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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Not From, But To

 

 

I just got an invitation to write for an anthology with the cheeky, if self-contradicting, title of Goodbye Jesus, I'm Going Home to Mother. (Self-contradicting because, if you're really at home with her, why bother addressing yourself to him?) It is to be, I gather, a book of tales: “faith journeys” from Jesus to the Goddess.

(“Faith journey” is the polite name for “I've changed my mind.”)

Inveterate storyteller though I am, I don't (on my own recognizance) really have much of a tale to tell on that account. For me—Christian only by virtue of infant baptism—the story is one not so much of flight from as of journey to. I fell in love, and that was that. As for so many with whom I speak, my own coming to the Old Ways is a tale more of homecoming than departure.

In those days, mind you, if you wanted the Lady, you had to quest for her. Thinking back, I'm reminded of Robert Graves' own trailblazing search:

 

It was a virtue not to stay: to go my headstrong and heroic way,

seeking her out at the volcano's head, among pack ice,

and where the track had faded beyond the cavern of the Seven Sleepers.

 

Her we sought everywhere, the Living Goddess—history, geography, folklore—and everywhere we found her. How not, since all life is a journey to her? From her we come, in her we live, to her we return. Indeed, there's nowhere else to go.

As for Jesus, I don't have much to say, except that—so far as I can tell—we know, and can know, very little about the historical Jesus of Nazareth, and that therefore all Jesuses—and one really does have to speak in the plural here—are essentially fictional characters. I can see little point in addressing him, not even to say good-bye. Return to sender, addressee deceased.

So I'll tell you no tales of Jesus. I'm now in my seventh decade, closer to death than birth. Time is dear, and if I were never to hear even one more word about the pale Galilean, I'd still have heard too many.

But tell me instead of Earth and her secrets, of the Moon and her mysteries, of the Sea and her deeps; tell me of Thunder and Sun, of the piping of the Horned, and the Green One's merry dance.

Speak to me of these, my friend, and I'll sit at your feet and listen, rapt, from now till the Harvest comes home.

 

 

 

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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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