Changing Values

While there’s always some in-fighting in any community, it seems like the last few years have been particularly rough on the greater Pagan, Polytheist, and magickal communities.  It feels like our past conflicts have been more about how and what to practice - the whole “my tradition is better/more authentic/more powerful/etc. than yours.”  These days our conflicts seem to run quite a bit deeper, to our core values - issues of right conduct, inclusion, personal sovereignty, and leadership. How do we, as a community, move forward when our core is fracturing?

Over the last few years I have seen a palpable shift from an embrace of larger communities to smaller, more insular units.  I believe this is due in large part to a shifts and schisms in core values.  At age 35 I am firmly in the middle of a generational shift in thought and values.  I can see and appreciate the values of our community founders, many of which are now aging into eldership or retirement.  They tend to value connection to the earth, freedom of expression (within a certain definition), and community togetherness.  I can also see the values of up and coming practitioners whose values tend towards individual expression, acceptance, and transparency.  While on their face these values don’t seem to conflict, but in practice they tend to express themselves with radical differences.   Whereas coming together in homogeneous celebration or join purposes has been standard for large scale ritual for years, these days a lot of practitioners are looking more to have an individual experience while in community rather than having the same experience as the person next to them.  Similarly, students these days are often looking for guidance on making a practice their own rather than simply wanting to be told the “correct” way of doing something.  While alternative communities are always more individualistic than the mainstream, we’ve taken things to a whole new level of late.

Another way this value shift has expressed itself is in the denouncement of poor conduct by community members, especially leadership.  Certain behaviors that were once quietly ignored or accepted are no longer tolerated.  Things like sexual misconduct, casual racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and various microaggressions are far more likely to be called out by the larger community than they have been in the past (we’ve still got a loooooooong way to go, but we are slowly improving).  Get any group of folks who have been in the community for more than five years (and a goodly number of newer folks) and they will be able to tell stories of “that once leader who creeps on all the girls” or “that one person who’s super nice as long as you’re straight” or, my personal favorite, “that one leader who loves everyone unless they disagree even slightly.”  In this era of ever present information it’s a lot harder to hide questionable behavior and people are getting better at calling it out.

While this is an absolutely necessary part of healthy growth, it does create friction and some people are pretty unreasonable about it.  It should be a no-brainer to kick out community members that prey on the community and yet, for some unfathomable reason, it isn’t.  Some communities have spent so long teaching tolerance and “positive thinking” that they become immobilized in the face of conflict, no wanting “confrontation” to “lower their vibrations.”  A little harsh?  Maybe, but people like that drive me up the wall - honestly what good is a community that refuses to protect its most vulnerable members?  It gets trickier when it’s a leader that’s made positive contributions to the community, while simultaneously preying on it or undermining the values they preached.  There have been far too many people in positions of power that have overtly made positive contributions while at the same time covertly engaging in sexual misconduct, abusive behaviors, racism, etc.  Does this mean they should be removed from those positions of power - of course it does!  Does this mean we should throw out all the structures they created and teachings they gave?  That’s much more difficult to say.  Chances are good that any power structure created by someone who abused their power will have some fundamental problems that will need correcting, and that their teachings will likely need close examination and amendment, but it doesn’t mean that they are without value.  Of course, determining how much should be kept and what should be tossed is likely to cause as much of an uproar as the initial exposure of wrongdoing.  There will always be those who value familiar structures over change, even when it’s necessary.  There will also be those so outraged by misconduct that they’ll want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Finding a balance between the two may be difficult unto impossible.

Change is good; growth is good.  However, people grow and change at different rates and in different ways and sometimes that means they can’t work with one another any more.  We are living in an uncomfortable time in which so many things are changing at once that it can be hard to keep up, let alone adapt and thrive.  As the values of the Pagan, Polytheist, and magickal communities evolve our existing community structures will also need to evolve.  We are incredibly diverse communities that are growing more so by the minute and our needs are changing.  I don’t have any answers for what we need to evolve into, but we’d better start figuring it out.  

Ostara Shadow Work

It’s almost that time of year again, springtime.  Yay?  I honestly have very mixed feelings about spring.  On the one hand I love not freezing my ass off at the bus stop, on the other hand I’m not especially enamored of being soaking wet either.  Spring in Seattle is a rather soppy affair, with rather absurd amounts of rain, but less of the biting chill that accompanies it’s winter rains.  I love the occasionally dry (ok, less wet) Saturday for getting to early season hikes and getting back out into nature after the cold dark of winter.  I love witnessing the turn of the seasons and the Wheel of the Year.  But you know what I really don’t love?  Pastels.  I don’t like wearing them and I definitely don’t want them in my rituals.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Ostara.  The Vernal Equinox is full of potent energy for growth and new beginnings.  It’s a very hopeful time and shadow workers often need a good dose of hope more than most.  However, I’d rather gouge out my own eyes than attend a sparkly, shiny, “love and light” ritual.  So, naturally, I do things a little differently.  

