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 In Praise of Local Orthopraxy

Do pagans "do" theology?

Reflecting on decades of experience in Interfaith outreach, my friend and colleague Macha Nightmare recently noted that, in these contexts, non-pagans frequently want to know about pagan theology.

But theology is not really an operative question for pagans, she observes. Theology qua systematic theology—in the sense of an overarching, internally-consistent conceptual framework—is a product of Christian thought, and not hence really applicable to the pagan religions.

Point taken. Still, I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing.

Maybe I've been contaminated by growing up in a Christian environment. When I look at myself, though, I find that I do, indeed, have a (more or less) internally-consistent conceptual framework for my paganism. (Regular readers of the Paganistan blog have been subjected to it for years now.) I can't help but think—or at least hope—that pretty much any thinking pagan (Macha included) does too. The unexamined religion, after all, is not worth practicing.

Theology is a fine old pagan word and concept. I'm with David “New Polytheism” Miller in this: whenever we talk (and think) about the gods, we're theologizing. That's the prisca theologia, the primal theology, theology as it was before being abducted and codified into orthodoxies.

Pagans, I would contend, have plenty of theology. What, as pagans, we lack is a shared theology.

 Parthenogenetrix

n. one (f.) who brings forth without benefit of intercourse

I coined the word parthenogenetrix while still in high school. (Yes, I was a pagan egghead back then. I suppose I still am.) My long-term intent was to see it in the OED.

The word has potential biological applications (ask any domestic pigeon or California condor), but I intended it theologically at the time. (This was, after all, during the Silver Age of Matriarchy.) Poetic it's not, but parthenogenetrix has at least the advantage of transparency—to the hyper-literate, anyway—readily construing as a portmanteau of parthenogenesis (“virgin” birth—or, at least, conception) and genetrix (the grammatically feminine form of genitor—one who begets or creates).

Parthenogenetrix tells a story, an origin story. This is no creation ex nihilo, but rather ex ipsa, from herself. That's how the Lady does things. With Her, it's all personal.

Goddess bless him, my best friend at the time (and fellow egghead) Doug Julius used to make a point of using the word regularly in conversation—which, as you can well imagine, required some pretty impressive intellectual gymnastics. He also, to my delight, made jokes about “parthenogenetricks.” When the punning starts, you know it's the real thing.

These days, a quick web-search turns up a handful of parthenogenetrices, virtually all in religious or mythological contexts. The Virgin Mary, Sophia, the Goddess of Witches: parthenogenetrices all. Each occurrence, surely, constitutes an independent coinage. Given context, the word virtually suggests itself.

I am a cauldron bubbling over. I've just finished reading Gus diZerega's God is Dead, Love Live the Gods: A Case for Polytheism.

(You can see some my reflections before reading the book here.)

I won't at this point attempt a full-scale review of this rich and nuanced work. (Stay tuned.) One thing, though, is clear to me: that to do justice to What Is in all its dazzling multiplicity may well require multiple theologies.

(Outrageous as such a suggestion might be, it somehow seems consonant with a worldview grounded in the Many.)

I would suggest that we need at least two theologies, one for the Elder Gods, one for the Younger: to vastly oversimplify, the gods of “nature” and the gods of culture, respectively.

Though both are gods, They're not the same.

The ancestors regularly distinguished between, if I may, two modalities of divinity. In most surviving pantheons, the Olden Gods, the “nature” powers, tend to get relegated to the background; it's the Younger Gods—the ones with human faces—that stand in the forefront with their temples, cultuses, and fancy myths. As we think through the implications of modern paganism, we need to keep this distinction in mind.

Different gods, different theologies.

DiZerega's work deals almost exclusively with the Younger Gods. As he sees it—to (perhaps unfairly) oversimply his rather more nuanced thought—they are, essentially, “egregores”: creations of the human mind. (This, of course, is not to deny that they have an existence and a reality of their own.) That's why they vary so much from culture to culture.

Like virtually all other contemporary pagan theologians, his treatment of the Elder Gods is minimal, in this case, a single sentence: “We do not often, if ever, see the same deity manifesting independently in very different cultures, except in very general terms, such as Mother Earth” [diZerega 192].

Yet surely this is not so. Earth, Sun, Moon, Sea, the Winds, Thunder....I could go on. These gods arise in pantheon after pantheon because they are the undeniable ground of reality. (That They should show Themselves differently to different people in different places should surprise no one.) They are not egregores, though egregores may form around Them. (In this instance, one can hardly avoid thinking of grit and pearls.) We see here a clear distinguishing characteristic of the Old Gods: They may not be understood without reference to the non-human world.

These categories of gods, Younger and Elder, are not, of course, mutually exclusive. Take, for example, the Yoruba and Afro-Diasporic goddess Oshún. As an Elder Goddess, she is goddess of the River Oshún, in what is now Nigeria. As a Younger Goddess, she is goddess of love, beauty, female sexuality, etc. As I see it, the danger lies in the detachment of one from the other.

Possibly the most disquieting sentence that I've ever read opens Robert Graves' retelling of one of the Greek myths:

One day Mother Earth was visiting Athens.*

Say what?

Also up there on my list of theological “What-duh-f**k?” moments is Isaac Bonewits' “Invocation to the Earth Mother”:

Thou Whom the Druids call Danu,

Come unto us.

Thou Who art Erde of the Germans,

Come unto us.

Thou Whom the Slavs call Ziva,

Come unto us....*

Half a mo here. We're calling Earth to come to us?

Some would say that the pagan religions are non-theological.

If by this we mean that pagan religions tend not to have 'systematic' theologies, I would agree.

But I prefer to think that we're just differently theological.

Drawing on the word's original meaning (theos, 'a god' + logos, 'word') theologian David Miller defines theology as 'thinking and talking about the gods.' (Miller's 1974 The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses was a pioneering work of contemporary polytheist thought.)

No system required, no seminaries involved. Thinking and talking about the gods.

That's something that pagans do all the time.

It's one of the more pressing questions of contemporary pagan theology.

What happened to the pagan gods during the centuries of the Great Interruption?

Did they fall asleep? Did they go away?

In the Baltics, the Old Ways lingered long. In Latvia, the Thunderer of the old pantheon—Perkons (= Perkunas, Perun, etc.)—came to be identified (among others) with “Saint” Martin.

“Martin carries nine Perkonses under his cloak,” was the saying.

Did the Old Gods abandon their people?

No, indeed. They've never abandoned us, and They never will.

They wrapped Themselves in other cloaks and waited.

And when they ask you,

Why do you worship

the creation, not the creator?

ask in return,

Why would you separate them?