The Book of Nature

In America we tend to think of science and religion as conflicting world views. This is, after-all, the land that still, despite wide-spread scientific consensus, wrangles with climate change denial.  This is the land where my home-state passed an "academic freedom" bill because Missourians still can't reconcile Darwin and Genesis.

In the late 1800s, Scientist John William Draper proposed, "The history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other." Though contemporary scientists denounce Draper's Conflict Thesis as overly simplistic, it remains a powerful force in popular culture. Adherents on either side of the supposed conflict glare scornfully into the opposing camp and lament the willful ignorance of the other. The media (both conservative and liberal) just heightens to problem by highlighting sensational non-news stories. Politicians exploit the divisive politics of stem-cell research, environmental regulation, and abortion to forward their own political agendas.

However, both history and modern science reveal the interconnectedness of science and religion. For example, during the Renaissance, believers across the social spectrum saw two paths toward understanding God. One was the Book of Scripture--the Bible. The other was the Book of Nature--scientific observation. Thus thinkers, scientists, and laymen alike believed that the more that science revealed about nature, the more they understood God's great work and purpose.

Modern pagans are a people without a Book of Scripture. There are undoubtedly books that have become foundational touch-stones of our faith. However our sprawling, eclectic religion is better conceptualized as interlocking circles rather than a list of tenants. One of those circles is idea of paganism as a nature-centric or earth-based spirituality. As Starhawk explains in The Earth Path, "The Goddess is embodied in the natural world, and science in its truest sense is about knowing nature. Thus our thealogy needs to be empirical as well as mystical." We are people of the second Book--the Book of Nature.

In Between Worlds I meditated on the strange balancing act between my witchy self and my academic self. As members of an Outsider community, it's easy to become skeptical and disenfranchised with seemingly authoritarian systems that leave minimal space for outlying perspectives. Many folks enter paganism to validate experiences and ideas that the mechanical/scientific world-view discredits: dreams, spirits who whisper through the leaves of trees, primeval stories, and nostalgic visions of a time before the industrial revolution.

In respect to all those folks who've been told that their beliefs are "scientifically impossible" and those who prefer poetry to statistics, I won't argue that all pagans should be scientists. Since we're working from a place of personal experience rather than academic consensus, we don't have to be completely methodical, rational, and objective. We have a unique space to embrace the best of both worlds.

To best explore those worlds, I believe pagans should study the Book of Nature as naturalists. Merriam Webster defines a naturalist as "a student of natural history; especially: a field biologist." I imagine a world where pagans spend less time sitting in living rooms talking about the four elements and more time mucking about outdoors. We can speak to a trees as "Sister-Dryad" for the mythical maidens who inhabit their branches or we can name them oak, silver maple, and sycamore. We can sing to the rippling waters and take the time to learn the creek's name and how it connects to our watershed.

Names hold power (thanks, Le Guin) and I've found that learning about nature,--the names, the cycles, etc.--increases my connection to this tapestry of life that I hold sacred. Knowledge reveals miracles. The Book of Nature both enchants and explains.  Rather than getting caught up in the religion/science binary, I borrow the tools of science (primarily observation) to understand and illuminate my religion. 

Between Worlds

Yesterday Sze Huei Yek over at Rebelle Society wrote a thought-provoking article taking yogis to task for "pseudoscience speeches." She basically argues that while she has personally benefited from her yoga, yogis should be mindful of the claims they make about the practice as a whole. Those claims, Yek worries, simply are not valid--at least not in the world of science where valid claims are based on observation, hypothesis, and experimentation in statistically controlled situations.  It's that distinction, that willingness to remind folks that science has its own set of rules and procedures that makes me wish I could bake Ms. Yek cookies!

I only keep a toe in the world of yoga, but I see the same problematic tendency toward pseudoscience in the pagan community. Paganism was my entry point into meditation, breath work, and energy work, which are also common practice in yoga. Paganism came with a history and worldview that frequently clashes with the history and worldview that I honor as an intellectual, an experience that I imagine intellectual yogis struggle with as well.

