You're an animal and that's okay

I’m off to get a guide dog. Barring some sort of catastrophe, I’ll have a new partner in magic and adventure by the time the next full moon rolls around. It’s been two long years of waiting and even after I was given a date, this opportunity was almost yanked away. But that’s another story. I’m going to focus on thinking positively about this one for now.

Both my potential animal sidekick and some of my recent reading homework for my MFA program have brought our own animal nature into sharp focus. In recent years, I made an implicit assumption that society and modern science have progressed to the point that everyone simply accepts that we humans are also animals. Various writers do state this obvious fact from time to time. And people mostly nod along.

Yet when confronted with evidence of our animal nature in daily life, many of us become distinctly uncomfortable. Whenever the topic of eating meat comes up in conversation, for instance—which is irritatingly often for me because of my medical ketogenic diet—the unwelcome elephant in the room is the fact that we too are animals.

During these conversations, those who eat animal meat generally don’t want to acknowledge that we are also animals, that eating meat means eating formerly alive creatures a lot like ourselves. At the same time. many enthusiastic carnivores don’t want to see or touch raw meat, Most certainly don’t want to butcher it or deal with the actual process of taking the life of an animal they’re going to consume. They have much less problem ripping up plants or even cutting down trees. Somehow that type of killing is more palatable. We’re animals after all, not plants.

Image of a smiling girl hugging a roaring lion - image via pixabay

Those who don’t eat meat, on the other hand, often want to talk at length about the gruesome details of butchering and preparing meat. They nurse convoluted diatribes on how somewhere in our species’ distant past, our pre-human ancestors were purely vegetarian. Vegetarians and vegans are, in my experience, more likely to admit that we are animals, but they’ll argue that we are a special, vegetarian type of ape. Or at least we were supposed to be, harking back to a mythical golden age of innocence in the Garden of Eden they envision in Paleolithic Africa.

On the other hand, what most vegetarians don’t want to talk about is the 30,000 years since a lot of humans left Africa and what they realistically ate and how changes in diet affected our evolution, how those peoples who ate a lot of meat grew strong and lived healthier lives, while those who ate grain-based diets were mainly forced to do so through authoritarian social structures and the greed of their rulers. And they suffered stunted growth and malnutrition as a result.

Neither the omnivores nor the vegetarians seem very comfortable with the basic facts of our situation. We are animals. We must eat something that was previously alive, like all animals.

Vegetarians have many justifications about how animals are higher forms of life than plants and thus we are more guilty if we consume them. They are more likely to accept animals as our kindred, but they still want to draw a line between higher/more worthy and lower/less worthy lifeforms.

Omnivores often draw this line right around humans, and some of them tighten it around only some humans. If animals are less important, then we are free to kill and eat them, the standard carnivore logic goes.

From a Pagan, animist perspective, however, both of these views are self-deluding. The vegetarians are correct that animals are our kin. But their arbitrary line between animals and plants with its assumption of categories of more worthy and less worthy doesn’t stand up to scientific or spiritual reflection.

There are plants that consume meat. There are plants that move. There are animals that don’t move or barely do. There are animals that show no signs of consciousness or thinking. There are plants that cooperate in complex networks of communication. Plants react as if they feel pain.

A generation or two ago, it was assumed that animals did not feel emotional pain. And yet the emotional distress of grieving or isolated animals is so clear to see, if you spend much time with them. I believe that if people pay more attention to plants, we will see that they feel even more than just physical pain as well. The bottom line is that there is no hard line. No “us and them.” No way to escape the uncomfortable fact that we must eat formerly living beings to survive and those beings don’t want to die and may well experience pain as they die, all so that we might live.

That’s the rub, of course. We not only have to accept that animals are our kin and that animals may suffer for us to eat them, as vegetarians do. We must also accept that there is no virtuous, get-out-of-guilt-free card. Plants may be more silent in their pain and dying, but they still experience both. A tree surely has as much value as a fish or a chicken in any large spiritual scheme of things.

And yet, this discomfort with the necessity of death so that we may live, provokes a lot of blaming and shaming of those who eat meat. Take for example, how common it is for omnivores to be asked to accommodate vegetarians or vegans at a social event by keeping some of the foods free of animal products. And yet, even with a diet that is medically prescribed, I am more likely to be admonished about eating meat than accommodated, if I ask that some of the foods be ketogenic and thus mostly meat-based without any type of sugar or starch.

I’ve made vegetarian and vegan food for my friends and family on many occasions and will happily continue to do so, even if I have to make separate food for myself. I know many other omnivores who do this or who even adopt vegetarianism for that particular meal out of convenience. But never, not once, have I seen or heard of a vegetarian or vegan accommodating someone with a ketogenic diet who cannot eat much plant-based food by making meat available. It’s much more likely that the person with the ketogenic diet will bring their own food and even so, negative comments may be made about animal products being present.

This surprises me in progressive and Pagan spaces not only because it is discriminatory toward people with medical conditions that require a ketogenic or other meat-based diet, but also because I am prone to naive assumptions about progressives being open to science and objective realities, like the fact that we are animals. It’s even more confusing in Pagan spaces, because the sharp differentiation between animals and plants runs counter to our animist roots.

And yet, I can easily see why many Pagans have become vegetarian or vegan. For many it is a spiritual oath or commitment, like my oath to wear a head covering. For many it is ecologically based. Industrial meat production as currently practiced is one of our least sustainable food systems, though by far not the only problematic one. But at the same time, our traditions are clear that not everyone has the same spiritual requirements and we too are animals. In the end, it is not immoral to obtain what our animal bodies need to survive.

One of my assigned books in my MFA program is The Vegetarian by Kang Han, a Korean novel about a woman who suddenly becomes Vegan—not just Vegetarian actually—because of disturbing dreams about animal slaughter. Her family isn’t very supportive and she seems to intentionally cause scenes with her husband’s colleagues to highlight her refusal to eat meat. She eventually ends up in a mental hospital for anorexia as she stops eating anything at all and becomes obsessed with turning into a plant and living on sunlight and air.

The whole novel reeks of the refusal to accept that we are animals, right down to the explicit demand that the woman be accepted as a plant in the end. Given the sympathetic portrayal of the woman and the unpleasant portrayals of those who criticize her, it seems like the author supports vegetarianism and wants to distance human beings from animals. But in the end, the book makes a horrifying case against veganism as a kind of slippery slope to anorexia in a way that I doubt most western vegans would appreciate.

I’m not sure of the author’s intentions with that book, but I am starting to believe that like so many other taboos--the shunning of sex, the belief that pleasure is sinful and so on—this modern squeamishness about our animal bodies will inevitably, when taken to extremes, lead to disfunction, oppression and even mental disturbance.

Because I have a ketogenic diet, I’m often accused on Facebook of being anti-vegetarian or anti-vegan. I’m not against vegetarianism or veganism in the slightest. In fact, I wish both could be more widespread without severe health consequences because of the current sustainability crisis in our food systems. I support those who choose to take on these diets, whether they have health benefits or complications. As long as it is the individual’s choice, they should be supported in it.

The thing is that I ask that those who choose otherwise, especially those who must eat meat or even a ketogenic diet for health reasons, not be harassed, excluded from social events, made to feel disgusting or otherwise shunned. It is only on that point that I have disagreed with vegans and vegetarians online. We are animals and due to our evolution we are genetically omnivores. Many of us cannot adapt to a plant-based diet without serious health risks, primarily diabetes which does and will kill prematurely and rob what life one has left of energy and health.

I encourage young, healthy people who can to eat a mainly plant-based diet with low grain and sugar content in hopes that they may be able to avoid the necessity of a ketogenic diet as they age. We don’t know our individual susceptibility or adaptability, which is all the more reason to be careful. I can’t know if I would have been able to avoid my current restriction to a ketogenic diet if I had cut out grains and sugar earlier, but it is likely, given current research.

So, certainly, encourage healthy vegetarian diets with caveats about grains and sugar. But don’t shame those who can’t because it isn’t negotiable. We do not choose to be animals or to have genes from climates where our ancestors subsisted almost entirely on meat and fat. We all try to adapt to modern society as best we can.

And the bottom line is that I am an animal. My body needs nourishment that it can process safely. You are an animal. Your body is an animal body too, and that is okay. Even if your animal body needs meat to survive. And even if it doesn’t, but it needs plants to survive.

As Robin Wall Kimmerer quotes from Native American wisdom, “We are the ones who give thanks.” We cannot keep ourselves from taking life to live. If we refused, we would take life too—our own. As ethics are based in nature, eating plants or meat cannot be unethical. What animist ethics requires is gratitude and acknowledgement. It is not that you must not eat this or that. It is that you ought to give thanks and be mindful of the life given for you, rather than hiding from the truth under mountains of excuses and attempts to make yourself more pure than others.

We give thanks for all living beings that give us life. Together with all of our animal kindred, we are part of the cycle and we are humble before it.

Pagan means interconnection, reciprocity and community: A response to Rabbi Wolpe and The Atlantic

Michele Reynolds, a Republican running for Congress in Ohio, was resoundingly denounced for trying to claim “jew you down” as a legitimate description for ruthlessly profit-seeking business dealings. Some people still use the lower-case term “gypsy” to mean a carefree, lascivious and irresponsible lifestyle or even “gyp” to mean stealing, but both terms are thankfully in decline. Black scholars have long railed against the use of “black” to mean everything evil, base or frightening.

We can all easily recognize these as instances in which the name of a racial, ethnic or religious group has been employed as a lower-case word with negative connotations. And yet, the December 25, 2023 issue of The Atlantic included an article by David Wolpe, a senior rabbi from Sinai Temple, that uses “pagan” as a synonym for the worship of wealth, ego and illegitimate power not once but repeatedly throughout the piece, and I haven’t heard any indication of concern from outside the Pagan community.

Defining modern or ancient Paganism as negative, fabricating false links between Paganism and Donald Trump, and supporting deceptive Nazi claims to Pagan symbols were the key points of Wolpe’s article. It had no other purpose, and as such, constituted hate speech under the US judicial definition.

Image of an ancient stone structure by Sinji and SaDIE via Flickr.com

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard the word “Pagan” used and abused in this fashion, but it is telling that I’ve heard it more in the past two months than in the past twenty years. Even before the Atlantic article came out, an old friend wrote to me with concerns over my use of the term “Pagan” on this blog because of an assumption that it implies “idolatry… wealth, gluttony, and drunkenness.”

I grew up in a heavily conservative Christian area and when I was a child there was no possibility of naming our spiritual practices openly. At the time, we had no word for “Pagan.” It was the thing we didn’t name or speak of outside of a close circle. My mother legitimately feared she could lose her job if our family’s alternative spirituality was widely known. I have met many fellow Pagans who were bullied or beaten up when their beliefs were discovered, and I’ve read about the cases where children were taken away from Pagan parents without any reasonable cause.

But I did think things were improving. I may not be “out of the broom closet” the way some Pagans are in big, liberal cities—wearing pentacle or Mjolnir jewelry on a daily basis or bringing up Pagan identity in casual conversation—but I don’t hide it the way we once did. I have a large meditation altar in my living room and everybody who walks into my house should be able to get the general idea. I do wear a lot of Yggdrasil jewelry, which could be passed off as “just a pretty tree” in case of threats, and when there’s good reason and my family and I are not likely to be in direct danger, I’ll use the term Pagan publicly. And of course, I have this blog.

So, I am rather shaken and deeply troubled by Wolpe’s article in The Atlantic, which is such a brazen attack on a broad group of spiritual traditions apparently without any other purpose than to malign and defame all those who practice within it. And coming from a rabbi, it has an extra kind of sucker punch feel, because he really should know better, and because being co-outsiders in a small town, I always felt solidarity with Jewish friends.

After the Atlantic article came out a close family member who has often participated in Pagan-adjacent practices referred me to the article and sharply criticized me when I attempted to explain the false premise of defining the term “Pagan” with negative attributes from the outset. If this kind of defamation can have that dramatic of an effect on someone who was previously inclined to be friendly toward Pagan beliefs, I am disturbed to think how it is likely perceived by those with less access to context.

So, let’s look at the issue through Wolpe’s own words. There’s a clue from the get-go in the fact that Wolpe insists on using “pagan” with a small P. This is a linguistic sign employed in a wide variety of contexts to imply that one is not referring to a legitimate cultural group, but rather to an attribute. This is why Black writers often insist on capitalization and why, if and when the Roma use the term “Gypsy,” they capitalize it. Those who wish to dismiss and degrade those groups will often insist on keeping the lower case. It is similar with “Pagan” versus “pagan.”

In any legitimate set of journalistic or scholarly style guidelines, we all know the term should be capitalized when referring to a specific cultural or religious group. Wolpe’s use of small-P “pagan” to refer to ancient Greeks and Romans as well as to modern Pagans is a clear violation of professional style and likely an intentional slap in the face.

But you don’t have to look to semantics to find Wolpe’s glaring prejudice and false premise. In the first paragraph, he asserts that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are “more than a little bit pagan” because of their “wealth worship and ideological imperialism of ego.” He’s basically setting up his definition of terms here, while also using unpopular figures as a cheap way to sling mud. He later states his stereotype in the most direct possible of terms: “The current worship of wealth is a pagan excrescence.”

But defining Pagan as “wealth worship” is no different than defining Gypsy as “wild and dishonest,” Black as “primitive and frightening” or Jew as “greedy and ruthless.” It’s a blunt force stereotype used to begin a pseudo-philosophical discussion on a false premise in order to denigrate a particular group of people.

In reality, the term Pagan was first employed by Christians in fourth-century Rome to mean those who had not converted to Christianity and who continued to practice polytheist religions. In pure linguistics, the term meant “civilian,” “rural” or “rustic,” and it was likely adopted for this use because, at the time, the imperial and military power was Christian and it was primarily rural people who continued the old religion. It has been retroactively used to refer to polytheists in the biblical age when there were wealthy Pagan empires, including Rome before its Christian conversion, but it was not a term anyone at that time would have recognized.

That said, while we may retroactively apply the term “Pagan” to wealthy polytheist empires, that no more equates Paganism with the worship of wealth, empire or ego than it does to equate the teachings of Jesus with those same negative values because the Roman Empire was Christian for hundreds of years, the Austro-Hungarian Empire hinged on ostentatious displays of Christian wealth and the crowning of kings as “Holy Roman Emperor,” and the British Empire was explicitly founded on forced conversions to Christianity.

Wolpe offers no historical facts to back his equation of Paganism to the worship of power and wealth, but simply states glaring stereotypes, as if they were well-known facts, such as, “Wealth is a cover for, or a means to, the ultimate object of worship in a pagan society, which is power.”

While there have been empires employing Pagan and polytheist religions, it is impossible to defend a claim that these represented the majority of ancient Pagans. Had Wolpe used “imperial” in place of small-P “pagan” in every instance in his article, it would have actually made a great deal of sense. But then, that would have called up some troubling connotations about American—as well as other monotheist—imperialism.

Were there polytheist cults that went overboard on the worship of imperial rulers or which made the collection of ostentatious wealth part of the veneration of their gods? Archeology says "yes”—just as Christians built massive cathedrals, glittering with gold, at a time when the vast majority of the population in Europe was starving and just as the Jewish temples of Jesus’ time were being used to amass wealth. None of us can claim purity in this regard, but this is an aberration outside the core teachings in Paganism, as I believe it is in Christianity and Judaism as well.

Wolpe continues with a history lesson based on falsehood: “Most ancient pagan belief systems were built around ritual and magic, coercive practices intended to achieve a beneficial result. They centered the self. The revolutionary contribution of monotheism was its insistence that the principal concern of God is, instead, how people treat one another.”

Let’s take this apart step by step. First, the best way to see what “most ancient Pagan belief systems” were like is to look at the indigenous belief systems that have survived more in tact because they were colonized by monotheist empires more recently or not at all. The vast majority of ancient Pagans lived in tribal, rather than imperial societies. While much of ancient European tribal culture has been obscured by Christian conquest, scholars assert that the Celtic, Norse and other ancient European spiritual traditions bore a striking resemblance to Native American, African, Australian Aboriginal and other indigenous belief systems in which community, family, reciprocity, humility and respect for other living beings are primary values.

But what about Wolpe’s contention that Pagans both ancient and modern are all about “ritual and magic?” Many Pagans do tout the importance of one or both of these.

First, there is overlap between Witchcraft (often defined as the practice of magic outside of prayer) and modern Paganism. But there are also Christian, Jewish and atheist practitioners of Witchcraft today who will tell you they are not Pagan. And there are many Pagans who don’t practice magic of any kind. Witchcraft, like Buddhist meditation, is a self-help practice for most adherents. There are of course Wiccans and religious Buddhists who complicate this equation by making these practices their religions, but for many this is not the case.

Of course, some Pagans do practice a lot of ritual and ask for things they want in prayer to their deities. So do many monotheists. These are pretty much things you have to do in order to get tax exempt status as an official religion, if one were to apply for that. It is a bit ridiculous to say that because Pagans pray for beneficial outcomes to their problems and engage in religious ritual, that our practices are “coercive” and our beliefs “center the self,” more than those of monotheist religions. Rather, most Pagan traditions we know about both modern and ancient require practitioners to view their individual needs and wants in the context of an interconnected world, in which all deserve respect and in which the gods may not be able to heed your prayers precisely because there are other needs in the world.

I study the teachings of the Druid revival of the 18th century. In this tradition and in modern Druidry, the primary prayer is for knowledge and understanding, from which Druids believe other benefits flow. Such prayers are never without the real world follow-up of study and meditation. Another prayer included in most Druid ceremonies calls for peace in all corners of the world. There is nothing in these traditions that remotely resembles the negative image constructed by Rabbi Wolpe.

As for the claim that monotheism brought in a revolutionary idea about the kind treatment of others, that is part of a biblical myth but it isn’t grounded in fact. Indigenous societies have espoused ideals of selflessness, generosity, care for the sick, care for the natural environment, care for children and elders, care for strangers and travelers, as well as the reciprocal relationship between the wealthy and the poor for millennia. Ancient Greek sagas give concrete historical evidence of this and while many other traditions were not written down in ancient times, there is no evidence that these values were changed for the better by contact with monotheism. What remains of ancient European Pagan ethics comes through mythology, preserved sagas and through the Norse Eddas. Like the Bible, the Torah and the Koran these sources are a mixed bag when it comes to being kind versus cruel.

The Havamal, the portion of the Eddas most credited with giving ethical advice, is probably the best we have for reflecting ancient Pagan ideas of ethics the way the Bible, the Torah or the Koran does for Christians, Jews and Muslims. Here are a few quotes with verse number and translation cited:

“Fire he needs who with frozen knees has come from the cold without; food and clothes must the farer have, the man from the mountains come.” (3. Belllows)

“He craves for water, who comes for refreshment, drying and friendly bidding, marks of good will, fair fame if ‘tis won, and welcome once and again.” (4. Bray)

Image. of a candle shaped like a cat, a crystal sphere and other pagan decorations - image by Arie Farnam

In these passages, we clearly see the widespread Pagan values of generosity, hospitality and care for wanderers and the poor. Every modern indigenous tradition and every ancient Pagan canon of mythology includes stories and teachings which advise kindness, care for the vulnerable, offerings as sustenance for the poor, sharing and wealth redistribution. I have studied dozens of traditions and always come across these teachings in tribal societies. It is likely that this is no coincidence, since societies based on tribal and family groupings rely on these values for survival, while empires—whether Pagan, Christian or any other—often stray from values of reciprocity in favor of concentrated power and wealth.

“A man shall not boast of his keeness of mind, but keep it close in his breast; To the silent and wise does ill come seldom.” (6. Bellows)

Here we see the very common Pagan lesson on humility even in intellectual matters. The need for humility among the strong and able-bodied is also showcased in the legend of the defeat in mock battle of the strongest and most robust Norse god Thor by the ancient and frail goddess Ela, who carries the symbology of old age. It is not difficult to read into that the lesson that old age and infirmity come for even the strongest among us eventually and thus humility is wise.

