5 posts tagged “religion”
Ever since I was a child, I've been interested in religion, my own and other people's. One of my earliest memories involving books is of a volume of Greek myths for children; something about the illustrations disturbed me, and I wound up lying awake in bed, convinced that a vulture was going to come out of the closet and eat my liver. (Perhaps the worst part was that I was not at all sure where my liver actually was.)
I cut my teeth, so to speak, on Greek mythology, on Norse mythology as illustrated by the D'Aulaires and by Willy Pogany, and on Egyptian mythology filtered through books on archaeology and ancient Egyptian culture. I pored over color plates of Tutankhamen's treasures and learned the story of the cursed ring, the original one, from the Volsungasaga rather than the Nibelungenlied: Sigurd and Brynhild, Andvari and Gudrun.
But I also got interested very early in religion as well as mythology--people's beliefs and practices, as well as their stories. Perhaps the thing that got me hooked was that big red Time-Life volume on Religions of the World. It had text, and I read the words, but while I was a good reader at a young age, what I remember now--as with the D'Aulaires' book and Padraic Colum's The Children of Odin--is the pictures: The D'Aulaires' Thor glaring through his bridal veil; Pogany's slender Loki and his up-curling hair, nibbling daintily on Gullveig's burnt black heart; the two-page color painting of all those Hindu gods and goddesses, with Vishnu and Lakshmi on one page, Shiva and Parvati on the other, Brahma and Sarasvati split by the spine, and all sorts of gandharvas, apsarases, nagas, and lesser deities around them; the golden vestments of a Greek Orthodox priest, offering communion to a small child on a silver spoon; the intensely saffron robes of Buddhist monks.
By the time I was ten, I think, I had graduated to books with more words than pictures. I recall a book with some black-and-white photos that I think was called The Five Great Religions; Amazon lists a book by that title with a publication date of 1974, which sounds about right. This book had chapters on Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and one other--what was it? Hinduism? Sikhism, possibly? I'm not sure. But books like the Time-Life volume, and The Five Great Religions, and Religions of the World, which must have been a college-level textbook with chapters on everything from Mesopotamian polytheism to Shinto, all taught me one important lesson. They taught me to think of Christianity not as Religion, but as one religion among others--a great and important religion, a world religion (unlike limited and local polytheisms), but still just one of many, and by no means the most colorful or interesting one. The pictures in the chapters on Christianity had nothing on that sensual and colorful spread of the deities of Hinduism.
Another thing that strikes me now is how very dull those books made Buddhism look. I realize now that they concentrated on the Theravada traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Ceylon, which focus on self-liberation through the monastic life. In those cultures, people who can't go off and live lives of monastic renunciation basically can't do anything meritorious except support the monastics and hope for a favorable rebirth in which such a life will be possible. I'd have gotten interested in Buddhism much sooner if they'd offered me descriptions of Vajrayana ceremonies and pictures of thangkas or dancing lamas. (That's "lama" with one "L".)
A westerner with the most rudimentary knowledge of Buddhism would think it odd to say the least if someone were named a Zen roshi, qualified to pass on the tradition, who had never sat in a zendo or completed koan practice. But this appears to be analogous to what has happened in Christianity.
--Maggie Ross, Anglican solitary and writer, at her blog, Voice in the Wilderness
I've been thinking a lot about this question. After all, I've vacillated between Anglican Christianity and some kind of Neopaganism since I read The Spiral Dance at the age of thirteen (and I still have that first edition, gold design on red cover). Why is it that finally, at the age of forty, I've apparently stopped vacillating and settled on the Pagan side of the fence?
Here are the reasons I've come up with so far:
1. I hadn't been getting anything from my Christian spirituality for a long time. Choir has become a burden rather than a joy; despite my love for the repertoire and the act of choral singing, by the end of the choir season, I feel like I need an organ transplant--my insides are just hollow. Choral singing always used to generate tremendous amounts of energy for me; to be honest, it used to put me into an ecstatic state, and that's just not the case any more. I don't think that's changed only because of age (though I suspect that has something to do with it). I think it's at least partly because I'm no longer 100% behind the words I'm singing, and partly, perhaps, because the liturgical setting and the tight schedule of preparing one mass and two anthems every week precludes doing some of the most challenging and enjoyable repertoire. With my pleasure in the music drying up, there's nothing else to hang onto any more.
