Sobriety

I hope that more of our polytheist events, whether in public or even in private groups, will be mostly free of intoxicating substances. 

I hope for drug free, and either alcohol free or alcohol only in moderation, and caffeine in moderation only. I hope for no nicotine, or  only in moderation as well.  I have some concerns about vaping: it isn't for everyone, and if it is done, perhaps it is better if others do not have to breathe the second-hand vape, whether that vape be nicotine, marijuana, or another substance. No "magic mushrooms." No illegal substances. No dubiously legal substances used in a fashion which is illegal or dangerous, like huffing of aerosols or gasses to get high. Marijuana, even if legal in some places, should probably be left at home. The substances themselves, and the behavior some folks exhibit while under the influence are not good or safe for many people. 

On a surface level of second-hand exposure, many people have allergies, sensitivities, or restrictions about these substances. There is also the possibility of associated trauma. There are also many people who have suffered either first-hand from alcoholism or alcohol abuse, or have had familial struggles with it. It's enough to leave the alcohol at home or to make sure that folks only indulge in moderation. It's a good, standard practice to ensure the safety of those in the community. 

I would also say that I have seen further behaviors exhibited which were  uncomfortable, or worse--hazardous, dangerous, and even malicious in nature and which involved intoxicating substances. 

I know of people who have been traumatized by questionable cigarettes which may have been more than they seemed at the time. It comes with an innocent enough request like "Care if I smoke?" and it is followed with some suggestion that "tobacco is sacred in many cultures" masking a malicious intent to get the bystander himself drugged or stuck with the threat of having been drugged, or of having unwittingly participated in something illegal. This is nasty and unacceptable. 

I recall a situation where the bystander is told that there is substance (like opium, or something else) in the cigarette. Perhaps the bystander thinks it's a joke because "who does that...?" or thinks "I'm outside in the open air, so maybe it's ok," or "I don't want to be the stuck-up jerk who won't let someone smoke." Sometimes the bystander is further harassed by bullying and abuse, or appeals to a person's better nature, or flowery complements peppered with outlandish insults to one's courage, individualism, or toughness, or a willingness to give a special offering to a deity, or even to the point where the malicious person insists that the deity would like this to happen. No! This is not ok!

Even if a "yes" is extracted, it should not be mistaken as "consent." And this goes for other drugs from which a bystander could end up with a contact high or a problem due to exposure. Few people want to be the "mean" person and say no...but also, few people want any drug test to come up with a positive for something they themselves didn't do. And nobody wants an evening of abuse just to make space and hold space for someone's maliciousness. Let's just not put people in these situations to begin with. 

I've seen further compounded problems with gas canisters at events too. Changing the atmosphere, literally, of the entire room, a bad idea. If you see something like this at an event, it's totally ok to be the uncool person and leave. At least a couple of times in my life, I have seen this: the explanations for suspicious gas canisters (nitrous, helium, o r something else?) on both occasions were too pat, and on both occasions I wished I had left. Things got ugly. 

I hate to say it, but in our community circles, sometimes I have not seen the customs and safeguards necessary to use what might be called "entheogens," drugs intended in a religious context. Also, illegal is still illegal, even if it is in a religious context. 

Some people might try to appeal to a right  of a non-violent indigenous people's religious use of intoxicating substances as a means to clear the way for their own illicit drug habits. Using a right secured for an oppressed minority as a means to further a different agenda isn't appropriate, especially when the users have a history of violence. It also imposes on a person's freedom to *not* do these things, it starts to become a bigger problem. 

Too many people have been traumatized by substance abuse at polytheist, pagan, and heathen venues including myself. If I feel uncomfortable there, if I know it's an irresponsible place for children, elders, and small animals, and I know it's not a good place for the kind of religious context I want to be a part of. I hope that there is a broader communities-wide movement to change a culture around intoxicating substances. 

Put Down the Knife

There is a matter I wish to clarify for my polytheist, pagan, and heathen readers, and that is the matter regarding animal sacrifice.

There are no times for which this is necessary. I speak from my traditions and my ways. I speculate that this is generally true most of the time across the board in most ethical polytheist, pagan, and heathen ways. 

I used to speak up on occasion for reserving this practice as a right in very limited circumstances, but I want to make clear that most of the time in most of the places, the circumstances are not right and should not be attempted. If a person lives on a farm, and this is part of their ways as their farm life and they wish to make a prayer and an offering to a deity when the animal's life comes to an end, then perhaps this is the 0.01% which is not inappropriate. But that is a private familial farming tradition which is done with love and care and it tends not to be a frequent thing. 