“Not reft of all is he who is ill, for some are blessed in their children, some in their kin, and some in their wealth, and some in working well.” (69. Bray)

Here we can see that the ancient Norse valued wealth but also many other things. The passage doesn’t say which of these is the greater or the lesser. The point is rather that blessings come in many forms. It may be a call to gratitude, for even if one lacks health or family or wealth, there are other blessings to be thankful for. It may be a call for humility to those that do have some of these blessings, because one very rarely has them all.

This is just a tiny sampling of ancient Pagan teachings on issues of wealth, humility, sharing and the like. I’m not here to argue that all ancient Pagans were paragons of virtue, humility or selfless love for their fellow man. There are verses in the Havamal that imply women are all a bunch of schemers or in which might makes right.

But remember Wolpe was comparing Pagan teachings to monotheist belief systems where the god curses women for all time because one woman wanted knowledge, a man is ready to kill his child because god told him to, the god orders the annihilation of entire nations including all the women and children, slaves are ordered to submit to their masters, and the idea of one lord above all is repeated endlessly. But somehow Wolpe decided Pagans are the ones with the negative teachings about power, wealth and empire.

Next, Wolpe turns to the worship of physical beauty as a supposed Pagan value: “The Greeks taught that the rich and powerful and beautiful were favored by the gods.” This is not borne out by historical evidence. While there is the occasional mention that the gods bestowed a gift of beauty or wealth on this or that mythical hero or heroine, they were just as likely to punish pride and vanity. Of course, some people throughout history have viewed good fortune, wealth, beauty or talents as implying the favor of their god or gods and thus their personal superiority. But monotheists have fallen for this logical and ethical error as much as Pagans ever did.

Wolpe then digresses into a troubling section in which he implies that the Nazi obsession with blue eyes and blonde hair actually represented an objective standard of beauty, rather than their own biased and contradictory interpretation of the concept. He drags Paganism into it without any factual link and states, “The veneration of physical beauty, the Instagramization of culture, is pagan to its roots.” There is nothing in Paganism either modern or ancient about the adoration of physical beauty, though Pagans don’t explicitly shun the human body as some monotheists have. Both polytheists and monotheists have their examples of opulence in honor of gods and both have their examples of asceticism. This is just Wolpe again implying an underlying assumption of Paganism as a term with inherent negative connotations.

It is hard to conceive of why The Atlantic or anyone else would see Wolpe as an expert worth such high profile publishing, given that he cannot get even the most easily verifiable facts correct. He states for instance: “January 6 made Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman,’ with his bare chest and Norse headdress, instantly notorious.” (The emphasis is mine.) That a so-called scholar of any type would call Chansley’s headdress “Norse” in the age of easily accessible information is embarrassing to say the least. The Norse never had horns on their helmets. There have been cartoon representations of Vikings with horns on their helmets in pop culture, but this bears no resemblance to historical or archeological fact and a “scholar” really should look further than cartoons for their sources. On the contrary, it is Native American culture Chansley was misappropriating with the fur-lined and feather-ornamented headdress he wore for the insurrection. Some Native American groups did historically use ceremonial horned headdresses and several Native American writers have protested his misappropriation of their cultural symbols.

But Wolpe is on a roll and continues digging his hole into alternative facts: “The Norse were people of conquest, rape, and pillage, at least in the popular imagination.” Well, at least he admits that what he is basing his information on is actually “the popular imagination.” The Norse were no more or less a “people of conquest, rape and pillage” than the Christians or the Mongols. The Norse were not all Vikings, which was a small subculture akin to pirates in other eras. The vast majority of moderately educated people today know some or all of this, but somehow Wolpe is given a prominent publishing platform for his hate-filled rant of ignorance.

As the article progresses, there are hints of the grievances that underlie Wolpe’s tirade, such as his glib soundbite, “Hug a tree or a dollar bill, and the pagan in you shines through.” Could it be that what Wolpe really dislikes so strongly is the environmental movement?

Much of the latter part of the article is focused on equating the movement for ecological protection, as well as all Pagans, with an obscure quote by the animal-rights activist Peter Singer which appears to support euthanasia for children suffering from extreme pain or complete incapacity because they should have the same “right to mercy” as animals that are “put down.” This is Wolpe’s weird twist on the animist world view of many Pagans which holds that humans are not categorically superior to other living beings and that everything has a soul. It’s just about the only place where Wolpe actually touched on a real Pagan value, although in an extremely distorted manner.

Yes, most modern and ancient Pagan traditions as well as most indigenous belief systems share a sense of human kinship with the natural world. We do not see ourselves as elevated by an all powerful god as rulers of the natural world. We also do not see the gods as authoritarian rulers over us. The Pagan worldview is one of interconnection and reciprocity, rather than hierarchy, precisely the point that Wolpe spent the first part of the article missing.

So, what is the truth about Pagan views of the value of human life versus animal or plant life? Frankly, it varies widely, just as it does among monotheists. Some Pagans are vegetarian because they see animals as relatives. Other Pagans are not vegetarian precisely because we see all living things as interconnected and required to live off of the deaths of other beings, and we do not view animals as morally superior to plants.

That does not mean we devalue our own lives or the lives of other humans. Most Pagans accept that it is natural and right to protect life and particularly the lives of those who depend on you. That is why we would be more likely to fight for the life of a human child than for an insect. We owe human children a higher level of protection and nurture because of natural bonds. The same applies to animals we domesticate. Still, most modern Pagans are less likely than some monotheists today to see the deaths of certain human children as more tragic than others because we do not see those who are different from us as less worthy. Furthermore, we are humble and regretful about any need to take animal or plant life, rather than claiming it as our due as superior beings.

What strikes me in this is that Wolpe accuses Pagans of being self-focused and obsessed with power and hierarchy, but then is disturbed that we are insufficiently focused on the authority of an all-powerful god and insufficiently self-obsessed to see ourselves as superior to the natural world. The contradiction is telling and in combination with the countless factual inaccuracies, the article turns out to be one of the most embarrassing pieces of un-scholarship I’ve ever seen.

The Atlantic is no doubt swamped with angry letters from Pagans. While I don’t see anyone else concerned by this show of hate speech, the Pagan community is certainly worried and alarmed. Even so, my natural instinct toward outrage is humbled by the calm and compassionate responses of many Pagan leaders, such as Holli Emore, executive director of Cherry Hill Seminary, who sent a letter to Rabbi Wolpe inviting him to a conversation on the topic without any criticism or rancur over the hate-inciting rhetoric he employed. Wolpe replied dismissively that he is too busy for any such conversation and claimed he never directed his condemnation at any particular group of people.

Emore and others like her have shown admirable restraint in their responses to this open declaration of hate toward our community. I take a lesson in humility from them, but I remain worried about the impact of this type of manipulative message, in which the underlying definition of terms is the vehicle for hate and condemnation of an entire religious group. Had Jews or Muslims or Native Americans or Christians been the target, I would be deeply concerned as well. The history of where this kind of rhetoric all too often leads has not even had a chance to gather dust.

Is Christmas really Pagan?

If you have come anywhere near the modern Pagan revival, you’ve heard about it. And if you attend a conservative evangelical church, you’ve also heard about it. There aren’t that many things both Pagans and conservative Christians like to harp on, but the Paganism in Christmas is one of them.

Many modern Pagans claim most Christmas traditions are mere mimicry of ancient Pagan practices, citing the Roman celebration of Saturnalia involving greenery brought indoors, a wreath of leaves or evergreens often used as a symbol of the sun and rebirth across the ancient Pagan world, the Druid veneration of mistletoe as a symbol of friendship and fertility, Germanic customs involving decorating evergreen trees, the folkloric origins of Yule logs as a good way to get a fire through a particularly long night, and the similarities between Odin and Santa Clause (rides through the sky at night, has either eight reindeer or an eight-legged steed, and has a long white beard).

A yule tree next to candles, decorations, a mother and child figurine, a pie with star cutout cookies and a boy holding up cookies in place of his eyes

You might think Christian uneasiness with the Pagan elements of Christmas stemmed primarily from having run across these crowing Pagan accounts laying claim to most of Christmas, but it’s much more the other way around. What little we know of ancient Pagan Winter Solstice traditions, at least in Europe, comes primarily from Christian sources. Many of the traditions modern European-based Pagans claim as authentic would have died out along with their last surviving purveyors of oral history centuries ago, if it were not for the efforts of Christian scribes who wrote about them—often in a disparaging manner but nonetheless.

I’m not exactly saying we owe them. Our traditions wouldn’t have needed to be saved from the abyss of forgetfulness had it not been for the forced and bloody spread of Christianity, but still much of the information we have about ancient Pagan traditions has come through Christian writers.

The Christian uneasiness with the Pagan side of Christmas is also nothing new. The Puritans saw Christmas as frivolous, raucous and disrespectful of their somber and serious god. Many Puritan leaders tried to dissuade their followers from observing the holiday, and celebrating Christmas was completely illegal for twenty-five years under the Puritans of England during the 1600s.

While the Bible does describe the birth of Jesus, it makes no reference to his followers celebrating his birthday, and early Christian writers placed his birth in March and September as well as possibly in December. In the middle ages, some Christian scholars were concerned that an emphasis on Jesus’ birth would encourage believers to see him as too human. They had dispensed with the whole conceived-by-sex part of being human, but the bloody mess of birth was still clinging to his image. Thus, some put forward theories that the story of Jesus’ birth was merely a metaphor.

And yet, Odin is not Santa Claus. He rides through the sky on winter nights as part of the terrifying Wild Hunt. He doesn’t give gifts to children in traditional lore and is a formidable god demanding respect and decorum, rather than a spirit of joy and caprice. Santa Claus as we know him today is an amalgamation of legends about a generous and kindly Catholic St. Nicholas and the early nineteenth century poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” written by (with think) the Dutch poet Henry Livingston Jr..

Still, Santa Claus fits in nicely with Pagan Winter Solstice celebrations and seems like a figure ancient Pagans could have conceived, even if they didn’t. There are multiple ancient Pagan myths about spirits, both kindly and malicious, entering homes through the chimney. Moreover, a red-clad denizen of the hearth, who might reward those who make offerings of baked goods and milk products, is a common theme in Pagan folklore across northern Europe. And the whole riding across the night sky thing is a widespread trope in Pagan myths.

The choice by Livingston of reindeer to pull the sleigh—and eight of them to boot—may have been no more than a Central European’s stereotyping of the far north or it may have been based on a deeper knowledge of northern lore in which reindeer were symbols of abundance and generosity for thousands of years.

Still, St. Nicholas is a clearly Christian entity who is the most direct ancestor of Santa Claus, so Pagans cannot take all—or even the most important parts—of the credit. At best, we can say Santa Claus is an offshoot of St. Nicholas with a lot of Pagan symbolism and trappings added on by a very imaginative Dutch guy.

It has always been my view that no one can take Christmas away from the Christians or claim it is inauthentic to Christianity. Jesus, in the Bible, doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would have wanted his followers to spend much time obsessing over his birthday, but he does seem like the kind of guy who would want the legacy of his birth to be people giving gifts, preparing good food to share together, taking special care of children and people in need and much of the rest of what Christmas is still about today. I wish my Christian friends full steam ahead in celebrating it.

That said, there is no doubt in any serious scholar’s mind that ancient European Pagans celebrated the Winter Solstice in many different forms. From the time that Pagan astronomers realized you could actually pinpoint when the sun’s light would begin to return, this became the most obvious moment to celebrate hope and the resilience of life on earth. One thing that is—oddly enough—mentioned much less by Pagans claiming ownership of Christmas is the widespread motif in Pagan lore of a mother goddess giving birth to a sun child or a child who brings light into the world in a wide variety of cultures. I don’t think this means that Christians copied Pagan myths in creating the Jesus story. I think this is such a universal dream that it likely arose spontaneously in more than one place without any mimicry necessary.

To me that’s the most Pagan and animist thing about the story though. My children used to ask me if myths are “real or made up.” I frustrated them with the assertion that, while myths are not factual the way math is factual, they are “true in spirit.” The story of a goddess, whether she is the Earth, an ancient reindeer spirit, Isis, Ceridwen or Mary, giving birth to a shining child who brings hope in the midst of darkness and hardship is one of those things we carry deep in our chromosomes. It doesn’t belong to Pagans alone, but it is absolutely at the core of Pagan spiritual beliefs, as much as it is at the core of the Christian origin story.

So, to the Pagans clamoring that the Christians “stole” Christmas from us, I say “go celebrate and quit yer bellyaching.” There are plenty of real historical grievances many communities have about forced conversions and the destruction of history and ancient beliefs. We should talk about those whenever possible, but Christians having helped preserve a few muddled scraps of Winter-Solstice-related folklore and wanting to participate in a holiday that has recognizable Pagan roots should be the last thing we complain about.

To Christians who worry that Christmas is too Pagan, I say some of their concerns are legitimate. It is important to keep the spiritual side of celebrations. If all a Christian is celebrating this time of year is family togetherness, Santa Claus, presents, lighted trees, mistletoe and wreaths, then I think they may have drifted a bit too far into the Pagan side of the holiday and might want to consider whether or not they are celebrating Christmas or the Winter Solstice. I see both as blessed, but Christmas should retain its unique character.

I spent more than twenty years in Central Europe where the Christian side of Christmas is much more overt. There are huge public nativity scenes in almost every village and many which are intricate works of art. There are special church services, and Jesus is the giver of gifts rather than Santa Claus. I see a lot of value in keeping Christmas overtly Christian. It is a tradition worth honoring and marking.

For that reason, I celebrate the Winter Solstice on the twenty-first or there about, not on the twenty-fifth of December. I reserve that day for wishing Christian friends a merry Christmas and I celebrate my holiday on the day that means the most in my tradition. I think we can share traditions, but we should also have some things that are unique in our traditions because uniqueness and diversity is part of what creates magic and beauty.

To those who want to try to cleanse their holiday of all Pagan influences and claim to celebrate only Jesus at Christmas time, I don’t entirely know what to say, other than “good riddance.” I believe Jesus is likely horrified by many of the things some have done supposedly in his name, but he would approve of Christmas as well as the Winter Solstice when they are celebrated in the spirit of hope, joy, kindness and generosity. To me, you can’t entirely separate Jesus from Pagan Winter Solstice traditions today because I believe they spring from the same primal spiritual truth. If someone wants to try to “get back to Jesus” by avoiding anything reminiscent of other traditions, they’re welcome to try privately, as long as they don’t berate others for celebrating in the universal tradition of joy and hope inherent to the season.

The short answer then is, no, Christmas isn’t Pagan. Christmas is a Christian response to the Winter Solstice. But the Winter Solstice and its Pagan traditions did come first. Christians cannot lay a unique claim to the holiday, the season or the spirit of renewed hope. And many of the traditions and symbols that Christians incorporate into Christmas were passed down from their Pagan ancestors and have historical Pagan roots. Those of us who are Pagan today are happy to share traditions, symbols and celebrations, as long as we are fully accepted and our celebrations are as welcome in society as Christian celebrations.

And so, I am ready to call it a night and snuggle down with some cinnamon tea and a star-shaped almond cookie. May your holiday be bright and full of magic, whatever you call it. May the spirit of the past year’s bounty fly across the moonlit sky and bring joy and warmth to you and yours. And may the spirit of hope and renewal rise shining for you once more.

Winter dawn: Mountain scripture

In winter before the sun truly rises, when sunlight strikes the slopes to the west but the sky is still pale, when the cold is so deep that snow squeaks underfoot, I walk to the ridge top.

Mercifully, there is little wind. I reach the grandmother pine tree, wisened and gnarled by her rugged life on top of a rocky ridge. Six hundred years she has stood here. She… yes, that’s my human thinking and yet that’s the feeling I get from this venerable being. The things she must have seen!

Pumpkin ridge and mount emily - image by arie farnam

I am thankful for the winter, for the cold. In these days of worsening fires and droughts, any cold or snow is to be valued. But this winter is mild. The cold has come only in a few intense blasts, like this one. The snow is scant and stale.

Each morning I still meditate, despite my daily life descending into a blur of chaos, conflict, grief and struggle with various bureaucracies. I still cling to that one bit of routine and stability. And the heart of that is gratitude.

I speak my thanks for my health, my body, my mind, my heart, my soul—even on days when I don’t feel so sure of any of that. I still give thanks.

I give thanks for my family, even when the grief and strain of their struggles has pushed me far beyond my breaking point. It’s a principle, but that thanks is sometimes hollow.

I give thanks for the abundance of my life, even though my existence which once spanned continents has contracted to the cramped confines of intractable restrictions and endless daily tasks. Still, my special chai tea, a piece of salmon and tomatoes from my garden still ripening on the windowsill halfway through winter make me conscious of blessings.

But that is nothing beside the thanks I give for this valley, the mountain, the ridge, the trees, the land and the open sky. Even on the worst days, when I can’t stop the tears falling all through my meditation, my heart sings in gratitude for the land and the sky. So many years I spent far away from this place, and I did value and care for the land there, but always this place was in my heart, even when I didn’t know it. And now, when times are hard beyond hard, my gratitude for the land and sky surpasses words.

I touch the prickly spines of pine needles. She gives me three small cones, hard and spiky, sharp in the cold. I pour out a stream of green gold tea, lit with the dawn, steam billowing from it. Drink and know you are honored, grandmother.

It is Imbolc time, the holiest part of the year for me because of my lady, Brigid. It is a quiet time without great community festivities but dear to my heart. Cold still binds the land like stone, but light is returning. The dawn rays are pale wheat, a promise of abundance and spring coming.

Maybe someday there will be space to write again. Maybe spring will come to my life. I still live in the depths of a barren and desolate time. Most days, I don’t think I will have health or years enough to start over when I’m finally free of this toil and sorrow.

But in rare moments, when I see a sunrise or a moon nearly full or the sky free and unbound, I say to myself that this winter must pass someday. Spring may not be the same as it was. Rains are scarce. The heat may come too early. But each season passes.

That is what the scripture of this mountain tells me.

Lughnasadh poem

Photo by Arie Farnam

Heavy air, hot breath of summer,

I step from the coolness under the earth,

into the heat and color and brightness.

Sun so powerful, lord of day,

I walk through the garden, giving water.

Thirsty plants beg, leaves quiver.

It is well, little ones, evening comes.

The brutal sun is sinking down,

Slow and warm like honey in the summer.

At the end of the row there are broad,

Prickly leaves on delicate stalks.

Good old friend, zucchini, I bend low.

And there at last is the gift long-awaited.

First harvest, two long, green fruits,

Bristling hairs, plump with water and sun.

Thank you, for the bounty, here drink your fill.

Walking back toward cool shade,

I kiss the summer squash, quick and secret.

Another harvest come, another year survived.

I don’t grow all my food today, but knowing

That I can grow food, from the giving,

Living earth, even in a new place,

In new soil and under a harsher sun,

That is the only feeling of safety that matters.

Adapting midwinter traditions in new circumstances

I walk down the gravel road to a thick forested place with the puny afternoon sun slanting in more from the south than from the west. I whisper thanks to the fir trees as I clip sprigs to make our Yule wreathes. Then I pour my water bottle out on their roots.

I’ve been doing that for fifteen years now, since before my kids were born. It’s family tradition—the natural wreath so bushy that it gets in the way of opening the door. I used to prune the fir trees at the top of our garden in the Czech Republic to make each season’s wreath.

When I lived here as a kid, I didn’t know about thanking the trees or giving water in offering or even how to make the sprigs into a wreath, let alone the symbol of the wreath as a sunwise spinning circle of life and rebirth. But there was family tradition then too, and that tradition said we gathered bows and a tree from this woodlot each December and carried them home on foot.

Image by Arie Farnam

The Winter Solstice is always a mix of tradition and adaptation for me. When I was a kid we had a beautiful wooden nativity scene that Mama let us set up. We always went out and got a tree, we had stockings and Santa Claus and special family cookie recipes. We called it “Christmas” then, but the nativity scene was the only part Jesus had in it and there was often some discussion of the Solstice. It was a mix of my mother’s memories of childhood and her attempts to make something “more meaningful” than commercial Christmas for her children.

