St. Patrick's Day vs. Snakes On My Wrists

"Say, I couldn't help but notice those blue yarn bracelets you've been wearing the past few weeks, what's the occasion?"

"Well So n' So, glad you asked. I'm wearing these in memory of the snakes that were driven out of Ireland by St. Patrick, as St. Patrick's Day is coming up..."

"Ah, I see. Got a thing for reptiles, eh?"

"No, by 'driven' I mean 'converted' and by 'snakes', I mean 'Pagans' or in Ireland's case 'Druids'".

From here, So n' So sips coffee or tea or beer and listens intently as I go on to explain how the whole "snakes" story of St. Patrick is really a not-so-subtle metaphor for the Christianization/colonization of Ireland, which was accomplished more by aggressive proselytizing (i.e. threat of execution) than gentle persuasive arguments ("Would you like to join us this Sunday? No? Okay, just go about your business, we promise never to ask again").

So n' So raises an eyebrow as I tell him/her stories of the Druids who refused to convert and were tossed off cliffs by the Bishop Patritius with his own bare hands (okay, I don't know if that last part is true, but at a party with other Pagans this past Saturday, after a few drinks, we all agreed...). I go on to explain how tattooed blue snakes on the wrists signifies initiates of Druidism and that is why I'm wearing the blue knitted yarn throughout the month.

So n' So says, "Whoah. That's pretty amazing," and goes about the rest of the day pondering the significance of the aforementioned holiday within the modern context of binge drinking and plastic green chatskis made in China.

Unfortunately, none of this has happened. For over a week I've been wearing knitted blue yarn bracelets around each wrist and haven't gotten one question yet. Not one. Maybe it's because I'm more or less a flaming hippie or live in a quasi hippie-ish town where outlandish (i.e. bad) fashion statements are the norm. But come on now, hey everyone! Look over here! Blue bracelets! There's a spiritual and political reason I'm wearing these! It's not another "hand-crafted" gift from the little one...

*sigh*

Next year, maybe I'll have some of those trendy Silicone "Live Armstrong" wristbands made up in blue instead...

Here Comes the Sun, It's Alright

It might be the coffee talking this morning but this Holiday Season I've been sensing a certain open-mindedness from secular-leaning folks towards Soltice/Yule over the orgiastic shopping frenzy that has become Christmas. Maybe it's the invite I received for a "Solstice Bliss" party from some friends who aren't really Pagan but are definitely not Christian, maybe it's my own Atheist father referring to the festive lights around his house as "Soltice" lights, or maybe the American public at large is realizing the two faces of Christmas ("Step on a fellow shopper's face and grab a flat screen at Walmart" OR "Celebrate the birth of little baby Jesus and kneel before God") have gotten a bit extreme.

Okay, clearly I'm projecting on that last part but still, there's something to be said for Pagans making an argument towards Atheists, Agnostics, and secular New Agey types in favor of the Yule over what any basic world history course would show is a misappropriated monotheistic holiday.

It bears repeating that Soltice or "Yule" predates Christmas the way the Beatles predate the Monkeys, and was universally celebrated as a seasonal holiday for cultures across the globe. That science backs up the cultural significance of the shortest day/longest night of the year as a real point in time and space within the Earth's rotation around the sun, only bolsters the idea that maybe, just maybe, it's time the word "Solstice" was resurrected from our collective vocabulary.

This is not to eschew the practices around Christmas. For years, my family has happily decorated our Solstice tree, and re-appropriated Christmas songs by simply inserting "Solstice" for "Christmas" or "Gods" over "God". (Cuz' seriously, the melodies sung at this time of year are awesome).

A friend of mine who identifies as a Jewish-Atheist and doesn't celebrate Christmas rolls her eyes at this, "It's a Christmas tree," she insists, and to be fair, she has a point. Even though the contemporary "Christmas tree" was once derided and even banned as a Pagan practice in early 19th century America, it's definition clearly has changed. My argument is simply, we can change it back. Why? Because it was never a symbol for Christians to appropriate in the first place.

This is all to say, despite it's contemporary secular undertones, celebrating Christmas in name is indeed to celebrate a Christian holiday - This is fine if you self-identify as Christian, but if you don't, there's a rose by another name that smells just as sweet. This year I'm crafting "Saturnalia" Solstice ornaments for friends, partly as a joke, partly because the aforementioned Roman holiday is yet another iteration of the Solstice, one that honors the agricultural deity of Saturn, and by extension, our ability to survive the cold unproductive winter months by storing grains, which is, one could argue, the very foundation of modern civilization.

