The Return of Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Yes, Magic Monday is on again. I appreciate deeply all the kind words, thoughts, and prayers sent my way in response to the recent passing of my wife Sara. I know that a lot of people respond to grief by taking time off, but that's not at all what I need or want just now. I've been through a long, lonely, stressful time during which I had nothing to do but provide a dying woman with the care she needed and would accept, which wasn't much, while we both waited for the inevitable to happen. What I need now to start the journey back to balance is conversation, interaction, and useful work to do.

So...

It's a few minutes before midnight and thus time to launch into a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism and I'll do my best to answer it. With certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question or comment received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted. (I've been getting an increasing number of people trying to post after these are closed, so will have to draw a harder line than before.) If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.1 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says.  

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With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed -- that is to say, no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

[causticus]

Good day JMG. My deepest condolences on your wife's passing.

1. Are a deity's English-language epithets effective enough for invoking vs. using the original names? Basically, I'm wondering if it's possible to invoke and venerate the gods in one's own mother tongue? (Mine being Modern English). I once invoked "Thunder" and got what I interpreted to be powerful results. Also, I know some original Roman god and goddess names have effectively been naturalized into English quite a long time ago, particularly the names we use for the planets. But a lot of others are more distant and alien to my own present-day cultural reality. As an "intellectual polytheist," one big hangup I've had trying to get into paganism is that trying to worship the gods just like the ancients did feels like the worship of ashes, as opposed to a living, breathing, dynamic spirituality. Worse, when calling on a god or goddess referring to stories from some long-dead culture that isn't my culture, it feels to me like LARPing and thus something that's totally inauthentic. I suspect this is one (among many others) reason why the Neopagan movement is currently on its way to the grave.

2. Sort of related to the above: is it possible to worship the gods without referring to ancient mythological content associated with them? I believe you've said a few times before that people looking to get into polytheism should shop around and try out different mythologies and see which ones resonates best. But what if none do? For me personally, I greatly enjoy reading myths as stories, but they do nothing for me as far as spiritual feeling is concerned. I do realize there's mysteries about the gods embedded in these stories, and I can gain a lot from studying them in that manner. But most of these myths simply feel to me like dead artifacts of a bygone era. And another big problem is that old myths contain themes that really don't square with the morality and general consciousness of our cultural zeitgeist. On this, I recently came across this quote from Cicero and it makes a ton of sense to me:

"Do you see how far from a true and valuable philosophy of nature this imaginary has evolved into a fanciful pantheon? The perversion has been a fruitful source of false beliefs, crazy errors and superstitions hardly above the level of old wives' tales. We know what the gods look like and how old they are, their dress and their equipment, and their genealogies, marriages and relationships, and all about them is distorted into the likeness of human frailty.

They are represented as liable to passions and emotions; we hear of their being in love, sorrowful, angry; according to the myths they even engage in wars and battles. These stories and these beliefs are foolish; they are stuffed with nonsense and absurdity. By repudiating these myths with contempt, we shall be able to understand the nature of the deities that pervades the substance of the elements, Ceres permeates earth, Neptune the sea, and so on; it is our duty to revere and worship these gods under the names which custom has bestowed upon them, and the best and also the purest, holiest and most pious way of worshipping the gods is to venerate them with purity, sincerity and innocence both of thought and of speech.

Religion has been distinguished from superstition not only by philosophers but by our ancestors. Persons who spent whole days in prayer and sacrifice to ensure that their children might outlive them were termed ‘superstitious’ (from superstes, a survivor), and the word later acquired a wider application. Those on the other hand who carefully reviewed and retraced all the lore of ritual were called ‘religious’ from relegere (to retrace or re-read), like ‘elegant’ from eligere (to select), ‘diligent’ from diligere (to care for), ‘intelligent’ from intelligere (to understand); for all these words contain the same sense of ‘picking out’ (legere) that is present in ‘religious.’ Hence ‘superstitions’ and ‘religious’ came to be terms of censure and approval respectively."

It seems that by Cicero's time many of these myths had gone stale (the Age of Aries had just recently wrapped up); at least among the intellectual classes of the Greco-Roman world. Not long after his time, the urban masses started flocking to new religions like Proselyte Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Magianized/Oriental versions of older mystery cults.

3. Should I really just be writing my own hymns and prayers to the gods in a way that makes sense to me? I've had religious experiences convincing me that many gods do indeed exist. I also learned that they're going to manifest how they chose to manifest, and that's not necessarily going to be a way that in which ancient stories depicted them.

[ecosophia]

All these are questions you should be asking yourself and the gods, not me!

[causticus]

Well, that does seems painfully obvious ;) Thank you for the splash of cold water.