A perfect symbol of this was her adaptation of a Christmas pinwheel cookie recipe. The cookies were probably okay to begin with, since they did have real melted chocolate in them, but the other half of the dough was just vanilla. At some point during my childhood, Mama took that recipe and spiced it up by adding mint extract and green food coloring to the light half of the swirl. It instantly became a family favorite and I have made them myself every year since I stopped living out of a backpack.

Tradition swirled with worthwhile new things. That’s Yule.

As a young adult, I questioned a lot of the ways I was brought up, as we all do. But my questioning went a little differently than most. I didn’t have inflexible religious or even mildly conservative parents to rebel against. Instead, I had their 1960s indecisiveness to rebel against.

If it isn’t really about Jesus Christ to you and you don’t literally believe he was born on this day two thousand years ago as the literal son of God, then why do you call it Christ-mass? If trees were decorated and greenery brought in long before Christian times, then why are we still calling them Christmas trees at our house? If you believe in “the universe” and love the Greek myths as much as the one about baby Jesus, then why don’t we celebrate that?

Yup, I was a handful. But fortunately, I just grew up and decided to do my own thing. I started calling it Solstice or Yule and choosing wrapping paper that had stars and snowflakes instead of crosses or “Merry Christmas!” on it.

I taught my kids that Santa Claus is the spirit of the past year’s sun, the manifestation of abundance and having enough to share and give that the year gave us. We make sun-shaped cookies and put them out by the wood stove with a bit of salt and cornmeal (for the reindeer).

In the Catholic country of the Czech Republic, I learned to light candles in a ceramic advent wreath on the table, one on the Sunday four weeks before the solstice, two at three weeks out and so forth until all four were lit before the Solstice. There, Santa Claus was replaced in popular culture by Baby Jesus, who somehow despite never being pictured as having wings or any other transportation device, delivers gifts to all the children.

I just told my kids that’s the spirit of the newborn, baby sun. Christians call him Jesus. And then I usually got sidetracked into telling them about the historical Jesus and how he was a great teacher who believed in peace and kindness, so he is a good ancestor to focus on during Yule. My kids are understandably a little confused. I find uncertainty to be a good state to be in when it comes to spiritual matters, so I continue on merrily.

This is our first year back in America and together with my extended family for the season. And it’s got a whole different set of challenges. Mama is utterly burnt out on commercial Christmas, right when most of the grandkids are pre-adolescent and most focused on it. She has started mumbling “Christmas… Solstice… Yule… something or other…” in place of any one holiday name. And my niece and nephew who have a solid dose of Jewish culture from their grandpa pitch in with a cry of “And Hanukkah!”

My son’s school holiday concert featured several heavy-handed Christian songs, a couple of cheery general Christmas songs, a couple in Spanish and one in Hebrew, which was nice and all but not actually about Hanukkah. It was as if they were trying to look “diverse” without actually allowing for anything beyond Christmas-all-the-way-no-natter-what because that might offend the majority conservative Christians in the audience. But it was still cute and fun all the same.

I’m not a grinch. Really I’m not. A lot of Pagans I know are not into Santa Claus and I can see the argument. I could wish for less focus on the commercial aspects, but I also can’t help remembering the incredibly joyful excitement of being a kid on Christmas morning, tiptoeing downstairs with my brothers to get our bulging stockings with the giant candy canes, then talking and playing and waiting in happy anticipation together for our parents to get up, so we could open the presents.

There are people for whom family conflict or extreme poverty or parental indifference poisoned this holiday time. And trying to explain this to them is like trying to explain the existence of gods to an atheist. You’ve got to experience it to believe it and it even has to happen in the right stage of life for the experience to stick. But if you have it, it’s powerful, like a Salmon’s homing instinct. I’m as capable of denying my kids that as I am of not making them wear warm coats in the snow.

So many things will be different this year. My traditions will have to do extra adapting. I won’t even be “home” in my cozy little Hobbit hole of a basement apartment for the Solstice. I’ll be at my mom’s place far out in the sticks with my kids. I still plan to sing Solstice songs set to old Christmas carols, put together a feast of round foods on the eve of the Solstice and freeze bowls of ice to use as candle holders, symbolizing the sun reborn in cold and ice.

But the food will have to be a lot different for me. With new revelations about my health earlier this year came sweeping diet restrictions. The benefits to my health and energy have been so striking that I’m not much tempted to cheat for the sake of tradition. I let my mom make the pinwheel cookies and I won’t be able to have even one without paying with several days of exhaustion and inflammation. I still haven’t figured out exactly how I’m going to make my traditional star-and-moon decorated desert with only three or four grams of carbohydrates, but I’m working on it. There will still be a large platter of roast meat, baked pumpkin and a salad full of the colors of the sun.

A purist would find plenty to criticize in my Yule celebrations. I don’t follow any particular Pagan tradition very faithfully. It isn’t a senseless free-for-all of eclectic cherry picking, but it is adaptation and conscious choosing of those things that make sense given new circumstances. This I believe is the most authentic thing we can actually do with our holidays, adapt them as our ancestors have always done to keep the spirit alive no matter what life, location and circumstance throw our way.

The ancestors' call became a siren scream

How we were

A small settlement hunches by the edge of the sea. The huts are made of driftwood, branches of knotted pine, some stone maybe, probably hides. The people are tall and fair with faces roughened by wind, brine and the pale northern sun.

They fish in the icy sea with spears and nets. They hunt the great shaggy, horned ruminants of the harsh rocky north. The reindeer and elk devour the tough wild vegetation and possess several stomaches to digest it. The people cannot.

They sometimes eat red algae collected from the sea or seeds or berries or sprigs of green herbs. These are good for health as any village healer knows. But they fill no bellies. That is the role of the great whales driven ashore by the first rough boats or wild bore brought down at great risk in the darkest parts of the pine forest.

After some time—a long span of centuries or even millennia—they find that if caught the deer and its relatives can be kept and that they will give good nourishing milk that the people can eat and that will usually go sour in a way that is good. They find the eggs of wild birds at first and eventually they keep these at home as well.

And that is what they eat. For thousands upon thousands of years.

How we changed

The new ways of tilling soil and growing crops came late to the shores of the North Sea, the Baltic and the North Atlantic. They came because the stuff that grew out of the soil was sweet and oddly addictive and because the new ways were good for chieftains.

The little settlements moved as needed for food or protection. But growing crops required control of land and for the first time there was food that would last more than a few months, food that could be stockpiled and given out to warriors and followers.

In the settlements there were people of greater or lesser strength, but strength was measured in mind as well as body. There were strong hunters, skilled gatherers, good cooks and experienced healers. Some of those of importance were men and some were women. Some were even very old, weak in body but strong in experience. No one ruled absolutely. Surviving alone, without a clan, in that harsh land wasn’t feasible. No one could have all the necessary skills.

But when the time of tilling and planting came, there were lords who fed the warriors and at first the lord had to be among the strongest. But later a lord might be sickly and idle, but still own the land by the social contract and structure of society, still own the stores of food given in rent, still control the might of men. And it was about men then. Women’s work was degraded and devalued.

Image by Diana Robinson

Still the women gathered the plants and berries, and the forgetting of the old ways was slow. But over the generations the people of the north, though they thought of themselves as fierce and free, became surfs. Not so much slaves to this lord or that. Those were overthrown on a regular basis, but slaves to the grain and later the potatoes and sugar beets.

Then there came famine, when crops failed and that was all they had to eat anymore. In Ireland, fifteen percent of the people died of starvation and a similar number were forced to leave their homeland, when crop disasters and overlords conspired to calamity.

And today the descendants of those who lived on those northern shores are still among the relatively few people on earth who can process lactose, the sugar found in unsoured milk. They are also a bit taller. They get fat easily on the modern diet of starchy vegetables, beans, lean meat, skimmed dairy and processed grains.

But this isn’t a healthy kind of fat stored for the lean times. It is concentrated near our middles. Arms and legs remain relatively slender until the last stages of obesity, heart disease and diabetes set in. It is not the well-proportioned fat of some more southerly peoples and the sad statistics of northern Europeans are mirrored among many indigenous communities of northern latitudes as well.

Allergic to sugar

I was always one who fancied that I listened to the call of my ancestors… and ate healthy. I ate whole grains and beans and veggies. I kept meat to a portion or two a week and dairy to low-fat and limited amounts. That was how I was taught. I did have a hard time resisting the siren’s call of sweet tastes. Maybe the cells of my body remembered a time when the hard-won taste of honey was the only way to get such sweet on the tongue and it was exceedingly rare.

And ever since I grew to adulthood, I grew a bit heavier every year with most of that weight around my middle, despite being known as a “health nut” with my pot of legume soup for every occasion and a moderately active lifestyle growing a lot of veggies in my garden. So, it was a shock when I registered with a new doctor in a new country and got a diagnosis with it.

BG 190….A1C 6.9…. Numbers I had no reference for. But a disease my eye doctors had taught me to fear above all others: Diabetes.

It’s a danger to anyone’s eyes because of the way high blood sugar destroys nerves and sensitive tissues. But with my eyes as fragile as they have been since I was born, it is a screaming emergency.

“It’s well controlled,” the conventional nutritionist tells me. “You could eat less sugar or a plant-based diet. But yes, it will get worse, just more slowly. There’s no cure.”

I read their brochures, which advised me to carry jellybeans in my pocket to ward off extreme blood sugar dips and told me to expect blindness, amputations and heart attacks sooner rather than later. I was told I could put off the inevitable by dieting, even though my metabolism would inevitably slow down and require ever more restriction and hunger to maintain even an moderatey elevated weight.

For a few days, I felt truly hopeless.

I’m still considered “young” for this. Most everyone in my diabetes support group is over sixty. I’m only forty-five. I’ve heard that the descendants of people who lived through famine are more likely to get diabetes, even if they eat a healthy diet. Older family members always said I inherited my looks and build from my grandma Janet (of the Irish wing of the family). Maybe that was to blame, I do wonder.

Nightmares kept me tossing and turning two nights running, strange images of dark woods and crashing waves interspersed with jeering faces, hands holding cinnamon rolls and cheesy garlic bread and voices taunting: “Fat!” “Lazy!” “Your fault!” “Glutton!” “You deserve it!” “Everyone will be sure you just didn’t follow your diet and that’s why you’re blind!” “You’ll be totally blind soon enough!” “And you’ll die young!”

I was so tired I could barely think straight and every time I closed my eyes the shame and fear closed in. So, I did what I always do in the worst troubles. I made a big, healthy pot of beans—food to tide over hard times, food to share, hearth food.

Then I forced myself to eat almost nothing else but beans and veggies for the next four days. I got rid of all my crackers, cookies, chocolate, cereal and wholegrain bagels and kept the rice around only for my kids.

I sat at the kitchen table forcing in bites of the bland beans, fighting back tears and feeling ever more exhausted and then oddly dizzy. In fact, I found that every time I had a bowl of beans, I felt dizzy, tired and even a bit sick for several hours.

That was when they told me the beans were spiking my glucose. Beans! It is one thing to have to cut out ice cream and chocolate and bread. But beans?!?

Okay, the doctors didn’t actually tell me to cut out beans. They just nodded sympathetically. This is the disease. You can struggle and make it a little better. But you can’t win. You’ll never win until you’re dead. The dead don’t have to eat.

And every time I sat down at my altar to call to my gods and my ancestors I felt their disappointment, rather than support. I drew Tarot cards and got Death, three times in as many days. I rarely get the Death card, at least before now. Was that supposed to be literal? I felt so tired I thought I might as well just curl up and die.

But Death in the Tarot is almost never about actually dying. It’s about the urgent and unstoppable need for deep and irrevocable change, often a leap into darkness. It was the time of Samhain when Death is a presence and we draw our ancestors near. I tried to listen. I stayed watchful for signs.

Addiction can be broken

I ran across a link to a study… and another study and another. In a large controlled trial a group of obese adults was divided into two groups. One was given a low fat-diet and the other a low-carbohydrate diet. Both lost weight, but the low carbohydrate-dieters lost three times as much. And their blood glucose stabilized.

Not every study is like that. I found several big ones that claimed low-carbohydrate diets aren’t that great or come with health risks. But without fail these studies mysteriously excluded everyone with diabetes from their data and included, as “low-carb dieters,” those who eat massive amounts of fatty junk food as well as meat.

It seems that being “allergic to sugar,” which is what some doctors now call the disease, disqualifies you from being a good candidate for a diet that really does take all the sugar out, even the somewhat disguised sugar in beans and whole grains and carrots. And if you want to prove something is harmful, it is best to ensure a large proportion of those doing it wrong in your study.

My dreams changed. I saw the settlement by the sea, one, then another and another. Back that many generations each of us has thousands of ancestors. My ancestors came from all across northern Europe. I saw them by their fires, cooking and eating, and in the waves of the sea dragging a whale ashore.

I also saw my guide, whom I met two years ago during an intense week of ancestral journeying just before Covid hit. I thought I had a guide who was a fisherman with a spear because my ancestors have been such deluded colonialists in recent centuries that that was just how far one had to go back to find someone of good honor. Now I realize there may well have been another reason I got him.

OK, if that is what must be, I will listen.

I stopped eating sweets, grains, even whole grains, potatoes, beans… the lot. I made curry with coconut, yams, veggies and a little chicken and gave my kids all the rice. I ate a lot of salad and little bits of meat. I had only unsweetened applesauce and a bit of dried fruit. And after a few days that applesauce tasted so sweet I had to check three times that it was really unsweetened.

But my body crashed harder than ever before. For four days, I thought I either had the flu, breakout Covid or uncontrollable diabetes. Once I drank a few swallows of carrot juice and the dizzy, sick feeling I’d had with the beans came roaring back. I didn’t even crave sweets. The thought of sweet foods made me nauseous.

But I remembered how I used to eat a sweet or carbohydrate-heavy snack every time my energy flagged in the afternoons, like other people drink coffee. No wonder I was sick. This was withdrawal. Allergy? Maybe addiction is the better term.

Then, on the fifth day I got up out of bed, and I felt better than I’d felt in years. But I was also hungry all the time. I kept healthy snacks in my pockets and tried to eat small portions. I still chose low-fat options out of habit, even though some of my reading was telling me that wasn’t going to help.

Finally, I found studies showing that the changes I had made were still not enough. Yes, that would keep me hanging on a little longer. It had taken my BG down ten points. I’d lost five pounds in ten days. But it was hard, miserable, hungry and still a losing battle, if a slow one.

By now, I was beginning to see sense in my dreams. My body had rebelled against the sweet and starchy modern foods or had simply been beaten down by them. Looking back, I can see the chronic exhaustion and rising health crises of the past fifteen years in context. I always ate something a bit sweet to boost my energy temporarily, but it was like an addict taking a little hit of a deadly drug to stave off withdrawal.

And now I can’t handle even the smallest doses without consequences.

The internet being what it is today, I soon found out that I am far from the only one, and there are growing numbers of people realizing the incompatibility between our bodies and modern food.

I’m still not sure it is everyone’s body though. When I was in Nepal, living temporarily in small mountain villages, the people there seemed amazingly healthy—though very small and stocky in stature. They ate plates of brown rice and spiced lentils with a tiny dab of boiled greens and the occasional sliver of chicken meat or boiled egg. That was all. And they were powerhouses of energy and strength..

But after ten days of it, I was trembling and bloated. It may be that different genetic legacies call for different approaches to bodily fuel.

Rebirth of the fire

There is a spectrum of regimens out there for those who find themselves “allergic to sugar” like me—everywhere from the carnivore (nothing but meat, eggs and dairy) to keto to paleo and real low-carb diets. Three weeks ago, I started on a keto plan specifically designed to reverse diabetes and protect eyesight.

Keto is short for ketosis, a metabolic switch where the human body gives up relying on sugars (i.e. carbohydrates, all of them end up as sugar in the end) and switches over to burning fat for fuel. It’s such a fundamental biological shift, and yet it is something our bodies have adapted to do over hundreds of thousands of years. And it is likely the state most of my northern ancestors lived with most of the time.

I once scoffed at such “diets,” suspecting that they were merely fads like the fruitarian diet or being gluten-free without any medical reason. I had read and heard a hundred times that the only way to lose weight is to cut calories. “Calories in, calories out.” So, exercise helps some too. And oh yeah, eat low-fat everything, because fat is… well, fat.

But pushed to extremes (and sick enough days to actually lie on my back and do research), it turns out I will try anything to get my energy back. I had already been doing meditations and energy working every day for more than a year to regain the life force and strength I lost sometime in my thirties.

It’s been three weeks now, since I’ve limited net carbohydrates to 22 grams per day. That’s seriously not very much. Today it’s 7 grams from two small super-low-carb peanut butter/cocoa waffles made with almond flower, half a gram from a spoonful of greek yogurt on top, 2 grams from a third of an artichoke, 3.5 grams from a spinach and tomato salad, 5.5 grams from a small piece of sugar-free avocado cheesecake and 3.5 grams from a bowl of chicken broth with moderate amounts of pumpkin and coconut milk in it.

That doesn’t include all the butter, coconut oil, olive oil, hard cheese and hemp hearts I dump on whenever I reasonably can because they don’t have “carbs” in them and they do have the healthy fats my body is supposedly now burning for actual fuel. It also doesn’t mention a large portion of elk sausage my brother shot, dragged, hung, skinned, dismembered, ground, spiced and froze last year. Elk meat doesn’t have any carbs either.

People tend to give me pitying pats and murmurs when there are things like muffins, pumpkin pie and pizza around. But unlike the previous more traditional diet, I don’t feel too hungry, just “ready to eat” by the time meals come around. I often feel quite full, in fact. I don’t have to carry snacks around. I actually really like some of the food I get to eat. (The elk sausage is fantastic, as is the avocado cheesecake and spinach salad. The super-low-carb waffles still need some fine-tuning.)

But best of all, I feel better than I ever dreamed I would again. I’m losing all kinds of minor ailments I used to battle constantly, like digestive trouble, foot fungus, hangnails, canker sores and restless sleep. Most of all, I have energy. I’m only tired when I’ve been run ragged by kids, bureaucracy, cooking, cleaning and hiking, and then fall into bed at night.

By the way, my blood sugar is down in the normal range, after skipping right over the pre-diabetic range and my cholesterol is dipping back into the healthy range as well. I’ve also incidentally lost another ten pounds and look like I did about ten years ago.

The hard part isn’t feeling deprived or having to fight cravings really. I sometimes think about the foods I can’t eat and wonder if I will really never eat a piece of my mom’s delicious raw-honey baklava again… for the rest of my life. Ouch! It’s the finality that hurts, not so much wanting to have some right this minute.

I have to say that the hardest part is all the cooking. There are keto packaged foods out there, but half of them are scams and actually fairly high in carbs or terrible additives. And all of them are ridiculously expensive. The only way I’m eating waffles and cheesecake is that I studied them, scrambled for strange ingredients and mad them like kitchen science experiments, and it’s a whole different kind of cooking, not to mention shopping. Most of the necessary ingredients are either things I’ve never used before or full-fat varieties that are almost impossible to find today.

The food is also often a bit too “weird” for my kids, so I have to cook separate meals in smaller sizes. It’s all new and coupled with the onslaught of school, health care and bureaucratic demands, I’m frazzled… but in a generally good mood for the first time in a long time.

My ancestors and my gods seem to approve. I get Tarot cards for victory and fulfillment on a regular basis with a few of the stern masters of structure and rules, such as the Emperor and the King of Pentacles, thrown in to keep me on the straight and narrow. I can feel the presence of the ancients and with my regained health I can walk in the mountains again.

When you don't believe in an all-powerful, omnicient or all-good god but you still believe in something

Even though I was raised “sort of Pagan” and I only ever attended the services of monotheistic religions a handful of times for reasons of friendship or journalism, it has been hard to rid myself of monotheistic assumptions. They permeate our culture and society.

Even a lot of agnostics like to say “Oh, the universe is moving toward a higher good.” It’s like there still has to be “something” to look to as a higher power and a power for good.

The basic assumptions of the big monotheistic religions are these. God is all powerful, God is omniscient, and God is entirely and only good. And this leads to endless agonizing, confusion and misery among deeply thinking theologians—at least the ones who are internally honest.