Come Solstice morning, the fam and I will do our annual welcoming of the sunrise with drums, flutes, and perhaps a ukelele version of "Here Comes the Sun". Silly? Perhaps. But no more silly than an old fat man in an elf costume going across the world in one night to deliver toys, all in the name of little baby Jesus. On that note, Pagans and secular folks alike are on common ground when we celebrate the return of the Sun, as opposed to the "son" - cuz' like George Harrison sang, "I feel the ice is slowly melting" between us, and most certainly, "it seems like years since [we've] been here."

re: Sacrificing a Chicken

My first foray into the realm of chicken sacrifice took place this past weekend at a friend’s house. To say it didn’t go as expected would be a lie cuz’ it did - Rooster was killed and we ate it. End of story..

Well sorta...

Event Host/Rooster-owner is not a Pagan, nor were the other invitees who arrived to witness said sacrifice; so said sacrifice went as follows: friend grabs rooster hands it over to me, I hold it for a while and sage it and apologize for taking its life but thank it as well, as a “representative of all domesticated animals that we eat”; chicken gets strung upside down, jugular is cut while I play a singing bowl, end of story.

Well sorta...

There was also the part where the host’s friend took pictures of the entire event - I didn’t care for that, but this not being my house nor my rooster, I didn’t say anything. There was also the part where the bleeding rooster flew out of the stirrups, landed on the ground and we had to grab it and string it up again - that was no fun. Then again, slaughtering an animal is not supposed to be fun.

See, while my friend isn’t a Pagan like me, I got the sense that as cavalier as he was about harvesting the one of the four chickens he got this past spring that turned out to be a rooster, he understood there’s something profound in the act of taking a life, even if for the noble purpose of food (and um...adhering to First World zoning laws). And while there’s plenty of “how to” guides online for killing a chicken properly, there are few guides on how to do it with a little ol’ time relijun, if you know what I mean. I’m guessing that’s why I got invited...

 

Being the first to arrive at said occasion, the host and I discussed how this would all go down - He’d do the stringing up, throat slitting, etc, I’d give the chicken some Pagan respect beforehand, smudging, a singing bowl om, a little sending off prayer. Ideally, I would have preferred to cast a circle, or at the very least call in the elements, and have the other guests sing something to the chicken while it was being sent off (stop rolling your eyes!). But yeah, you’re never sure how folks will react to the “Woo” so I kept my New-Agey shenanigans to a minimum. 

Surprisingly, the hosts friend’s were pretty respectful of the entire process, as in they didn't snicker or chase me away with a pitchfork. I even got a few, “I see you’ve done this before,” accolades to which I replied, “Uh, actually, no I haven’t.”

Cuz’ here’s the thing - my friend is a white collar suburbanite, as were most of his guests. Yes, they eat meat, but no, they’ve never participated in slaughtering a bird or mammal for food - It kinda goes against the entire point of living in the First World and working a white collar middle class job, right?

But urban farming being all the rage these days - everyone who wants to maintain some level of street cred just has to have an organic edible garden, maybe even a bee hive, and definitely some chickens (I have 2 out of those 3). And if you get chickens that weren’t sexed beforehand, well, that rooster has few options as this is once again, a First World suburban enclave, and the only loud morning sounds allowed here are dump trucks and the occasional motorcycle. This is all to say, people here take their poultry zoning laws seriously.

So here we were stringing up this young rooster. The majority of the folks in attendance being men, it was hard not to feel a little gender solidarity. And we can’t just kill the damn thing without any homage, right? So here I am, feeling a bit like a schmuck in front of these other dudes, but also feeling pretty damn serious, playing a singing bowl for an upside down rooster, telling him, “thank you for your sacrifice, may your spirit return,” then holding the chicken as its last breaths left its body and its eyes closed, shushing it, and then a few moments later, helping pluck the feathers out. “Anyone wanna help?” the host and I asked, everyone said no.

And yeah, there was the science experiment part later - with examining the crop, the liver, the heart, the other unidentifiable parts; there was the ethics and philosophy discussion we had while the chicken was being roasted - about the burden we carry as humans in being conscious of our own eventual death, about the price domesticated animals pay for living a simple, well fed life; and there was the unspoken part about being white collar and middle class and trying to honor the spirit of an animal we’ve all been complicit in killing millions of times over but too privileged to ever participate directly in.

I know carnivores who say they’d never eat meat if they had to participate in slaughtering animals. I say, you should never eat meat if you’ve never participated in slaughtering an animal, at least once, and if you’re planning to, call me and I’ll bring over the sage and singing bowl. Till' then...

A Week In Review

Last week was an interesting one for a Pagan newsjunky like myself. First there was the sentencing of a satanic murderer in Los Angeles, and on Friday, Salon.com dropped an article about the Family Research Council hosting a lecture on how the modern porn industry is a vestige of “Pagan Sexuality.” To top this all off, the murderer was Latino como yo, and I wouldn’t exactly call myself the harshest critic of adult entertainment.

