Friday evening I drove to Point Reyes Station to hear David Abram give a talk.  Ever since I had read his first book, The Spell of the Sensuous,  Abram has been on my shortest list of authors to read, reread, and recommend to anyone I meet. Including you, dear reader. (But unless you are a serious student of philosophy, skip chapter 2.) It was particularly fitting that I could hear him just a few days before Earth Day.

As a graduate student, Abram hoped his skills as a sleight of hand magician, and consequent heightened appreciation for how perception worked, would give him special entry into the worlds of traditional shamans.  He traveled to Indonesia and Nepal to do his research, and found they were indeed interested. He also, as he put it, got in way “over my head.”

His second book, Becoming Animal,  delves more deeply into the implications raised by his first, but for Earth day in some ways Spell of the Sensuous is the most important.  (See here for my review of Becoming Animal.  )

I closed the second of my open letter to Pagan libertarians with a few comments as to what is right about libertarianism. Since discussing the issue continues on this site, I want to explore libertarianism’s positive dimensions a little more. This is complex because the good is interwoven with the not very good, and the interweaving is hidden by popular words covering both, such as “individualism” and “private property.” 

Along the way I will also try and make clear where we Pagans have something important to add in enriching libertarian thinking. 

The libertarian principle of not aggressing peaceful people is in keeping with the Wiccan rede “an it harm none do as ye will.”  And where libertarians understand their principle clearly, they end up on the right side of important issues, such as opposition to the aggressive wars we are waging in Iraq and Afghanistan or to the so-called “War on Drugs.”  Given that no conservatives and few liberals are clear on both these issues, and both the Democratic and Republican Parties are largely tools of corporate domination, it is easy to see why many idealistic people are attracted to libertarian positions.

Libertarians have a long history with modern NeoPaganism. In the early years of our rapid growth science fiction writer Robert Heinlein ‘s Stranger in a Strange Land,   helped inspire creating the Church of All Worlds.  and the libertarian spirit and strong female characters in his The Moon is a Harsh Mistress  was popular with many.  Historically the connection between libertarians and Pagans is deep.  Today many Pagans are libertarians and still more are sympathetic to what they imagine that philosophy to be.

On the surface that connection makes a lot of sense because libertarianism’s ethical principle is remarkably compatible with the Wiccan Rede.    Libertarians generally say no one has a right to coerce a peaceful person and our rede states “An it harm none, do as ye will.”

Words are often like frosting on a cake. Ideally they reflect the quality of the cake below but often fancy frosting covers inferior cakes. In my view such is the case with modern libertarianism. As it currently exists libertarianism in my view is deeply incompatible with Pagan religion in any form. It need not be, but it almost always is. Libertarian Pagans tend to confuse the attractive frosting with what it covers.

continued from part I.

What is wrong with libertarianism as a philosophy for Pagans?

While my chapter demolishing libertarianism treats every aspect of its ideology as failing its core ethical principles, I think its basic heartlessness should give any person pause if they adhere to any tradition holding values like love, compassion, harmony, and kindness.  For Pagans who see that our world as a whole is more than just a pile of goodies for the powerful to use, the lack of fit is even more fundamental.

This post started as a discussion of whether some Pagan traditions are more “privileged” than others.  It rapidly became deeper than this.

When I first became a Pagan and began thinking about the deeper implications of my spiritual path, my first major insight was that since Spirit is everywhere, every spiritual tradition, including those made up from whole cloth, have the potential of carrying someone closer to harmony with the Sacred. For example, even if Gerald Gardner simply made up Gardnerian Wicca (which I do NOT believe), that the Gods come in our workings is all the proof I need that it is a valid path – at least for me.

Several major insights grew from this realization.

UPDATE BELOW

Joseph Bloch has made an interesting case that Pagan religion cannot always be labeled a “nature religion”  because  historically most weren’t. Instead they were concerned primarily with human affairs. I argue here that he is wrong, and do so in three steps. The first two explore crucial concepts he ignores. The third looks at errors of fact.  Grasping how he is mistaken deepens our understanding of what Paganism is and how we relate to the world today. 

The issues he does not examine are what we mean by “religion” and how Paganism reflects the times in which it exists. 

 How might our Paganism influence our politics? A post I wrote before the election, was recently rebuked because I supposedly had no respect for nearly half the American people. Supposedly my views were alien to the Wiccan rede. I disagree as will be obvious, but my basic issue is not with the author, who I assume was sincere, but with a style of thought and the confusions it breeds.  While this post begins with a political question to answer it I will take a journey through some theology and some philosophy.

How big a tent?

Two points argue for an immense political tent among Pagans and I agree with them both. First anyone can be a Pagan who claims to be one because there is no set of authorities to say you or I are or are not Pagans. That lack of authorities is a good thing in my view.

My previous post on connecting with Pagan Gods and Goddesses involved seeking to establish relationships with them by becoming involved in ritual Pagan practices where such events happen, and sometimes are even expected to happen. Having such experiences means our spiritual reality roots are directly into our own experience of the more-than-human as not only sacred but also willing to enter into explicit relationship with us. Such encounters are both wonderful and deeply transformative. They also upset our life plans in many cases, although in my experience leaving us ultimately better off than had such things not happened.

But are there easier ways to at least get a sense of this greater reality? Ways where we can be more active in our search?

One of the most interesting discoveries I made about modern Paganism is the large number of people attracted to us because they feel at home here. They like the way we celebrate seeing ourselves as a part of a larger world of intrinsic value and beauty. Our society gives little opportunity for people with these feelings to come together in a community. We do, especially in our public Sabbat celebrations.  But they say they have never had a powerful spiritual experience, in whatever way they might define the term.  Some even describe themselves as Pagan atheists.