[jprussell]

As someone groping around how to answer similar questions, I thought I might share some of my experience, in case it's helpful, but as JMG's answer points to, this seems to be highly individual and your mileage will almost certainly vary!

On 1, I find that using modern English seems to work fine for me, but I've given some thought to treating Old English or Old Norse as a "liturgical language," which is what some heathens do and apparently find helpful and satisfying. For my own practice, I've grown to think that aesthetics are an important guide here: I like the sound of Anglish and the look of knotwork, so I incorporate that into my worship, but I don't go for the Theodish approach of wearing period clothing and doing rituals in Old English, because as you say, it seems a bit silly and that puts me off. For me, using past forms and approaches as inspiration for something of my own has also worked pretty well: for example, I use Eirik Westcoat's approach of adapting Old Norse poetic meters to modern English and compose prayers following them.

On 2, have you tried using any myths as themes for discursive meditation? I have found this to be extremely fruitful, even (especially?) with those myths that are most at odds with what seems ethically right ("Why would the God of keeping promises break his word?").

For 3, that has largely seemed to work well for me, but studying the Rosary has made me jealous of Christianity's long, living tradition of official liturgy. Without even getting into egregores or the like, many of the prayers and rituals evolved organically over long periods of time and thus have a certain quality that you can't get from one guy making something up.

Whatever ends up working for you, good luck!
Jeff

[causticus]

Jeff, thanks for your response. Very thought-provoking as always!

1. The whole LARP factor has been bugging me more and more lately. To me, using Anglish (a modern linguistic construct) and digging the aesthetics of knotwork (something that some very crafty and creative present-day artists work with) seems a lot more authentic than trying to pretend you are someone from some arbitrarily-chosen time period and locality. I guess this version of "authenticity" is the exact opposite of how a strict reconstructionist pagan might use that term.

2. Yeah, I've been able to unpack some degree of inspiration from some myths. It's just no one set of myths inspires me more than another. Once I cease being the world's worst meditator, I might be able to unpack some more more profound insights.

3. On Christianity and egregores....I was friendly-arguging with some well-meaning guy over on a social media platform who is taking his own stab at reviving the ancient Roman pagan religion; taking ancient Roman holidays/festivals, mixing in Neoplatonic theology, and taking Catholic holidays and practices and rebranding them as Roman Pagan (what in the automotive industry is referred to as "badge engineering". I was trying to make the case that religions (especially Natural Religions) take many centuries of organic development and much of this development comes from authentic religious experiences of ordinary people. His work seems like an attempt at a top-down engineering project, like an instant, "ready-made" religion that has "just add a bunch of followers, then...boom!" as its next step. I shook my head in a polite manner and wished him the best. This is what inspires me to tinker around and find something that actually works, even if just for me and no one else.

Polytheism

[(Anonymous)]

As to your Point 2, Causticus: of course it's possible to worship Gods without relying heavily on the ancient mythologies associated with them. At the same time, the old stories can form a useful doorway to getting to know them on a personal level, and building your relationship with them from there. It's possible to sift through the old myths and find a few that resonate with you--many of them can be poetically and symbolically beautiful.

From my own religion: how about the "creation" (or really "transformation") of the first human couple from trees? The trees given gifts of the Gods and transformed. It offers a lovely image of the kinship between humans and nature, and the value of the Gods' gifts: the sacred breath of life, divine inspiration that bridges between humans and the Deities, and the human form with its shining beauty, its speech and human behavior and action, and the warm flush of life that enlivens it all. Meditating on this can offer common ground between us and the Deities who gave these gifts (Odin and his brothers / companions) as a basis for growing a deeper relationship with them, as Jeff Russell put it so well in his post.

There are countless such examples in all the Pagan traditions, and other religions as well. One doesn't need to focus on the distasteful imagery; all these stories are products of their times--some can bear the test of time and still confer wisdom; others do not, or only do so by counter-example or by deep, symbolic analysis of the myths.

On your Point 3: it's entirely up to you, of course, but that is what many people in many religions do: create their own prayers and devotional customs, their own symbols and practices, which may rely to a greater or a much lesser degree on older traditions. No matter how old a religion or mythology is, *someone* came up with the original stories and practices. No reason we can't, or shouldn't, do this again: in our own time, and for our own times and places in this world today. They're still here--the Deities--and still interested in genuine and sincere interactions with us in today's world. They wait for each of us to find a language or symbology that works for us, and they will meet us there.

Winifred Hodge Rose

Re: Polytheism

[causticus]

Winifred, thank you for this! I love your work, btw.

I do certainly agree that the myths are very useful in terms of unpacking symbolism and mysteries. As an occultist I have no problem with this approach at all. But in terms of something that makes for serious devotion, I'm going to have to work on employing a set of language and symbology that works for me.