Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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From the City of the Moon Goddess

 The Full Moon Reflected On The Lake Surface Stock Photo - Download Image  Now - iStock

 

Who is the divine patron/matron of your city?

 

The Secular City

 

She left her temple in Uruk to descend into the Underworld.

She left her temple in Larsa to descend into the Underworld.

She left her temple in Nippur to descend into the Underworld.

 

So begins the story of the Sumerian goddess Inanna's descent into the Underworld.

(If the prospect of the Goddess leaving her people to descend into non-existence seems harrowing, it's true: we've been there, and seen what comes of it. Consider, though, that we've gone through non-existence along with her and, along with her, come out on the other side.)

Long ago, I noticed that there are certain aspects of the original that just don't translate.

 

She left her temple in Cleveland to descend into the Underworld.

She left her temple in Peoria to descend into the Underworld.

She left her temple in Fresno to descend into the Underworld.

 

Laughable, isn't it?

Once cities were sacred places. Now we live in what theologian Harvey Cox called “the secular city.”

That's the problem.

 

The View from the Broom

 

It once happened that I flew into the city of Minneapolis on the night of the full Moon. It was then that I made a surprising discovery.

(I was flying in an airplane, as it happens, but the view from the broom would be the same.)

You could easily tell when we'd reached Minnesota: they call it the Land of Lakes. (So we have been since the end of the last Ice Age.) The very name Minnesota means “Sky Water.” We're said to be the Land of 10,000 Lakes; actually, there are more.

What I discovered that night is that there's a full Moon in each of them.

 

The City of Minneapolis, Her Seal

 

Years back, several of us sat down to discuss—as a matter of course—what the Seal of Pagan Minneapolis, City of Lakes, should look like.

(Why, you might ask, do we get to decide? Not hard. We get to decide because we were the ones that asked the question.)

The question is not so quixotic as it might seem on the face of it. There are many pagans here, and have been for a long time. Then, as now, we were convinced that the future is pagan.

 

Mermaid rises from lake, wearing mural crown.

In one hand, she bears an ear of wheat, in the other, a fish.

 

Which came first, Athens or Athene? In the old days, cities were themselves accounted goddesses, iconographically identifiable by the mural—city-wall—crowns that they wear.

Minneapolis was first (paganly) settled by witches, Children of the Moon.

This, then, from the City of the Moon Goddess, Mother of Witches. If, for us, she wears a fish's tail, what's it to you?

 

Coda

Pagan St. Paul, Her Seal

 

What then, you might ask, will the seal of our neighbor-across-the-River, St. Paul, look like?

Easily answered.

In the pagan future, being known once again by her original (and, in a pagan world, honorable) name of Pig's Eye, our sister city's seal will bear the image of a sow suckling a farrow of eight piglets.

But that's another story, for another night.

 

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Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

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