Planning a polytheism workshop Dec 13

November 15th, 2009

I am making plans for my last polytheism day for this year. I am planning a 6-8 hour workshop on Sunday, Dec. 13 in northern Atlanta. I’m trying to decide what size of location I need, so I wanted to ask anyone who is interested in participating to give me a semi-firm commitment. I need to know how many people to expect so I know how big a location to reserve.

This workshop will likely have a small fee to cover the cost of the space. The workshop itself will consist of meditations, lectures to recap what I have been discussing in my earlier talks, and a ritual to enhance understanding of the teachings. The focus of the day will be helping those attending to find their own connections to deity and their own understanding of the multiform nature of reality.

So, if you are interested and pretty sure you would want to participate, can you send me an email and let me know? I’d like to have a general count by next Sunday (Nov. 22) so I have time to make reservations or arrangements.

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Lecture reschedule to November 14th

October 23rd, 2009

I have to reschedule the first of the 2 lectures I just posted about. My family has decided to plan my grandmother’s 90th birthday party for Nov 15 and I certainly can’t miss that.

So the lecture will now be Saturday November 14 from 4PM to 7PM.

Hope to see folks there.

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2 more lectures to finish out the year (Julian that is)

October 22nd, 2009

I have set the dates and titles for my last 2 polytheism lectures this year.

Sunday, November 15th, 1PM to 4PM
Saturday, November 14th, 4PM to 7PM
It ain’t easy seeing many: living in a polytheistic universe and doing it well!

This will be 2 hour (or so) lecture on living in a polytheistic universe, focusing largely on the moral and ethical side of being a literal polytheist. As usual, there will be theoretical as well as practical elements.
We’ll be using the Atlanta Polarity Center again. I’ll send out directions with a reminder as we get closer.

Sunday, December 13th-
Living in a world of many: a day of connection and reflection in a polytheistic reality

The exact time and place for this lecture are TBD. I am looking for the right spot. The goal is to have a longer seminar (i.e. 6-8 hours total) that will focus on tying together a number of elements from earlier lectures, as well as meditative and ritual practices to encourage and enhance our connections to the multiplicitous universe we live in. Some of the meditations and rituals will be extensions of ones I’ve used for many years, others will be brand new.

I’ve asked some friends to spread the word as widely as they feel comfortable doing.  One caveat i gave is that I do assume those attending are interested in literal polytheism. I have no problem if people have other views, but I don’t want to waste time arguing about it. :)

2 friends broached the idea last time of asking for a donation to help cover costs, and I want to follow up on that. So for the first lecture I will have a donation box and a suggested donation of $5. I’m not counting it as folks come in, nor will I be looking to see who donates and who doesn’t. It’s completely up to those attending.

For the December seminar, I may have to set a fee to cover the cost, since a larger space for a longer day costs a lot more, but I’ll figure that out once I find a spot.

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Polytheism – complex and confusing

August 5th, 2009

We have to accept that the reality of lived polytheism is complex and often a bit confusing.

I’m asked pretty frequently how my idea of deity as individual accounts for ideas of 2 different names for the same deity. “If Diana and Artemis are the same goddess, doesn’t that mean deity isn’t always individual?” This is a valid question, but it confuses name with person.

A name can change with time and growth. Most of us have more than one name we use regularly (nicknames, legal names, formal names, etc.). Imagine you go to a party that two of your friends are attending. When you meet the first she calls you by your nickname. The other runs into you later and refers to you using your surname. You are still you even though each of them uses a different name for you. While you as a person have changed with time and circumstances, there is a specific continuityof identity that is notalwayts matched by the names attahced to the reality of your existence.

This situation can be applied to deity as well. In some cases we do have 2 names for one individual deity. In other situatiuons scholars have decided 2 deities are the same person with 2 names, when in fact they are 2 separate individuals with one name each. To understand this better, think about the people you know. Some of them have markedly different personas in different social arenas. Sometimes it is hard to recognize a person in work apparel and persona when we only know them from religious occasions and social gatherings. As I heard someone say recently, “I didn’t even know he wore shirts. I’d never seen him in one.” If human persons can vary so greatly depending on situation, how much more so might a deity, who exists after all in more dimensions then we are normally aware of.

The deities we  know as Artemis and Diana might indeed be one person. Equally, they might be 2 different people who  just look a lot alike (I’m always getting told I look exactly like someone else, and its never the same someone else). I can’t say for sure because I don’t know either of them well enough to be positive. I tend to think of them as 2 different people with similar interests, but I’m fully prepared to be wrong on that.

