Pagan Godspell

“I guess it doesn’t matter what a person’s name is as long as he behaves himself,” said Marilla, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.

“Well, I don’t know.” Anne looked thoughtful. “I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. 

- from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

I’ve been thinking about names.  And naming things.  And naming people.  And people re-naming themselves.  As Pagans, we do this – sometimes we do it several times over.  Inevitably on Pagan forums and listservs, someone new to Paganism, all eager and afire with newbie verve, will ask how to go about “getting” a Pagan name.  Advice inevitably follows.  Some people say that others (your group, group leader, a human child from outside the boundaries of Fantasia, etc.) should name you.  Others say to wait for your new name to come in a dream, or from the gods, or in an omen.  More will say you should just pick something that resonates with you.  And then, some recommend The Pagan Name Generator, or the Magickal Name Generator, whether to be snarky or whether they’re actually serious, I’m never sure.  But what always strikes me is the delicious thrill that those new to Paganism (and in particular Wicca, though many other Pagans participate in renamings) seem to feel when faced with the idea of a new name.  A special name.  A name picked for them by the Beautiful World (or by their newly empowered selves) that holds their essence, the numinous quality of their spirit.  For some it is a manner of Pagan baptism, an outward ritual expression of one’s new religion, one’s new identity.  And yeah, sometimes the names that folks claim for themselves can seem a trifle…pretentious.  Or silly.  Or twenty syllables too long.  But it’s a journey, like anything else.

Names and naming are important – vital, crucial, powerful, spiritual.  A symbol of new birth, empowerment, identity.  Naming our deepest thoughts, emotions and beings is also incredibly powerful: Eve Ensler on NPR’s All Things Considered talks about the power of naming. While I personally wasn’t as taken with the Vagina Monologues as a lot of folks (I’m more a fan of the book Cunt by Inga Muscio myself), I do remember seeing it performed live at a 3000 seat theatre, and the overwhelming, pure, sheer power of nearly 3000 women howling and screaming (with laughter, with rage, with fierce empowerment) at the naming of their lives, their experiences, rocked me physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Feminism and other empowerment/liberation movements are naming movements – bringing oppressions to the light, showing them, airing them out, making people see them, saying “look – here is where the culture wounds us, here is where the culture destroys us – here and here and here and here and here….”  Naming is some powerful magic from down there in the molten lava under the good grass.

On the flip side of names and naming, folks often encourage budding amateur naturalists to learn the names of plants and animals.  There’s some huge emphasis on this – learning the names of trees, of mushrooms, of beetles – if you want to say you “know” your landbase.  We have these enormous taxonomies designed to classify creatures and stack them in neat little rows so that we can walk through the woods muttering little scientific incantations to ourselves.  In my very not so humble opinion, this is the kind of naming that stagnates, that removes people from real relationship with creatures.  These aren’t names we grant as gifts to friends, spiritual partners or loved ones, these are names given to things for the purpose of…what?  Organization?  The sweeping power of knowing everything but truly knowing nothing?  We rest smugly in our ability to name plants and animals out of that crappy “ordained” superiority we think we have over other beings, not out of relationship.  We name them to force them to bend to our understanding of a mechanized universe, to study them, to remove them from their natural places.  This is a different naming, an inauthentic pretending.  The difference is in the relationship. 

I recently read a wonderful passage in a book on earth education by Steve Van Matre, that proposed that when a student approaches a plant and asks “what is it?” that the response not be an automatic rattling off of taxonomic or even common names, but rather a series of questions, encouraging the student to engage in a true discovery of the being, its personality, its spirit, its body.  This leads to true naming, to an awareness of the unique gifts of individual creatures as they work in the staggeringly complex manner of unity that makes the planet work.  Authentic relationship is the core of the planet, and an authentic gift exchange is the gift of naming and telling names.  To truly listen to a plant or an animal and hear them tell you their true names in exchange for yours, to receive their name for you as you give a name, born out of true knowing, to them.

This is what I think undergirds the power of names – the potentiality that we might discover our deepest selves and then have that gift to offer others in exchange for the amazing honor of knowing theirs. 

On this pre-winter cold and getting colder day, and in fact, my 30th birthday (in the year of some powerful naming of my own self),  my wish for you friends is the gift of your real names and the wonder of sharing and exchanging these gifts with others.  A loved one, a friend, the vole who lives in the compost, the snow. 

‘Course, then again, if you please, just for today, I think I should like to be called Cordelia.  Cordelia is such a wonderful name, don’t you think so?

