 |
| Dike Astraea in Vermont |
This year's theme was Social Justice.
Sunday, January 25
Keynote: Nikki Bado, “The Athame Cuts Both Ways: Pagan Responsibility and Social Justice”
Through the modern miracle of electronic communication,
Nikki was able to speak to us from the facility in Iowa where she was
recovering from surgery. I usually
have a chance to visit with her at the AAR, but due to travel – she worked for
a while in Japan – and health issues, she’s been unable to attend for a few years,
and my not attending the last one because of a recent stroke, we haven’t seen each
other in some years.
I love the title of her talk (even though I see the
double-sided blade of the athame as a piercing, pointing, thrusting, stabbing tool
rather than a cutter or slicer).
The root Craft tradition from which I sprang places a high value on
expressing one’s spirituality, in part, in political and social
involvement. In a word, activism.
Nikki articulated three areas in which Pagans could serve
their communities well in the area of Justice, the theme of this
conference. Nikki’s “3 Rs” are
Religious Literacy, Respect, and Responsibility.
Religious Literacy:
The first is religious
literacy. Religious literacy
is not something that Pagans learn in classes, study groups, or ritual work. Nor is it, in general, taught in public
schools, Ignorance of such common Biblical phrases such as, “as old as
Methuselah,” or the distorted translation of “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to
live” diminishes one’s fuller appreciation when such phrases appear in
literature, or even in everyday speech.
One Biblical quote, from the book of Ecclesiastes, is very common, and has the advantage of working for
nearly everyone, Pagans included, since it reflects the Wheel of the Year as
well as the five stages of life articulated by Robert Graves (birth,
initiation, consummation, repose, and death):
To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to
die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
Yet how many know its source?
Neither are theological notions of immanence and
transcendence paid much heed in standard secular education. Who ever emerged from an American high
school knowing the concepts of, and differences among, monotheism, polytheism,
pantheism, atheism, and henotheism?
Pagans, on the other hand, arrive upon a Pagan
religio-spiritual path after plenty of searching and sampling. Few Pagans were brought up in
practicing Pagan households. (This is true of adults, and less true for
Americans, especially those reared in metropolitan and/or academic
environments.) So we learned about
various religions on our own. I
think it’s fair to say that Pagans generally have greater knowledge of
non-Abrahamic religions than most people have. I’ve also learned a lot through my involvement in
interfaith. I wish I could say
that curiosity about religions that are not one’s own were more in evidence
within the mainstream.
Respect:
Which brings us to the second topic Nikki addressed, respect. Again, speaking in generalities, and more particularly from
the point of view of my own vintage, Pagans are countercultural. Our movement in many ways grew in the soil
of the 1960-70s countercultural revolution (hippies), which evolved from the
Beat Generation, preceded by Bohemianism, itself preceded by Romanticism. As such, our religion(s) is
oppositional in nature. Which
tends to make us disdainful of the orthodoxy and dogmatism of mainstream
religions with their established institutions.
This disdain had its place in the arc of growth, but is less
serviceable as one matures (both personally and in terms of religious thought
and practice). It loses its
usefulness in the pluralistic society in which most of us live today.
Speaking for myself and other Pagan colleagues who involve
themselves in interfaith (more aptly, “inter-religious,” since Paganism(s) is
not based on faith or revelation, rather, on experience), I have scrupulously
observed this convention. I only
wish some of my non-Pagan interfaith colleagues were less presumptive about
belief. (See the last section here.)
Responsibility:
The third R is responsibility. To illustrate these ideas, she spoke of
the care we must take to avoid cultural appropriation. We need to be mindful of unconscious
racism. We need to remember some
nations’ tendency towards colonization.
A good rule of thumb if you’re not sure of the provenance of a practice
and accepted use is to ask, “May I?”
(Dr. Sabina Magliocco offers a useful overview on “Folklore, Culture & Authenticity.” Note: Video is
longer than one hour.)
Nikki also referenced Kareem Abdul Jabar and the Skeptics dictionary. I’ve found this to be an excellent
resource, if a bit cynical.
Kahena Dorothea Viale, founder of the Claremont Pagan
Studies Conference -- praise be her name! – spoke in “Kali Dancing in Justice,” about the value of dance as prayer, and
as a fun and healing activity, regardless of grace and skill. Better, of course, when a dance has
grace and skill of expression, but valuable to the dancer in any case.
 |
| Themis |
He said that balance is a vector, not a still point; it’s
motion. Therefore, when it comes
to Justice, we are better served by applying a vector instead of a scale, as
shown in ancient images of the Titan Themis, Egyptian
Ma’at, and Lady Justice herself.
In the field of Logic, “a statement that is true by
necessity or by virtue of its logical form.” Joseph claims that most human thought is “monotautalogical,”
yet justice involves a feeling between two entities and therefore
“polytautalogical.” Justice is
non-institutional (although often institutionalized in terms of having legal
and court systems), individual, community-based, and direct. (I apologize for what may be
misperceptions or imprecise descriptions of this talk.)
 |
| Ma'at Weighing the Heart |
Although I don’t feel qualified to comment knowledgeably on chaos magic, I merely
mention that Joseph, who himself practices chaos magic, included it in his
talk, and his citing of servitors,
egregores, and fetches.
* * * * *
My accounts of these presentations do not address every
talk. They are recountings of
those that had the strongest impression on me.
 |
| Lady Justitia presides in Rome |
[Finis.]
No comments:
Post a Comment