Demeter, and even some aspects of the Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary.

Astarte is a Phoenician-origined goddess with roots in the worship of the Sumerian's Inanna, and the Akkadian Ishtar. All are goddesses of agriculture, fertility, and war.

So I think that "Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, Inanna" is less of a check-list than it is an attempt to connect with strong feminine archtypes unavailable in the monotheistic and patriarchal religions. Certainly none of them can be called entirely benign, being as likely to kick ass and take names and to comfort and nurture.

I would imagine that the gods chosen would also bear some attributes that have been archetypically male - the hunter, the warrior, and so on. I would not say that all male gods are the same, any more than I would paint all goddesses with one brush. The diversity, the origins and history of the gods we now lay claim to allows one to deeply appreciate the passage of time, and know that not even the gods remain unchanged by it. And perhaps in learning their diverity, develop an appreciation for that diversity in ourselves, and in others.

Likewise, I do not think that that it is likely, even with the 'creation science' being advocated, I doubt you will find one person advocating (for instance) that the sky god embraced the earth mother so tightly that they could not let go. I see creation myths as the way our ancestors answered the question, "But how did we get here?"

They didn't have quantum physics, or the Hubble telescope, or even so much as an idea of how far higer than the mountains the sky actually was. So, working with what they had, they tried to figure it out, and while they got the Void right most of the time, it is not to their discredit that they couldn't dope out the rest. Even with all we know now, someone might be sitting 3,000 years in the future with a copy of The Universe in a Nutshell and pissing herself with laughter.

(Reply to this)

madfedor
2005-07-02 09:41 pm UTC (link)

Well, as someone who likes to chuck political correctness out with the bath water... how about obsession with getting it just right?

That's really what it boils down to, getting it right. Humans are not totally self-sufficient, or we never would have invented religion to begin with. Then there's the idea of having to reinvent the wheel every time, so we have holy text and oral tradition and ceremony and... if it worked right for the previous generation, it must be right for ours, eh?

If you are getting a tone of cynicism here, you'd be only partially right, and the reason is this: some people (most people, in my experience) are just not ready to work or capable of working without a net. Let them have their ceremony, their garb (whatever you want to call it, and I don't recommend pissing off Scadians [grin]), their reconstructions both conscientious and fanciful. It works for them.

If you have a problem with that, I've got a nice cure for megalomania sitting in my closet somewhere... and that last one is totally cynical, because the last thing I plan to have any tolerance for is someone claiming authority over the spiritual expression of others. Complaints about using what they don't understand, or worse abusing the traditions of others, yeah, I can get worked up over that too. But if live and let live is not in your vocabulary, it needs to be.

(Reply to this)

alagbon
2005-07-02 10:19 pm UTC (link)

As for the question of "attachment to the far past," I part ways with many of my fellow recons based on how I recognise that if Christianity hadn't gained the ascendant it is extremely unlikely that any of the religious traditions that predated it would have remained static; hence one can be a perfectly good heathen, for example, without following historical forms to the letter. People who think everything should be exactly as it was 1500 years ago are silly, even though generally their heart is in the right place. So there you definitely get an amen. (or an "alu," to be less Abrahamic...) I'm also quite annoyed by the obsession with gender; the whole "polarity" thing is dangerous bunk, and the common paganoid sex-obsession gets rather amusing at times. "Hey, the Xtians don't like sex! Let's make it central to our practice! Mwahahahaha!" As for cooptation of deities, though, while I personally wouldn't mess around like that I would have to say that history and anthropology can show many examples (particularly in Buddhism and the Afro-Diasporan religions) of a deity being adopted into a religion other than that of its origin. It does, however, seem to be most successful when it's the product of an evolutionary process involving long-term contact between cultures, such as the mingling of Buddhist and indigenous practice in Tibet and China or the mixing of different African cultures in the Caribbean and Brazil.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

Volume 2...

alagbon
2005-07-02 10:28 pm UTC (link)

That said, however, it's not my intention to denigrate anyone who has genuine success with the things I consider silly; if it makes you connect better to do rituals in Old Norse clothing or put up an altar on which the feminine Kwan Yin is "balanced" with the warrior god Nikalseyn (bonus points to the first person to figure out who this is,) by all means go ahead. Just don't expect me to join in.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	dolmena 2005-07-08 08:25 pm UTC (link)
	But, but... I like dressing in garb! It's like dressing up for Sunday school, only more comfortable. And unless I travel further from my home, nobody will let me do ritual in the nude (as I often do at home)... Oh well. (Reply to this)

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Co-optation of deities

Obsession with gender

Attachment to the far past

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