Aerobic: literally “with oxygen.”  Aerobics, in the common vernacular, usually refers to physical activity that increases the supply of oxygen to the body, that gets the heart pumping.  Thus, I’m entirely in love with the term “spiritual aerobics” as used in this article: Young Australians attracted to ’spiritual aerobics’

Indeed, people are hungry for spiritual oxygen, something that gets their hearts moving, that wakes them up, makes them dance, moves their bodies, launches their ecstatic spirits.  Certainly, reason should be involved.  Critical examination of self, spirit, community.  A hermeneutic of suspicion.  Yet in all that reason and discipline and thought, we must make room for ecstasy, for dancing, for spiritual aerobics.  When a religion sacrifices ecstasy for reason, you get a host of bored and boring people – people who may not be able to see the life inside a snail or the dancing inside the nature of a mountain, and therefore may ignore their voices.  Of course the flip side is when you sacrifice reason for ecstasy, things can get scary – people neglect responsibility, self-care, the needs of others, etc.  But it should be for a healthy and dynamic middle point that we should be pushing as a people.  Sometimes I think that finding a healthy, dynamic middle in *anything* may be our greatest lesson as contemporary human beings in our modern culture.  It certainly has proven difficult for us to do.  I believe that we knew this once – could know it again.  It is plain in the movement of the planet, all the creatures.  It requires listening to our landbases to relearn this secret.  For me, I believe there is much in performing spiritual aerobics, spiritual gymnastics.  To reconnect through my feet, through my body.

I know this is not necessarily what the author of the article means by “spiritual aerobics.”  Yet I wonder, when I read about the rise of charismatic mega-churches alongside the rise in Paganism, and the rise in interests spiritual in general, what this means for the heart of industrialized humans – I feel often that these impulses spring from a similar place, though with differing points of course.  And how may we begin to tap into that awakening spiritual joy, that longing, that need, and nurture it into world of vibrancy, diversity and juiciness, instead of zealotry, oppression and a legacy of top-down violence.

‘Course, maybe all these spiritual aerobics will end in some kind of slimmer, leaner spirituality, one with a six-pack and spandex leggings.  Me personally, my spirituality is a little plumper than that…and I could live without spandex.  Yep, ‘fraid there’s just no room in my life for spandex theology.  Alas.

This week, the blog Cypress Nemeton brings up the subject of eclecticism (in a brief but reasoned post) in the wide and wooly world of contemporary Paganism, which has me thinkin’ about it on this chilly grey day in mid-November.  Law knows it’s a subject that gets not a little bit of attention in our spheres of worship, and it’s definitely spawned some ugliness in chat rooms and on listservs around the country in recent years.  To be traditional or to be eclectic, or to be somewhere in between (and what is that then)….that is the question.  Whether t’is nobler, or who’s nobler than whom, there’s a bit of that going around too.  Me, I’ve done my own share of wrestling with those dark angels in the riverbeds of my practice. 

As most are aware, the history of Paganism (and, as Jason Pitzl-Waters points out in his post today, the history of other religions and, IMO, pretty much anything else) is a shadowy elusive figure – cagey and tricksy, like a ferret.  Our history as I know it is based on some good books and a lot of personal experience.  I know enough to know that I don’t really know.  The development of eclectic vs. traditional forms of Paganism is long and beautiful and messy, so in the interest of time we’ll generally skip that part (actually, I wrote it out, what I think I know, and it was just painfully long and convoluted, so I’m sparing you – something for you to say ”Amen” for over the tofurkey next week).

What I do know is that it often seems like the truth is always floating around somewhere in the middle of extremes (though this isn’t always true).  I myself have waxed and waned between both of these extremes in my personal spiritual journey – beginning in the feel-good world of mix n’ match, Mr. Potato Head eclecticism and rocketing out to the badlands of hardcore starchy traditionalism.  Both have their totally gorgeous moments.  Both have their flaws. 

I tend to list towards the traditional side still, as I believe in the power of our ancestors and the importance of feeling a connection to a community of history and time, the red thread that binds us.  Yet the glittering seductive dance of so many traditions and stories that populate the imagination of the Earth are sweet – we risk stagnation to ignore change or evolution, or refuse to add to our store of knowledge and practice.  Always it is beneficial to be educated fully about the historical implications of what we do when we eclecticize, how our adaptations affect communities and the Other, whether we are being responsible in our workings and our daily prayers, lest we fall into the ugly and dangerous world of that Big Nasty, cultural appropriation.

As many have pointed out, all religions participate in a natural syncretism – it’s ridiculous to suppose an unbroken purity of vision over centuries in any realm of thought or being in an anarchic species of dreamers and art-makers such as we are.  So of course we are mutable, and so are our traditions.  We strive for balance, which is an endless game.  True equilibrium is utter stagnation (for evidence of this fact starring the ever sexy Christian Bale, see the film Equilibrium), and instead we swing back and forth along the pace of our changes. 

I am a Witch, and a curious Druid in the beginnings of study, and a conspirateur in the Church of the Old Mermaids, and an evangelist for Pronoiac vision, and a lover of gospel music.  I am also the daughter of atheists, the granddaughter of Christians, and the living embodiment of my ancestral story back through the tangle of ages.  Is this eclectic?  Is this traditional?  As long as we are making critical examinations of ourselves in relationship with history, the Earth, time, our communities, and ourselves in order to be the most authentic and respectful expression of our being at any moment, do these questions of eclecticism and traditionalism matter?  Is this the question?  Who says?  Hamlet, you shut up.  Overly verbose git.  Me the pot and him the kettle…la la la.