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Category: Pagan Conversations

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Published on 6 Comments on The value of consent

Sign: "Emergency Shut Off Valve" Many prominent Pagans are now talking about consent culture and how to make Pagan spaces safer. It particular, I would recommend Christine Kraemer's Consent Culture 101: Basic Practices and Teaching Games, Yvonne Aburrow's Silence equals complicity: making Pagan groups safe for everyone, Shauna Aura Knight's Harassment and Boundaries, and especially Stasa Morgan-Appel's Some Experiences with a Culture of Consent and Radical Inclusion.

To me, a culture of consent means that activities only happen with the enthusiastic consent of all participants. It is where lack of enthusiastic consent is sufficient to stop an activity and seek better communication; a spoken "no" is not necessarily required. And it goes beyond sex and even beyond touch and into all interactions so that games and activities, religious rituals, and even conversations are all based on consent. If we establish an expectation for seeking consent in all things, maybe it will be easier for all us to create and respect boundaries in more challenging areas such as sex.

At a Pagan event, I was in the washroom with someone with whom I generally get along and she made a comment that I didn't want to engage with. I said "I don't want to get in the middle of that". She had started towards the exit as we talked and she then stopped in front of the door, blocking it, holding the handle, and proceeded to rant at me. It was brief – probably only 30 seconds – but I felt disrespected and annoyed. Had I been less startled, I would have spoken up, but it happened so fast. I don't think she thought about it either; she didn't consciously override me or disregard my feelings, but simply got caught up in her own head.

At a drumming workshop, the instructor asked each person to individually play back a rhythm. I decided to pass on that particular exercise, being self-conscious about my sense of rhythm. When it came to my turn, I told the instructor that I would prefer not to and he was fine with that, but someone else in the class said "we're allowed to not do it?". It shocked me that those around me didn't know that they were allowed to say "no" to something.

If we value consent as individuals and as a community, we will all develop the ability to lovingly enforce boundaries and respectfully step back if requested. That's what a complete culture of consent could help us all with. There's a phrase amongst people that are seeking to create "consent culture": "yes means yes". Instead of defining consent in terms of what we don't say no to, it is about seeking enthusiastic consent. Enthusiastic consent and participation is what we should want in all our rituals; it will make our magic and our worship stronger.

There a few things I consider non-negotiable to warn for going into a ritual: skyclad (especially if it is mandatory); blood drawing; and drugs, including alcohol, in the working portion of the rite (a small amount of alcohol in the food and drink portion seems acceptable to me as long as consumption is voluntary and an alternative is presented as equal in value). Unfortunately, I have seen or heard from trusted sources of all three of these things being sprung upon ritual participants at different times by ritual leaders who should know better. I believe that sometimes ritual leaders are using the element of surprise in these matters as ways to shortcut to intense experiences. By springing something controversial and difficult on the participants, they can provoke an emotional response to add to the energy of the ritual. I think it is a lazy way of creating a heightened atmosphere and has no place in a religion that calls all members priests and priestesses.

Warning for or avoiding nudity, blood, and drugs is just the minimum we should do, though. The next step would be doing what this year's event coordinator did at the Gathering: making sure all event descriptions include information about scents/incense and food so potential participants with allergies and sensitivities can make informed decisions in advance. Finally, I believe we should make it clear how people can opt out of any part of a ritual or leave the sacred space completely.

I feel like it is an incredibly powerful thing to be able to have a skyclad ritual at a Pagan event. I've felt and seen the magic that happens when people have the chance to be naked in Circle together: how people gain confidence and become more embodied, and sometimes even become more comfortable in their skin. I don't practice skyclad at home, but I lead mixed groups of almost strangers in nude rituals at the annual local Pagan camp (The Gathering for Life on Earth) because I believe it is important for the experience to be available there1.

