The Magical Life of Oberon Zell
Interview by Natalie Zaman

When I attended the New York Witch-Fest a few Samhains ago, I was a little nervous about approaching the man who founded the Church of All Worlds, Green Egg Magazine and the Grey School of Wizardry (for those who believe that wizard schools ala Hogwarts are fantasy--think again!). For over 40 years, Oberon Zell has been a champion of paganism, learning, and magic, along with his--to use his words--beloved soul mate Morning Glory.

Hopefully I've come away with a little wisdom from my meeting with this extremely warm and personable wizard. Accomplishments are marvelous things, but it is the person who is important--the one who helps others and works actively to spread enlightenment and make the world a better place today.

I'm on the road at the moment, writing this from Whispering Pines in lovely coastal North Carolina. In the past two weeks I've had the pleasure of performing and presenting at Ecumenicon, and then at Ramblewood Beltane.

Continuing my thread of answering reader questions, today I'm going to be tackling a rather interesting question from Christopher who asks: 

A powerful and enigmatic archetype, The Magician is arguably one of the most troublesome cards of the Tarot, perhaps because it embodies several powerful patterns that can be, at times, conflicting.

One of the main differences between the Light and Shadow permutations of The Magician is motive: gain for others versus gain for self. After all, every permutation of this archetype involves some form of skilled manipulation.

Let’s examine a few of the powerful archetypal permutations of The Magician and some examples of each pattern:

So on my blog http://krasskova.weebly.com/blog.html i've invited people to ask me about Odin. Post your questions there and I will answer them either there, or more likely here, at Heathen Heretic. 

Reader Tannim broke the ice with two very interesting questions, which I've decided to answer here. Thank you, Tannim! I encourage my readers to keep the questions coming. in the meantime, here are my answers to Tannim's questions.

As you may have noticed, I have changed the name of this blog!  It is now “Threads: Musings from a godwife and heathen artisan,“  and the intro text is:  “A twisting (and sometimes twisted) exploration of godspousery, seership, hearth witchery, and the mysteries of traditional femininity.”

I made this change (with the kind approval of Anne Newkirk Niven) because I haven’t felt moved to write specifically about Frigga for quite some time now, so it has begun to feel misleading at best (and possibly disrespectful at worst) to have Her name up there in large text in the title line for the blog.  At the same time, I have become increasingly comfortable, during the past six months or so, writing more directly about my path, including some of its more personal aspects that I had previously felt very awkward and/or inhibited about discussing.  So all in all, this name change and refocusing will enable me to post more actively and less self-consciously here, since so much of what I end up posting has been about my path with Odin and/or being a godspouse, anyway.  Also, it will give you a better idea what you're in for when you start reading. 

Along similar lines, a while back when I mentioned over on my own blog that I would be taking a short break from writing new posts in order to prepare for my renewal of vows ritual (which took place this past Tuesday, on May Day Eve), I also mentioned that when I returned to active blogging I’d be opening myself up to questions from my readers, as many other bloggers have done.  I’ve been encouraging readers to Ask Me About Odin for several months now (and you are still welcome to send in your questions about Him specifically to me via wodandis@gmail.com), but now I would like to widen that a bit and invite you to send ask me anything you’d like to know about myself, my practice, etc.

In response to my call for questions, Trine asked me the following: 

"Why do you think humans bicker so much about the "right way" of pleasing the Gods (through ritual, devotional practice, etc.)? Is it because the Gods (in their mysterious ways) ask something different of each person, and sometimes what they ask and expect of one person is the complete opposite of that of another person? Or is it rather the result of human arrogance and ego? I feel it can be both, but having no experience really with spirit work and what it's like to carry out these duties, I'm not really sure. "

Traditional wisdom ranging from a bevy of global cultures—including Native American, Taoist, and West African groups—calls for honoring one’s ancestors to a specific generational threshold. I’ve most frequently heard talk of remembering to ‘seven generations,’ and trying to learn the names of one’s family up to that level. Doing the math, if you start with yourself as the first generation (1) and go back seven steps, at level seven there are 64 individuals, for a total of 127 names, lives, and personalities to remember. If you start at your parents (2), the top level has 128 people, and the total runs up to 254 persons of note. That’s only counting direct ancestors, one mother and one father for each person, with no account for brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, stepparents, adoptive family, etc. While it is certainly not impossible to remember a roster of names to that length—recitations of lineage are common in a number of cultures which rely on oral transmission of lore—it can be difficult for people in a literate society to manage. Moreover, for those of us who like to maintain ancestral altars,  keeping physical representations of between 128 and 254 people on our altar spaces can be unwieldy.