The Satanic thing caught my attention cuz’ as any beginner, veteran, or recovering Pagan will tell you, they are two very different things that often get mistaken for the same. As a friend recently put it jokingly when I showed him a Pentacle art project I needed his help on, “Whoah, I didn’t realize we were gonna be doing some Satanic shit. I better talk to my priest first.” I responded with a straight faced emoticon.

This is all to say, depending on where you reside in this country, the upside down pentacle, the right-side-up pentacle...any pentacle, tends to either conjure perplexed looks at best, or hostile ones at worst. Thankfully, the Los Angeles Times article indicated the murdering dude’s Satanic imagery was limited to 666’s and upside down crosses. Still, as I was reading, I found myself hoping there wouldn’t be anything even loosely associated with Pagans...but there was. The murder was committed on a “Satanic” holiday - Feb.2nd which unfortunately is the same day as the old milk harvest celebration of Imbolc or Brighid. Nooooo! It’s a good thing the Times didn’t catch this, though I shudder to think what the Family Research Council would do if they found out.

Turns out the FRC was too busy focusing on Porn that week. And who was the latest scapegoat for the dangers of online skin flicks? The “sexual practices of Pagan Rome” of course!

And to think I thought it was those damn Hollywood liberals.

This one was a tad more complex because similar to other cultural stereotypes that can sometimes be taken as a compliment (don’t pretend like you don’t know), modern “Pagan sexuality” does indeed tend to pride itself on being...how do I put it? Many shades greyer than “Christian intercourse.”

According to the Salon article, Dr. Patrick Fagan (yes, his name really is only one letter short of reading “Pagan”), of the Marriage and Religion, Research Institute, delivered a speech lambasting “pornography (as) an anti-Christian vestige of a sick pagan world.” Reading the first part of Fagan’s list of sacrilegious sexual practices was an exercise in eye rolling:

"Abortion" - While I’m a casual Pagan, and don't believe the state has any business forcing a woman to have a baby if she’s not ready to, the connection between these two issues is more political than spiritual. In other words, probably the majority of pro-choice registered Democrats would also call themselves Christian, but you don’t hear that aspect come out in the cultural wars, so why would being Pagan be brought into the picture? And although I wouldn’t call myself an expert on the hundreds of Greco-Roman Gods and Goddesses of Antiquity, I’m fairly certain there is no “Abortion” deity.

"Homosexuality" - Okay, not only are the Pagans I know totally cool with it, the majority of Americans now are too. And seriously, America’s Christian Fundamentalist population really needs to recognize they’ve lost this one.

“Infidelity” - Modern Pagans might call that Polyamory and not all of us do it now, and seldom was it done, if at all in pre-Constantine Rome. And seriously, any basic reading of Roman history would not draw anything more than a superficial link between cheating on one’s spouse and honoring Jupiter. (Unless of course, the husband doing the cheating wanted to be like Jupiter, in which case, he’d have to turn himself into a swan or something first).

But then, the list got nastier “euthanasia, infanticide...” Wait, what now? How do those words even belong in the same sentence as “sexual practice”? Are these the same folks who think Warren Buffett is a Socialist?

The problem with Dr. Fagan’s claim that “Roman Pagan sexuality is back, run for the hills!” is that it's clearly based on exaggerated and poorly understood readings of history in general and Roman history in particular. Queer lovemaking for instance - While sex acts between people with the same equipment wasn't considered the norm in ancient Rome, it wasn't exactly considered immoral either. As one of my favorite podcasts "The History of Rome" once put it, the gender role, as in "who's the bottom?", was what was considered important, which is to say ancient Rome was definitely chauvinistic, but not homophobic.

As for the infidelity claims, long before Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, other emperor's attempted to reign in the cheating ways of the Roman Aristocracy, most notably Augustus, and he was about as Pagan as it got. The key word here is "Aristocracy" cuz' when you're super rich, well, your sense of propriety tends to loosen up...why? Well, you can afford it, just ask Tiger Woods.

This is all to say "Pagan sexuality" is no more to blame for the perceived permissive atmosphere of pre-Christian Rome, than Pagan Spirituality is to be given credit for the establishment of Western Civilization. Dr. Fagan may indeed have a point about the potentially harmful effects of too much pornography, and the general decadent nature of mainstream America, but drawing a connection between that and “Pagan sexuality” rather than with a culture obsessed with material wealth and domination is just a tad off target. And besides, there’s nothing inherently immoral about giving/receiving pleasure with one, two, or more consenting adults...provided it’s in a respectful and honest manner. That’s definitely something most Pagans would get behind, on top, or in front of.