This year, the camp's theme was "The Wild Hunt" and my ritual, called Challenges of the Wild Ones, was on the first night, at about 11 PM. This has been the traditional time slot for the "starlit skyclad" (known in previous years as the "nude moonlit"), and I like it for the feeling of jumping in to cold water: everyone who wants to take the plunge can do so early in the weekend, before they have time to talk themselves out of it. I know how much courage it takes for people, especially first timers, to take off their clothes in front of other people, especially if they are also coming to one of their first group rituals ever. I feel honoured that several times, my skyclad ritual has been someone's first group ritual besides the camp's opening. I am flattered by the trust they've put in me.

When I write rituals for strangers, I cast my mind back to when I was new to public rituals and I never include anything that would have made that self feel unsafe or embarrassed. So when I was writing "Challenges of the Wild Ones" and wanted to include a part where everyone had to respond to a question, I considered a couple of different ways of making that more comfortable while keeping the feeling of a challenge. One option I considered was to give the questions in the pre-ritual explanation so people would have more time to prepare their answer. This was ultimately rejected because I didn't want everyone distracted by thinking up and remembering their answers during the first part of the ritual. The solution I came up with was to offer the option of a silent response. Since everyone would have their eyes closed, people wouldn't necessarily know who spoke and who responded silently, so hopefully that would minimize peer pressure. Honestly, I expected most people would respond silently when given the option, but when that portion of the ritual started, every single person gave their answer out loud. I don't remember many of the answers - the answers were to the gods or spirits, so not mine to collect - but I was deeply touched by the authenticity and honesty in how people spoke. I felt that most people responded from deep truths, even when their words were simple.

Later that weekend, I spoke to someone else who had been in that circle about how that surprised me, and she said that maybe because I had given people an "out", they felt safe enough not to use it. This dovetails nicely with my theory that if we make it easy for people to know how to leave a ritual, they'll be less likely to want a way out. I don't think offering an opt-out option will usually result in a ritual of non-participants watching... if it does, the ritual needs to be redesigned from scratch.

The pre-ritual speech I had my priest give (while I ran down to the beach to finish setting up) included directions on what to do to opt out of an activity, permission to respond silently, mention that I would be touching people on the shoulder to prompt their response, and instructions to bring their cloaks and towels with them for the optional skinny dipping. Looking back, I would have liked to have added a note about how to leave the ritual completely. There was one originally, but when the opening ritual didn't include a circle casting, I hastily wrote a circle casting into my ritual and didn't have the time to thoughtfully consider how people should exit. I would have also made sure to draw attention to the ingredients in the food and drink (several people took only apple slices until they found out that the cookies were gluten- and nut- and dairy-free), and to mention that opting out or leaving would have no consequences and there would be no questions asked, though my priest and I would be available to talk or receive feedback throughout the weekend.

Our most popular Pagan liturgies hold that we are all divine, or at least all capable of reaching the divine on our own. If everyone is god/dess, or even if everyone is "merely" a priest or priestess, then we owe each other respect. One of the ways we can show each other respect is to seek consent in all things. It is the least we can do for our fellow deities.

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Published on 3 Comments on Our place in the cosmos – part 1

The Cat
Source: Hubblesite.org

We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. - Carl Sagan, Cosmos, 1980.

A big point of this website is to explore the intersection of religion, especially Paganism, and science. My first exposure to the idea that we are made of star stuff wasn't through Paganism, though I'd been Pagan for six years or so, but in a second year university geology class. My professor taped Christmas lights to the blackboard and turned out all the lights and told us about how carbon and almost all the other elements that our world is made out of were formed in the heart of long-dead stars. He ended with the Carl Sagan quote above and I got goosebumps. I was so inspired that years later, I wrote my biggest ritual to date based on this idea: the Stardust Ritual.

Episode 123 of The Wigglian Way podcast included a review of the tv show Cosmos1. As part of the discussion, the two hosts, Mojo and Sparrow, mentioned the show's occassional anti-religion jabs and a star stuff quote:

[Stars] get so hot that the nuclei of the atoms fuse together deep within them to make the oxygen we breathe, the carbon in our muscles, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood. All was cooked in the fiery hearts of long vanished stars. ... The cosmos is also within us. We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. - Neil Degrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, episode 2, 2014.