2. I found a supportive pagan community. Even though my contact with AODA folks has only been online (I think the nearest neighbor is in Pennsylvania, an hour or more away), it's been a tremendously supportive, helpful experience, contact with people who care, who had no problems with my identifying as Druid and Christian, and who actually have knowledge and experience I lack and know how to share it effectively, without condescension.
3. I found an effective system of magical training that works for me. I only wish I'd found the New Hermetics twenty years ago, or even twelve years ago. Its streamlined, "nondenominational" techniques are easily applicable to Druid magic and ritual, which is what I need. And Jason is a gifted mentor and teacher, again, someone who's actually more advanced than I am (authority figures who actually know more than I do have been hard to come by in the Church).
4. Polytheism gets results. My other druid group (which shall be nameless) irks the hell out of me much of the time, but their theories and methods of contacting the gods through sacrifice *work*. Making offerings with prayer establishes contacts, and then the gods start to take notice and begin to tell you what they want you to give them, and what they want you to do.
5. Since I got involved with AODA and studying the New Hermetics, I've landed a full-time job, we've moved to an apartment with a sane landlord, and we've settled our debts honorably. These are all big positive changes and all in the area of life I find most problematic, the Earth Element, the realm of Pentacles or Discs in Tarot, of health, finances, home, food, the body. Again, pagan and magical stuff has gotten results.
I'm always going to be influenced by having been an Episcopalian. The Church gave me beautiful language and literature, rich stories, gorgeous music, and a model of good ritual. My tradition's theology has always emphasized the goodness of the body, the dignity of work, the natural world as a shrine of the Divine Presence. I'm not the only person who has recently transitioned from Anglican to Druid; I just hope I stay out of the news!
I am on a number of email lists that discuss various spiritual paths. Druidry, Gnosticism, magic and hermeticism, and the life of a small religious order in the Episcopal Church are among the topics I follow. Sometime ago, a wise older woman who is on several of my lists posted the following words:
One teacher along the Way taught me to carry a trident of power
within myself. The left tine is the Path you follow that helps you
get in touch with your intuitive self – more feminine or Yin. The
right tine is the active, conceptive path – Yang or Masculine. The
center tine is your Path with Heart – a true path that enables you
to hear the song of yourself. This is the path that allows you to
walk your talk and stay in your center in this World. The left/right
paths may change, depending upon your life's circumstances, but your
Path with Heart in this lifetime remains true.
Gareth Knight, a well-known occult author and member of the Society of the Inner Light, writes similarly about the Society's founder, Dion Fortune, that she followed a threefold path: the Green Ray of nature mysticism, the Orange Ray of hermeticism and ceremonial magic, and the Violet Ray of Christian devotion and mysticism. He connected these to the three paths that leave Malkuth, the sphere of manifest reality, on the Tree of Life: the path to Netzach, the sphere of feeling, the path to Hod, the sphere of intellect, and the path to Yesod, the sphere of imagination, which rises straight to the crown of the Tree.
I have come to realize that something very similar is true for me. While I identify myself these days primarily as a Druid, and specifically a Druid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, my path is not confined to emulating the Druids of the ancient Celtic peoples, or even the Druids of the eighteenth-century Revival to whom my order traces its lineage. I also am a practitioner of the Western Magical Tradition in the form of the New Hermetics, and, somewhat reluctantly, an Anglican.
I do not say I am a Christian. Not any more. I am no longer engaged with the ridiculous power struggles going on in most Christian denominations; I am no longer at all satisfied with the road-map of human experience provided by Christian theology. Perhaps I am just too frightened by the rise of fundamentalists all over the map, in every religion and denomination--and they exist in Neopaganism, too. But I have realized that while I may not believe in the Virgin Birth, I do not want to give up Nativity scenes and Christmas carols; while I may not believe in the Resurrection, I do not want to give up the great rite that is the Easter Vigil. I do not want to give up the stories, pictures, music, and poetry which, for me, have long been the most important things about Christianity.
I make a rather bad Anglican, by a lot of people's standards--and no better a Pagan, by a lot of other people's standards. By my own standards, I am walking a threefold path that is intellectual and creative, artistic and connective, and spiritual and mystical, all at once. And the thing for which I am most grateful is that in my Druid Order, I am wholly within my rights to do so. AODA does not require me to be a Pagan in order to be a Druid.
Soon, I shall have my initiation into the First Degree of AODA. And soon, I will start attending Mass again. Meanwhile, I have meditation and magic and prayer. It's all part of the threefold path.