So what are our options, if we recognize the importance of maintaining an ancestral presence in our lives? Today I want to look at some of the ways we can encompass our forebears without crowding out an entire room of the house with representative knick-knacks (if you do maintain such a room, kudos to  you and I would love to visit, as that would be an intensely powerful space, I think!).

Genealogy

I was recently asked if Dionysos frightened me.

Gods yes. All the bloody time.

Ancient Hellas is often lauded as the birth place of modern science and philosophy. Certainly in the arts of medicine and healing, this is true. Hippokrátēs of Kos (Ἱπποκράτης) is seen by many as the founding father of medicine, and today--seeing as I'm a little sick with the flue--I wanted to talk about one of his basic understandings about the human body: the internal physician; the body's own ability to determine its illness and cure it where possible.

Hippokrátēs was alive from 460 BC to about 370 BC. In his lifetime, he set about to advancing the systematic study of clinical medicine, summing up the medical knowledge of previous schools, and prescribing practices for physicians through the Hippocratic Corpus and other works (although he Corpus itself was most likely not written by him, but assembled in and slightly after his time). Hippokrátēs separated the discipline of medicine from religion, believing and arguing that disease was not a punishment inflicted by the Theoi but rather the product of environmental factors, diet, and living habits. Much of his theories came from his very basic understanding of the human body: in Hippokrátēs' time, it was forbidden to cut into a corpse, even for research.

Before we get to the inner physician, I must speak about two of Hippokrátēs's most famous ideas about illness: humoralism and the concept of crisis. Humoralism is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health. The four humors of Hippocratic medicine are black bile (melan chole), yellow bile (chole), phlegm (phlegma), and blood (haima), and each corresponds to one of the traditional four elements.

Paganism becoming more mainstream (This is Bath)

"The number of pagans has doubled in the past decade and with Glastonbury Tor, Avebury and Stonehenge, the West is leading a religious revival in our pre-Christian beliefs. Yesterday, pagans said they hoped to have finally convinced the public at large they are peace-loving nature devotees, and called for greater recognition of paganism and pagans..."

Increased numbers of Nepalese women tortured because of witchcraft (Global Times)

Smile O voluptuous cool-breath'd earth!

Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!

Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains misty-topt!

Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with blue!

Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!

Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my sake!

Far-swooping elbow'd earth — rich apple-blossom'd earth!

Smile, for your lover comes.
Walt Whitman - Song of Myself

Beltane always falls when the Sun is in Taurus; if you celebrate Beltane astrologically, the Sun will be exactly halfway through Taurus, and halfway between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice — always a few days later than May 1st. (This year, it fell early on Sunday, May 6th) Whether you are heading towards summer or winter, the Earth is in transition. Perhaps this is why the sign of Taurus is so concerned with security, with farming, and the Earth. Taurus’ other main focus is a sensual connection with the Web of LIfe, and the creation and enjoyment of beauty.

The New Moon Eclipse on May 9th will highlight Taurean themes for some months to come. There are four planets (a stellium) in Taurus in this chart — Sun, Moon, Mercury and Mars — and if you follow this blog, you’ll recall that the influence of a solar eclipse can be as long as a year. Saturn in Scorpio provides a balance point for all that Taurean energy. Though there is no direct opposition, as I noted in this post,  “We can look on the progress of Saturn through Scorpio over the next 2 ½ years as an initiatory undertaking  — a deep, transformative time when, if we will discipline ourselves to fulfill the requirements of the body and the Earth, we can create with power, insight and spiritual awareness.”

Venus, the ruler of Taurus, has just moved into bright, aware Gemini, where life is a question to be answered, and connection to others is key. Venus is square to Neptune in Pisces, and Pisces' other ruler, Jupiter, is also in Gemini, unaspected, making it even more of a wildcard than usual.

All of this suggests that in the months to come, issues of material security will be raised again and again at varying levels of intensity depending on how this configuration falls in your personal chart. Are you stuck in a rut somewhere? Has the pursuit of security smothered your creativity and playfulness, or do you need to pay more attention to how you support yourself on this Earth? What are the personal and social costs of the way you live your life? If you don’t ask yourself some of these questions, they will be asked of you, and the answers will demand both action and clear communication.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Walt Whitman - Song of Myself

In my previous post, I promised that if people wanted to ask me questions about my practice or about the way I express piety in my devotional life, I would be more than happy to answer them. Liza broke the ice and asked the following three questions, which I found very insightful, so I decided to tease them out into their own separate post. 

