- [or insert any other tradition here...] -
I WAS (RE)BORN INTO THIS WORLD
TO SERVE THE GODS AND
TO RENEW AND REVITALIZE
THE LOST WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS!!"
TO SERVE THE GODS AND
TO RENEW AND REVITALIZE
THE LOST WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS!!"
Yeah yeah.
Yadda yadda yadda. Get real....
Yadda yadda yadda. Get real....
Why do the rites at all? Well of course there are many
reasons, perhaps as many different reasons as there are people involved in the
process. Perhaps also we might find that there are many reasons unsaid and
unarticulated which are more significant for us than any of the pompous
internal assertions of our pseudo-mystical personae.
Eliade* and others show us that the functions of public/tribal calendrical ritual were largely pragmatic: the rites were not considered optional, they were considered to be essential for the health and safety of the people. The rites were also considered to be essential to the very continuity and integrity of the World Itself; the rites neglected, the World-as-we-know-it could very well come thundering to an end. Is this all so very primitive? Really?
In my writings and public speaking I often find myself
suggesting (projecting?) that many of the aspects of our Neopagan personalities
are simply dishonest. Innocently and without malice of forethought, but
still... we are dishonest. We are all far, far too wrapped up in the way we
would like to be thought of and the kind of person we would like to think of
ourselves as and the way we would like to live our lives... than we ever could
justify through real action in real life at all. We can't expect to relate to
others about the true motivations behind our spiritual identities if we can't
manage to be honest, internally, with ourselves. This dichotomy between the
false self image and the ordinary but pure self is the theatre of the medicine
of religion. True religious activity is that which seeks to rectify our
relationship with the World: the relationship of our true selves with the true
World.
The Old Ways that the anthropologists of religion
describe to us were not legislated at some synod of ecclesiastics and then
carved in stone; no, no... they grew. Over generations of practice, repetition,
and trial and error, they grew, were molded and evolved organically; more truly
coming to fit the needs of the people and their world. For all the machinations
of the governing priesthoods of thousands of years, that simple living process
defiantly survives, and again and again shakes off the ash and rubble of the collapse
of artificial, unnatural and inhuman cultures and their false, unnatural and
inhuman religious systems. People are by nature religious creatures and they
need religious activity that touches their lives in a direct and honest way; it
does not need to cater to our fantasy selves, it needs to speak to our souls.
"Finding comfort" in the rites
Paganism, as a modern pursuit, often attracts those
seeking the unusual, gothic, or titilatingly different. Those folks quickly
tire of the hard work and actively spiritual participation demanded of them by
group religious practice. We are not in the business of entertaining the
curious, but it is encumbent upon us to work hard to meet the needs of those
who attend and willingly put themselves 'on the line' by attempting to
participate. Yet, to meet their needs, we must be able meet our own also.
There is a pendulum that swings through our lives... or,
perhaps I can be more clear if I speak of my own personal experience: there is
a pendulum which swings through my life which finds me drifting alternately
from a clear and integrated relationship with the world to that of a self which
is work-weary, media ravaged, fragmented and basically schizoid in its
distorted, false notions of the world and my place in it. The need to govern
this ever pulsing rhythm, swinging from competence to failure, from knowledge
to doubt... is what sometimes calls me to return to the woods or to go out
under the stars.
Here perhaps we can find one definition of the spirit of
Druidism: answering the call of Nature; not to be wild, but to be healed by the
Wilderness. The Wilderness bears within it that which we periodically come to
lack: truth.
There is a great pattern of undeniable natural truths in
which we live our lives; it is the Great Wheel of the Seasons, and for us
living in this part of the North Temperate Zone, we are blessed with the grand
four-fold symmetry which has shaped our cultures and languages and cultural
consciousness for tens of thousands of years. As far as we may stray from the
ordinary facts of existence, the Seasons always bring us back to the truth. No
amount of air conditioning, roofing or central heating can support our
fantasies substantially enough to escape the fact that we are not in control
here. The World is not the Mall, nor is it School, nor is it Work... no matter
how much it seems that way to us at times. The World has more to do with that
tree you touched the other day than all the tax forms and magazines and dollar
bills we print on the flesh of its kin, yet we constantly lose sight of this;
well, I do... don't you? Perhaps it is time to call upon the definition of a
term I have been developing for some time now:
"Reconciliation"
...Rx for having fallen from grace with one’s sense of
wonder... a bringing back of the individual’s sense of self into an
appropriate, correct, or more sanctified relationship with certain "facts
of existence"; unlocking the sanctified relationship with the
world-as-it-is and thereby moving away from (or being cleansed-of) the world-as-we-imagine-it-is.
The need for this function is often due to the
individual’s natural propensity for ‘back sliding’ or becoming somehow
progressively distanced from one’s own set of ethical, religious or aesthetic
principles (or various other attitudinal predispositions). In a sense, during
extended periods of distraction by either some singular concern or simply the
the increasing demands of everyday life as one ages, one’s reflective capacity
can become slightly or significantly schizoid in its relationship with the
components of one’s personality which matured or integrated during a period of
life that was far richer on a reflective level. It is possible to functionally
‘de-evolve’ at the reflective level; leaving one a "stranger to one’s self".
This is the schizoid dilemma which calls out for rectification: the current
‘dull’ self must be brought to terms with the earlier ‘enhanced’ self -before
one’s standards become lowered beyond retrieval. Is this Psychology or is it
Religion? I believe the answer to that question is: "yes."
Remembering the Seasons
Reconciliation with the World through the process of
honoring the Seasons, the connecting and coming to terms with the gentle
passage of time through our lives, is one of the most important single reasons
for celebrating any calendar of religious observances. The more that the mythos
and theme of an annual feast is integrated with the grand seasonal pattern
above and around us, the more valid, powerful and profound the religious
mysteries are commemorated therein. Too often, when developing some complex or
even simple symbolic or traditional theme, the content of our observances
become artificial, too human and out of step with our basic need to become
personally reconciled to the season. The season simply must be remembered in
the process of a rite or one of our holiest duties will have been neglected.
(c)1996, Earrach of Pittsburgh,
Notes: * Mircea Eliade, "The Myth of the Eternal
Return" (1949)
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