Mojo: "... [Neil Degrasse Tyson] also mentioned that there's a good possibility that everything on the earth - everything alive - came from the stars; that we are in fact made of star stuff... does that sound familiar to anybody? That we are made of star stuff? So not only is Cosmos not disproving my religion, it's only proving it more. We've always said we're made of star stuff."

Sparrow: "Exactly. ... Science is coming closer and closer to what we believe all the time."

The idea that we're made out of stars predates Carl Sagan. Quote Investigator found uses as old as 1913 and 1918, both from science. The only non-scientific origin seems to be a "Serbian proverb": "Be humble for you are made of dung. Be noble for you are made of stars." Serbia has been Christian for a very long time, so I don't know if we can count that as Pagan origins. And that's assuming it truly is a Serbian proverb; the earliest source seems to be Guy Murchie in his 1978 book The Seven Mysteries of Life and he did not provide any documentation. It is an interesting idea that Pagans, ancient or modern, may have always believed that we're made of star stuff, but I couldn't find any proof of this. Mojo hasn't gotten back to me with his source.

Until a Pagan source can be found - and I am keeping an open mind about that - I will remain a bit disturbed by this possible re-writing of history. I know modern Pagans are not, as a community, all that good at history (you don't have to dig very deep to find people who still believe that nine million women were killed in the "The Burning Times" and in Gimbutas' ancient gynocentric civilizations), but that's all the more reason to guard against the tendency to add more unprovable or false stories to our collective history.

We can be the religion that embraces and welcomes science; the progressive, flexible, growing religion that isn't threatened by new facts or by change. I don't want science to prove my spiritual beliefs to be right; I want to take on new knowledge and incorporated it into my beliefs and rituals. And maybe that's something Carl Sagan, scientist and self-proclaimed agnostic, could get behind:

Every aspect of Nature reveals a deep mystery and touches our sense of wonder and awe. ... Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries. ― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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Published on 3 Comments on Our big questions – part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

Cherry blossoms in full bloom on a rainy day

I listen to a lot of storytelling podcasts, so I'm afraid I don't remember where I heard the story, but someone was talking about a horribly embarrassing situation and how one young person responded: "Awkward." The storyteller, an older man, expressed admiration for a generation for whom the major value scale is graceful versus awkward, instead of appropriate versus inappropriate or right versus wrong1.

When you are trying something new, there is often a period during which things don't work well. Whether it is that your limbs won't seem to do the right things while doing a new exercise or sport, or whether it is running into your partner repeatedly while trying to make dinner together for the first time, or whether it is circling with a new ritual group, there will be missed cues, confusion, and overall awkwardness. You will lack smoothness, flow, grace. And that's normal when something is new.

When it comes to a ritual group or structure, I am wondering when to drop something that isn't fitting in as smoothly as you might want. Right now, there a couple of places where Silver Spiral has to pause to consult each other about the order of things in our new ritual structure, such as: ground, cast, then quarters; or cast, quarters, then ground? And sometimes the grounding meditation gets skipped accidentally. As I see it, we have a choice to drop that part of our new structure, revise that part in some way to try to make it easier to remember, or push the group to memorize it. Which one we go with may demand on how much awkwardness we're willing to tolerate, or even welcome.

There's freedom in a ritual structure you know so well that you don't have to continuously think about what comes next. It allows you to be present in each moment instead of second guessing your next move. It allows everyone to do their part gracefully and contribute equally. However, one of the theories about the usefulness of ritual is that it engages and focuses our conscious mind, allowing our sub-conscious to do the magic, so if the ritual is so rote that we can do it without thought, our conscious can be distracted by other things and we are no longer fully in the ritual. I have said some of the same prayer or bits of liturgy so often that I can get to the end and only then realize that I've said the whole thing without a bit of thought or intention.

