PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com Exploring a personal, eclectic path by looking at the intersection of three great traditions.
I knock on wood from habit and superstition. But lately the act has taken on both a Pagan and a Buddhist resonance for me.
Trees stand up like us but are taller and more grounded. Even so we are intimately linked: trees breathe out what we need to breathe in, and we return the favour. Trees are witness to our short lives and beacons directing our attention both above and below.
I was swept away by the healing ritual, chanting with a hundred others as we worked with the energy of Isis. My friend from the other side of Paganism, however, was aghast.
“You invoke the gods and then do nothing for them. You’re not even properly grateful.” For her the gods existed externally and needed to be honoured and thanked, not used as props in a psychodrama. I just knew that the ritual had worked. I felt alive and uplifted.
As I fumbled to explain, she asked in exasperation, “I mean, what exactly do you believe?”
Well, I don’t. Believe that is.
“I don’t know what to do. They wonder why I don’t visit but when I do it’s so painful.” My friend, just cresting her forties, was dealing with a difficult relationship with her parents. They refused to accept any responsibility for—or attempt to change—the behaviours that she’d found hurtful since childhood. She was struggling to find forgiveness, to be able to maintain some connection with them, but every interaction reopened old wounds.
Krishna Das tells the story of an important teaching he received from a fellow disciple of his guru, Maharaji: The disciple showed him with great ceremony an object hidden deep in a cupboard, wrapped in a dirty cloth. It was a small beat-up aluminum pot. The disciple unwrapped it and showed it off reverently. “Do you see?” he said. “You don’t have to shine. You don’t have to shine.” *
I used to joke with friends about what I called my “checkered religious history” — I’ve been a Jehovah’s Witness, an Anglican, a wannabe Catholic, a Pagan, a Yogini and a Buddhist—the last three all at once (and still). I have always felt free to choose and/or drop beliefs without a great deal of angst. This shows either a lightness of spirit…or a lack of seriousness. Perhaps both.
On Hallowe’en I carve a pumpkin and give out candy. That same night, the Pagan feast of Samhain, I honour my ancestors beyond the veil. The next day, All Hallows, I honour my favourite saints.
Saints you ask? Oh yes. You can take the girl out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the girl. So I have saints too, just Pagan ones.
But what is a Pagan saint?
“Now it seemed like everyone suffered from some trauma; they just didn’t know it yet.” (1)
Trauma awareness does indeed seem to be everywhere these days, spurring the use of trigger warnings and encouraging the adoption of various practices, from analysis to hallucinogenic journeys, meant to help uncover and heal it.
