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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Curse You, Narendra Modi

Curse you, Narendra Modi.

You're shooting all my nice, simplistic binaries to bloody red rags.

Monotheism = narrow-minded, intolerant, exclusionist.

Polytheism = broad-minded, accepting, inclusionist.

Here's a nice, pat example of Binary-Think that I suspect many pagans are familiar with. History provides us with just enough buttressing examples to make it look almost convincing.

Then along comes bloody-minded Indian premier Narendra Modi with his anti-Muslim Hindutva-Think, thus proving—insofar, at least, as Hinduism may be said to be polytheistic—that polytheists are just as capable of narrow, intolerant, exclusionary thinking (and behavior) as any monotheist.

As if we didn't already know as much from our own community.

Of course, we could make excuses.

We could say: Hinduism isn't really polytheist.

We could say: Hindutva isn't Hinduism, it's a misuse of Hinduism.

We could say: They're not real Hindus.

These, of course, are the same lame, unsatisfying excuses that everyone else makes when their co-religionists act badly.

Or, with a little more thought, we could say: In the policies of the Indian Right we see polytheism aping monotheism at its worst.

We could say: Here we see polytheism reconceived monotheistically.

To me, this is no more convincing than dysfunctional Third World dictatorships blaming “Colonialism” for their current woes. Sorry, folks, eventually we've all got to grow up and own our own actions.

The sad fact is that people are people, and capable of all sorts of behaviors, both bad and good.

Polytheists acting badly. We see it in current Indian politics; we see it in our own community.

As People of the Many, we polytheists have no reason to be smug, nor should we willingly drink the comforting Kool-Aid of facile binaries. We're just as capable of ill-wreaking as anyone else.

In this Wonderful World of the Many, simple binaries rarely do justice to reality's delicious complexity.

Which I suppose is as good an argument for polytheism as any.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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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