My mother raised me in what I’d like to call “the Martin Luther King tradition,” because of his statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” She applied this both to the world at large and to her own life.

Image via Pixabay

There were hard times, really hard times. There were days when she didn’t know how we were going to eat and keep the electricity on that day or the next. She had three young children and local jobs were scarce and unreliable. It was rock bottom.

On one such day, she went down the muddy driveway to the mailbox crying, and sitting in there was a government check for back payments of SSI for her disabled child, which she didn’t know was coming. It provided just enough to scrape by.

That sort of thing happened a lot during the first twenty years of my life. It was possible for me to believe in my mother’s philosophy as long as I lived in our sheltered little valley where generally things did work out in the end, even if the working out was really hard. But when I grew up and travelled around the world, I met a lot of people in situations that did not work out.

I met refugees fleeing violence who were going to starve and whose toddler was already dying of dysentery. I met a 28-year-old mother in a Bangladeshi slum who was so broken in body from breaking bricks for a dollar a day to keep her stick-limbed children barely alive that she looked like a rugged 80-year-old. I met bright, hopeful Romani kids leaving Eastern European orphanages knowing that most of them would be in prison within a year. I met a 16-year-old girl being inducted into the lethal black-market coal mining gangs in the Eastern Ukraine. I met a 10-year-old street kid in the same country who smeared dog feces on herself every day to keep rapists away.

And I met all the kinds of people whose decisions or lifestyles or indifference or hatred kept those horrible things happening. I wrote about injustice and I joined the clamor of voices demanding change. I clung to the hope that Dr. King was right and that what it needed was for people like me to work and shout and scream for compassion and justice.

I spent all my spending money on yellow fruits for kids in the Bangladeshi slum, because a nurse told me that even just a little yellow fruit could keep a malnourished kid from going blind. But there were literally millions of kids in that slum alone and I was one shoe-string journalist living out of a backpack. I desperately wanted to believe in the arc of the universe, because things had worked out reasonably well for me and I wanted to be a journalist and travel around without feeling guilty for not dropping everything and giving everything whenever I saw desperate need and impending tragedy.

It was a philosophy that functioned like a bandaid on spirituality—until twenty years of really hard luck gradually stripped away my dreams, my opportunities, my family life, my rock-solid health, and finally, my home. I’m not saying that spirituality should rest on my experience alone. It’s just that I was brought face to face with the fact that my “arc of the universe” philosophy was a cover for a person with relative privilege navigating a world in which justice and hope is random at best and often just plain rigged.

It made me feel better a times, but it also made me feel deeply uncomfortable. And that same philosophy--and its lone omnipotent god--is cold comfort when chance leaves you crushed and broken in the ditch.

I tried asking a lot of spiritual people who subscribed to some form of the omniscient, all-knowing, for-some-greater-good God / universe idea. How could this God or universal good spirit allow the unimaginable misery and tragedy I had witnessed?

“It takes time.” “Patience.” “The arc is long.” “It takes good people…” They had answers… of sorts.

“But what about the all-powerful part?” I’d always ask. And the conversation generally disintegrated one way or another. That three-part backbone of monotheistic spirituality or agnostic universe-ism, doesn’t hold up. At least one of the three parts has got to give for me to believe in anything like a god or goddess or universe spirit—and not feel like a sham.

For the past ten years, I have been experimenting with really integrating a more polytheistic worldview. At first, I thought I was just trying to be closer to nature and even science in my spirituality. I was practicing what is called “soft polytheism.” That is the idea that ancient gods and goddesses are archetypes and meditating on them or praying to them is psychologically healthy and will help one’s internal integration and mental health.

I found that soft polytheism worked pretty well for me. I enjoyed it and did gain psychological benefits. I developed a solid daily practice. But soft polytheism has a few drawbacks. It essentially side steps the “arc of the universe” issue. It is when you get right down to the nitty gritty actually a lot like atheism. If gods and goddesses are all psychological constructs then nothing is really there. All spiritual practice is just an exercise for mental health and on a deeper level it is… well… bogus.

And shit kept happening in my world—things that demanded something real in the spiritual arena, if I was to keep my sanity or at least keep suicidal thoughts at bay.

So, I leaned into hard polytheism a bit. And then a bit more. Hard polytheism is broadly the idea that gods are real in one sense or another.

It is often defined as “one name one being.” It is fashionable among hardline “hard polytheists” to insist that Odin, the one-eyed Norse god who sacrificed himself to gain ultimate wisdom and the Norse runes, and Woden, the one-eyed Anglo-Saxon god who sacrificed himself to gain ultimate wisdom and the Anglo-Saxon runes, are two completely different real entities, and it is a kind of blasphemy to behave as if they are the same god.

But in truth, hard polytheism broadly doesn’t necessarily mean a strict interpretation. It just means that you are not on the “gods are archetypes in our subconscious” bandwagon and you believe there is some real power or being on some level of something that can be called upon as a god and you are at least open to the idea that there are likely to be more than one of them out there. And it includes everything more strict and specific than that as well.

In this polytheism I have finally found something that, although a bit shaky, holds water for both my spiritual nature and my overly literal brain.

I started six years ago with the goddess Brigid or Brighid. And no, I’m not a hard enough polytheist to insist that the Irish Brighid and the Scottish Bride and the more widely recognized Brigid are all separate goddesses. I don’t have an answer on that. At least, not yet.

I am willing for now to let that be a matter that humans don’t know because we are not gods. I hold my concept of her both whole and separate, in an openness that asks understanding over time rather than demands certainty right now.

I have studied the various faces and names that are at least associated with this goddess, memorized many of her traditional prayers and devoted a daily spiritual practice to walking in her footsteps as healer, poet, craftswoman and social justice defender. I have come to call myself a bearer of Brigid’s flame as many others do today. And in the process I have developed a sense of her influence in the world and in my life.

So, then if I test my polytheist spirituality against the old monotheist paradox of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good god in a very screwed up world, it goes something like this.

Is Brigid all good?

Well, from my perspective I’d say, “Yes.” But mine isn’t the only perspective. Brigid is a healer. She does care more about humans and animals than about the lives of the bacteria that make us sick. On the other hand, I’m not sure that she cares as much about humans as she does about trees. She is good to me and to my animals, not necessarily to bacteria and viruses, even though she acknowledges that they are also alive and needed in the ecosystem of earth. She is good but she does not contain all goodness. Her focus is on creative work and social justice. She is not all that focused on sports competitions, winning battles, making money or pure enlightenment. Could she influence those things? Maybe. She’s a very powerful goddess, but she might well choose not to.

Is Brigid all-powerful?

No. That’s the simple answer. Yes, she’s a goddess and she has a main line on the greatest powers of the universe. But she cannot redo the laws of nature or society. I can feel the benefit of her protection, healing and inspiration in my life. But she does not fix things like the fact that my family is on the other side of the ocean. She does not heal my congenital vision impairment which causes me to be nearly blind. And she is definitely more able to influence things in her areas of expertise than in unrelated areas.

She is known for protecting against house fires and I have had a number of close calls in which Brigid’s image occurred to me in time to catch something smoldering that could well have resulted in a house fire. But clearly she doesn’t stop all house fires and won’t stop even my house from burning if I’m careless.

Is Brigid omniscient?

Not in the general, knowing-everything-all-the-time-everywhere-in-the-world sense, the way children in Christian Sunday school are taught about Jesus. But she certainly has a wider and deeper understanding of the world, time, interrelationships and possibilities than I can fathom. I personally feel very unqualified to guess at the limits of her knowledge. But I do find that calling her attention to a need for healing or protection appears to help. Maybe that’s just Brigid being reciprocal with me, since I devote a lot of time and energy to my service to her. But it is possible that calling her attention is also helpful in an of itself.

Here is an example, which is actually the thing that prompted me to write this post.

I have called on Brigid to protect my family many times. According to lore, she has a particular interest in orphans, fosterlings and adopted children. So, it’s a natural fit beyond the fact that my interests in healing, creative work and hearth keeping mirror hers. Both of my children have faced massive challenges over the past several years and there has been plenty to ask help for, including mental health crises, bullying, the disintegration of the local school under the pressure of Covid and so forth.

After my son started American online school in January, things improved for him. He started learning and slowly improving in emotional areas. But with all organized sports closed he took to learning stunt riding on his BMX bike with a couple of local boys. There were several gangs of bullies specifically on the look out for my son because even though he left the local school, he is still one of the few people of color in our small town. I worried every time he left the house—about the bullies and about the stunt riding.

But what can you do? Parents in so many places know the struggle. I kept him safe as long and as much as I could, but there comes a point when restricting a kid becomes less and less tenable and the more you try to exercise direct control the less real control you actually have. So, I supplemented physical safety measures with petitions to Brigid for his protection and empowerment.

And then last month, the day came that I knew was going to come in some form. My son came home injured. I heard a clatter in the hallway and him weakly calling for me. I ran out to see him collapsed against the wall, still in his biking gear. He had the breath knocked out of him so that he could only breathe in short gasps. He managed to explain that he had raced down a steep hill and gone off of a new extra-high jump and come down wrong and flown over the handlebars.

I checked his arms and legs and head and neck, all the things a parent does. He gripped his left shoulder and winced. I felt it carefully and found it to be the right shape and size. I felt his ribs and found only the bottom most ribs tender. He claimed he hadn’t hit his head or punched the handlebars into his abdomen. The bike had flown up behind him and come down on the back of his head, but he was wearing a special stunt helmet that covers the back of the head. It looked like he had been very, very lucky.

I can’t drive. I believe I would have taken him someplace to get checked out if I could have. But as I watched him over the next hour he improved. I could have called for an ambulance. We have universal health care here. But the last time I had called an ambulance 12 years ago, when my husband thought he might be having a hearth attack at 4:00 in the morning I was yelled at and shamed by the ambulance crew because he was much better by the time they arrived. I was scared and my son wasn’t visibly bleeding or unconscious or broken.

My husband rushed home from a distant worksite and by then my son had taken an ibuprofen and felt significantly better. He mostly didn’t want to sit up because it made his stomach hurt. He said he had bellyflopped on the ground and it made sense that it would hurt. And as we thought it through we realized that if my husband took him to the emergency room, he would have to sit upright in a hard chair for at least three hours waiting to see a doctor. Since he wasn’t bleeding and had no head injury, he would be their last priority. And that would clearly be agony. So, we made the decision not to go.

Thirty-six hours later, his stomach pain was worsening, so we took him to a local pediatrician and then to a small hospital and then to a big hospital. After six hours of dragging him through hallways and around large hospital corridors and waiting rooms on foot, he was found to have a torn spleen. The internal injury to the organ was classified as severe, though it had not fully ruptured, which was the only reason he hadn’t bled out internally by that time. We soon read about the case of a local boy who had fallen on a stick and complained of abdominal pain just like our son had and the parents hadn’t taken him to the emergency room immediately and by the time they did, he had bled too much internally and he died.

My son spent the next three days in the ICU and another ten days in the hospital, during most of which he couldn’t even sit up to eat or use the bathroom. He’ll recuperate over the next several months with strict doctor’s orders to avoid physical strain and any sporting activities.

He was a lot more than lucky. The fact that with the severity of the injury, he didn’t bleed out despite our delay in taking him to a major hospital where the correct diagnosis could be made might be characterized as a miracle. If we had taken him to the small-town emergency room and he had not had profuse internal bleeding yet, it is very possible that the extent of the injury would have been missed with lower level scans and his spleen could have burst later, when we thought we had done due diligence by going in to the small local hospital immediately.

So, this is where I’m at with gods and omnipotence and all that. I can accept that there is some power of help and comfort in the universe. I personally feel that Brigid helped to keep my son alive, despite the fact that there is no power on earth or in the spiritual realm that could have kept him out of dangerous sports activities, since that was all he wanted to do. Something like this was bound to happen eventually. So, it happened. But my son was protected from the worst outcomes.

Because the injury was so painful and the recovery is likely to be long, he may actually take a warning from it. And we will be moving away from this country and the roving gangs of bullies by the time he is out and about again. No god or goddess can change what is most basic about our world. If a kid insists on high-risk sports, injury is going to happened eventually. If a society is deeply ravaged by racism and hate, violence is going to happen. My goddess has an interest in protecting the vulnerable, but not absolute power.

Once I had a solid relationship with on deity for several years, I found my awareness and heart opening up to others in different but also profound ways. Those are stories for another time, but for now the crucial point is that polytheism, a philosophy derided as “primitive” and “backward” for centuries by monotheistic religions is coming back precisely because it offers reasonable spirituality connected both to heart and to the day-to-day world. I’m perfectly content that it isn’t for everyone. There are many gods and it isn’t my place to tell anyone else what to rely on, even if they rely on the dry and heartless god of science or on a god who knows all and controls all in this hard world.

Beginning a path of study, plus a poem

In the past year or two, I have said things like “My spiritual path is somewhere between earth-centered goddess spirituality and Druidry.”

That coyly skirts the fact that once you are doing some Druid things, there really isn’t much difference, except perhaps for one’s own awareness of being part of a heavily frayed string of traditions that have something to do with ancient Druids of the Celtic world. And yet, I didn’t feel like I could come right out and say, “I am Druid.”

I wasn’t really convinced we could know what a Druid was supposed to do or know from long ago, and what I did know told me that Druids were very scholarly. I am always learning and studying, but I don’t have multiple university degrees or anything. Most of my studies have been informal. So, I was reticent.

Now I have begun a training course with the British-based Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), one of the two major international traditions claiming to be carrying on the practices and knowledge of the Druids. This is the first time I have ever entered a formal religious tradition, signed up and put my money—not to mention significant amounts of time and energy—where my mouth is.

To be clear about the reference to “religious tradition,” OBOD is classified as a “religious organization,” but their materials state that they are not devoted to any one religion. Druidry, like Buddhism, can be a practice or a religion or both. As a practice, it is compatible with Pagan beliefs as well as Christianity. Since entering its online communities I have encountered quite a few people who steer away from any devotional wording and clearly see Druidry as a practice only. Still the majority of modern Druids seem to lean toward Pagan spirituality.

Creative Commons image from Flickr.com

Even so, it took a while to get here, mostly because there was no one I knew and trusted personally to point the way. I am not actually against formal traditions or set in my eclectic ways. But I have never lived where there were Pagan gatherings and those few groups I have encountered in person weren’t inspiring or accepting.

Online I found scattered good people, many interesting writers, and a wild plethora of competing viewpoints, most claiming to be a true and reliable ancient tradition. I also encountered a myriad of charlatans and countless hucksters in Pagan spaces. None of this— even the good people and interesting writers—was all that helpful in figuring out where I belonged.

But slowly over many years I sorted and winnowed through the streams of words and ideas and slowly a pattern became clear. Those things which made sense to me, mostly fell in one corner of the Pagan world and above that corner there where several banners “earth-centered spirituality,” “goddess spirituality,” “eclectics,” and “Druidry.”

Of those banners, Druidry was the only one offering a clear way to enter and become part of a community and a tradition. The others were either so open that there was no community to speak of or you had to know the right people. When I took a goddess spirituality class and signed up to a formal course of study some years ago, my instructor stopped communicating with me after a few months, then disappeared, then reappeared but continued silence toward me.

Druidry on the other hand, offered a highly structured and fairly expensive training course. I thought about it, met a few people who were members and found them to be among the more inclusive and level-headed in the Pagan community. I read things about the two main Druid traditions on offer. Then I had to see if I could gather the money, which I eventually did. And two months ago, I took the plunge.

Ironically, now I definitely feel that I cannot say, “I am druid.”

That is because the training course takes at least three years and often much longer to complete. Technically, everyone involved is part of “druidry” and can claim that as their spiritual path, even the newest initiate. But there are three grades and the Druid level is the most advanced. I am officially studying as a bard. A lot of people in the bardic grade call themselves bards before graduating, but many of the new initiates, myself included, are shy about it.

I always played at being a bard, when I was a kid playing fantasy games. I am already a writer, storyteller, poet and songwriter, though not much of a singer or musician. Today bards use artistic expression in everything from basket weaving to cooking though, so I should manage to pass those standards.

I am thoroughly enjoying my course of study and practice, which lifts the gloom of a northern winter amid the extra intense third Covid lockdown.

There are a great many other things that are not so great or hopeful in my life and in the world at the moment. Just about everything else feels like failure and disaster. And it is possible that I am still just playing in a fantasy. And yet, the course is surprisingly hard work, harder than I imagined, and there is a thriving community engaged in ongoing practice and study. There are also many Bards, Ovates and Druids with knowledge and skills that make me feel very much like a novice.

I don’t know if I am deluded. But I know that I have been entirely without hope for myself or humanity in general for months. I have felt like a dandelion that got covered with asphalt. Like dandelions, I don’t give in easily. I struggled and fought for a crack to the light for months. And I don’t know if this channel leads anywhere but delusion, but I know there is room for some growth here. And for me and for dandelions under asphalt, that will have to be enough.

One of the first things to come from my studies is this poem I wrote about my inner sanctuary.

The Grove

“Branches black against dark sky
Needles sharp, stiff bristles, arms surrounding.
Stars cast like corn.
Silver orb in cold dry space.
The trees stand in a rough circle,
Pine, fir, thorn and elder,
Hardy mountain trees, swift and straight.
Planted by wind and squirrel
Snow gleams, fresh sparkling sugary drifts
Graceful lines, silent, slow waves
In and out of moon shadow.
I step inside, snow creaking the audible cold.
An owl calls. Too whoo! Too whoo!
Another answers. Lo loo! We too!
The smell is cold.
Evergreen and snow, sap like stone.
And then my nose catches the warm steam.
Rising from the rocks ahead.
A pool sheltered below
Candles lit in the niches.
And black water, rippled.
Steam rising, ghostly in the moonlight.
I know then that there is magic in this.
A dream, yes, or more than a dream.
I touch the water, the stinging heat.
Flat stones, leading down to the edge.
Water black, opaque and ruffled.
I hang my coat on a branch, shirt and leggings too.
My feet sink into the burning crystals of snow.
Shoes tucked under a pine.
I step to the stones, carefully toward the pool.
Hard bumps rise across my skin,
But I take a moment to gaze at the moon.
Then step into the shocking heat,
Scalding the soles of my feet.
The shivering burn rises over my tired muscles,
Warmth closing over my shoulders, around my face.
A stone ledge makes a seat and I lie back,
The trees whisper,
Standing guard around this place of the elements.
I listen to the west wind, needle song, snow sifting.
Coyotes yip on the northeastern horizon.
Let me understand, my sisters.
Let me know the words in the song of the mountain grove.
The moon is beginning to sink to the west,
Candles puddle in their cubbies.
I must stand bare in the night frost,
To dress and make my way homeward.
The cold makes it hard to return.
And the aching, stark beauty of sky, snow and trees.
Who am I to have this joy known by so few?
The warm embrace from deep within the earth,
Earth fire water.
The breath of trees and the song of the moon.
When finally I come from this place.
I will be restored.”

Resilience - Survive, interconnect, thrive, repeat

Resilience is primal law.

There is something very deep in us that considers survival not just a right, but a duty. We pity people who give up, either in spirit or by suicide. But we also judge them.

Maybe that is why I included resilience in my list of ethical principles. I didn’t mean for any of them to be judgy. But by their very nature, ethical principles are something we strive to live by.

And yet, resilience is often discussed as something a person either has or doesn’t have, and we still judge people who lack it. And to be honest, I think the jury is still out on how much of resilience we have personal control over.

Resilience is partly explained by the comic with the frog being eaten by a bird that reaches out and grabs the bird’s skinny neck in a fist while most of its body is already inside the bird’s bill. In a nutshell, that’s it. A living being has got to struggle to survive and to thrive. It isn’t just the frog that embodies resilience. It’s the bird too. That bird’s got to eat to live.

Creative Commons image by Pacheco of Flickr.com

Resilience is what I put in place of the rules about self-sufficiency and industry that crop up in some other systems. I don’t think self-sufficiency is really possible in an interconnected world. Putting it forward as an ethical goal is like saying one should try to be at the top of the food chain at all times.