For years I experienced this strange, often surreal divide between what I think of as my Academic Self and my Witchy Self. As my Academic Self I sorted through peer-reviewed journals, formed structured arguments, and marshaled both evidence and logic to support my claims. I lived in a world where I prided myself on thinking deeper, challenging assumptions, and demanding proof. Though my writing processes remained intuitive and alchemic, the work was intellectual and belonged to the respectable world of academic. As my Witchy Self I traded scholarly journals for bonfire chants where I channeled the knowledge of my ancestors. I still tried to think deeper, but the only proof was experience and the assumptions that I challenged where the foundation on which that respectable academic world was built.

I learned to roll with it...kind of like code-switching, I suppose. I kept my worlds apart and capered like Coyote Woman between the intellectual and intuitive worlds.

Until the day I recognized one of my professors from a pagan festival. I felt oddly outed, like some kind of hippie-spy exposed in the sedated corridors of a rural Midwestern university. Or worse, I worried, perhaps I would unwittingly become the person who outed a respectable professional as a woman who danced with animal spirits.

I decided to keep my quiet and keep my world divided, but the conflict was officially exposed. As a mindful person, I knew that I had a problem when I cringed to hear this professor offhandedly mention goddesses. I knew I had a problem if there was alarm in my head screaming, "You can NOT talk about this here. This is embarrassing. This is wrong. Everyone will think you're silly!"

However, I did not sing or pray to solve my problem. I read. I  reread Wicca 101 books, I hosted a handful of pagan circles where we discussed spirituality, and I tracked down Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. 

The process allowed me to see that my conflict wasn't rooted in an inherent conflict between the worlds of academic and intuitive experience, nor an inherent conflict between science and religion, nor the incompatibility of being pagan and knowing a bit about history. The problem lay in refusing to call apples “apples” and oranges “oranges“. The problem was pseudoscience.

For example, let's take the basic claim, "Wicca is a valid religion." Too often modern pagans attempt to validate their faith by arguing that it's an ancient religion. It's not. It was created in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner. It was undoubtedly inspired by Gardner's interpretation of ancient history and ancient history is undoubtedly filled with goddesses, symbols, and stories that are worth exploring today. However, Wicca itself, as both a label and a practice came out of the mid-twentieth century. To claim otherwise is to repeat the problem many pagans accuse Christians of having: attempting to pass mythology-tradition as history.

I also believe that making false claims about Wicca’s history does the religion a dreadful disservice. The world doesn't need more "old" religions rooted in outdated worldviews and rituals. The world needs new world-views that embrace what humanity has learned over the centuries about science, sociology, and living in a diverse, humane society. The more we are willing to learn about history and science, the more we know about the realities that exist beyond the traditional borders of academia. The more we learn, the more we can do to validate practices and beliefs that flourish outside the accepted world-view.

Similarly, when pagans and yogis make their claims from within their tradition, they work to validate that tradition as its own body of knowledge. Not everything can be proven with science. Nor does it need to be. Therefore, I believe we do better work when we make claims like, "Kryia yoga teaches...." or "Modern pagans are inspired by ancient religions that believed...."

There are valid paths to knowledge beyond the rules of peer review and scientific method. However, I think it’s misguided and sometimes deceitful to try to pass one of those methods off as science. It’s that mislabeling–that “pseudoscience” babble that’s invalidating–not necessarily the claim itself.

As a society we're all struggling to balance intuitive experience with a mechanical, scientific world-view. However, it's a mistake to convolute personal experience with scientific study and make false claims about the history of a religion or the effects of breathing through the left nostril. Doing so just makes for poor science. However, when we embrace practices like yoga and Wicca as distinctive branches of knowledge and tradition, they flourish. It may not be science, but it is good. 

How I Met Coyote

Coyote Madonna by Terri Windling

Once upon a time, this gal  brought home her second baby, looked around the house, and decided her life was a train wreck. She needed a few days alone in the Wild Country to pull her head together, but what with a baby, a toddler, and an essay on Euripides’s “Medea” due on Tuesday, her options were limited. She certainly didn't want to pull a Greek tragedy on her beautiful family, so she decided to pray.

While she was praying, Coyote-Woman sauntered up. She pulled two bundles of sweet herbs from the bottomless pockets of her crochet coat and offered them to the unsuspecting mother. “Smoke the first bundle,” instructed Coyote-Woman, “And I’ll patch you up with the other.”