Liza: For the newbie, young's, seeker without a physical community to lead them, how do you suggest they start? (Though I suspect I know this answer in part, I think it bears repeating)

On Walpurgisnacht, May Day Eve, the special ceremony I had been planning for nearly two months, and thinking about for years, took place: Odin and I renewed our Marriage vows.

I had been thinking about doing something like this for years because when I initially married Him in December 2002, it was more of an elopement than anything else.  The ritual I had been planning at that time was supposed to (or so I thought) be a simple year-and-a-day dedication to a god Whom I had (or so I thought) only recently begun working with.  But I thought wrongly.  That's right, folks: as much as I've written here and elsewhere about the need for careful consideration and deliberation before entering into a god-marriage, as many times as I've stressed that it is an action to be taken only after years of devotion and not entered into on impulse, this is totally a case of “do as I say, not as I do” because my own Marriage was very sudden.  Or, so it seemed to me at the time.  It turns out, Odin had been hanging around me my entire life in various guises: there was the episode with the Wild Hunt when I was eight, my sense that I had an invisible dark companion all through my teens, and my marriage to an “underworld spirit”, a dark, shamanic warrior king who I now know fits Odin's description to a tee, in my early twenties.  There was the unexpected playing of “Ride of the Valkyries” as I started down the aisle at my wedding to my mortal ex, and the time a Ouija board spelled out “Priya” (proto-Indo-European for “beloved,” and the root on which Frigga's name is based) when I asked for a “pagan name.”  So many signs and clues I've enumerated in other blog posts in various places, and yet (since I can, frankly, be a bit thick when it comes to this kind of thing) I still thought it was sudden when I impulsively called on Him in my mid-thirties and He not only answered but almost immediately said, “Come be My wife.” But it was Him, so regardless of the things that seemed to stand in the way, how could I refuse?

I keep hearing about the dangers of excess piety.
Man, I don't even know what that is.
Those words don't exist in the Dionysian vocabulary.
It's too much when you burst into flames from being too close, too in love with the divine.
And let me tell you, in the whole history of the human race that has happened to one woman only - and it was from her womb that my god came.
When your piety matches Thyone's, then we'll talk.
But there ain't been no one since who could approach that level. Not even close.
And sure as Dis not anyone in any of the communities that make up modern paganism.
Now that's not a diss on anyone, though I'm sure there will be plenty who take it that way. There always are.
I'm including myself in this, mind you, though I shun pagan affiliation
for certain obvious reasons.
What I'm saying is that no matter how much you do there's always more to be done for the gods, deeper places you can take it. Religion ain't no video game.
There's no defeating the last boss to save the princess and then you're finished.
If you're doing it right there's no end in sight.
There's always more to learn and experience, threads to unravel, new ways of perfecting the art, grand adventures you've yet to go on.
Even the most accomplished among us are little better than journeymen.
Most won't even become apprentices.
But masters; there are none of those around these days.
Let alone what comes after and even after that.
And you want to give up?
You think this is enough?
You caution taking it too far when we can't even see what's around the corner?
Really?
And they call me drunk and crazy!
Oh, for a people that hungers for valor and excellence,
a people who understand deep in their blood and bones
that the gods are worthy of everything we have
and twice more than that!
Oh for an age where such people may spring up like Anthesteria blossoms
- and if it's not meant to be this age, I pray it will be the next.
The god deserves a grand procession through the streets,
men in hunting boots and ivy crowns and robes red as wine
and women with hair loose and wild, eyes mad,
clutching snakes in their hands, fawnskins fluttering
as they all march, ecstatic and enthused as the pipes compel their feet
and the drums give steady cadence to their beating hearts
while the phallus is hoisted high and the spectators scream,
"Ave Bacche! Io io evohe!"
Do we have that yet?
Then we don't have too much piety,
and let's hear no more of such sad folly.

Following on my discussion of miasma I would like to say a few words about religious prescriptions or taboos (keeping in mind that the English taboo is quite different from the Polynesian tapu.) Again this is kind of an awkward subject for me as the nature of my path does not permit me to have any, including those once observed in the ancient cults of Dionysos. I am actually quite fond of taboos despite that and one of the first conversations I have with other devotees, priests, god-spouses or spirit-workers is a run down of what is tabooed to them.