Well, yes, that does seem preferable to the alternative.

It is also a warning against sloth, but most people who have touted “self-sufficiency,” “industry” and “individualism” as values were privileged and they got much of what they thought was their own “honest gains” through systems that oppressed and stole from other humans or damaged the natural environment beyond its ability to regenerate in that person’s lifetime.

Concern over self-sufficiency mostly ignores the fact that so much of our ability to provide for ourselves is dependent on the local natural environment and/or the manmade circumstances we’re in.

Sure, I get irritated with laziness, but I have never encountered laziness that wasn’t based on being in a privileged position. I have never actually met a lazy, poor person and I’ve met a lot of poor people.

I have met people sick with a disease we call addiction that looked lazy. I don’t know their fight, thank the gods. But I don’t think that is “laziness.” I’ve met people sick with despair too, but those were generally people still working their asses off.

I have met people who were lazy and complained about not having money, but invariably they lived in wealthy areas and were actually being kept in relative comfort by someone else, often their parents, an inheritance or a privileged job that didn’t require much of them.

I have traveled in some of the most desperately poor parts of the world, like Bangladesh or the back roads of Zimbabwe and Ecuador and I never met a lazy person in those places. I don’t see laziness among poor people in wealthy countries either.

Among people who struggle for the next meal or for next month’s rent, I see resilience. It isn’t self-sufficiency. People in these hard situations are always in a community, supporting one another, getting by and sending what they can to those who need it even more. It certainly isn’t individualism and sometimes health precludes outward “industry.”

This resilience is a tenacious will to survive and thrive, but it isn’t just greed and self-service. There is more too it because resilience also implies a long view and it’s requirements often extend beyond the self..

Resilience has several interlocking components:

1. One prerequisite for resilience is the understanding that failure and struggle are normal and inevitable parts of life. It isn’t that one has to be a morose pessimist in order to be resilient. Resilience walks a delicate balance between optimism and knowing that mostly life is pretty hard.

2. An old adage says, “God only gives us what we can handle,” but that is really only true for those who have been born into relative comfort. It’s a comforting thought but a false friend, which can lead to crippling despair when luck deserts us. Resilience says, “It is our purpose to keep on, even when the way is broken and there is no light anywhere.”

3. Part of resilience is the ability to get up and try again when circumstance throws you in the dirt. We love to say it to others, “Try, try and try again.” It isn’t much fun in practice, as I was reminded when I finished this post and a website glitch deleted it permanently as I was finalizing the formatting. If you’re reading this, I managed to finish it again. It’s not the most popular part of resilience, but it’s there.

4. Another part, often neglected, is the ability to pace one’s self and engage in self-care within overall focus on the goal. When my web software deleted my post, I was very unhappy. I’d spent all of my free time for several days on it and now it was gone. I started rewriting but only got a few paragraphs in when my ten-year-old finished his online schoolwork. Despite the looming deadline, I fulfilled my promise to make gingerbread cookies with him and then sat down to enjoy some with a cup of tea. This too has to be done if resilience is to be maintained.

5. Another aspect that sets resilience apart from sheer desperation is that strong community, reciprocity with the earth and a healthy local environment all enhance resilience. It is possible to be somewhat resilient even in the worst place and circumstances, but insofar as resilience is the ability to survive and to thrive even amid adversity, external conditions matter, particularly the most local conditions. Getting to a better location or improving the situation where you find yourself build your capacity for resilience.

6. But there’s a catch, if those good local conditions are manufactured through exploitation and exclusion of others, resilience is weakened instead of strengthened. The wealthy might pay for their place in a gated community or a climate-change-proof bubble, but all they gain is a tenuous advantage. The structures that keep desperation at bay through exploitation will eventually crumble, leaving those who opted out of developing strong community and a healthy environment even more vulnerable.

7. Finally, resilience isn’t just about the survival of the individual. It is about building resilience for life through the generations. A resilient plant, when threatened by extreme heat or drought will put every bit of its remaining strength into throwing out seeds. This is part of it, the urge to help one’s own kind continue. But the same urge drives us to do creative work or aid other species. Life promotes life. Resilience.

These interconnected aspects of resilience give a better understanding of why resilience is an ethical principle, rather than mere survival. Resilience calls us to survive and thrive over the long haul, not just as individuals but as a community and an ecosystem in a way that ultimately benefits the individual as well.

I’ve finished the post for the second time and I’ll take better care in saving a backup. It has been a hard year and the last couple of days have epitomized that with close friends and family angry and not speaking over online accusations and politically sensitive resentments among those who usually share the same politics. And yet it is Thanksgiving.

A lot of Americans are having a quiet long-distance holiday. It is always possible to think of something to say we are thankful for, even if we don’t feel very thankful, even if the day is bitter. I am reminded that all of these values are interconnected. Gratitude is another and it too is part of resilience. We know things are hard and that makes gratitude even for small things blossom.

They say it will be a hard winter because of the virus and the economy and isolation and climate change and political division. Our hope is for resilience. Breath. Humility. Gratitude. Interconnection. Hope.

Blessing of the Ballots

A sigil and a candle spell you can participate in to speed and assist ballots bringing justice and hope back to the United States of America

Are you anxious or full of fire about the election? Do you want to do more than just vote? Volunteering to help get voters the information they need to get through red tape and rampant voter suppression schemes is a good avenue for that energy. Here is another.

If you read my blog, I doubt you’re vehemently against metaphysical action. If you are among those who firmly believe in the power of real-world, non-fantasy magic, then you’re reading the right post. If you are—like me for most of my life—still skeptical but desperate enough to try, you’re also reading the right post.

The past ten years of my life have been outwardly drab and unsuccessful. But these years have been a cauldron for me to brew and stew in. I have spent that time studying the arts of the disenfranchised, the powers of the powerless, what has been called “witchcraft.”

There are some of us who when trapped and downtrodden beyond all hope in the physical world, go beyond the physical in our efforts, rather than languish in despair. That’s what I did and I have finally come to a point where I am confident enough to share some of what I’ve learned.

I have learned that one person can influence their own fate or the fate of someone close to them through force of will and the powers willing to help. To influence something vast, something that affects hundreds of millions of people, a whole country and in truth the whole world—that is a harder proposition. But there are ways.

You have to choose a leverage point, something small that is possible to lift with the power you have. And this working to bless the ballots of change and justice is one such.

I don’t regularly publish my. workings—first because to speak or write about them before they are finished can, in some cases, be detrimental, and second because as someone already vulnerable to social exclusion, I fear judgment and attack due to yet one more thing that sets me outside the norm.

In this case, the need is stronger. While Trump supporters might notice and try to counteract this working, my blog has a pretty focused audience and the nature of this working—to support ballots—makes it particularly hard to counteract. It would be like trying to swat a swarm of gnats as they blow past.

And as for my fear… well, there are other workings for that.

This working is one that I could do alone. Even one person doing it can have significant effect, but more workers should also have significant effect. It does not need to be millions though or even thousands of us. Not every person casting a ballot needs to do magic. Those few of us will be enough because of the power of the symbols involved.

The leverage point

With any kind of magic it is important to remember that it still takes our personal energy and effort, including practical steps in the real world. We won't influence the election very much if we don't vote. Just as it feels like a tiny thing to send in one ballot, it also feels like doing magic for a good and just election result is probably just a drop in the bucket.

But it is possible to add an extra boost that will actually matter if we are very specific and ensure that we are pushing on a leverage point that doesn't have too much focused will against it.

Just doing magic to get Biden to beat Trump may not actually be that helpful. There are plenty of people putting their wills to work on both sides of that. It may not be useless to put your will toward it, just as it is far from useless to vote. But using a more strategic leverage point may be a better use of your time and energy.

One such leverage point is simply the ballots themselves and the ability of every citizen to vote. Every objective indicator shows that if everyone who wants to vote is able to vote, Trump will not win. And while a lot of people have their wills focused on trying to get Trump to win and other people have their wills focused on trying to get Biden to win. only a few corporate hacks are actually sitting around focusing their will on not allowing people to vote in the first place.

There were widespread reports of voter suppression and vote tampering by Republicans in the 2000 election. That was the first election where I really became aware of the issue. But most of the concern came after the fact and all such reports were denied by those accused of carrying them out.

This time it’s different. Trump has called for mail-in ballots to be rejected and has openly disrupted the Post Office system in service of that goal. This is because statistics show some 70 to 75 percent of mail-in ballots are Democratic. It’s the best gamble Trump has got.

Trump talks about his opponents using “voting fraud” but never gives any specifics. It’s a classic tactic. If you’re doing something nefarious, accuse others of doing it. At the very least, it muddies the waters and creates chaos. Only very precise investigation will be able to tell what is real and what isn’t and who was actually breaking the law.

But at the same time, Trump and his supporters call for paramilitary poll watchers to intimidate voters, particularly people of color, and to get as many voters struck from the rolls as possible. It’s all about figuring out which demographics—such as people of color, mail-in voters, people in historically liberal locations or citizens living abroad—are likely to vote for his opponent and then throwing every possible barrier to voting against them.

As I wrote about earlier this month, I was hit by this tactic myself. Every year since I turned eighteen and registered to vote, I have received a mail-in ballot automatically, as long as I kept my address up to date. This year, Trump supporters forced through quiet new rules and my ballot didn’t arrive as it always had. I never would have received one at all had a volunteer for Democrats Abroad not called me and tipped me off that I had to specifically request my ballot this time.

Another new regulation means that the postmark on the ballot envelope is of no use. The ballot must arrive in the ballot box by November 3 or the vote does not count. And of course, between Covid and Trump’s actions to disrupt the Post Office, there is a significant chance that many ballots won’t arrive on time.

So this is a good leverage point where positive energy can help volunteers reach the right people, mail processes flow smoothly and circumstances favor voters and their ballots. The negative energy opposing this effort is likely to be lower than if one simply pits one’s will against the wills of Trump supporters in a head-to-head contest of who can raise the most energy, and the results we want will still be the same in the end.

It also helps that you will have all the spiritual powers of justice on your side since all you're asking for is fairness in the democratic system.

Natural allies

National politics are often matters we as ordinary people can do little about. The volunteers help to get out the vote, but at this later stage even they have done all they can. Now we need help from beyond the purely physical, ordinary reality. We need to harness the energies of will and the power of natural justice.

As I’m sure you’re aware, this election is both an issue of human justice against an unjust, bigoted and criminal regime and also a matter of justice and survival for many of the earth’s other inhabitants.

Both the fact that this working calls upon basic fairness—every person who wants to vote having the chance to vote and all votes being counted—helps to call in primal energies. The fact that the Trump regime endangers the climate and many vulnerable populations both human and non-human around the world also means that many natural entities will willingly stand with us.

Here is a list of herbs, essential oils and stones that will be particularly helpful to you in this working. If you can get any of these, it will be that much easier to call on the natural energies of the earth that are eager to support this kind of work. Don’t worry over much if you can’t get exactly these herbs and stones, however. I list more widely available substitutes and even if you have none of them, calling on the powers of herbs and stones found in the world around you will draw this helpful energy.

Herbs

• Rosemary (for clarity of mind and electoral processes, and for protection against thieves and fraud in the election)

• Plantain (for the power to withstand all difficulty and rush against the current regime)

• High John (for strong will power and added luck, and to remove obstacles and protect the vulnerable and disenfranchised)

• Substitutions: You can use just rosemary or oregano or these two kitchen herbs in combination. Like High John and plantain, oregano has a subtle warrior energy for the protection of the vulnerable. I prefer High John in this case largely because it has a history of protecting African Americans and it was named for a slavery resister according to old herb lore.

Essential Oils:

• Bay laurel (to break the power of the unjust and power-hungry)

• Patchouli (for a strong woman on the ticket).

• Rosemary (see above in the herbs section, particularly for protection agains voter suppression, which is a form of theft)

• Substitutions: pine and cedar are also useful in this kind of working for their clarifying, protective and communication enhancing energies..

Stones

• Obsidian (to block and bury negating and opposing forces)

• Amethyst (for written communications such as ballots and mail, clear pathways, truth and justice)

• Jasper (for added protection, strength and energy)

• Substitutions: If you don’t have these specific stones, you can use clear quartz. You can also use any stones collected on the territory of the United States or other areas impacted by the U.S. election, even just pebbles from an empty lot. Stones have their own ways to communicate with one another and will pass on your call for assistance.)

A symbol for many uses

Here is where things get specific to my path. This past year I have begun studying Anglo-Saxon runes, thanks to learning more about my genetic ancestry. From an ancestral perspective, I can call upon Norse and Anglo-Saxon runes as well as the Irish Ogham alphabet as symbols related to my ancestry.

But here’s the thing, this working can be made universal. You are welcome to use my Anglo-Saxon runes, even if you have no relation to them. That is because this is my working, developed through my studies and it is my gift to others.

It is advisable to call on Woden (the Anglo-Saxon name of more widely known Odin) who is the master of the runes and who, according to ancient myth, discovered them through a harrowing sacrifice. You may ask his permission to use these runes for this purpose, even if you have never spoken to him before because the rune sigil has already been made with his blessing.

However, you can do this working with other symbols from other cultures as well. I advise you to include symbols for focus, truth, justice, a nation or tribe, fair results based on merit, patience rewarded, protection and just leadership. If you can combine such symbols from another culture and call upon other gods, ancestors, guides or entities to aid you, the result should be completely compatible with my working and those of others doing the same working.

If you aren’t comfortable using esoteric symbols and calling on gods or spirits, you can also simply write the words “truth,” “justice,” “fairness,” “nation,” “protection,” “ballots,” “votes,” and “good leadership” as well as other relevant words in an artful way to create a symbol for yourself and focus the power of your will.

It’s like baking a cake. The ingredients may be different if you’re vegan or gluten-free or lactose intolerant, but the basic types of ingredients are needed. In this case, those ingredients are the meanings of the symbols and the energetic power of your will and entities willing to lend support to your will.

Here are the Anglo-Saxon runes I have chosen for this particular working:

Runes:

• Tir (pronounced “teer,” for steadfast direction and focus as well as for objective truth and justice)

• Gear (pronounced “yee-ar,” for fairness to all based on their effort and for a long awaited beneficial result)

• Ethel (pronounced “ethel,” for justice and protection of the nation)

Several extra runes appeared without conscious intent in the sigil: Sigel (pronounced “see-yel,” for a good leader and speaker for the nation), Rad (pronounced “rad” for the swift and smooth journey of ballots) and Eolh (pronounced “eh-olkh,” for protection of the poor and vulnerable)

When the instructions ask for you to draw the sigil, you draw each of these runes fully, even though that requires you to trace the same line more than once. As you trace the rune, you speak it’s name and call on it for the particular power we want here, such as, “Tir, I call the rune Tir to bring focused direction, truth and justice in this working.” And so forth with the other runes.

The function of these runes is to create a visible sigil or symbol that can be inscribed onto the candle you will use in this working, onto a piece of paper to be placed under the candle, on a photocopy of your ballot or a picture of a ballot from the internet or on the back side of your ballot envelope in a corner where it does not obstruct anything official.

This sigil can also be drawn in the air as you stand in line to vote or when you see people standing in line to vote on TV or while driving or walking by. The sigil can be put on your kitchen table, on your computer monitor or on top of your TV, where you will see it often until the election result is secured.

The blessing

The way this magic works is that you build energy and strength of will through calling on deities, ancestors, other entities, herbs, stones and symbols, such as runes, and then you release that power in a focused moment while lighting a candle and saying a blessing for the ballots.

I have written this blessing to include the rune sounds of the main three runes of the sigil—T, Y and OY. (Ethel’s sound correspondence is OY. I am not advanced enough in old English linguistics to know why its name is so different from its sound.)

“Total trust, truth this time.
Ye ballots of change speed to the mark.
End the reign of vicious crime.
Bring us to joy out of the dark.
Yay joy! Yay joy! Yay joy!”

Here is the blessing to recite both while inscribing your sigil onto the candle, while lighting the candle and while sprinkling herbs on your ballot or an image of a ballot.

The step-by-step working

If you are experienced and you have been skimming, this is the brief recipe part that you’ll want to stop for. All philosophy, lore and background aside, here’s the working for the Blessing of the Ballots

Other than the herbs, stones, sigil and blessing text listed above, you will also need the following for this working:

Printable symbolic ballot image: Print, mark symbolically and draw your sigil in the space on the right. This does not count as an actual vote.

• A blue or orange candle (White can always be substituted for any color in a pinch)

• A heat-proof candle holder

• A pin or stiff metal wire

• Matches or lighter

• Olive oil or other oil that doesn't irritate your skin

• Small bottle or measuring cup for mixing oils

• Piece of paper and a pen or pencil

• Your ballot, a copy or a picture of a ballot from the internet, such as the one posted here. (Caution: In some states it is illegal to publicly display or copy a pre-marked ballot, which is why this copy is blank. There is no law against printing and marking a photo for your own private use.)

Process:

1. Sit quietly and center yourself in which ever way works for you. envision your roots going down into the earth or ground yourself in some other way.

2. Clearly state that you are going to vote or have voted and that you intend to support everyone's right to vote in this election through this work.

3. Call on your gods, ancestors, guides or other spiritual entities to bless this endeavor and aid you with their energy.

4. Call Woden, master of the runes, and ask for his blessing in using the rune sigil I provided (or call on other deities or entities relevant to your own symbol, if you choose).

5. Pour a teaspoon of olive oil into your bottle or small measuring cup and add one to three drops of each essential oil. As you drop the essential oils into the carrier oil ask the spirit of each herb to lend the particular blessing listed above to the work.

6. Draw the rune sigil onto the piece of paper while speaking the name of each rune: Tir /teer/, Gear /yee-ar/ and Ethel. Envision each rune lighting up in turn as you say their names again and ask for their particular energy listed above. Place the paper on your table or working surface where you are going to put your candle holder.

7. Take up your candle and using the pen or stiff wire inscribe the same runic sigil into the candle wax, while repeating the names and energies of the runes.

8. Dip your fingers into the mixed oil or dab drops of it from the bottle onto your fingers and rub these into the candle swirling in a clockwise direction. Meditate on your intent.

9. Place your candle in its holder on top of the paper with the sigil.

10. Place the stones around it, while calling on the specific energies of each stone as listed above.

11. Read the Blessing of the Ballots text out loud until you can say it from memory.. Then speak it while lighting the candle.

12. Prepare your ballot or copy safely away from the candle. Take a pinch of each dried herb, calling on their specific blessings listed above. Rub them together in your hands and smell the aroma. Then sprinkle them over your ballot or copy, while repeating the blessing of the ballots again. Scatter any extra herbs around the candle holder. Recite the Blessing of the Ballots again.

13. If you are using a copy or a picture from the Internet, draw the runic sigil on it while repeating the Blessing of the Ballots a third time. Also rub some of the mixed oil onto the photocopy or image. Using a copy or image is effective, using the principles of “sympathetic energy.” If you are doing this with your actual mail-in ballot—which lends another level to this working—your best bet is to draw a small version of the sigil on the back of the outside of the envelope where it will not interfere with any official texts. (Don’t mark anything on the inner “secrecy” envelope or the inside of your mail-in ballot that is not exactly according to the instructions. Dust off any herbs before putting the ballot into the envelope and don’t put oils on it.)

14. Put your hands on the ballot or image of a ballot and pour the energy of your need and will and all the power you have gathered around you into it.

15. Place your ballot or copy at a safe distance from your candle and let the candle burn out.

16. Thank all deities, ancestors, other entities, friends, animals, herbs and stones that have helped you in this working. Release the pent up energy in your space, sending it out to assist other ballots all over the country. I find it helpful to ring a bell to signify releasing the energy or to go outside and throw my arms up in the air and feel the energy spread out wide.

17. If you feel jittery or “keyed up” even after releasing the energy, place your hands on the ground and allow any scattered and unfocused energy to dissipate into the earth.

18. Mail your mail-in ballot if that is what you used. Or keep the copy or picture from the Internet under the stones until the election result has been secured.