And that, I think, is the heart of dealing with the confusing complexity of polytheism. Personal relationships are our key. They open the door to understanding and some level of knowledge. Using the knowledge we gain through relationships with deities, we can make judgments on things like what name goes with who. We might get it wrong, but we have a sound basis for making judgments.

Let’s continue our analogy with inter-human relationships. Most of us know a lot of people in a general way, a smaller number in a closer way and a very few in such a deep way that we perceive ourselves as understanding them well. Now, if that is the state of our relationships with other humans, how is it surprising that we can only really know a tiny number of deities. It takes time and effort to understand another person, be they human or other than human.

If you are very lucky, you have the time to develop the skills to interact with deities outside of ritual, journey or meditation. In that case you have more chances to interact with and get to know a deity. If you don’t have those skills your relationships with deities will only develop while you are in specific situations designed to put you in touch with deity. Just as if you only saw other humans on certain occasions, your relationship will take longer to deepen and develop in most cases. So it is understandable that we don’t all have immediate knowledge of the nature of all deities. We can’t even expect to have full knowledge of every deity we encounter directly.

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many polytheisms

July 26th, 2009

Polytheism is an interesting way of describing a way of interacting with deity. It is a relatively simple concept in terms of dictionary definitions. But in reality, in practice and religioning, it is a much more complex concept. There are so many ways to understand the idea of multiple deific forces that the reality in practice forms a broad spectrum of understandings.

In a simplistic examination of that spectrum, you can identify two basic poles. The ways real Pagans engage with deity can vary widely within a range between a symbolic polytheism and a literal polytheism. Symbolic polytheism is an understanding of the deities as parts of one larger unity. Literal polytheism is seeing the gods as individual persons with their own lives and ways.

How does this apply to members of a culturally based Paganism who believe firmly in the reality of their own gods, but deny the reality of the gods of other people? What about the Pagans whose symbolic polytheism is bi-theistic, rather than universalistic. These polytheisms are in a spectrum that is in three dimensions, not two. There is no simple mapping of Pagan attitudes towards deity and spiritual reality.

For myself, I am at heart a literal polytheist. The gods and goddesses, ancestors and spirits, that I know well and work with are individual people with their own personalities and their own realities. I learned many years ago that my gods are individuals who do not like to be confused with one another, at least by those who know them. I got a spiritual slap upside my head when I made that mistake once. I quickly learned why and what it meant.

However, I also learned to recognize that just because there were 2 names didn’t mean there were 2 individual deities. As an example, when I first encountered Oggun of the Yoruba and Zarabande of the Congo, I assumed they were 2 distinct individuals who had been conflated due to a need to syncretize for survival. That attitude fell apart when I spent some time with each and discovered they fond my attitude amusing. (There is no better way to get a big head deflated then getting the spiritual equivalent of  “How Cute!”) These two are related in a way that makes little sense in a human mind, being not brothers or cousins or anything else we would recognize. But they are also not exactly the same person.

So where do I fit on that spectrum? In exactly one spot – mine. To truly chart a spectrum of understandings of deity within any grouping of religious people would require a single data point for each individual, at a minimum. So what use is the idea of a spectrum? It helps us understand the broad strokes of the detailed reality. As with all broad outlines, it gives a useful picture while encouraging more detailed examination of the fine points.

Here is where understanding the multiplicity of the universe is useful. If the universe is made up of multiples, then our perceptions must be complex in order to encompass some larger portion of that multiplicitous reality. And we can give ourselves permission to not get it all completely right on the first try, or the hundredth, or ever. We just keep trying.

More on this later..

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My local paper must be in real trouble with staffing

July 2nd, 2009

I found a mention on The Wild Hunt about an article in today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution about Pagans.

It’s from 2006 and is one of the worst bits of fluff I’ve seen in a while. And, as Jason at Wild Hunt point out, this is a ridiculous bit of recycling. Why in the world would you repost an almost 3 year old article? Didn’t the writer do something about summer activities or the Fourth that would be more relevant to the day?

Proud pagans party for magical time

Now I understand this is from a column where the writer goes around Atlanta seeing what people are doing. But if he treats every group with this level of silliness, I’m surprised if he ever gets to go anywhere twice.

There are elements of the Pagan Pride picnics that can certainly seem a bit odd to people who aren’t used to the sub-culture. Hell, some of it just seems odd to me and I am pretty used to it. But to treat the whole thing like one big party just for fun doesn’t offer anything of value to any readers, no matter how they feel about Pagans. I think the costumers at Atlanta Comic Expo got better coverage.

