November

I'm embarking on a project during the month of November, so expect me to be incommunicado for a while.

Cause for celebration

So what religious holidays do I feel are celebratory?  Well, mostly for me it is the equinoxes and solstices.  To me they are reminders of the passage of time, the turn of the earth around the sun.  The traditionally "major" neopagan holidays just don't hold much resonance for me. Here is a list of the days I consider special and their significance:

Midwinter: This holiday feels like a celebration of the return of the light, and a celebration of laying fallow and resting.  It is a time for reconnecting with the people I love.  It is a time of year I associate with death, but also with rebirth.

Spring Equinox: This is a time when the first blossoms have already appeared where I live, and it feels like the world is ripe with promise, like a new bud just opening.  It is a time for planting my garden and making plans. It feels like the beginning of a new year.  It feels virginal, and I associate this time of year with maidenhood.

Midsummer: This is a time to celebrate fertility and the fullness of life. I enjoy the variety of fresh fruits available at this time and of then preserve them for giving.  It is a very motherly time of year.

Fall Equinox: This is the harvest festival.  It is a time of gathering in energies and harvests in order to prepare for the future.  This is the time of year I associate with aging or "crone-ness".

The Wiccan Rede, Part 2

So my last post dealt with the first part of the Wiccan Rede; If it harms none.  This second post will deal with the second part of the Rede:  do what you will.

It seems to me that "do what you will" here is taken as a statement of permission, but is also a challenge.  Because "will" can mean to 'Desire, [or] wish for', but it can also mean (According to the OED) 'Denoting expression (usually authoritative) of a wish or intention: Determine, decree, ordain, enjoin, give order (that something be done).  Imagine how different the Rede would sound if it said "do as you determine".  Determining something requires judgment and consideration.  You have to think critically, consider options, and decide what is best in any given situation.  That is a lot more complicated than "do what you want to do".

The Wiccan Rede, Part 1

I have found that author John Coughlin best sums up the Wiccan Rede, when he says, "Today's Wiccan ethics largely center on the Wiccan Rede: If it harms none, do what you will. Longer versions are in circulation adding poetry or personal views (or both), but these eight words are the basis of these variants and best sum up the nature of Wiccan ethics".

It seems important here to separate this Rede from one modern interpretation of it that I have seen -- the one that says "Do what you want as long as it doesn't harm anyone".  The Rede I am using here says that it is ok to do something that won't cause harm but it does not say anything about things which do cause harm.  It sets an ethical guideline of harmlessness.  This is consistent with the definition of  'rede', which according to the Oxford English Dictionary, means "Counsel or advice given by one person to another. Also: a piece of advice".

The other Rede actually says that all actions that cause harm are forbidden.  I think that this is impractical and almost impossible to follow.  After all, sometimes all we have to choose from is a lesser and a greater harm.  And what about self-defense?  No, this isn't workable.  Moreover, it is a newer, and less accurate reconstruction of the older phraseology. The older phraseology is reflected in the Rede I am using here.

If it harms none, do what you will.  This seems so simple to follow on its face, but it really isn't -- at least if, like me, you believe in an interconnected web of relationships and responsibilities toward, well, toward everything, really.  What does it mean to truly harm "none" in this context? Is it even possible to know when an action will cause harm?  After all, tiny differences in starting conditions can yield widely varying outcomes in chaotic systems -- and this is a chaotic system if I ever knew one!

No, I think that in order to work at all, the Rede must be taken with a dose of practicality -- that harm to another cannot be the intent or foreseeable collateral damage of an action, and that this is an ethical guide.  And based on this guide, a practice of harm minimization is acceptable -- to "hurt none" where possible, and do the least amount of hurt in all other situations.

Emerson's The Over-Soul

I read Ralph Waldo Emerson's short essay, The Over-Soul and found it very interesting and very much true to my experience.  Though very much based in a Judeo-Christian view of the world (unsurprising, given that Emerson was a Unitarian Minister), his transcendent, nature-based view of the divine and of religious experience very much resonates with my own.  For example, he says, "Let man, then, learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this, namely; that the Highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind", making nature out to be the (or at least a) revealer of truth. 

Moreover, when he says, "We distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term Revelation. These are always attended by the emotion of the sublime. For this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. It is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life," he is very much touching upon my own experiences of the divine -- the Other that is not other, the reconciliation of a false dichotomy that is accompanied by the most amazing feeling of connection to all things, and a joy at that connection.  This is even more pronounced when he says:

The soul gives itself, alone, original, and pure, to the Lonely, Original, and Pure, who, on that condition, gladly inhabits, leads, and speaks through it. Then is it glad, young, and nimble. It is not wise, but it sees through all things. It is not called religious, but it is innocent. It calls the light its own, and feels that the grass grows and the stone falls by a law inferior to, and dependent on, its nature. Behold, it saith, I am born into the great, the universal mind. I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect. I am somehow receptive of the great soul, and thereby I do overlook the sun and the stars, and feel them to be the fair accidents and effects which change and pass.

"I, the imperfect, adore my own Perfect."   For in these feelings of ecstatic connectedness is a deep understanding of one's own flawed nature, but the perfection of that nature as well.  Akin to wabi-sabi, it is a concept that is immensely difficult, I think, for those of us who have not grown up with the concept, to grasp.  For how can this be?  Emerson answers: "I am somehow receptive of the great soul".  And if I should ever forget my part in divinity, there are reminders all around, for "the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh".

So what do I believe, anyway? Part 2

In addition to believing in the Gaia hypothesis, I also believe in a sort of Jungian oversoul.  I believe that archetypes help to form the structure of this oversoul or collective unconscious, and that as such, they form a mythos that can help us to grasp the often slippery ideas of spirituality.  I think that myths and folktales -- as well as contemporary literature and all forms of art -- are often composed of or involve archetypal figures, and that as such, these forms of art can help us to understand metaphysical themes.  This is where things like the Tarot come in.  They don't predict the future so much as act as a conduit for us to better understand ourselves and our situations

The oversoul I believe in differs from Jung's in a critical way.  I believe that all life feeds into this oversoul -- that there aren't separate collective unconsciouses for different species the way Jung though.  In fact, I'm not sure if inanimate objects have a part in the oversoul or not.  They may, but I am rather trending toward thinking that they don't.

I have not read Emerson's The Over-soul , but I rather think I should.  Maybe that will be my next post -- what I think of that essay.

So what do I believe, anyway? Part 1

So in the last post, I talked a bit about what I don't believe.  I'd like to talk now about what it is that I do believe.

Basically, I believe in the Gaia Hypothesis.  I believe that everything on the planet -- alive and inanimate -- are caught up in and bound together in a ever-changing, self-regulating system.  To me, that means we are tied, not just to each other, and not just to other living beings, but to literally everything on the planet through a web of biological, chemical, and spiritual ties.  Does that mean that the planet is alive?  Does the pancreas know that the body is alive?  I don't think so, but then again, I'm not in a position to know that kind of thing.

I believe that since we are tied to all things on the planet, we have responsibilities based in our shared relationship to those things.  Those relationships vary depending on the kind of relationship we have.  The relationship that my sister and I share is different than the one that the Grand Canyon and I share, and thus my responsibilities to my sister are different than my responsibilities to the Grand Canyon.  I also believe that when a responsibility is neglected or ignored, those consequences will reverberate throughout the web of ties and end up harming us.

So far, so good.  But my theories break down at the precise responsibilities I have toward things like the Grand Canyon, and even life forms like lichens.  Certainly I should try my best to do them no harm, and to actively reverse harm where it occurs, but does my responsibility extend beyond that?  How?  I don't know, and that is part of what I am trying to figure out.