That’s the whole of it. Pass this along to friends and family who want to put their wills toward a just and hopeful outcome to the election. I did this after I voted, using a copy of my actual ballot. There are benefits to doing it with an actual mail-in ballot that will be sent, but if you have found this only after your ballot was submitted, you can still add your will to this working. Use my photocopy image or another from the internet that you can print.

Keep passing this working around, making the sigil and repeating the Blessing of the Ballots words until election day. There are no done deals or guarantees in this season, but the only major possibility that Trump could win relies on the suppression of these ballots. This work complimenting the work of voter-assistance volunteers has an excellent chance to prevail.

Regardless of the imperfection of any other outcome, the overthrow of a dangerous, bigoted tyrant will serve to protect the nation and further justice. With the free expression of the voices of the many that is already coming to pass.

Blessed be!

How we've done Halloween/Samhain in isolation for years

Cold, frosty air swirling the first snowflakes in at the open door of the woodshed… all the neighborhood kids crowded inside… bobbing for apples with faces stinging from the cold… warming up with hot, fresh-pressed cider… pin the tail on the donkey—finally a game I could beat the older kids at, where my experience not seeing much came in handy!

Among my best childhood memories are those of Halloween.

This particular year, I was dressed as a witch, the green warty kind, with a tattered homemade black dress and a store-bought pointy hat. Pa lifted the broom with me on it and spun around under the bare 40-watt bulb of the shed. Then we piled out into the night, racing up the lonely road, a few kids pulling sleds, a third of a mile to the first place, then keep on uphill in the snow until our legs ached.

We knocked on doors and filled bags with homemade treats and several pieces of candy. Someone had changed an outdoor light to a green bulb and it shown out over the fields and made me shiver with delight. The boys tried to scare me, saying a real witch lived there and she’d take me because I was dressed right this night. Even at that age, I was more interested than really afraid.

There were other years, when we went trick-or-treating in a town. And in someways it was better because there were more houses and thus more candy. But I always remembered that year, tramping the gravel road in the first snowfall. It was special enough to last nearly forty years, bright and crisp as a jewel of memory.

And of course, I wanted these kinds of things for my kids. I wanted them to know safe types of adventure and real wonder. I wanted them to touch the spirit world in a way that fosters respect and a healthy caution. And I wanted them to know that good, old-fashioned fun that makes your cheeks numb with cold and your voice hoarse from laughing.

But it wasn’t in our wyrd, not much at least. There was one year when the kids were very small when we managed to be in the US during Halloween. My daughter was old enough to kind of understand. My son was a toddler, lost and terrified in the darkness, uncomfortable in his costume and not even that interested in the candy.

Image by Arie Farnam

Otherwise, we have spent this season in the Czech Republic. They have a day of devils and candy in early December, something that resembles a Christian remake of old folklore traditions involving mischievous land spirits and a pre-Santa figure. But they don’t really do Halloween.

There is a heavily Christianized tradition of visiting graves during All Souls. We go to my husband’s family plot and clean out the debris of branches, wilted flowers and burnt out candles. I lay offerings and pay my respects. The kids usually run around outside the walls and don’t want to be involved.

There is little of mystery or wonder to attract children to such a celebration. And American traditions of Halloween meet mostly with ridicule and disdain among the locals. Early on I enlisted neighborhood kids to have a party and they were game because, “Hey, candy is candy.”

But negative comments from adults eventually persuaded me to stop. And since then, I’ve had to find ways of making Halloween/Samhain good for my family, both in terms of the fun and the deeper spiritual connection to ancestors and the Otherworld.

Today with Covid still closing down so many countries, I hear people lamenting another lost holiday for their children. So, I thought I’d write something about how I’ve handled this over the years. It might provide some inspiration and help to those who are now suddenly pushed into a situation more like ours.

The fun part

When my kids were very small, I read about the tradition of Grandfather Deer taking children to meet ancestors in their dreams in the book Circle Round. My children grew up putting cookies and a bit of hay or corn tassel outside with the jacko-lanterns for Grandfather Deer and then racing back there at first light to enjoy a few small gifts.

Here is the video we made when my kids were very small that begins with this Samhain tradition.

The part of the tradition involving presents is based on the idea that children are closer to the ancestors, having just come from another world when they were born. And as such, I have insisted that gifts are only for very little children. My kids get enough plastic stuff anyway and the season is supposed to be more focused on gratitude and respect for ancestors.

So as they got older and braver the tradition has migrated outside. We dress up, though often not in traditional costumes—rather in whatever wild things we want to wear—and go out into the woods near our house at night. I creep out before the kids and place candles in jars at various stations along the way. Each station has a few pieces of candy and some sort of message, joke or fun activity.

The activity is moderately labor intensive for adults. I have to prepare and place the stations and then clean them up the next day. But it incorporates the fun, anticipation, dark adventure, cold weather experience, mild fright and sugar rush of old fashioned trick-or-treating. Some years we include one or two close friends who appreciate the tradition but sometimes we also do it alone.

My kids always look forward to these traditions and for them this year isn’t likely to be much different. But it is possible that a lot of other kids will be doing Halloween in a similar way, finding a secluded, dark place to commune with the night and the thrill of touching normally forbidden things.

The kids do love to run through the night hooping at each sight of a flicker of candlelight through the trees to find sweet treasures and enjoy the thrill of nighttime escapades. And this activity can be easily done with just one or two children and a willing adult accomplice. Teenagers can participate as well (either in the set up or the enjoyment of the hunt) and older kids can can experience greater challenges in natural environments. It’s a versatile activity that taps into our primal need for challenge, adventure and a relatively safe perception of touching the forbidden.

The spirit part

It has been a struggle to involve my kids in spirituality due to their special needs, but we have always carved pumpkins for Samhain, and while it may not be the ancient meaning of candles in vegetables, I envision these as a welcome to friendly ancestor spirits and simultaneously a ward against unfriendly or malicious entities.

I set up an ancestor altar where the kids can see pictures of our ancestors and their symbols. This always sparks several conversations about ancestors over the course of the season. This year will be particularly interesting on this count, since my children both did Ancestry.com DNA tests.

Being adopted from uncooperative Eastern European orphanages, their ancestors have been mostly a mystery. But now we have some actual information to go on, information that paints a picture of a long journey across multiple cultures spanning several centuries. This is what history told us about the Romani people, but now we can see it laid out in clear science and that will add more detail to our celebration.

We will likely watch videos from the various cultures our ancestors come from this year. We might make collages using old National Geographics and printouts from websites.

Occasionally, we have managed to get together with one Pagan family that lives a few hours from us, usually not on the actual day of Samhain but at some point during the season. One of our favorite traditions to do together is to make natural candles by pouring hot beeswax into walnut shells with a tiny bit of cotton wick sticking out. Then at night we take these to a nearby pond, light them for our ancestors and float them out on the water. It is a magical sight and while it is more spiritual than sugar-coated, the kids go along with it reasonably well. This year, we may have to do this activity with just our family.

I do miss being able to have an adult Samhain ritual with like-minded people after the kids go to bed. The few years I’ve been able to do it were wonderful. But this year, I’ll almost certainly be doing it solitary. Other than paying respects to all the various ancestors of our family, of the place we live and of my craft, I always do a house cleansing with herb smoke and renew wards with sea salt and rosemary sprigs on the window sills.

I doubt any of this is going to make you like the time of Covid. But both fun and spiritual fulfillment are possible to find even during quarantine or social distancing.

Blessings to you and your ancestors in this season of going within. Let us hope to emerge fully free after the darkness is past.

Patience: Riding the great wheel

If there ever was a time to write about patience, it would be now.

But I haven’t seen a lot of posts on patience during COVID-19. There are a lot of posts on anger and rage. There are posts on grief and how to get through isolation and depression too. There are practical posts and posts that try to foster empathy and solidarity. But not a lot about patience.

Maybe that is because we have no idea if and when this slow-mo crisis will ever end. Whether an effective vaccine ever comes or whether we simply figure out how to live with this new threat to our health, we need patience more than ever—patience with ourselves, patience with those people we do meet, patience with our families and patience with technology.

But I’m not actually writing about patience specifically because of COVID-19, though it is clearly relevant to the times. Patience is the next principle for practical ethics in my backwards take on the code of ethics I presented on this blog a few weeks ago.

While often unmentioned, it is a classic Pagan virtue. Patience is at its most basic about recognizing inevitable cycles, both within us and in the world around us. A farmer who pulls on the shoots will not hasten a good harvest to put it in Wheel-of-the-Year terms.

Last time, I wrote about joy as a principle of ethical living and that might have been confusing to some. But we are used to thinking of patience as a virtue and some may wonder what more there is to say about it.

Image via Pixabay

We should be more patient. We all know that. Yawn.

But before you dismiss patience from consideration, I would ask you to look at some aspects that slip through most interpretations. And to consider the great harm done by insisting that oppressed people need to be more patient. That gets us a bit closer to the ethical principle of patience.

First, we are all pretty familiar with the concept of being patient with children, students, customers, employees or people in the service industry. We are told that we should bite our tongues and stifle our frustration when people don’t live up to our expectations or do what they are supposed to do quickly enough.

Those of us who are very busy and living in hyper capitalist societies have a particularly hard time with this part of it. We are not fond of time wasters, be they human or inanimate. We take yoga and meditation classes to cope, and we still struggle for patience.

If you’ve taken enough self-help classes or have a therapist, you have likely also heard about the concept of being patient with one’s self. It’s the same as patience with others, except patience with yourself is about not churning out hateful, toxic self-talk as soon as you make the slightest mistake. Not everyone suffers from this problem overtly, but those who do likely know what I’m talking about. Here too, patience is widely regarded as a virtue.

But whether we’re talking about patience toward one’s self or toward others, does biting our tongues and suppressing frustration really do any good? Doesn’t it build up tension and resentment that will eventually do its damage anyway, even if less directly? Is patience really primarily about suppression?

It is for a lot of people today, and that’s part of our problem.

What if instead of suppression, we thought of patience as a long-view attitude. That’s what we need with COVID-19 after all. We aren’t telling people developing vaccines and medicines to “be patient” and suppress their feeling of urgency. We are asking them to pace themselves, do the careful double and triple checking and go through the proper science to keep people safe.

A lot of life under COVID feels like suppressing frustration, granted. We have to swallow frustration with our internet providers, our devices, our kids, their teachers, store clerks, our customers, our colleagues and so on. Everyone is on edge. We also have to swallow frustration and stifle twinges of panic at the sensation of partial suffocation in order to put on a mask again and again.

But what if instead of suppression we look at these actions actively? Instead of suppressing frustration we extend empathy to each of those people we are frustrated with. If instead of fighting frustration every time we put on a mask, we consider it an act of strength, steadfastly protecting those in need of protection.

Image via Pixabay

Then discomfort and frustration changes. It is still there but instead of frustration bottled up, it becomes another challenge overcome, another example of inner strength. This is a different kind of patience. It is closer to endurance, but still reminds us to be patient with ourselves as well.

Oppressed people have been told to be patient and to endure too much. Why would I consider patience a primary ethical value then?

If you don’t see patience as a matter of suppressing your feelings, but rather a matter of steadfast persistence and an attitude with a long view, then this question is less troubling.

There are issues and situations that need anger, even rage. There are times when suppression of such rage is wrong. We’ve seen some of those moments this year as well in the United States and elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t need enduring patience at the same time.

Patience doesn’t mean suppressing the rage and grief of people who are yet again traumatized by a system that strips them of their worth and their rights. It means doing what must be done, fighting yet again. It means protesting day in and day out for months if that’s what it takes, like the people of Portland, Oregon have. It means considering the long view in the midst of a crisis and balancing the needs of the moment with strategy.

There are times to exercise patience toward those who don’t comprehend a burning issue the way we do. It is possible to say, “I recognize where you are coming from,” because it is a position we are familiar with. It doesn’t mean I agree, only that I recognize it and I have listened and heard the other. That doesn’t mean I won’t protect myself from someone who refuses to wear a mask or protect the vulnerable from a bigot.

Patience is about recognition of a living being, where they are at right now without assumptions made for their future. Patience doesn’t mean we let ourselves be trodden upon.

The same things apply to patience in our interpersonal relationships and with one’s self. Instead of suppressing frustration, patience here too should be about taking a long view and recognition of where a person is at.

Rather than suppressing my frustration with myself when I couldn’t work for three days due to illness, I have to recognize that I am sick and remember that if I push it, I will remain sick longer. The delay would, in the end, be longer.

Patience may not be the most welcome ethical principle in our tool kit, but it is certainly necessary. It is akin to the self-discipline mentioned in many codes, but it is self-discipline toward a specific purpose—a long view and a capacity to endure.

Patience, my dear ones. Do not despair.

Dancing with the rhythm of the moon

Last night was the full moon. You could see this by stepping outside if it was a clear night where you are. You could find out about it by consulting a lunar calendar. My post unfortunately didn't give you a heads up this time because of a technical glitch, though I usually send emails before the new and full moons.

I started timing my blogs by the moon because that was about as frequent as I could manage a couple of posts, but also because I had set a little internal goal. I wanted to learn to live and work in harmony with the phases of the moon. And the first challenge in that was to be aware of the moon phase at all times.

Being in tune with nature—the seasons, the moon, the rhythms of life—is hard for anyone in our modern society where a lot of workplaces and even homes are pretty cut off from the natural environment. If you have to spend a good part of your life in a closed, climate-controlled space, even the seasons can get to be bewildering.

Creative Commons image by B K of Flickr.com

I live pretty close to the land, growing a lot of my own food, so I feel very in touch with the seasons and the rhythms of the earth under my feet. But I’m mostly blind and I can only very roughly see the moon when it is big in the sky. Yet I felt strongly called to harmonize my rhythm to the moon.

Finally, I can say that I have succeeded. For at least a year now, I have been aware of the moon phases and it has become second nature for me to time cycles of increase and decrease by the waxing and waning of the moon.

The blogs have helped. It is one thing to decide to do something yourself, but even though only a few readers have told me they use my emails to keep track of moon phases, it’s still a commitment I made to others, not just to myself. And that makes it easier to keep.

But I did also make commitments to myself. I consult a moon calendar every morning during my spiritual practice and mark the different phases of the moon with different colored candles. The colors really help me. I have always found it ironic that as a visually impaired person, I have such a visually oriented mind. Not everyone does and for each person the cues that work best are likely to be different. Part of getting to know one’s self is figuring out what works for you both aesthetically and as practical cues.

What I learned from this experience is that it can be done. Even in the midst of a hectic life and amid the modern world, in a place where the sky is overcast a lot of the time, I have come into rhythm with the moon by my own decision. I plant and harvest my garden (mostly) according to moon phases. I plan major cleaning for the dark of the moon, new projects for the new moon and celebrations near the full moon without it being an added stress.

And I like it. It feels right. I am no longer surprised by the slump in physical energy I feel during the waning moon. It is something I can just take into account and the exuberant energy of the waxing moon is also there to be harnessed.

If you’re interested in attuning to the rhythm of the moon that has such a dramatic affect on our hormones and on the bodies of water on earth, it is well worth the effort. For me, it took persistence over a year and a regular routine, not perfect but regular. It took having a daily reminder of the moon phase which I enjoy—the colored candles. And it helped that I had something I shared with others that is also connected to the rhythm of the moon.

If you have a regular gathering of friends, timing it to the full moon would be an excellent way to keep connected. But any event, even if it is only something you do by yourself—a regular, luxurious bath at the dark of the moon, for example, would help. Having different decorations or scents or sounds associated with the different moon phases would also help.

Being aware of and thus able to take full advantage of the different energies of the moon phases is one benefit. Most people have greater physical energy during the waxing of the moon. Many people feel more upbeat during the full moon, although it notoriously causes some people to go into crisis, as any good street cop or ER nurse knows.

The waning moon may seem to sap physical energy, but it is often a good time for studying or other pursuits that require being quiet and sitting still, which might be hard at more hectic times. The dark of the moon is particularly good for introspection and getting rid of unwanted influences.

Giving up an unwanted habit will be just that much easier when the moon is at the end of its cycle. Starting something new will be a tad easier when the moon is new.

So, at this full moon, celebrate a little if you can. Let yourself be full of whatever goodness there is in your life.

Reading Tarot: Mastering the meanings of the cards

Some traditionalists claim you should learn all the meanings of the cards by heart before you ever do a Tarot reading.

But if you’ve been reading my Tarot series, you’ll know that I call Tarot a language. Requiring that a reader know all the meanings before they start would be like insisting that no one should ever speak a language until they know it perfectly. Neither is realistic.

It does seem reasonable to say that you probably shouldn’t be charging for readings until you have mastered all of the cards, but I personally wouldn’t have a problem with a paid reader who consulted a stack of well-written books to clarify a specific point on a particular card.

I wouldn’t want to pay a translator who didn’t know the language at all, but I have nothing against a skilled translator double-checking with a dictionary.

And as for the learner who is doing readings for themselves and their friends and family, I don’t really know any other functional way to learn the cards (or another language, for that matter). One could in theory, simply study the definitions like the multiplication tables and attempt to learn the basics by heart. But it is unlikely that real understanding would accompany this.

Gaian Tarot - photo by Arie Farnam

The fact is that these are archetypal aspects of life, personality types and key concepts. They are a lot more complex than the multiplication tables.

The best way I know of to master the meanings of the Tarot is to read and study enough that you have a general understanding of the types of cards, the numbers and the suits. Then do small readings for yourself with a book until time and experience give you a more intuitive and genuine feel for what those meanings reflect in real life.

For beginners the Major Arcana cards are a challenge. For many years, the concepts all seemed equally huge and vast to me until I discovered the technique of reading them like the Hero’s Journey, in which the Fool is a person traversing a major life struggle and each of the following cards represents issues and challenges that the Fool has to overcome along the way. Then many things fell into place.

However, I am not sure if clarity came at that point precisely because I had found the magic key or because I had already spent a few years dabbling and had enough experience to make the connection. I suspect that it is mostly the latter.

Tarot is a sophisticated art and it takes at least ten years to master. I would never suggest anyone become a professional Tarot reader with less than ten years experience, and ten years would have to mean ten years of actual practice. Formal training isn’t necessary with all the excellent study materials available, though for some it may shorten the period of trial and error.

A program of study

I once found an online Tarot course that offered scholarships for low-income people and I joined it. But the teacher stopped communicating halfway through, so I didn’t get any certification from it, though I learned a lot.

It is difficult to get good Tarot training and it is very rarely affordable for most people. There is no shame in self-study, small group study or apprenticeship with whichever reader is at hand, but the Tarot is complex and requires serious study, if you want to see serious results.

Here is a course of study that you can undertake yourself and which will give you a basic mastery of the cards and their relationships.

You will need:

• A full Tarot deck with no missing cards, preferably a deck that has illustrations on all the cards, including the Minor Arcana pips.

• At least three serious Tarot books, at least one of which uses classic Rider-Waite definitions. (Serious books = not gimmick books such as The Tarot According to Bart Simpson, humor-focused books, little pamphlets that come with decks in lieu of a book or books providing less than a page per card of interpretation. Psst… I just made that up about the Bart Simpson Tarot and then decided I’d better Google it to be safe. Someone has made Simpsons Tarot cards. They are clever and entertaining, but they aren’t on Amazon. There are uses for these things, just not while actually trying to learn the Tarot.)

• A notebook or notepad app to record your notes

Exploring your cards:

• If your deck is new, it should be organized into Minor Arcana, court cards and Major Arcana. If it is not new, organize it yourself, so that you have the Major Arcana numbers 0 to 21, the court cards organized by suit and the Minor Arcana organized by suit from Ace to ten.

• Start a page in your notebook with a title like “Exploring the cards.” Write down your impressions as you continue.

• Look at the four suits. They may or may not be called Wands, Swords, Pentacles and Cups but they are likely to correspond in some way to the four classic elements of fire, air, earth and water. See if you can identify by the color scheme and aesthetic of the cards which suit corresponds to which element. (Note that there is disagreement about the answer to this question even among Tarot masters and your answer may change as you come across other decks.)

• Take a single suit in your hands from ace to ten. Notice how the colors and images change as the numbers get higher.

• Take up the court cards and look at how their colors and personalities match their suit.

