Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Where Does Reenchantment End, and Delusionality Begin? Or: Pagans in Exile

 

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Unicorns Will Always be Easier

 

Back when I first got to town, the Rowan Tree Mystery School was one of the big players on the local pagan scene. I myself never joined, but a number of good friends were committed members.

As part of their magical training, each student was expected to keep, in effect, an astral familiar: a unicorn, a dragon, a griffin. I'll admit, this always twisted my nuts the wrong way.

What's wrong with real animals? I wondered. If you're going to cultivate a relationship with an animal, why not Buffalo, or Groundhog, or Deer?

Why not real animals: animals that shit, and piss, and stink? Animals that we have to watch and study long to understand? Animals with wills and lives and ways of their own, animals that won't do what we want them to?

Unicorns will always be easier.

 

The Barrow-Wights Are Angry

 

A local high [sic] priestess had a mission. The barrow-wights were angry, you see, and it was her job to—I suppose—mollify them.

Well. This is Minnesota, and there are lots of mounds here. There are people in many of those mounds, the ancestors in the Land.

Seeing what has become of the Land, I could well understand that they might be angry. Well do we, the Younger Sibs, new in the Land, need to make our peace with the Land, and with the First Peoples of this Land: with what has been done, and with our role in that doing. Well might the barrow-wights be angry.

But no high priestess, however powerful, can do that work for me.

That work I need to do for myself.

 

Pagans in Exile

Why isn't the Earth enough?”

(Mark Green)

 

I once spoke with mythologist Joseph Campbell. After his talk, I asked him a question: “Do we, then, need to return to the Earth?”

I had intended my question—not, perhaps, as felicitously phrased as it might have been—seriously. The West is in spiritual crisis, granted; how, then, do we best address ourselves to this problem? Is the sacrality of Earth not central, both to this problem, and to its solution?

Campbell, though, who had his own story to sell [sic]—the Hero's Journey—blew it off.

“Oh, I think we'll all return to the earth soon enough,” he quipped with a smirk. Mild laughter from the audience. Next question?

For a while, Campbell was something of a hero to many pagans. Me, I never liked him.

 

We are the pagans. For us, everything begins, and ends, with Earth. For us, Earth is Truth.

For long and long, though, our people have been in exile: in exile, incredibly, from Earth. Not physical exile, but spiritual exile: estranged from our Mother.

The walk back is a hard one. Myself, I was lucky: I learned of Earth and her ways from my teacher, a man named Tony Kelly, who loved her best of all. Even so, it took me long and long to learn to live her truth. In many ways, I'm still learning.

(Begin, though, with Earth, and a whole pantheon soon reveals itself: Sun, Moon, Storm, Sea, Red, Green, River....)

My people, let us gird up our loins. The journey ahead will be long and hard.

And unicorns?

Well, at least they're a place to begin.

 

 

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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