As Coyote-Woman started nosing around under the bewildered mother’s skirts, the gal asked, “Are you a midwife? I thought Bear was the midwife.”

Coyote-Woman laughed, “Bear Medicine? Do you want to curl up in a cave with your babies for the next five years? You’re not the stuff attachment parenting is made of, girl. Smoke my sweet herbs and we’ll walk the long road with our feet in the Wild Country and our hands tending the Hearth.”

So she smoked the sweet herbs and welcomed a Coyote Spirit into her life.

Coyote is one part spirit guide, one part imaginary friend, and something like an alter ego. She’s a devilish co-pilot and always takes up too much space on the dance floor. She capers between the mundane and the ridiculous, teaching folks how to stay sane in a mind-boggling world.

5 years after slipping into my life disguised as a midwife, Coyote-Woman continues to offer advice on navigating the contradictory worlds of yoga, feminism, hoop dance, university, crochet, marital romance, community building, and part-time employment in public education.

For the next few days, with some randomness tossed in between, I'll be exploring the stories, symbols, and meditations that make Coyote-Woman a powerful ally. 

Thoughts on We All Come From the Goddess

It's been a while since I've posted anything here, but I had to write out my thoughts as I watched the debate unfold on Facebook over Z Budapest's request:

Dearest Friends!I would like you to help me spread the words that Singing "We all come from the Goddess" should NOT BE rewritten. It is my intellectual property. it is NOt a folk song, which by the way is the fate of many composers whose songs are stolen. You steal my song from now will have consequences. You put men into the song, like God,a hex will be activated. I have found that people actually sell their wares with my song in the Title,like Serpentine for example. These people are NOT having my permission, especially when they don't even credit my name. Women are fooled that its from me, or fooled that its Serpentine. .Theft is theft. I cannot be everywhere, but i have experienced women making up new words,attaching it to my song that NEEDS NO attachments. Have you ever heard a man writing a song about the gods, and then put females in it?? Never. So stop you generosity attacks with my songs, write an original .Men who had Mozart and Schubert amongst them,surely will come up with their own songs .
Women like to give away and include but please do it with your own intellectual property.
I wrote that song for the Goddess worshipping women. Its gone around the globe. I don't mind you singing it, only selling it and not giving me credit.
Its a sacred song, and i will protect it! Speak up when you hear this song abused, and write to me. Blesssed be!Women like to give away and include but please do it with your own intellectual property. I wrote that song for the Goddess worshipping women. Its gone around the globe. I don't mind you singing it, only selling it and not giving me credit. Its a sacred song, and i will protect it! Speak up when you hear this song abused, and write to me. Blesssed be!

I don't know about anyone else, but my chants are very organic. I sing praises I've written myself. I sing prayers I've learned through my community. I was SO HAPPY about 6 months ago when I learned it was Z. who wrote "We All Come From the Goddess." I shared my new knowledge with my Circle. So I started singing it often and its grew.

It grew to include the chant of goddesses names. Because I also have a son and a chant of god names (that I wrote), I eventually channeled a variation of "We All Come From the Goddess." It tends to run along the lines of "We all come from the wild wood (sometimes God) and to Him we shall return like the leaves of autumn falling in the forest."

As a person who values organic music, I see my variations are part of the tradition that keeps music alive. It's not sold on any album or uploaded on Youtube. It's a hymn I sing in my car, on long walks, in my rituals, and in my prayers.

However, my song isn't a Dianic prayer anymore. It's pagan, but not Dianic. I believe this because I hold so much respect for the Dianic community. I understand Women's Mysteries and the religious perspective or ethics that accompany an exclusively female tradition of Goddess Worship. At one of my first festivals I learned a Dianic chant with instructions that it was only shared Sister to Sister. I haven't share it or changed it to include the Divine Masculine because I honor the tradition and instuctions that I inherited with it.

"We All Come From the Goddess," regardless of the author's original intent, has moved into the wider pagan tradition and has grown to reflect that. Therefore I plan to continue singing and sharing all its glorious incarnations. I'll continue tellings folks that the original core chant was written by Z. Budapest. I'm not sure how I will deal with the rest of the debate. I want to honor the author's wishes, but suppose in the long run I'm too much a part of the re-mix, open-source generation to agree that "We All Come From the Goddess" should not be rewritten.