What does "morality" mean to a pagan?

Morality is a loaded word these days. It has come to mean everything from "whatever we've always done" to "whatever my god says it is". The term "moral relativism" has crept into the conservative lexicon, with a meaning just short of "mortal sin". It assumes that there is an absolute morality, independent of time, history, culture, and context. I would argue that the term is an oxymoron. Morality is always relative. Relative to your time, place, and point of view.

A case in point: In the Western Europe of the 1400's, it was considered immoral for a woman to learn to read. Moral authority held that it invited the writing of love letters and the reading of impure books. In modern America, it would be considered immoral to deny a woman the opportunity to learn to read. Reading leads to a higher level of education and strongly correlates to not only her own success, but also that of her children.

This only one example - history is rife with such contradictions. Morality is, by its very nature, a relativistic idea.

Think of the concept of "morals" as being a set of axiomatic beliefs held by a person or a culture. They require no proof and no basis - they simply are. Morals are the assumed, and largely unchallenged, code of behavior upon which everything else from law to custom is based. For many cultures, morals have their basis in religion. For others, it is a matter of long observance. For most, it is an amalgum of both that assumes the mantle of "divine revelation", and therefore unassailability.

This works, after a fashion, for completely homogeneous societies. If everyone holds to the exactly same religion, and looks to their religious leaders as the arbiters of morality, then everyone agrees - no problems there. Where we run into trouble is where varied subcultures occupy the same place. With a depressing predictability, they come into conflict over the idea of "morality". Since every group assumes their own axioms, and since they are axiomatic, (there is no concrete proof for them) you end up with groups of people shouting at each other and trying to legislate the others to follow their own code.

A wise woman once told me, "you can't legislate morality". My mom was right.

So how does morality play out for pagans? It's really quite simple. It works much like the excellent book by the Dalai Lama on the subject, "Ethics for a New Millenium" (His language is a bit challenging, but his reasoning is inspired). In his book, the Dalai Lama develops an entire system of morality and ethics from one basic axiom: all humans want to increase their joy and decrease their pain. In much the same manner, pagans - and particularly Wiccan's - derive their moral code from one basic statement as well. It's called "The Wiccan Rede" and it goes something like this:

"And it do no harm, do what you will"

In other words, the limit on your ability to act in any manner you choose is limited only by the point at which is causes harm. As my mother explained to me when I was a child, "your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins".

Of course, the point of discussion here is exactly what constitutes "harm". Just as the Christian Bible has tons of wiggle room for interpretation (even by those who claim to follow it "literally"), the Wiccan concept of "harm" has room as well.

So the real challenge for a pagan is defining, for himself, the idea of "harm".

I try define harm in fairly practical terms. If something I do causes you physical pain, that's harm, and that's immoral. Physical harm is either damage to the body or the limiting of someone's ability to act in any moral fashion. If something I say isn't true, that's harm, and that's immoral. Speaking an untruth may cause another to act outside their best interests. Beyond those two simple statements, things start to get a little more difficult.

For instance, if something I say is true, but I know that saying it might cause you emotional pain, is that harm? Is it the intent that matters? What if I do something that causes you emotional pain? Is emotional pain harm? My father would say that what someone feels is under their complete control, and nothing you can do or say can make them feel a certain way unless they choose to. As he likes to say, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent". Under that line of reasoning, "harm" is only "physical pain". I don't know that I'm willing to tighten things down that hard.

It gets more complicated from there. Say I do something that leads to your emotional pain. Is it then moral for you to act to prevent that emotional pain if it will lead to my own harm? Is there such a thing as "emotional self-defense"? I argue that physical harm trumps emotional harm. My morality doesn't support me punching you because you flipped me the bird.

The gay marriage example works really well here. I do something that causes a fundamentalist Christian emotional pain (I marry my husband). There can be no physical harm involved, because I have neither damaged their body, nor prevented them from doing anything. This Christian feels the emotional pain because what I have done comes into conflict with their moral code. They then do something to prevent their emotional pain: they ban gay marriage. This has the effect of keeping me from caring for my dying partner in the hospital because I am not "family". I argue that my physical harm (prevention of my ability to act) trumps their emotional pain.

In my own analysis, morality is never absolute, never complete, never final. It is a living, breathing thing like the law. I think the only thing you can do wrong when talking about morality is thinking that any moral code is eternal, universal, or unchanging.

And it do no harm, do what you will

Not a bad place to start. It sets up only one rule, but leaves a key term open to interpretation and flexibility. In the final analysis, morality is a very personal thing. If what I do doesn't hurt anyone, why should you even care? If I swing my arm in the forest and no one's nose is around to get hit, does it make a difference?