Before I continue I suppose I should explain this curious feature of my path. As a holy fool I cannot hedge myself in with rules - in fact there can be nothing between me and Dionysos, including piety. Where there is a boundary I must transgress it until I have completely dissolved into him. This type of bhakti mysticism isn't for everybody and it isn't for most Dionysians, either. It is way too easy for this to become an excuse to do whatever you want or to do nothing at all because we're very good at justifying our indolence, aren't we? This approach requires a tireless searching of one's motives and actions to ensure that they are consistent with the desires of the Lord one serves and what's more, one is not allowed to fall back on external structures or habits. One is always starting from scratch in everything one does and one's actions must be filled with an enthusiasm and devotion that is frankly exhausting to maintain. (No matter what you're feeling or what's going on in your life at the moment, you have to be able to get it up spiritually for him.) There's a reason we call people on such a path fools.

Asatru Alliance leader interviewed about prison murder suspect (CBS4 Denver)

"During a phone interview with 4 On Your Side Investigator Rick Sallinger, [a] priest of the Asatru Alliance in the U.S. insisted it’s not a white supremacist religion. “You cannot practice the religion of Asatru and be a hateful, bigoted person. It’s just not part of our value system,” said Asatru Alliance priest Valgard Murray."

Twelve year old girl confesses to witchcraft (Manica Post)

I feel weird whenever people come to me with questions about miasma and ritual purity because it really emphasizes how different my spiritual path is from the one that so many others walk. A lot of the advice I end up giving isn't actually stuff that I myself do because, frankly, most people have no business doing the kind of stuff that I do unless they've undergone the sort of initiations that I have. Even then it's a fine line and there are dangerous consequences for straying too far. I've run into some real trouble over the years because of what I've been called to do, the energies I work with - and that has given me a unique perspective on why some of these rules are in place.

These customs provide a buffer between us and the elemental forces of creation which is necessary because too deep or prolonged an exposure to such power warps the soul and diminishes our humanity, making it harder to function in ordinary society. These rules and practices are a way back to regular life and consciousness, a process of reintegration and the reestablishment of order to our personal world. Most forms of miasma, after all, are concerned with the boundaries of mortality: birth, sex, death, madness, etc.

Although contact with these things pollutes us it is important to keep in mind that this pollution carries with it no moral stigma. Miasma is not a state of sin from which we are in desperate need of deliverance - in fact we often have moral and religious obligations to engage in activities that cause pollution as when we conduct the proper ceremonies of mourning for the deceased (which their posthumous fate may depend on) or a soldier doing his duty for the land and his people or couples begetting children to ensure that the family line continues and there will be future generations to honor the gods and ancestors. Even though these acts are right and necessary they still impart miasma and that impurity must be ritually addressed.

In a comment to my previous article, Anne Niven wrote: 


"But anytime we start getting into defining "piety" I start to twitch. I believe that there's absolutely no "right" way to serve the gods. Why? Because I believe that only personal gnosis can impart that information. And personal gnosis is just that -- personal. Which is to say, what's pious for you is, indeed, pious -- for you. But it might not be pious for me. In fact, what's pious for you might very well be *impious* in my relationship to the very same deity."

Over on The Wild Hunt, Teo Bishop has made an interesting proposition: he would like to crowdsource Pagan theology in anticipation of an upcoming conference presentation. People are encouraged to post their personal Pagan theology in the comments section, on their blogs, and on Twitter. 

When I have to use any kind of terminology at all, I define my personal theoilogy (not theology, thank you) as polytheistic panentheism. Translation: I acknowledge the existence of a multitude of autonomous Powers which are simultaneously inherent/manifest within creation and transcendent/beyond creation. Some Powers are intimately interwoven with creation -- for instance, the dryad who lives and dies with her tree. Other Powers manifest within but are not as tightly bound to creation -- Athena, for instance, with Her ties to olive trees and owls and serpents, is also connected to "higher" qualities such as wisdom and creativity. And I do mean multitude; how many Powers have existed since before the beginning or been born in the interim I dare not even guess.

There is no one book which completely and perfectly explicates my personal theoilogy. (I am sure the same is true for many people.) There are, however, quite a few books which have informed my theoilogy, supplying bits and pieces here and there, clarifying points of confusion, helping me to develop it over the years.