This Ostara my ritual is going to be about balance and wholeness.  You can’t have light without dark and at the Vernal Equinox the day and night are of equal length - thus light and dark are symbolically of equal strength.  Instead of celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, I’m going to spend my Ostara recognizing both the parts of me that are light and the parts that are dark and what those things give me.  Shadow work is all about recognizing the less pleasant parts of yourself and integrating them, rather than cutting them off or hiding them away - about finding strength in wholeness.  Despite it’s occasionally sinister image, shadow work is actually a very hopeful practice.

My main working is going to involve meditating on some of my less pleasant features.  I’ll write down a list of things I don’t like about myself and try to narrow it down to one specific trait that I think is being the most trouble right now.  Once I’ve selected the one trait to focus on, I’ll burn the list of negative traits - it doesn’t do to dwell on them and there’s always going to be too much to tackle everything at once.  Then I’ll create a sigil to represent that one negative trait.  I’ll use a crayon to draw that symbol on a raw egg and then I’ll hard boil it.  (If I’m feeling like I really need to go the extra mile I might dye the shell black)  Then I’ll eat the egg to symbolize my recognition that my negative trait is a part of me and that I’m willing to work with it, rather than just blacklist it or try to remove it.  

There’s no banishing at Ostara, just gentle acceptance and willingness to grow.  Negative traits can be a problem, but they can also be teachers.  My avoiding a particular project might teach me that I need to solve an interpersonal problem with a teammate, or that I’m afraid of what will happen when the project is finished.  My shocking inability to get off my ass and go running (even though I really want to) teaches me that I’m still clinging to the image I had of myself a year ago (when I ran four times a week) and don’t want to be smacked in the face with how far I’ve fallen off the wagon.  It’s hard to look beyond what we don’t like about ourselves to really figure out why those things bother us so much.  Ostara is the time to be a bit more gentle with yourself and take baby steps.  We’ll save the more drastic measures for the waning half of the year.

Shadow Work and Heroism

I had the good fortune of spending this last weekend with a group of some of the most amazing magickal practitioners I know.  On the three hour drive down to Portland I had a really interesting discussion with a gal I was giving a ride down to the moot.  We got onto the topic of our personal paths and that naturally took us to shadow work.  I explained that a huge part of my personal path was hard self-examination and then taking the bits of myself that weren’t working and smashing them with a hammer.  She was rather horrified.  Her knee-jerk reaction was to say that such work is just way too hard and ask how I could possible do it voluntarily and on a regular basis.  Her reaction got me thinking.

For me, shadow work gives me a chance to be heroic.  In the modern world we don’t really face the kind of trials that give us a chance to make big leaps forward with our spirit.  In ages past people had occasional large scale trials and rites of passage (first hunts, surviving in the wilderness, ordeals and rituals), giving people a way to test themselves and prove their worth.  In our world we just don’t have heroic trials; we have the grind of daily trials (work, family, finances, etc.) that, when taken all together, are just as difficult but dealing with them just doesn’t give us the sense of satisfaction and self-worth that we get from single rigorous trials that we can actually defeat.  Getting up every morning and going to work in order to pay the bills, giving up selfish desires for the good of the family, and playing nice with a co-worker we’d rather throttle all take courage and fortitude, but we rarely acknowledge them.  Does facing down a wild boar take more courage than dealing with a relative that tears you to shreds every time you see them?  I don’t think so, but it just doesn’t get our adrenaline going in the same way; it doesn’t engage our fight or flight response.  Shadow work gives us back those heroic trials.

Sitting down to do serious shadow work is akin to the spiritual retreats of past days – we sit alone with our deepest most frightening truths and either overcome them or die.  Once you’ve seen the sharpest cracks of your own soul you either do everything in your power to heal them or you give up and become a broken shell.  When I say that shadow work is do or die I mean it.  If you look too deep and you’re not ready to face those truths, to do something about what you see, serious depression and suicide are a real risk.  If you are ready to do something, then you can vanquish the beast of your own heart and come out a true warrior of the soul.  It’s not a quick and easy process, it takes time and hard, unpleasant work – that’s the point really, go through the fire and come out clean, with all the garbage burned away.  You may have to walk through the fire a thousand times to reach the level you want to get to, but each pass brings you one step closer.  A shadow worker is a hero that faces their darkest demons and comes out whole.  (It gives you a whole different perspective on a stack of obnoxious paperwork, let me tell ya.)

Succeeding at shadow work will change how you see yourself and the world.  If you can look at yourself with real honesty you’ll being to see everything else just as honestly – this is a great tool for becoming a better person, for understanding and compassion, but it isn’t always pretty.  You’ll see all the beauty of compassion and love, but just the same you will see the anguish of relinquished hopes and broken dreams.  It might not make you happy, but it will make you strong.  It will make you a hero.