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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The Mills of the Gods

 Small Millstone — Pennoyer Newman

Hubris, Thy Name Is Donald

 

Well, well, well. The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine.

Sin isn't a particularly active category in most contemporary New Pagan thought, but the ancestors, having more experience, and hence more wisdom, than we do—not to mention a worldview uncontaminated by knee-jerk reaction against natal monotheisms—accounted hubris as the chiefest of sins.

Hubris: excessive pride. (“Overweening” is the classic adjective here, but it's silly to define one unfamiliar term with another.) Not pride, note, but excessive pride: that's what the gods hate.

Well, gods, I'm with you on that one.

Of what does hubris consist? Of arrogating (whence “arrogance”) to oneself that which properly belongs to the gods. Thus, oddly, hubris is a form of theft: more specifically of sacrilege, stealing sacred property, accounted by the ancients as one of the most terrible of crimes.

For all the hallmarks of hubris, utterly lacking in the greatness of heart or nobility of spirit that characterize, say, Achilles, look to the former American Criminal-in-Chief: a life without honor, lived only for himself, in the misbelief that, for him, deeds have no consequence.

We've waited, if not always patiently; now, at last, his crimes are catching up with him.

Well, you know what they say about the mills of the gods.

Grind on, O Mills, grind on.

 

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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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