• Without looking at the meanings, choose a court card which best represents you at this stage of your life, based on the picture. Then read the meaning in one or more of your books and record your impressions. How well does the card reflect your personality and struggles?

• Pick up the Major Arcana cards in order and fan them out. Notice the progression of colors from beginning to end.

• Hold your hands over the fanned-out Major Arcana cards and move slowly from zero to twenty-one. You may want to close your eyes. Do you sense intensity or tension along the way? Is there a section or a card that draws your attention?

• Add the digits of your birthdate together like this. If your birthday is Jan 21, 1994,, you add 1 + 2 + 1 + 1 + 9 + 9 + 4 = 27 And then if your result is higher than 21, you add again. In our example, 2 + 7 = 9. Look at the Major Arcana card which matches your birthdate sum. Does it relate in any way to the part of the cards where you felt intensity? Read about your birth-date card. I find that this card has an uncanny correspondence to a person’s overall life lesson or struggle. I cannot explain why this should be, but I have never known someone well for whom this was not true.

Card of the Day

• After you have completed the initial exploration of the cards, shuffle your deck well. Focus your mind on the day ahead of you or behind you, depending on if you are drawing in the morning or in the evening. Draw a single card, using either the cut-the-deck method or the fanning method. See this post for detailed instructions on shuffling and drawing.

• This single card is your “card of the day.” Read the description and meaning of your card in one or more of your books and consider how this card relates to your current attitude and situation. The card may address a single event throughout the day which has greater significance than you might initially think. Or it may address the overall atmosphere of the day or give advice on how you should conduct yourself.

• Write your impressions of the card in your notebook with the date.

• Each day thereafter draw a new card of the day, read about it and record your impressions.

• Look back at the cards drawn over the last few days. Do you notice anything interesting? Do you understand how they relate to your current situation? Do you find that you keep drawing the same few cards, despite thorough shuffling? Don’t worry. Shuffle well, but this will happen a lot more than pure chance would imply. It is not a sign that you are doing something wrong. It is a common occurrence and generally indicates a pressing issue that extends over more than one day. I have recently received the same Major Arcana card twelve times over the past forty days. And yes, I got the message.

Understanding different interpretations and approaches

• Read through the introductory information in each of your three chosen Tarot books. Notice that this information usually gives an overview of the philosophy and atmosphere of the Tarot system favored by the author. It isn’t hugely important which system you choose, but it is essential that you try out more than one or two before focusing in on one, if only so that you can understand what your method is not.

• Read through the information at the beginning of the section on the Minor Arcana cards. In many books this will come after the Major Arcana and court cards. However, the concepts in the Minor Arcana are by their very nature simpler, more mundane and more familiar to most people. It is helpful to begin your studies with these. Read what each of your books has to say about the Ace through ten cards, what each book says about the different suits and what it says about the numbers on the cards.

• Many Tarot systems employ numerology or astrology to assist in understanding the Ace through ten cards. These are added tools and if you find them helpful, you may wish to ultimately choose a Tarot system which employs them. Even if you are not smitten with the numbers, it is worth noting the similarities and differences between cards of the same number in different suits. Just as each suit corresponds to an element and a personality type, each number has a kind of theme that is seen through the filter of each particular suit. Aces are about beginnings and the seeds of things. Twos are about equilibrium, even if sometimes uneasy balance. Threes are about passion, the tone of which depends on the suit. And so forth… It is worth understanding the diversity of Tarot on this subject.

• Now turn your attention to the court cards. These belong to the same suits and many books will include a section on the court cards that explains what the four different levels of court cards are. (A very few Tarot systems use only three court levels and are still considered Tarot, rather than Oracle Cards, though this changes the ultimate number of cards in the deck.) Court cards are seen as personality types in almost every Tarot system. They have other meanings as well but their most basic meanings relate to personality types. Some systems insist on a gendered approach to the court cards that dates back centuries to a time when gender was a major dividing line in European society. Others take a different approach. It is interesting to note that classic Tarot decks have sixteen court cards and the Myers-Briggs personality test has sixteen personality types. Consider the approaches taken by your three chosen books.

• Now turn your attention to the section on the Major Arcana. These twenty-two cards represent enormous, universal human concepts. Many books treat them as archetypes. The original thinking behind the Major Arcana was very hierarchical. Each card was considered to be stronger or superior to the one before it. Each concept trumped the one before it, and the cards are still often called trump or triumph cards as a result, a tradition that far predates anything to do with current politics. Other Tarot systems are more cyclical in approach, seeing the progression of the Major Arcana as a cycle of change within the individual and in society at large. Similar to this, some systems relate the Major Arcana to the psychological concepts of the Hero’s Journey and use ancient myths and classic human stories to explain them. Read through your three books and take a look at how each one treats these cards.

• Be patient with yourself. Fully grasping the Major Arcana is a lifelong pursuit. This is the kind of thing mystics have spent their lives contemplating for thousands of. years. The only reason to worry might be if you feel certain you understand everything there is to know about the Major Arcana. You might then spend some time contemplating the dangers of the Tower.

• Finally read through the sections of your three books giving sample readings and layouts. Consider the differences and similarities between them and take notes.

Do a three-card reading

• I highly recommend that you try a few types of three-card reading before moving on to more complex spreads. Three-card readings are not necessarily simplistic, but they are short. They give you a good chance of being both specific enough and being able to hold the entire reading in your mind at once.

• Think of and write down a question with an open-ended answer (not a yes or no question), the more specific the better. Shuffle the cards well and draw three cards, laying them out in front of you from left to right. The first card represents the situation or you in the situation. The second card represents the action called for. The third card represents the likely outcome from the present perspective. Record your reading in your journal with the date and your impressions.

• Think of and write down another question or a situation that changes over time. Shuffle the cards again thoroughly. Lay three cards out from left to right again. This time the first card represents the past, the second card represents the present and the third card represents the future. Depending on the scope of the question, this may be a long time span in terms of years or even generations. Or more commonly it may relate to only a span of a few weeks. Either way, if the past appears to date only a few weeks back, it is likely that the future will only look a few weeks ahead. Record your impressions again.

Do a Yes/No reading

• This is another three-card reading but it is a bit more complex and often requires repeated questions. Think of and record a question that should have a yes or no answer. Shuffle the cards well, making sure in this case that some cards can and will be turned upside down, and draw three cards, laying them out from left to right. In the most basic interpretation, three upright cards means yes. Three reversed cards means no. Two upright cards means mostly or probably yes. Two reversed cards means mostly or probably no. Those are the only possibilities. The cards themselves give context and explanation to the answer. This reading is often uncomfortable and brutally honest.

• Record the reading and your impressions in your notebook, and consider whether or not the reading actually fully answered. your question. A yes or no reading often only leaves you with more questions.

• If you have further questions closely related to this question, leave the three cards where they are and reshuffle the rest. Record your follow-up question and then lay out another three cards below the first. You can continue this with further follow-up questions for as long as you need to.

Learn the cards as a language

• By this time you have hopefully become familiar with the Tarot and have at least a vague idea about the meanings of many cards without having to look at your books for each one. Some people will find that they can read the cards without books fairly quickly by using the images and their own intuition. But there is no superior or inferior way, as long as the results speak for themselves. If you want to know the meanings of the cards by heart and decode the language of the Tarot, it is time to treat it like a language, just like French or Mandarin, which you might sit down and learn.

• This will take time. If you have a spiritual or study time every day, take a card every day to study. It can be very helpful to reorganize your cards into suits and numbers to do this. Pick a suit and start with the Ace. Read the description, put yourself into the card and the concept. Write down your impressions based on your chosen book or books and any previous experiences in readings.

• Then the next day, move on to the two of the same suit. And so on until you pass through all of the Minor Arcana, the court cards and the Major Arcana starting with the Fool. This would take you 78 days of study, if you could do it every day without fail. That would be a tall order for many. Another way is to commit to tackling three cards a week or even just one. This isn’t a race but consistency and persistence is key when learning a language.

• As you study the cards make special note of the keywords that make most sense to you. The card’s concept is more than just the simple keywords, of course, but these keywords can help you a great deal in recalling all that you have learned and they can at times be used just like words in a sentence.

• To get to know the cards better, you can use the keywords to make sentences with the cards. The sentence “Childhood friends celebrate a the birth of a baby,” can be expressed as the Six of Cups, the Three of Wands and the Ace of Cups in that order. Try writing messages using the cards like hieroglyphs. Note that this does not limit you to 78 words. The Six of Cups represents “childhood friends” as well as “nostalgia” and in some cases “memory” or the verb “to remember.” That’s just one example and each card has a set of interrelated meanings.

• You can use this technique in a three-card reading as well. Read three cards, not as separate cards but rather as words in a sentence. This is a fairly advanced technique but you can experiment with it until it gets easier.

Practice

• Reading Tarot—using it for introspection, communication and decision making—is a skill. It may not be “a skill like any other.” There is an element of intuition and understanding beyond the purely intellectual. Up until now this study program has primarily relied on mental skills, but that is far from all there is to learning Tarot. Practice with openness and intuition is just as important, if not more so.

• Just as drawing a card of the day and studying the cards in order takes time, practicing Tarot takes time and patience. However, this is real Tarot reading as well. There is no set, defined point at which you transition from practice reading to “real” reading. Once you do a reading it is real. It is simply worth recognizing early on that your first readings may be unpredictable.

• Do a Path Practice Attitude reading. This is a very illuminating type of reading, it is also particularly helpful in learning the cards. Divide your deck up into three categories 1. Major Arcana and the Aces, 2. all non-court Minor Arcana cards and 3. the court cards. Record a question involving what your best course of action is in any given situation or problem. Shuffle each stack thoroughly and draw a card from each. The card from the first stack is your path, the major life lesson this situation or problem involves. The card from the second stack is the best action you can take to solve a problem or bring about the best in the situation. The card from the third stack represents the attitude you should attempt to emulate. This reading gives excellent advice and is a helpful aid to learning all of the cards if it is repeated many times.

• Do complex readings for. yourself. Use your books or the internet to find readings with multiple card placements. I will eventually post about some of my favorite spreads, but for now it is plenty to simply experiment with the layouts listed in the Tarot book you have chosen. Make sure you do several more complex readings for yourself before moving on to reading for your family and friends. This is simply good practice. If you were painting nails, you’d practice on yourself first.

• Keep notes and do readings over the course of several months. You can certainly do small readings every day, though complex readings may be best reserved for a once-per-week or once-per-month event. in the beginning it is good to do something with the Tarot at least every few weeks. Otherwise it is difficult for you to internalize the language of the Tarot both intellectually and intuitively.

• Do at least three readings for others. It is definitely a good idea to read for other people, even if you don’t plan on making a career of it. It is often far easier to see the messages of the Tarot from a more objective position. It is common for readers to get bogged down and confused in their own readings but find reading for others refreshingly straightforward. The different perspective on card meanings helps a lot.

This course of study is about becoming familiar enough with the meanings of the cards that you can do readings without a book, if you choose. But it is certainly not everything there is to learn about the Tarot. You will have to study further to learn about the history of the Tarot, the deep symbology of the Tarot, the philosophical basis and how it is changing with modern decks, deep numerology and astrology in Tarot and a great many other worthy topics.

Still, if you can stick to a course of study like this and actually do the work, you will learn the Tarot and be able to read and. understand the cards.

While I can’t guarantee that this course of study will change you into a powerful psychic reader, it gives you a chance to begin to open up your intuitive faculties. We can’t control intuition through study. Techniques to increate your intuitive strength include time spent alone in nature, time with animals and small children, art and meditation.

There are many uses for the Tarot. Even if all you do is use the cards in a logical, analytical manner, they will aid you in a great many ways. And you are likely to find that the process of using Tarot is another method to strengthen your intuition.

Joy as a principle of ethical living

I’ll start backward. That seems somehow fitting. I’ll start from the bottom up.

When I wrote my thirteen practical principles for living well, I thought about a lot of things. Thirty years of thought, testing and reevaluation went into that. But in terms of which principle I put first, I wrote them in the order they occurred to me. I didn’t think of one as more important or primary than another.

I find it interesting then that they have a clear order as listed and I have no desire to change it. It isn’t a hierarchy though. I don’t see any of these principles as “number one” and none is dispensable. It’s more about the parts of life they address.

Image via Pixabay

The first three principles (balance, reciprocity and integrity) address our relationship to the earth and the cosmos, to life itself and to our spirituality. They are the biggest concepts, the ones that came to mind first because after all the years of pondering they were the hardest to nail down.

The second three (empathy, nurture and solidarity) are mostly about our relationship and actions toward other living beings, both of our species and of others. It is personal but also general. These too came quickly to my mind and developed from my years of intercultural experience and from the animals and plants I live with.

While I think society could be much improved with the first three spiritual principles, it could well become a ruthless and hard-edged world if based only on things like reciprocity, integrity and balance. Empathy, nurture and solidarity make for the kind of world I would actually like to live in.

The next three (interconnection, justice and openness) are essentially the political ones. This is about our relationship to society as a whole. Certainly any of these principles could be political but taken together these three outline a socio-political creed—one which emphasizes the needs of the whole, a world without coercion and the inevitability of constant change.

Finally, there are three (resilience, patience and joy) which are about a person’s relationship to themself. There is one final principle, of course, to make thirteen. That is mystery, which stands alone because it is the essential reminder not to be too sure, never to become a cult or adopt the arrogance of believing I have it all figured out—even when the occasional good day makes it feel that way.

So, this is why I say that beginning with joy is starting backwards. Except for mystery, which like the Fool in the Tarot doesn’t really have a place in any order, joy came at the end of my list.

Starting on the path

It has been a decade now, since I made one of the most important decisions in my life. It was not the decision to go to college or leave college or get married or have kids or leave my country or buy a home or quit my day job and start my own business.

All those were important decisions. But this one has done more to change the way I live. Ten years ago, I gave up on social approval. I didn’t give up on manners or small talk or trying to reach out to others. I just gave up on any of it actually working to make me socially accepted.

This was after decades of exclusion. As a kid, I was heavily ostracized because of my thick glasses and extreme nearsightedness. As an adult, I was able to pass for about ten years in my twenties until my vision impairment and other physical disabilities became more pronounced and visible. But even then it was a constant struggle to pass.

As a new mother in my mid-thirties I found myself snubbed in mothers’ groups because of my disability, because I was a foreigner and because my child’s skin didn’t match mine. That isn’t to say that I was universally rejected. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it was when I was a kid. I have wonderful, life-long friends who just don’t live where I do. And locally there were a few other women I connected with.

The giving up wasn’t about not trying. It was just about not hanging onto it and not hinging my happiness on social approval. Up until that time, I had truly believed that a person’s happiness could be measured in the quality—if not necessarily the quantity—of their friendships. I had also believed that goodness. honesty, loyalty and a full heart would win through in the end, that I would find those who would value me if I kept faith.

Those sound like such good things to believe. And yet those beliefs made me miserable because my experience for thirty years was that I was a failure at it, no matter what I tried. My friends and I tend to be people on the margins of society. We love one another, but because of being on the margins, we don’t generally get to congregate close together and the people I live among never fully accepted me. And I realized that they never would.

So, I let it go. And I decided to base my goals in life on something else. I decided to pursue joy.

Beware here. When I say I pursue joy and encourage others to pursue it as well. I do not mean the pursuit of hedonistic pleasure, momentary whims or entertainment. These things are not joy and pretty much always lead to eventual misery if they are over.indulged.

Joy is different. Joy is the deep love and gratitude that you feel in a beautiful moment full of life and passion. Joy is the satisfaction you feel when you lose yourself in work that it is purposeful and true to your own gifts, work you enjoy. Joy is often, but not always, in the connection with people you love, friends and family. Joy is also an open connection to other living things and to natural places.

Joy is both fleeting and lasting. It often lasts only a moment when you notice it. But it also does not destroy its own potential. Unlike the enjoyment of pleasure, which can when taken to extremes lead to addiction, destruction and exploitation, joy feels different and it doesn’t destroy.

Both pleasure and joy are sweet. But pleasure is like salted-caramel ice cream—a treat that leaves me feeling heavy but properly pampered. It costs money—a lot where I live—and I love it, but I also know that if it disappeared forever I could still survive.

Joy is like fresh homemade bread with honey. The sweetness fills my senses. It nourishes and I know that it is attainable directly through my connection to the land with work and focus. There is something in it, the real food of the spirit that I know I can’t live without.

I do use hedonistic pleasure. I eat sweets—specifically salted-caramel ice cream—to celebrate or to get through a tough time. I love to lie back and watch a good film or an old, beloved TV show. And in moderation these things are good. They just aren’t joy. They have more to do with another principle we’ll look at another time, that of nurture. Our bodies and souls need some pampering, but that isn’t what joy is about.

Joy often comes at the expense of that pampering. If you’ve ever worked for twenty-hours straight on an artistic endeavor in a fit of joyful passion, you’ll know that joy isn’t self-care and needs to be tempered by it. The same applies to that joy that comes from stunning natural places, often reached through considerable strain and discomfort.

Joy is the positive side of passion. Maybe that’s the best definition.

Essentially, I found that you can have a pretty good life in all of the ways that are supposed to matter—material comfort, respect, family, friends, purpose—and still feel empty without moments of joy or a joyful passion underlying it.

When I decided to give up on social approval the important part of the decision was that I decided to live my life for joy, even if I was not accepted.

I have continued to put energy into social things, but it is a limited amount of energy. When I reach out to people and I am rejected or dismissed out of hand, it stings but I refuse to let it derail my life again. When I try to build local community and my efforts are rebuffed, I don’t let it take my happiness anymore. I have found a great many joyful things that don’t need anyone else’s approval.

After fifteen years of building it bit by bit, there are many things in my home that give me joy. Last year, I finally had the raised bed that I have dreamed about since I was about six years old built. I feel real joy sitting on it in the afternoon sun, studying the herbs from one of the books I don’t have enough time to read very often. I also get great joy from finally finding the key to successfully making sour cherry jam, which my husband always said was his favorite.

I feel joy every morning as I walk up the hill to feed the chickens, not because I love chickens that much. But because they force me to get out and experience the morning air and light earlier than I would otherwise. I feel so fortunate to be one of those people who lives on a hillside with a view of a misty valley and mornings that are sometimes clear and sometimes rainy with a gritty wind.

The hard thing about joy

What gives you joy will inevitably be different than the things that give me joy. My husband often mentions that the things I take such joy from are drudgery to him. But then he hasn’t found his joy. So many people today don’t know what would give them joy or even believe that anything would.

It isn’t easy. I certainly spent enough years being miserable and I probably would have thought “joy” as a principle of ethical and practical living was a trite and simplistic slogan. But I’ve been living it for ten years now, and it has helped. It hasn’t fixed everything, but it has helped.

The other hard part about joy is that it is so often fleeting. Early this summer my ducks made babies in a nest right outside of my window—the one where I both sleep and read in stolen moments. It was lovely to listen to the tiny ducklings with beautifully speckled backs pecking around through my rock garden. I put food and water near the nest every day to make sure the mother duck would not have to go far.

But still they didn’t survive. I am not sure what got the babies, though I suspect a surly neighborhood tomcat that prowls loose. I could easily see the entire incident as negative, but I know the truth. There was joy. There were moments of joy both for me and the ducks. And sometimes that’s just the whole reason we live—those little moments.

A year ago, I was deeply enmeshed in Extinction Rebellion, an organization founded on good ideals and flawed humans. For a time, the local group gave me more purpose, hope and social acceptance than I had known in well over a decade. Not only do I fully believe in the vision of an equitable future and the struggle to mitigate the devastating effects of climate change, there were moments of pure joy when groups of people worked together creatively and harmoniously.

For months I was respected as a healer, a teacher and an effective organizer. And there was definitely joy in that.

But the same old prejudices crept in and eventually those who felt threatened by me and could not accept me as anything but a symbol of the group’s charitable tolerance toward a disabled person in a corner of the room held sway. I lost it all again.

And it would be easy to be bitter. But the joy that the group created and that I knew during that time was real. Sorrow doesn’t negate joy. They switch places over time or even coexist simultaneously.