For a vast majority of the population in the United States, 99.9% of the time this  is not the situation. There is no reason to support the practice or to continue to support the practice, whether in person or by request. In case I haven't made this abundantly clear, 99.9% of times means no. No animal sacrifice. Put down the knife. 

No animal torture: this isn't the same thing as animal sacrifice, but some malicious people do push this boundary intentionally and may try to parade it as religious rights. Be clear where I stand on this matter: NO!

If you want to make an animal offering and you are already a meat eater, you can buy some good quality meat from an ethical source. Free range, organic, kosher, halal, or by supporting a local farm, even through a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) meat share. Ethical, legal hunting and ethical legal fishing might also be options. 

But there are other offerings which can be made and which do count: offerings of charity or community service, offerings of work, offerings of homemade goods, offerings of other foods, offerings of incense, offerings of candle light, offerings of time and service, offerings of devotion like prayers given for several nights in a row, offerings of praise and devotion.  Though I still have mixed feelings whether or not this fits into a Canaanite / Natib Qadish religious context, I know of some pagan, heathen, and polytheist folks who would make a "blood offering" by donating blood through the Red Cross, and I applaud their efforts.

Unfortunately, there are a few irresponsible people, bullies who have demanded their way into our communities, and they use the matter of animal sacrifice in order to harm personal and communal  boundaries intentionally. This stretching of boundaries can do harmful things: it pushes one's own personal boundaries into a group-think which can be dangerous, it stretches one's own moral boundaries and values, it can desensitize people to violence in an inappropriate way, it can be used as a gateway down a path of religious extremism. Sometimes they even make this boundary-pushing look pretty with a gloss of academia and a bow which mocks civility. Nope. 

There are some people who maliciously do this and worse. They tack onto it suggestions of a faux "mystery" work,  bringing a person to reflect on one's own death and then via irresponsible and abusive work in a "religious" context bring up human sacrifice or try to plant malicious cues. We, in our religious communities, cannot and must not tolerate this. No boundaries pushing regarding human sacrifice!  This is wrong! This is not what we do. No, no, NO! 

The stress puts pressure on a person's nervous system, causing a release of hormones and a state of stress by which clear thought and good decision making may not be available. Basically, it's like "hot-wiring" someone's brain to bully them into bad decisions like a crook would hot-wire a car in order to steal it. It's irresponsible and often malicious to use a human person's own fight/flight/freeze stress response against them in a sham and a shame of a "religious" context. Religion is not a roller coaster or an episode of fear factor, and people who drive it in that direction are all-too-often bullies with an agenda which has little to do with religion or with living in good relations with the gods or human communities.  Again, NO! This has no place in good religious community.

It's a typical and saddening part of our lives that all lives will eventually come to a natural end. Gods willing that for most of us that natural end is gentle and appropriate and after a long period of good life. Eventually all of us will likely know the death of a loved one before we ourselves reach our death. There is enough to reflect upon here without forcing the subject, without harassment.

¡Hola!

¡Buenos días! Quiero hablar por algunos minutos en mi segunda lengua. Si puede usted leer esta nota, usted ya sabe cuál idioma es. Empecé a aprender español hace muchos años, pero no tengo la habilidad de hablar lo que deseo. Es difícil aprender otros idiomas y doy gracias cuando una persona toma el tiempo y trabaja para aprender mi idioma. Tenemos una experiencia similar, no lo mismo pero similar, y estoy agradecida por su trabajo. 

Estoy agradecida también que hay sistemas de corrección gramatical y de ortografía. Hay limitaciones en mi vocabulario, y solamente pensar y escribir de manera lenta; a veces mis limitaciones me frustran. Yo empatizo con las personas que están aprendiendo inglés. 

La mayoría de la gente con la que yo hablo en un día usual son angloparlantes, pero tengo la oportunidad de hablar con hispanoparlantes casi cada semana. Es un placer. Las personas que me hablan tienen mucha paciencia y son muy simpáticas. Estas interacciones son difíciles para mí, pero al mismo tiempo son como un bálsamo para mi alma y me dan alegría. 

He escuchado a las actividades de familias, como fue el clima en otras partes del mundo, a veces una chiste, unas canciones, conversaciones de salud o de ángeles y fantasmas. Un tiempo una persona me dijo como hacer sopa de mariscos. A veces hablo con personas que nunca han conversado con una angloparlante. 

Yo sé que algunas partes de la cultura de los Estados Unidos no son simpáticas ni tienen paciencia, pero ellos no son todos. Quiero ser parte de la solución, y quiero apoyar la diversidad. Por éso, aprendo y practico en idiomas diferentes a mi primer idioma.