Though we may want to cultivate the grace that comes with a familiar structure well-run, there's also value in a bit of awkwardness. Putting moments into our ritual structure that require concentration or thought seems like it could help us not just run through it mindlessly; it prevents us from ever having it down pat. Maybe we need things to stay just a little awkward, a little challenging to remember, just to keep us fully engaged.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 3: ritual structure 2.0

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Published on 2 Comments on Our big questions – part 3: ritual structure 2.0

mythumbnailHaving decided that we wanted a ritual structure of our own and that we wanted to use our own words instead of those of other traditions as much as possible, my spiritual family, the Silver Spiral Collective, set out to revamp how we do what we do.

We started out on our email list. We set up an email thread for each part of the ritual: cleansing the space and welcoming participants, casting and cutting the circle, grounding, calling and thanking the elements/quarters, invoking and thanking deity, and blessing the food and drink. Everyone who wanted to contributed to each thread with their own writing from past rituals or new pieces of writing designed just for this. There was some discussion and variations suggested, but for the most part, writing was simply posted without comment in preparation for our in-person discussion night.

Just before the discussion night, I copied and pasted the ideas from each thread into a single document, sorted by ritual component and stripped of author's names. When we gathered together, we each had a copy of this document and a pen. We also came equipped with some understanding of each others beliefs from our previous discussion nights, a history of working together (some of us have been circling together for over 16 years), and an openness and lack of ego.

This could have been a very difficult process without that last part. I take pride in my rituals and I usually like my own writing; I assume this is the same for most people who write group rituals. Unless you believe that you are channeling the ritual directly from the divine, it is your work and by presenting to a group in a religious context, you are saying that it is worthy of being part of their spirituality. You have to believe that you have something to offer in order to put on a ritual. If even one person had come into our discussion night wanting to push their words on the group, it probably would have been a much less productive and satisfying evening, but everyone came in with open minds. Though I had sometimes forgotten who the author of each piece was, in the cases where I did remember, it was never the author who spoke up that that was their favourite; someone else always had to speak for it.

Unfortunately, despite our best efforts at scheduling, not everyone was able to make it to the discussion. Luckily, the people who write the most rituals for the Collective were all able to attend, and it was agreed that nothing would be set in stone; whatever we came up with would be subject to everyone's approval and that feedback and re-writing was expected as we used the structure in upcoming rituals.

We did each ritual component separately, working through the ritual in order. First, one person would read all of the pieces of writing for that section out loud. Then we would gradually eliminate some of the options as being too specific to the ritual they were originally written for, too difficult to recite smoothly or too long for our purpose, or not quite matching the beliefs of the group. This was done very gently, with lots of "I love this, but..." and I know my feelings weren't hurt when my words got struck off some lists very early. When we were left with fewer options, we dissected them and what we liked about each one, then started combining bits from each in different combinations until we found something that was both pleasing to our ears and to our spirits. Sometimes the end result was almost exactly one of the original pieces of writing, sometimes it was a combination of multiple pieces, and sometimes we almost ended up writing something entirely new together. We spent a lot of time reading the drafts out loud over and over again, teasing out how a single word added or eliminated changed the rhythm or the meaning.

In the course of discussing opening procedures for rituals, we did stumble upon an odd little thing: not all of us agreed about the purpose of something we'd been doing as part of our rituals for years! When writing the original Silver Spiral ritual structure, Teresa and I had incorporated a meditation taken from a different tradition. We'd been guests in that tradition's rituals a couple of times and enjoyed the meditation. In discussing what to replace it with, we discovered that Teresa thought of the meditation as a personal grounding exercise to encourage each individual to be completely present, while I had always thought of it as a uniting meditation meant to bring everyone's energy and states of mind together. It was a revelation to find out that the meditation we'd been doing together for probably a decade or more meant such different things to each of us and yet worked for both of us anyway. A quick poll of the rest of the group found that the group was split about 50/50. As a group, we wrote a short meditation that incorporated elements of both, but with an emphasis on the individual grounding aspect because our re-written circle casting already had a number of uniting elements.