Their motive for identifying with the rest of us seems to me an excellent reason to consider oneself a Pagan. On the other hand, I am surprised at the numbers of us who have never had a personal experience with this enchanted world. This blog entry is dedicated to those who haven’t and wonder how they might

But I want to make one initial point very clear.  I do not think people who have not had such experiences are in some sense “less evolved” or “inferior” to those of us who have.  In my judgment the core of spirit is love, not amazing encounters, and the size and openness of your heart is a better indicator of your spiritual qualities than whether you see auras, encounter spirits, or can go into trance.  But with that said, such experiences became an important part of my own spiritual life, and in my particular case ultimately enlarged and opened my heart as well, which is their true value.

In the two months since the election my broader outlook has become less defensive.   I have begun turning from battling the nihilistic right to the vastly more rewarding challenge of helping build a attractive alternative to modernity’s collapsed moral foundations. That collapse facilitated the right wing’s attempt to impose traditional authoritarianism in both secular and religious guise. Now, instead of constantly uprooting the right’s intellectual and moral weeds I hope to help prepare the ground for new growth and beauty. We sure need it.

My reading has shifted from politics to exploring recent studies exploring how our world is truly conscious “all the way down.” So long as materialist reductionism dominate the intellectual conversation, with irrational monotheism as the alternative, we will be regarded as exotic outsiders, and not taken seriously.  This conversation desperately needs widening. More and more people are becoming aware of the inner bankruptcy of the Enlightenment project and its monotheistic alternatives, and so are open to views such as that of many Pagans if they are skillfully presented.

Mainstream philosopher of science Thomas Nagel’s short Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False,  argues materialistic reductionism will not work and suggesting possibilities with more promise.  All involve making consciousness in some sense a fundamental aspect of reality “all the way down.” Coming from the perspective of process philosophy, Christian de Quincey’s  Radical Nature: The Soul of Matter   is a more demanding work making the positive case that nature is conscious. After Nagel demolishes, de Quincey builds.  These two books are an excellent beginning, and for most, probably a good ending to seeing how a Pagan friendly outlook helps solve problems in the contemporary worldview, and does so from the perspective of contemporary thinking.

November 6^th the right wing attempt to take over the country shattered against the sea wall of our constitution and a damaged but still viable electoral system. I think their defeat will be ranked by future historians as their high water mark. They can still do great damage to our country, but their chances to rule us have collapsed. And they know it.

This development frees us from having to play defense all the time, allowing us to ask what positive values would we like to see better achieved in modern America? 

I have put a more complete argument for why I think Pagans should vote 100% democratic up on my personal blog.  Here at Witches and Pagans I compress it only to the issue of women and the feminine.  In reality that should be enough.  My basic point is not that the Democrats are awesomely good. In almost every case they are not.  It is that their opponents are awesomely bad, in every case.

                         The War on Women and the Feminine

  Pagan spirituality in almost all its forms praises feminine values, usually in through a Goddess.  The Republican Party has demonstrated over and over again that even during times of high unemployment, attacking anything that empowers women takes precedence over all other issues with the possible exception of increasing the wealth of the 1%.  Most of my readers will know of the recent comments by Todd Akin that women when raped cannot get pregnant along with Richard Mourdock’s ‘insight’ that when they do get pregnant from rape, it’s God’s gift. (Theological coherence is not a right wing trait.)

The Republican and right wing attack on a woman’s right to choose whether to be a mother when she finds herself pregnant is of long standing.  But this past year it has broadened enormously and ominously to assault anything that empowers women except as obedient servants to right wing values.

Two fascinating insights deepen our understanding of death and Samhain, which honors its sacred dimension.  In one of his essays on nature poet Gary Snyder made a point I have never forgotten. 

An ecosystem is a kind of mandala in which there are multiple relations that are all-powerful and instructive.  Each figure in the mandala – a little mouse or bird (or little god or demon figure) – has an important position and a role to play.  Though ecosystems can be described as hierarchical in terms of energy flow, from the standpoint of the whole all of its members are equal.

   . . . We are all guests at the feast, and we are also the meal!  All of biological nature can be seen as an enormous puja, a ceremony of offering and sharing.

As I was finishing a chapter in my forthcoming book, Faultlines, I encountered a compatible observation by Carl von Essen regarding what he called the “hunter’s trance.”  Von Essen wrote 

Early Fall is upon us, and the year’s Wheel turns from harvest into the darkening time leading to Samhain. This reminds us that one great distinction between modern NeoPaganism and most contemporary religions is our different relationship to death. For the monotheistic traditions death entered into the world as a consequence of sin. As I understand Buddhism, death is one of many forms taken by suffering, and suffering is evidence something is amiss with embodied existence. The secular modern ‘religion’ of scientism hopes someday to enable us to achieve immortality, perhaps as consciousness encased within a computer.

Today many of the deceased are painted to look as if they are still alive, ‘sleeping,’ and their bodies buried in ornate caskets with comfy cushions to protect them for as long as possible from finding physical oneness with the earth. We mourn the loss of loved ones but we mourn from within a different context than do those who see death as a misfortune.

We NeoPagans generally honor the powers of death with a Sabbat, Samhain. If two Sabbats are more symbolically important to our practice than any others, they are Beltane and Samhain. Separated by 6 months, they honor the two greatest themes of physical existence: life and death.