An Apology

I apologize to the polytheists, the heathens, the Pagans, and good people of good faith. In a misguided attempt at holding space for diversity of our polytheistic ways, I have caused a good deal of wreckage to the very people and ideals I should be supporting.  I am horrified. 

I have been reassessing my place and my involvement in our overlapping religious communities, and I have realized that I have been blind in promoting attitudes which I cannot in good conscience or good faith ignore. 

Furthermore, I do not wish to support ideas brought forth as edgy, controversial, or subversive when the ideas promoted as "edgy, controversial, and subversive" are not at their heart compassionate, useful, and supportive of human rights and dignity. Through the best of my intentions, I have been misled. I cannot, will not, hold space for toxic attitudes and behaviors which undermine the goodness and justice I would like to be done in this world.

I am an abuse survivor.  I am a survivor of cultic and religious abuse. I am a survivor of sexual abuse. I am also a survivor of antisemitism and other forms of racism. I have been scapegoated. I have been bullied, and I have been isolated by bullies. I have not gone through that foulness only to find myself supporting the very attitudes which can cause that foulness to flourish. I know what it feels like to be put in danger and to be threatened  and have my family, friends, and community threatened. I do not wish that on good people. 

It's not good. It's not ok. 

No. Just. No. 

Again, folks, I apologize. 

Alliance Dissolved

The alliance between myself and Galina Krasskova, if it was ever valid, is dissolved. Ties are broken. I do not think that the alliance offered to me was ever in good faith and soured before the ink dried. There was no honor in this alliance. It is an insult. Any oath pressed upon me in bad faith is resolved. 

 Her values, her techniques, her methods, her opinions are vastly different from mine, and I do not approve. I refuse to support or take part in any of her work. This is not a simple disagreement. There are large fundamental differences which absolutely cannot be resolved. 

 I prefer to go "no-contact" with her, her family, those in her employ, her friends, and those in her service. I am not an ally. I am not a friend. Any welcome is revoked. Any notion of consent or volunteering is also revoked if it was ever implied. 

 Do not contact me. 

 Do not use proxies to contact me. 

 No.

Festival of Oil, Ashuru Shamni

A prayer for 'Ashuru Shamni

Excerpt:

May Ba'lu Haddu, Cloudrider, guide those who honor him. May the pukhru kina'ani be guided. May Motu know the limits, Yammu know the shores, and may Ba'lu Haddu know the boundaries. May the liminal spaces be blessed, may the thresholds be blessed. May the liminal spaces be guarded, may the thresholds be guarded. 

Winter Dawn's Praise

Sometimes the Dawn's light comes not in rose hues.

He works His way aloft at Night's shift's end

Or climbs the vaulted stairwell at Day's fresh bend

While clad in robes of chill and twilight blue.

He edges, imperceptibly, at first.

He doesn't crack, but grows and pushes forth:

Quiet crescendo slightly right of North.

In dark, His face spills, flowing light; breath's burst.

The winter's Dawn is insulated; snow

Accumulations azure, without sound.

I shared with morn my song; no finch I found.

A gift I sing to winter Dawn's ice flows.

The season's cold, still Dawn I shall revere;

With Dawn's goodwill I pass through storms severe.

Subsistence

I dare recall the days of dewy mist

When the expectant air parted, like lips

Through which the gloried names of Gods persist.

How dwindled now their offerings--but pips--

When first of harvest's fruits we once did give.

In ignorance our wants Their needs eclipsed. 

Primordial, the Deities still live.

With prayer and song we lift our hopes once more.

The thorny chaff of mishap They do sieve.

When we shall seek Their goodly grace, a door

Will part. When in good faith we make amends

We heal the broken bonds; the roots restore.

Entanglement of worries we resist

With strength. In good relations we subsist.

God of the Meridian

"God of the Meridian,
And of the East and West,
To Thee my soul has flown,
And my body is earthward pressed.
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division,
And leaves a gulf austere
To be filled with worldly fear.
Ay, when the soul is fled
To high above our head,
Affrighted we do gaze
After its airy maze
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws--
And is this not the cause
Of madness? -- God of Song,
Thou bearest me along
Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share
With the hot lyre and Thee,
The staid Philosophy.
Temper my lonely hours,
And let me see Thy bowers
More unalarmed."

--John Keats

I'd been leafing through a beloved creased and flecked paperback volume of Keats when I rediscovered this poem. The words spoke deeply to me of divine trauma--something a few of us have experienced when working with and honoring our deities. I thought I would share these words here that it may lift the day of someone who has experienced similarly. 

"God of the Meridian" by John Keats. Written prior to 1821, Public Domain.