By the end of the evening, we had a working draft: Silver Spiral Ritual Structure 2.0. We used it in several rituals and after each one, we checked in with each other about how it was working. There were several weaknesses that we could only see once the structure was being used. For example, our circle cutting procedure was too short and felt perfunctory in version 2.0, and then was too long and drawn out in version 2.1. Our 2.2 version might be just right, but it will need to be tried at least one more time before we know for sure. As well, we have decided that we want to include a more formal procedure for our offerings to deity during our food and drink portion of the ritual. This is an interesting development, actually, because we had no such procedure in ritual structure 1.0; offerings were made somewhat casually after everything had been passed around and some of whatever was left was set aside or was simply left in the goblet or dish to be taken outside after. But during the trial runs of 2.0 and 2.1, the idea of a dedicated offering bowl and a planned way of making offerings was suggested and seemed to be universally agreed to; it seems like an idea whose time has come for us. I added an offering to our 2014 Imbolc ritual, which was the first to use ritual structure 2.2, and now we will discuss and refine that.

The process of developing a ritual structure that is satisfying to everyone has highlighted the things we all have in common (though individually we may all call different powers at the quarters at different times, we all agree on the elements as one good option) and the places where we diverge (the order in which the elements are thanked: same as when calling or reversed?). Sometimes seeking consensus means watering down everything to the lowest common denominator, so I was watching for that tendency going into the discussion night, but I don't feel that that's what happened. Those of us who prefer more elaborate calls and invocations definitely had to compromise some in the spirit of making everything adaptable to a variety of ritual themes and easy to remember, but I feel that we did keep things flexible enough to allow for precision in calling when desired. In the end, we built a suitable container for more challenging ritual content; a way to gracefully get into the same mental and spiritual space together and to deliberately bring ourselves back out. It was what we were seeking when we kicked off this process with some questions about what we believe.

I doubt we'll ever be done and have a final and forever ritual structure. In fact, I hope we keep evolving it to meet the needs of new members and our future selves. I expect there will be Silver Spiral Ritual Structure 2.4 and 2.5... and maybe 3.0 one day. And maybe "our big questions" parts 4 through 10 or more; there's always more to discuss and learn about each other and ourselves.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

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Published on 2 Comments on Our big questions – part 2

mythumbnailAs discussed in "Our big questions - part 1", my spiritual family, the Silver Spiral Collective, has been having a series of formal conversations about faith and spirituality. It started with one conversation about each of our personal beliefs and practices, which led us realize that we wanted to have more conversations and start revising our ritual structure to better match our beliefs and needs as a community. Our second round of questions, therefore, focused on our ritual needs:

Do we want/need a standard ritual structure?

Do what extent can/should we deviate from the standard ritual structure?

If we decide to keep a standard ritual structure, are some parts mandatory or are all parts optional?

If we decide to keep a standard ritual structure, is the one we're using working?

How do you write/design a ritual?

As with the first time, the questions were posted to our email list in advance. I also posted a copy of our ritual structure at the time, annotated with comments on why we had the rules we had and making sure everything was properly attributed. We'd been using minor variations on the same structure for probably 10 years, so it was good to remind ourselves of why we made certain choices and to make sure our newer members knew where we got bits of our liturgy1.

This conversation was less personal than the last one and therefore went a lot faster, though we did use the same general structure to allow everyone time to speak. At the end of the evening, we did have a consensus that we liked having a ritual structure and that we thought we could improve on our current one. We were especially interested in replacing some of the words we were using from other traditions with our own words.

Where we did have a bit more variation in opinion was in how strict to be about our ritual structure. Some of us are more interested in seeing about how much depth could be achieved in rituals by sticking very strictly to a structure, and some of us are more interested in deconstructing ritual and in experimenting with how the container affects the contents. We decided to be very strict about using the structure while we were still in development (realizing that this was going to be a process that would probably require revisions as we tried it in practice) and for some time - a year, probably - after, and then we would open it up to one-off changes as required by the ritual. We did decide on a general rule that we wouldn't change the structure just for the sake of messing with it; all changes would be with purpose.