Blessed Be.

What does it mean to be a pagan in the modern world?

I suppose you will get as many answers to this as there are pagans. Let me give you my take on this.

Being a pagan in the modern world means looking around the concrete and steel to see the grass that stubbornly grows in the cracks and the birds that somehow find a way to make a living anyway. It's reveling in what we have accomplished through science, but being aware that there will always be something for which science has no measurement, no way to classify - and being OK with that.

It is understanding the science of a thing and still being awed by it. I understand why a 747 can fly, but it still amazes me every time I see one actually do it.

Being pagan in the modern world is to seek that which is hidden, and to know that both the hider and the hidden are important reflections of each other.

Being pagan in the modern world isn't about denying what man has accomplished or looking back to a more agrarian time, some perfect green utopia that never existed except in fantasy novels. It's seeing nature as indominable, omnipresent and that Spririt is a part of everything and everyone. Spirit is the self-awareness of Life.

Being a pagan in the modern world is to celebrate Life Elemental.

There are two things in this world that are unavoidable: change and Life.

Change:
Life is change - without change, life does not develop, does not mature, does not reproduce, does not teach, does not continue. Change isn't something to be feared or avoided. It's something to be embraced for what is it - the Universe continuing to find new ways to express itself and the miracle of being. I've always thought that one of the prime differences between conservatives and liberals isn't religion, isn't morality, isn't "family values", isn't fiscal policy. At their core, conservatives fear change. They look to the past as the ideal state and seek to keep the "now" in a perpetual state of "then". Liberals, on the other hand, encourage change, sometimes just for change's sake. Neither extreme is a terribly balanced way to look at the world. Between the two is a space when you can honor the past, recognize that change has happened, enjoy the present, anticipate further change, and be ready for the future when it comes.

Life:
Life, Nature, Spirit - there are many ways to think about that special "spark" that takes an inanimate object and makes it something awake and aware. Some pagans personify Nature in the guise of classical gods and godesses, some approach it through the Earth Mother and the Horned One, some see the Lord and Lady, some see the Green Man and the Maiden. For me, nature is something completely outside the bounds of classification. It's a pervasive force that seeks life, IS life. It's a name we apply to something that somehow includes every living thing, past present and future, in a connected whole. It's everywhere, in everything. You can never be separated from it, but you can think you are. Life is a continuum, and through Life we and every other living thing participate in the wholeness that is Spirit. Call it by whatever name seems most appropriate, see it in whatever light makes sense to you - it's inescapably there.

If you listen closely enough, Spirit will tell you things. Just as you always know where your own hand is through the kinesthetic sense, if you really pay attention, you can "feel" the other parts of the Spirit through your inner sense. They are you, you are them. Not in some cosmic, philosophical sense, but in a very real, very practical sense. That's the foundation upon which spellcraft and magick is based. More about them in later posts. If you need a temporary metaphor, think of them as prayer. It's pretty close.

So, being a pagan in the modern world isn't really that much of a stretch, after all. What it does require is the willingness to expand your sense of "self" to include everything else that shares Life. My entire moral code starts with that simple idea.

So then, what is morality to a pagan? That's the next question, and probably the next post.

Blessed Be

Why be a Solitary?

One of the problems I have always had with organized religion is that all of them - at least all that I've ever seen - have a lot to atone for in their histories. For others, it's their present activities that's the problem. From the systematic persecution of women in the Islamic world to the multiple atrocities committed in the name of Roman Catholicism, I've never found a world religion that didn't have blood on it's hands - either literally or metaphorically. In fact, many of today's organized religions seem more focused on persecution of gays and lesbians than on the promotion of godliness and personal faith.

Knowing what has been done - and officially sanctioned - in the name of established religion, I've become deeply skeptical of them and could never see myself joining one. To do so would be to provide my own approval to these atrocities, both past and present. I know others have found ways of looking at the history of organized religions without losing their own faith in their precepts, but I've never been able to get past it.

That being said - there's a lot I don't agree with in the major segments of the pagan world as well. From the nearly maniacal feminism of many groups to the rampant heterosexism of others and the amateur theatrics of many, I can't seem to find a home in the gatherings of modern pagans, either. If I am going to lend my voice to a group, I'm not willing to compromise my personal moral code to do so.

So what's a pagan to do? We, the majority of modern pagans in the world, choose to be Solitary Practicioners.

