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Gods, flippin' America.

I hate that, in America's hyper-racialized mindscape, colors become shorthand for people.

I hate that—so hyper-racialized is that mindscape—to the American ear, the racialized meanings can tend to become the primary meanings of color words: that, even when used to describe color, and no more, such words tend to take on racialized implications.

Ye gods. Is there no way out?

So entrenched has such usage become that I recently heard a local heathen elder advise against using the term “wight” in public without qualification—land-wight, tree-wight—lest someone should mishear racial implications.

(The term “wight”—literally a “being”—refers to the other, non-human, peoples of the land. Some speak of “land-spirits” and the like, but personally I prefer "wight" because it doesn't specify kind of being—personally, I don't believe in spirits—only that they are.)

And yet. And yet.

Last night, the ancient language of the rite of Imbolc opened up before me with a possibility of hope for a greater enrichment.

We're American pagans. We live in a democracy, and think democratically.

(For the time being, at least. If we want to keep it that way, we'd bloody well better get our pagan butts out there in November and vote.)

So what's with all the aristocratic/monarchic language—lords, ladies, kings, queens—when we talk about the gods? Having dumped the institutions, why do we retain the language, and wouldn't it be better to replace it with something more in keeping with our own politics instead?

In my more than 50 years in the pagan community, I've heard these questions raised any number of times, and acknowledge their validity.

Experientially speaking, though, I find that this nobility-speak terminology doesn't really bother me. Why not?

Well, for one, I live in a democracy. (Note above-cited caveat.) That monarchy and aristocracy can be profoundly oppressive of yeomanry like yours truly, I have no doubt whatsoever—to quote my friend Volkhvy, if there's any noble blood in my family, it's only because a horse outruns someone on foot—but I also have no personal experience of it. I've never been in a situation where the laird and his hunt ruin my crop by riding through it, or his son rapes my daughter, and I have no recourse to the law because the laird is the law. Thank the gods.) Precisely because I'm American, kings and queens, lords and ladies have, in a sense, lost their political reality and become metaphors of status and power.

(That the gods are bigger and more powerful than I am, I readily acknowledge.)

Add to this the fact that nobility language has become so ingrained in religion, both Western and Eastern, that it seems perfectly natural to speak this way in religious situations. The elevated and the archaic have characterized religious language for as long as we have record of religious language. So I find no fault with these metaphors, social fossils that they are, on this account, either.

To this, I'll add a third argument, a pragmatic one. When I hear objections raised to “lord” and “queen,” my very practical response must be: okay, so what do we have to put in its place? Better the imperfect metaphor that we have, than the perfect one that we don't.

Obviously, our political institutions have nothing to offer here, precisely because of their essentially egalitarian nature. Speaking of the gods as presidents or senators evokes nothing but laughter.

Faith-based is what you say when you don't have the courage (or honesty) to say “religious.”

Plant-based is what you say when you don't have the courage (or honesty) to say “vegan.”

Earth-based is what you say when you don't have the courage (or honesty) to say “pagan.”

Are you seeing the trend here?

Of course, one understands the reasoning. The Bush 2 administration didn't want to admit that they were directly giving taxpayer dollars to religious (in virtually every case, conservative Christian) organizations. Like conservative Christians, vegans have a—let's be honest here—all-too-often well-deserved reputation for entitlement and self-righteousness. And sometimes, as we all know, everything sounds fine until you use the P-word.

(Besides, calling the modern paganisms “Earth-based” is aspirational at best; in most cases it's just plain untrue. I'm sorry, there's nothing “Earth-based” about Something Out of Books from Long Ago and Far Away.)

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Euphemism.

Me, I'm a word-guy. The trajectory of my entire linguistic career has been towards a language of clarity, precision, and honesty. Euphemism strikes me, instead, as the preserve of the dishonest, the craven, and the demagogic.

Lesson 1

“What a beautiful [blowing] horn,” I say.

It was, and my friend's wife, to whom the horn belonged, told me the story.

She had raised the cow herself from a calf. After a long, productive life, the cow—I can't remember her name anymore—was happily grazing in the pasture one sunny day when...

“...Thor took her,” she said.

Translation: “The cow was struck by lightning.”

That's how you think in Pagan.

Up in northern Minnesota's Lake Country, a young girl disappeared and was never found.

“They say the lake took her,” her mother told authorities. “I don't believe it.”

Translation: “The girl drowned.”

That's how you think in Pagan.

Extract from the article “Bealtaine Rite” in The Waxing Moon, Bealtaine 1977

We met one day in May when the Moon told us it was right.

Translation: “We held our Bealtaine ritual during the Waxing Moon of May (because the waxing of the Moon mirrors the waxing of the Year).”

That's how you think in Pagan.

“Goddess temple.”

“Goddess religion.”

“Goddess people.”

After nearly 50 years in the pagan community, I have to admit: these phrases still set my teeth on edge.

It's not the content of any of them that bothers me: it's the delivery.

Goddess (adj.).

The Goddess is the great unstated fact of Western culture. “God” implies “Goddess,” and always will, so long as (and wherever) English is spoken.

The flexibility of English is one of the language's great advantages: nouns regularly change to verbs, verbs to adjectives, and the reverse.

But to my ear, there's something wooden about goddess (adj.), something inelegant. It has the advantages of being practical and comprehensible, but (let's admit it), it's utterly lacking in beauty.

The ancestors are still speaking.

One of our very greatest inheritances from the forefathers and mothers is language. If we listen closely, we can hear their voices today.

2500 years ago, the ancestors bound their thought together with alliteration, what we may think of as initial rhyme. Many of these phrases—hundreds, if not thousands, of years old—are with us still.

Might and main. “Might” is physical strength; “main” (OE megn) is non-physical (psychic, spiritual) strength—“soul-strength,” one might say. To do something with all one's might and main means to use all one's available resources. Those seeking a word for “energy” that doesn't reek of patchouli may wish to consider “main.”

Kith and kin. It's interesting how frequently these inherited alliterative phrases refer to a totality. “Kith and kin” means “everyone”: both those that you're related to (kin), and those that you know (kith). Preserved like a flower in amber, the ancient word for “know personally” also survives in “uncouth,” originally meaning “unknown.”

Bed and board. Tables take up a lot of room. In the houses and halls of the ancients, where interior space was at a premium, at mealtimes it was customary to set up trestles and boards to eat from. Hence, board, pars pro toto, came to be short for “table.” (“Table” is a French word. The Normans, of course, were the aristos; they could afford to have tables sitting around, uselessly taking up room. Every word's a story.)

“Bed and board,” then, means home: where you sleep and eat.

150,000 years of pagan history, and it took the so-called 20^th century to reduce the gods to the level of co-workers.

“I work with [Name of Deity].”

How many times have you heard this expression?

Note who's the active agent. Note the nature of the partnership. Note the implied equivalence.

The ancestors would never have used the phrase “work with” to describe their relationship with their gods. They might have worshiped a particular god. They might have offered to a certain goddess. They might have made their prayers to said gods.

But—for the most part—modern pagans are afraid of worship. (Why? Another day, another post.) Mostly we don't offer to our gods. We're not particularly strong on prayer, either. I.e. we have rejected the spiritual technology of the ancestors.

So much the worse for us.