The next step was going to be working on the ritual structure itself, which was clearly going to require a night of its own. We set a date and went back to our email list to prepare for the next step. That'll be part 3 in this ongoing series.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 1
Our big questions - part 3: ritual structure 2.0
Our big questions - part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

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Published on 3 Comments on Our big questions – part 1

mythumbnailAt the Gathering for Life on Earth 2012, Robyn, Richard, and I ended up having a number of wonderful conversations with various members of the Pagan community and amongst ourselves, leading us towards the notion that it was time for our spiritual family, the Silver Spiral Collective, to have some more conversations about beliefs and spiritual needs. We'd had these conversations before, but the discussions had been informal, had not always included all members, and had not been happening recently, which meant that we didn't always know where everyone's spiritual evolution was taking them. We also had more relatively new members at the time, which meant that we were definitely due for a planned and organized sit-down.

The Silver Spiral Collective has always been a work in progress. We formed in 1998 because we were all Pagans of a similar age, in similar life stages, with similar enough beliefs to enjoy circling together. After forming a group, we gradually created rules about our rituals (must include a power raising, no junk food for the sacred feast, etc.), which evolved into an optional ritual structure, and is still changing to this day into a new ritual structure that has been created out of where we are now as individuals and a group.

We started this round by gathering questions from all the members. Everyone was invited to contribute their questions in advance to the email list we're all on. With fewer than a dozen members and some questions that overlapped significantly, this resulted in a good number of questions covering a lot of areas, but not an overwhelming number. I took all the questions, re-organize them into an order that made thematic sense, then re-posted the list to everyone at least a week before the event so everyone could prepare their answers in whatever way felt comfortable to them. Some of us came to the discussion nights with answers that were virtually essays, some came with notes, and some just spoke from the heart in the moment, but I think everyone found it useful to know what the questions were in advance.

The second thing we considered was how to make sure everyone spoke on every topic. We have some introverts and some extroverts in our group, so it is easy for some to sit back and not contribute while others dominate the conversation. We decided to go with "an authoritarian imposition of rules to ensure the democratic distribution of the conversation" (a paraphrase of Robyn's great turn of phrase). We started each round with one person reading the question out, then we went clockwise around the circle, each answering the question without interruption. We didn't allow for questions or discussions between answers, but simply allowed each person their own monologue. We ended up not having to set time limits on individual's answers, as everyone was very careful to keep their answers on track and not allow themselves to ramble, but a timer was an option we were holding in reserve. At the end of each round, we had a period of open discussion to ask each other for more information and to compare and contrast our opinions. When that conversation would start to get off topic or would simply lose steam, the person who answered first on the previous round would read the next question and the person to their left would answer first, and so on.

Here are the questions from our first discussion night that gave us the most interesting and thought-provoking answers, in my opinion:

On the colour triangle described in the article Pagan Deism: Three Views, where do you place yourself?

What is an essential part of ritual for you (like what has to be included for it to feel right)?

Do you practice religious/spiritual things in your own time?

What does the creation of sacred space look like for you?

What is a successful Silver Spiral ritual for you (what do you want to get out of our group's rituals)?

How do you feel about our current level of "ritual standardization"?

I highly recommend that everyone read the "Pagan Deism" article before a discussion like this. The answers to that first question were particular enlightening for us, as we discovered that most of us had some "yellow" component to our individual beliefs, and many thought they were the only one.

Following the discussion night, I felt closer to my fellow members of Silver Spiral and felt like I could design better rituals and could share deeper spiritual experiences with the group. Not too much later, we scheduled a second conversation, as we all came up with even more questions for each other. Later posts will cover the subsequent questions and the evolution of our ritual format.

Series to date:
Our big questions - part 2
Our big questions - part 3: ritual structure 2.0
Our big questions - part 4: circling from awkward to graceful (and back)

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