So just what is a Solitary? A Solitary Practicioner is someone who chooses to acknowledge, celebrate and/or worship the divine in completely private practice. We are congregations of one. We are, quite simply, electing to experience the divine in that most personal of relationships - just between ourselves and the Diety.

Many of my Christian friends don't understand this. For them, religion is not just about faith - fellowship with those of common belief is just as important. For me, those are separate concepts and independent goals. I would hazard a guess that most Solitaries feel that way. Although we may find common cause with others of varied faith systems from time to time, we separate the act of divine communion from fellowship with others.

There are some key benefits to being a Solitary - the first and foremost is that you never have conflicts about dogma or teachings, no struggle over the mission of the church, no ceding of authority to a pastor or priest. We are completely free to worship in the manner we see best and trust our ability to act as our own spiritual guides. We may seek guidance from wise souls or gurus from time to time, but that is different from looking to them for leadership. We take responsibility for our actions, responsibility for our own morals, and responsibility for ourselves.

In my own case, being a Solitary is also important to my ability to fully experience the divine without distractions, external or internal. As a former theatrical professional, the presence of other people invariably puts my brain in "actor-mode" and interferes with my ability to openly and authentically express myself in divine practice. In fact, I've found that I don't sing, dance or even speak when I cast a circle and call the corners. I barely even move. Those activities bring out the performer, which is not conducive to a meditative state. My spiritual practice is intensely personal, very private, and not intended for an audience or to be shared.

In my public life, I rarely talk about my faith. If asked, I'm always willing to open a discussion - as much to learn as to teach - but I don't often share without prompting. In this, I am like many in the neo-pagan world. Wicca and neo-paganism are non-prosteletizing faiths by design. We don't convert people, and we certainly don't preach the wrongness of others and the rightness of ourselves. Most pagans come to be pagans as a personal choice. There is no grand moment of conversion, no "born again" hystrionics. For most, it's a private and very profound moment - for Solitaries, it remains so.

Being a Solitary has it's challenges, though. First off, because you aren't handed a cookbook for the faith when you start (Bible, Talmud, Koran, etc.) you really do have to start at the beginning with the simple question: "What do I believe?" For me, that was the start of the journey, and it's a question I ask myself on a regular basis. The answer has changed over the years as I have studied and grown. That growth process leads you to new questions, and you develop a belief system over time, rather than being handed whole cloth at the beginning.

On balance, though - I'm glad I've ended up on this path. It has provided the opportunity to ask all kinds of interesting questions, and continues to shape the way I look at my world. Being a Solitary is work, but it's enjoyable and fascinating work.

Why be a pagan? What's the point?

The best way for me to answer this question is to tell a brief story about how I came to be a pagan. I tend to use the terms "pagan" and "Wiccan" a little bit interchangably - don't let that throw you.

I was raised by parents who chose, from the beginning, to allow me and my siblings to find our own spiritual paths. Given that we are talking about the early 60's, this is remarkable in and of itself, and I still don't know how they got away with it. They exposed us to a number of churches, spoke freely and openly about their own belief systems, and even sent us to a Lutheran private school at one point. I will forever honor them for approaching this as a personal decision as opposed to family dogma.

This is not to say that I was raised by hippies or wolves or anything. Dad is a USMarine, and my mom stands somewhere to the right of Ronald Reagan. To this day, she quotes Rush Limbaugh to me and doesn't understand why I'm offended. In the end, I ended up being pagan, my sister is Roman Catholic, and who knows where my little brother is at this point.

For myself, the journey really began about 5 years ago.

Holidays have always been a little weird for me. In America, with it's puritanical background, all of the public holidays revolve around the Christian calendar. As a non-Christian (I knew that much, even before I discovered Wicca), it seemed somehow wrong for me to celebrate the life story of a religion I didn't subscribe to - particularly one with the checkered past that Christianity has accumulated. On the other hand, it DID seem appropriate somehow to celebrate the passage of time in some fashion. That just made sense to me.

This led me to researching the roots of the Christian cycle of public holidays. Turns out, all of them - literally all of them - were inventions of the Catholic church as a means of co-opting the existing pagan holidays when the church started expanding into pagan Europe. Although most Christians don't know it, Christ was neither born in December (research indicates February) nor crucified in March. Both Christmas and Easter were the Catholic church's inventions to supercede the existing Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox festivals that most agrarian societies acknowledge.

In fact, if you look at most of the major holidays; Easter, Christmas, Halloween, etc., you will find underneath them a pagan celebration with roots going back further than anyone can document. It seems that we humans have celebrated the changing of the seasons as a nearly universal, pan-cultural practice.