Side note – they seem to reprint these columns pretty regularly.

“Among attendees at the recent festival were Atlanta witches; gals from Smyrna’s “Sylvan Forest” Wiccan community, who believe in unicorns; and reps from a seminary in South Carolina “Where Wiccan Families Work Together.” The Druids came, too. (No, not from Druid Hills.)”

I wonder if he would have referred to a Christian or Jewish group that way. Hey the gals from St. John’s Catholic Church believe in zombies (dead guy gets up, walks around, talks). Or the boys from the local temple say they used to have a magic box that made them tough (Arc of the Covenant is said to have made the Hebrews invincible for a while).

I think this treatment of any religious group would annoy me. There are plenty of ways to write a fluff article about pagan Pride day without being so dismissive of people you are covering. Or just ignore religious groups all together. I’m sure any group would prefer being ignoring to being made fun of.

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Thoughts on birth in a universe of multiples, pt1

June 30th, 2009

The recent birth of my son got me thinking more about birth and its implications in this universe of real, living, individual deities and spirits. The existence of a multitude of spiritual forms leads us to understand the real existence of our own spirits, and the multitude of ways they come into being and continue existence. If the gods are many, then so are the human spirits in the universe. If the realities of existence are many, then there must be a multitude of ways to exist.

There are many, many individual beings that we call deities. These beings permeate the universe and provide part of its structure. They must be different and independent in order to give strength to the universe and meaning to its existence.

With this multitude of deities, they need to be connected to other deities, and other spirits. The connections help fill out the substance of the universe. Since the existence of beings other than deities is patently obvious in our universe, those beings must also have connections to the broader structure, else they could not exist. I have observed on numerous occasions the interwoven energetic ties that enmesh human beings and link them to deities and spirits.

When a human person is born into physical existence, the soul that interweaves itself with the physical matrix brings with it pre-existing ties to other spiritual entities. Those entities may be deities, other humans, or any of the broad myriad of other spiritual beings. These pre-existing ties will change as the person continues on their path of existence. But some always remain, on some level. One of the things I have seen is that every person I have worked with has a deep energetic tie to one or more specific deities. That tie does not go away although it may be more or less obvious at different times.

So when a new little person goes through birth, he or she brings along these links. The reality of the soul before birth influences when the spiritual matrix begins to mesh into the physical matrix. The soul can enmesh with the body at any time during gestation, from the moment of conception to the moment of drawing the first breath. It does not happen at the same time for each soul.

I say this, having watched numerous women during the gestation period, and having closely observed the growth of my own two boys in the womb. With my sons, one did ensoul sooner than the other. In fact, the difference scared me some with my youngest, because it was different from the first time. I wasn’t expecting it to happen when it did.

So I have been musing on the nature of birth, and the way in which the complexity of the universe makes it hard to make absolute statements or predictions about gestation and birth. As the OB kept telling us, “Each pregnancy, and each birth, is its own thing. Never think otherwise.”

More thoughts to come.

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A new blog for thoughts old and new

May 19th, 2009

I need a place to lay out and possibly organize my thoughts. I’ve found I do better lecturing to an audience then sitting in front of a microphone, so I thought maybe the same will hold with my writing.

To start with, let me layout the basis for the thoughts, theories and practices I will be going on about.

I am a polytheistic Pagan. More specifically I am a modern Pagan who is a literal polytheist. This means that when I say there are many gods, I mean just that. There are many individual, discrete deific persons who engage in various ways and to various levels with human persons.

They are not facets of one thing. They are not manifestations of some vast force, whether that force be seen as one thing, 2 things (masculine and feminine, light and dark, peanut butter and jelly) nor any other cont that denies the individual reality of the gods.

Just as you and I are separate people, alike in humanity and interesting in our diversity, so too are the gods and the spirits.

Being a polytheist, I recognize diverse and multiple forms not just in deity, but in all things. This is incumbent on any one who has experienced even a fragment of the vast and changing reality of our universe.

So that is, at heart, what I will be talking about here. I think that the nature of polytheism needs to be explored and discussed. Just as importantly, the implications of polytheism need to explicated and explored. Being a polytheist isn’t something that stops as seeing the deities as multiple and individual. It has to expand into all levels of a persons life, touching everything we do. Because polytheism is a way of understanding the universe, not just a position to be held in debates on deity.

So that is where I begin. From here i will post notes from talks I give, musings on the nature of polytheism and the universe, my thoughts on how other Pagans view and interact with deity, and a whole host of other areas that come to my attention as I ponder deity, reality, duty, honor, nature and all that other stuff that makes us human and alive.

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