I suddenly realized that this was what I had been looking for. I had felt the need for some sort of acknowledgement of the passage of time - I just had never figured out where that feeling was coming from. The problem, however, was that the popular image of the modern pagan was of some Dungeons-and-Dragons-obsessed freak prancing around the forest in the middle of the night in a bad production of "Midsummer Night's Dream". As a theatre person, I saw that for what it was - in a word, theatre. For that matter, most organized religion has a healthy dose of theatre. Just talk to the Roman Catholics - they practically invented the drag show. What I needed was something more basic, more simple, and more honest.

The first place I went for information was the Internet. I'm a geek, and that is - after all - the first impulse of most geeks when they have a question. The Internet pointed me to an absolutely amazing book called "Wicca for the Solitary Practicioner" by Scott Cunningham. In that book, I discovered the beginning point I needed to start finding my own way. And I also found my first question.

What's the point?

Luckily, Scott didn't answer the question, per se. He had the wisdom to tell his reader that the only answer to that question comes through your own personal journey, your own personal construction - your own personal faith. He told me to use the symbols that made sense to me, make the rituals that had meaning for me, and find the answers that spoke truth to me. I felt like I had been given a driver's licence to the magickal highway.

And so, on a late summer evening, I gathered together the elements of my first altar, cast my first circle, called the corners, placed a pentacle around my neck and called myself a witch for the very first time. The details of the ceremony I constructed were simple. I won't give you the specifics - every solitary should make up their own, and if you are joining a coven, they will have a ritual already in place. What I will say is that my altar contained - and still contains to this day - a clay goblet of Water, a clay pot to represent Earth, a lit candle for Fire, and a chime to represent Air. In my circle, I am Spirit. If you've done any research, you will notice that this isn't the inventory you would find on most altars. No problem - this is my altar, and these are my symbols. Choose those that speak to you.

I also gave myself my "craft name" of Adam - more about that in later postings, but it's kind of like a stage name for your soul. Or rather, it's your real name, and your birth name is the stage name. You could look at it either way, I suppose. "Adam" isn't all of my craft name - like most Wiccans, that's on the private side. I'm comfortable, however, sharing with you my first name.

So what is the point? The point is to find a way of looking at the world that resonates in your Spirit. Whatever that perspective ends up being is right for you - Christian, Jew, Buddist, Moslem, Wiccan, whatever. To my mind, they are all reflections of the same thing: the human spirit's desire to acknowledge something outside the bounds of the mundane and find the stage upon which the play called "Reality" is performed.

A Word of Introduction

Hi and Merry Meet.

I'm so glad you've found me.

Althought I've chosen the solitary path (for reasons that will become clear in future posts), there is a part of me that wants to reach out and make what I have learned accessible to others. In my own self-teaching, I've found that it's been terribly important to read the thoughts of others as a backdrop for developing my own Way. Although I've not always agreed with their Way or found it useful to my own Journey, the thoughts of others have invariably helped launch new questions and new answers of my own. It has been these questions and the process of finding answers that have framed my own Journey.

In particular, I've ended up spending quite a bit of time thinking about what it means to be a pagan in the modern world, and also what it means to be a gay pagan. Along the way, I've come across answers that work - at least for me. And, as what modern Wicca calls a "Solitary Practicioner", that's really what it's all about - asking the questions that have meaning for you and seeking the answers that expand that meaning.

So - I am offering this blog as a sort of "virtual" Book of Shadows, not as a dogma for you, but as a framework that will hopefully help you find your own questions. As I explained to a dear friend, a Book of Shadows is kind of like a Bible - the difference is that Solitaries write their own Bibles. Each is unique to their own experience, and each is a beautiful reflection of their own understanding of the indescribable. Not all of these are written down - after all, Solitaries don't have to worry about passing it on or teaching it. For most, it is enough that you carry your holy book within your own mind - editing and adding to it as you find new questions and new answers.

A Solitary's Book of Shadows is a very personal thing. It's one person's ongoing dialogue with themselves about how the universe works, and what it means to be alive. I seldom talk about my own beliefs out loud except to a few extremely close friends - and at that, I don't share it all.

There is magick in that which is known only to you.

That being said, the Teacher in me directs me to find a way to share my thoughts with others who may find them of some help in their own Journies - just as the writings and thoughts of others continue to guide mine. Thus I am come to begin composing my thoughts in a form that others may find helpful.

With that, I can offer only the following guidance as you read:

May you find questions that lead to new questions, and may the answers bring even more questions in their season. Questions are, in many ways, more important than answers. Our worlds are framed by the questions we ask. May you never run out of things to learn.

Blessed Be.