A friend who also left the group recently wrote and asked me for comments. I will always tell the truth about the prejudices and exclusion that forced me out of the group and ultimately decimated the local group after I was gone, but that truth goes hand in hand with the real joy that existed for a time.

Joy is often fleeting. It is real for all that. It also lasts.

I list joy as a principle of ethics because it is a focus that doesn’t betray. If you can separate joy from pleasure, entertainment and seeking quick comfort, living with joy as a goal that provides just the sort of true compass that we need to stay on our path.

That’s what ethics should be about in the end. I don’t subscribe to a religion of angry gods or an ethical framework of “shoulds.” We strive to live ethically, in the end for ourselves. We teach our children to live ethically for their well-being. Religions that make ethical and moral laws based on punishment or even a reward after death are, in my view, fraudulent methods of control and oppression. Real ethics has as its objective, not control, but happiness and genuine peace of mind.

Seeking a code of ethics for today and tomorrow

I’ve got kids ages nine and eleven. That means they are at that age when concrete thinking gives way to more abstract concepts.

“Do your chores and homework, if you want video games” is still a house rule, but, “Why can’t I hit her, when she whispers insults in my ear every few minutes, so that no grown-ups can hear? And if I can’t hit or tattle, what can I do?” becomes a much bigger issue in which the first-grade response of, “Just ignore her!” no longer entirely serves.

Life has also become very physically and psychologically hard for my family. Even before COVID-19. life was a daily struggle. If you haven’t picked up why from my blogs, it’s a bit much to explain briefly—a combination of physical and neurological disabilities, community isolation due to prejudice and a generalized toxic culture, as well as living on very modest means.

I have lived in extraordinarily diverse environments during my life, from the heights of privilege to mud and stick huts. And I’ve noted that ethical questions are a lot easier when the next meal is assured and human contact is available.

If you have enough to feed your children and you aren’t socially outcast, “Don’t steal” is a pretty clear moral rule. If not, it is far from simple.

The same goes for more complex concepts. If you are socially strong, able-bodied, included and psychologically solid, “Just ignore her!” does make good sense. If you’re chronically excluded or significantly under-privileged, if the insidious insults come in a constant stream and you can’t just leave for whatever reason, it starts to come down to your overall code of ethics.

Image via Pixabay

With my kids these days, I too often find myself yelling—emphasizing every word, “Treat! Others! As! You! Would! Like! To! Be! Treated!”

Those who haven’t been to my house will be smiling knowingly and wagging a finger at me. Ah, but didn’t I just break that rule myself?

Not really. If I was behaving in such a way (and I did to some extent as a child), this is the response I would most like to have. At least it is the best one I know of. Emphasis does help when attention is chronically scattered.

I am glad my parents and community taught me ethical values, despite the struggle.

I would not want a parent who ignored and let the sneakiest, most mean-spirited kid’s actions stand. I would want a parent who said if five times calmly, but then eventually laid down the law with emphasis. I would want that message which is simplistic but as close to complex as a one-sentence moral code gets.

“But it’s Christian. And you’re not a Christian!,” some readers will now be chortling. When you boil your code of ethics down to its most basic form, what you get is a Christian phrase. Isn’t that a sign that you might not be on the right path?

First, we think of this Golden Rule as Christian in our society, but the truth is that some version of it is at the heart of the vast majority of human moral systems, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and so forth. One exception is the core principle of Wicca, the Wiccan Rede: ""An [if] it harm none, do what ye will."

It sounds ancient, but it only dates to the mid 20th century at the earliest. And it tries to wash its hands of ethics with a fairly flippant assertion that a person should be able to do whatever they want, as long as it harms no one else.

My fundamentally animist response is “How do they define a person?” and quick on the heels of that comes “How do they define harm?”

The Rede is the most basic reason I have never actually tried out Wicca, though I dabble around the edges a lot. On the one hand the Rede is too constrictive. If I take the “harm none” statement to mean no living being or spirit may be harmed, all action becomes paralyzed. I can’t walk or eat or do much of anything without harming some being I consider to be alive and possessed of a spirit.

But interpreted more loosely it provides almost no guidance whatsoever. If you restrict the meaning only to people, you are allowed to harm everything else with abandon. If you restrict the “harm” only to intentional harm, you are allowed to be negligent and oblivious to a murderous degree. Any attempt to argue that there is some natural nuance in the Rede is merely personal interpretation and embelishment, not a moral code that can be taught to a constantly testing child.

On the other hand, the “treat others as you would want to be treated” rule provides a much more practical teaching from the perspective of a harried mother. The kid can insist that they’d be fine with that treatment, but generally they know it isn’t true.

There are occasional situations where they might truly believe they would like the treatment, such as when playing loud music that is disturbing someone else. They might believe they would like someone else to play loud music near them. But it is not nearly such a stretch to teach children that it is the respect for the needs of the other person that we mean in the rule, rather than the specifics of the situation.

It isn’t that you put on loud music for others because you would like it. It is the consideration of how you would like others to behave toward you, if you were being disturbed by something they were doing? There is no way out of it as a functional rule.

Therefore, I’m fine with the Golden Rule as a basis for teaching kids how to navigate ethical and moral issues. I don’t call it “the Golden Rule” because that does seem to be a Christian term. But as a most basic backstop, it works.

It is still too general though. It works for close-up human relationships because we understand what the other person is experiencing with our loud music. Even if I like loud music, I can relate it to a time that another person kept turning the lights on and off for fun and that was disturbing to me.

It works less well for global concerns or coexistence with non-human lives. We don’t always know enough to understand how we we are treating others in these situations.

And there are times when we simply cannot treat all others the way we would like to be treated. I would not like to be eaten, but I eat carrots. Moreover, what I do affects future generations in ways that I can’t really compare to myself.

So, while “treat others the way you want to be treated” works reasonably well for my kids. It isn’t actually enough in the long run.

And with the expansion of the one-sentence rule, Christianity fails for me. The Ten Commandments come across like a very incomplete and oddly obsessive section of a law book.

“Don’t murder.” “Don’t steal.” “Don’t tell lies about your neighbors.” Those are fine as far as they go, but they are easily covered under the “treat others the way you want to be treated” rule already.

And much of the rest of them are not something I can get behind. I will have the gods that suit me, thank you. And I am fine with others having other gods. I’m a tad confused about the bit on idols, but either way it seems like a detail, not something for the grand code of ethics.

The same applies to taking the Lord’s name in vain. I would not be very impressed with a god or any other authority who had such a fragile ego that it needs a special rule about something that might disrespect its name.

More than that though, the Ten Commandments leave out most of the things I would consider essential to a moral code. Nowhere in there is there anything about how we should live in a fragile world, how we should treat non-human life or the earth or our children or even how we should behave toward family or toward strangers.

A moral code should give us a grounding for what really matters in life.

One of the prominent moral codes in modern Paganism is the Nine Noble Virtues subscribed to by many Pagans following Northern European traditions. This comes a lot closer to what I am looking for and is something I am very tempted to put on my kitchen wall and teach to my children. More than anything in Christianity or Wicca it provides a moral compass that is more in-depth than the “treat others” rule.

The Nine Noble Virtues are:

1. Courage: That quality that allows a person to take action even when afraid.

2. Truth: That quality which defines a fact that can be established or agreed upon.

3. Honor: Earned respect, good reputation and moral character.

4. Fidelity: Loyalty and honesty to one’s partners, family, organizations, nation and so forth.

5. Discipline: The regulation of one’s momentary impulses in the service of a code of conduct or rules one has decided to abide by.

6. Hospitality: The quality of being kind and generous to guests and strangers, as well as giving required respect to hosts with reciprocity.

7. Self-Reliance: The quality of providing what one needs for life and happiness through one’s own labor.

8. Industriousness: The value of hard, detailed and careful work.

9. Perseverance: The continued actions of work, effort and struggle despite obstacles.

It’s a decent list. It is a bit heavy on the individualism and light on compassion, but depending on the interpretation, it can serve most issues between humans. However, if we don’t explicitly discuss how we must view the earth as our host under the laws of “hospitality” and emphasize the “truth” of ecological needs, it still doesn’t cover the greater part of our ethical responsibilities.

Furthermore, history indicates that the Nine Noble Virtues are a modern Neopagan construct, not an ancient code of ethics. Heathen gods do little to further these virtues in preserved lore. Worse yet, the author of today’s version of the Nine was John Yeowell, a British fascist and white supremacist in the 1970s.

Even if this particular code was perfect in itself, its origins would call its entire moral foundation into question.

Some Native American lists of values and virtues come closer to my ideal, including a lot more about our relationship to other living beings, the earth and future generations. Yet, these are generally so specifically grounded in Native American spiritual tradition that adopting them and publicly subscribing to them might well be called “cultural appropriation.”

The seven principles of Kwanza form an admirable moral code, even if like most European Pagan traditions, it is a modern construction. The principles are:

1. Umoja (oo-MOE-jah) - Unity - Joining together as a family, community and race

2. Kujichagulia (koo-jee-cha-goo-LEE-ah) - Self-determination - Responsibility for one's own future

3. Ujima (oo-JEE-mah) - Collective Work and Responsibility - Building the community together and solving any problems as a group

4. Ujamaa (oo-JAH-mah) - Cooperative Economics - The community building and profiting from its own businesses

5. Nia (nee-AH) - Purpose - The goal of working together to build community and further the African culture

6. Kuumba (koo-OOM-bah) - Creativity - Using new ideas to create a more beautiful and successful community

7. Imani (ee-MAH-nee) - Faith - Honoring African ancestors, traditions and leaders and celebrating past triumphs over adversity (Source)

Still it is too specific for general use and also the particular property of the African American culture that built it through immense struggle and effort. It is not for the whole world.

A code for practical, ethical guidance

I am pretty solid in myself, and for my own purposes, I can pick and choose among the moral codes on offer. I feel personally grounded and even though not every ethical question is simple, I am not paralyzed by difficult questions.

But it is harder with kids or anyone else who asks about my code of ethics, when I can’t point to a ready-made list.

I am now forty-four years old and I’ve been looking for such a code most of my life. It feels arrogant to even consider just crafting my own explicit code of ethics and putting it out there for others to try on for size.

On the other hand, I find that I haven’t been given a lot of choices. We all know what our current moral codes are lacking. It is time someone put out a new set of commandments.

Here is what I have so far. I have been influenced by Native American and Buddhist values and teachings as well as those of many ancient Pagan traditions, but I believe I have not been culturally appropriative here. This list is much more a matter of learning from the past to make an ethical code that can work for today and tomorrow than it is an attempt to call upon the authority of some older tradition.

Here is the list I have come up with:

1. Integrity - I act on my beliefs and behave according to the words I espouse, despite hardship, obstacles, pain or fear. I acknowledge those things which are objectively true and understand how perspective can change things. I am grounded in my inner truth and stand by it when needed.

2. Reciprocity - A balance of give and take is the foundation of life. The purpose of an apple is to be eaten in order to spread appleseed. Our purpose is to give gifts to life—to learn, to express, to create, to do those things only humans can do. Everything that has a spirit is alive. All that we use is a gift from some living being. All gifts and all lives require respect. Mindfulness of life and the gifts of life should inform our actions moment by moment.

3. Gratitude - We cannot help but consume life and the gifts of life to live. Gratitude is part of our reciprocity. Gratitude, especially in times of hardship and scarcity, keeps us on our path. Gratitude is our connection to the earth, the primal mother and original love.

4. Nurture - We are called by our bodies to perpetuate our species. As such, our actions must reflect our best understanding of what will benefit our descendants who will live after we die. It is also our purpose to nurture and defend other species in reciprocity. My own survival and health is necessary to this nurture and I must ensure my own vitality, that I may give nurture.

5. Solidarity - When I undergo hardship, I learn to aid others. I stand with those who share my struggles. In a cold and hungry winter, I may have solidarity with a mouse. I defend those who are vulnerable to exploitation, aggression and disrespect. I am willing to make sacrifices of my comfort, wealth or safety for those who stand together with me.

6. Empathy - I see the needs of others as equal to my own needs in importance. As I attempt to avoid pain and suffering for myself, I also avert the pain and suffering of others. When faced with conflict or choice, I consider all the needs I am aware of to take the best path forward. No one can be aware of all needs. We must listen to one another.

7. Interconnection - I recognize that my survival and the survival of my descendants depends upon every other part of the living world. All that have spirit influence one another. No action is without consequence and most consequences cannot be easily predicted. Yet it is my responsibility to learn and act in accordance with this understanding.

8. Justice -With power and abundance comes responsibility. A leader is one who goes first into danger and gives first to those in need. Leadership is earned by courage and solidarity. Each spirit must make decisions freely. The oppression of one by another is anathema to the natural world. We take the lives of plants and animals to eat with the knowledge that this incurs a debt of reciprocity. We may do violence in defense against unethical violence with the same understanding. There is a price and we will pay it.

9. Openness - While I know my own truth, my mind and heart remain open and curious. New ideas, skills, concepts and perspectives are welcome. While I hold solidarity with my own, the possibility that others may enter my circle remains open. My circle of belonging is ever widening.

10. Resilience - Survival is hard. Pursuing a goal is harder. Hard work, attention and mindfulness are necessary. Failure and suffering are inevitable. Some efforts should not be forcibly continued. However, the law of life is resilience. As long as life remains, the roots take hold and regrow. If the plant cannot live, it throws seeds that the future may be reborn.

11. Patience - Those needs which are important take time—time waiting, time growing and time healing. Patience is needed with those who are lost in anger, hatred, fear or shame. Understanding and enlightenment take time and experience. My growth is my own responsibility, The growth of others is theirs and it is not mine to judge.

12. Joy - The purpose of life is the experience of joy, the pure essence of passion. While joy may not always shine on me, the seed of joy is hidden in every moment. To make beauty in all work is in the service of joy. Joy in the presence and happiness of another is at the heart of love. Joy is our right and our duty on the earth.

13. Mystery - There are many things I do not know and may never know. Seeking deeper understanding and empathy is a never ending path. Some things may never be known fully. The workings of time and the universe are great mysteries to which we are given only partial keys. Curiosity is good as long as it is guided by joy, empathy and balance. Acceptance of mystery is a virtue.

These are my values put into thirteen key words. Thirteen is a nice mystical number. I’m glad it worked out that way. I like this list better than the Nine Noble Virtues or any other similar ethical code I have encountered. It is practical. It covers those things that need to be covered while remaining flexible enough to stand the test of time.

I hope this attempt to set down my code of ethics is helpful to you, my readers. I don’t wish to preach a rigid set of values that I want others to adhere to. It is mostly for my own benefit that I have put it down here. But if I find that it is helpful to readers, I may spend several further posts exploring each of these principles in depth.

What does the Pagan value of hospitality mean in practice?

I know. I know. There is nothing—absolutely nothing, including respect for the earth—that we are allowed to say actually connects modern Pagans together in terms of a value or belief. BUT many European Pagan traditions do explicitly claim “hospitality” as a virtue, requirement or tenant.

Moreover, I have lived in traditional communities all over the world and have never encountered one where hospitality was not a lived value, a primary requirement of ethics and a point of honor.

In remote villages in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Nepal, the Ukraine and Zimbabwe, I was told that their people live by “the law of hospitality” usually in so many words in their local languages.

Some of these communities, the villages where I lived for a time in Ecuador and Nepal, for instance, were proudly indigenous in their spiritual beliefs and they pointed to the law of hospitality as an important marker of that and something they believed distinguished them from people in non-traditional, industrial society. The other places had a thin Christian or Muslim venire with clear signs of pre-Abrahamic traditions showing through.

Creative Commons image by www napavalley com

We may not call these cultures “Pagan” today because that term is generally only applied to cultures that have asked for the label, primarily modern European Pagans who wish to practice either a reclaimed ancestral tradition or an earth-centered path. But even a rudimentary exploration of anthropology will show that these cultures and ancient European Pagan cultures have a lot in common.

In fact, one of the ways Europeans can successfully follow a pre-Christian ancestral path is to observe and learn from indigenous cultures. This doesn’t mean culturally appropriating their technologies, terms and rituals, but rather looking for the context and how indigenous communities relate spirituality to ethics and to daily life. These things don’t tend to change that much between a remote village in Ecuador and a remote village in Nepal, so it is likely that ancient Europeans were also pretty similar in these matters of ethics and practical spirituality.

That’s all to say that I’m going to make the statement here that hospitality is generally a Pagan value, whether the nitpickers like it or not.

Whew! Having established that I am even allowed to discuss hospitality as an ethical requirement, I am interested in what it means in practical terms, from interpersonal interactions to politics.

Stories tell us that among the ancient Scandinavians rules of hospitality were truly observed. A request for hospitality could not be lightly declined and it was considered a spiritual and moral failing if necessity or danger forced one to refuse. It was shameful if one didn’t have food and drink to offer and not offering what one had was unthinkable.

This was also my experience of being a visitor in indigenous communities. I was invariably given more and better food than my hosts, even in situations where they were clearly suffering nutritionally. I was always careful to be quiet and reserved until I learned the requirements for guest behavior, which are so often part of hospitality rules and can vary from place to place. I always brought gifts but rarely offered to directly pay my hosts unless I could be sure this wouldn’t give offense.

In one memorable encounter, I showed up in a small village at the end of a dirt road in Nepal with a letter from my Nepali friend asking his cousin to help me hike to the even more remote village where his wife and children lived. My friend was an immigrant in the West and we had met through a network of immigrants in a country where I was also a foreigner.

We’d been through some intense things together, including an incident when I had to bandage his serious wounds because his immigration status wouldn’t allow him to go to a hospital without ending up in deportation proceedings. We were tied by strong bonds and those bonds then extended to his cousin by the rules of hospitality.

I was dismayed to see a look of shock and even horror cross the face of the cousin when I finally reached him and handed him the letter from my friend. I could tell something was wrong, but he quickly recovered and greeted me with all due respect. At first, I worried that our friendship broke some rule about relationships between women and men in their culture or some such.

But later the cousin pulled me into a private corner and laid out the problem. which put two of his most important spiritual laws in conflict—hospitality and the rules of ritual.

His toddler was sick and this was connected in traditional belief to the fact that the family had neglected rituals to purify and ward their newly constructed house. A local elder and ritual leader had been called in from a distant village to conduct the necessary rituals. The elder was to leave the next day and the rituals could not be put off. Their tradition had a hard and fast rule that anyone who would sleep in the house that night must participate in the ritual.

From the perspective of my friend’s cousin, this presented a terrible dilemma. He had met only a few western foreigners and they were all Christian missionaries who viewed traditional rituals with disgust and disrespect. He felt pretty sure that I would be the same and this had caused him great discomfort because he had to decide whether or not to postpone the ritual or refuse hospitality to me.

Given that the health and safety of his family was at stake, he had finally decided to do the latter.

Thankfully, he addressed the issue with me openly and forthrightly, and so I was able to put his fears to rest and attend a traditional ritual that few foreigners would be privileged to join. It was one of the most intense and mind-opening events of my twenties, but I have written about the ritual itself elsewhere.

One of the most important concepts I gained from that experience wasn’t in the ritual at all though. It was the relationship of hospitality to ethical and spiritual rules in that culture. Clearly hospitality was a high virtue, but not the highest priority to which all others had to give way. My host was clearly distraught by the idea of refusing hospitality but also prepared to do so in order to obey the rules of the ritual leader and protect his family.

I have thought a lot about the laws of hospitality and how they should apply to my own conduct since then.

Eleven years ago, I was on my way an orphanage to meet my three-month-old daughter for the first time and a meth addict accosted me in a parking lot and begged for money. I was carrying the food to make lunches for my husband and me on the road. I could have stopped and handed her some of the food. We could have done with a little less and the law of hospitality tells me that I should have.

But the moment was among the most intense and emotionally fraught of my life and I instinctively recoiled from her face, so ravaged by the poisons of methamphetamines. And I fled. The woman was not threatening me, only begging. She would likely have used any money I gave her for drugs or alcohol rather than for food, so far gone was her addiction. But I had food—that most essential element of hospitality—right in my hands.

It is one of the most potent regrets of my life that I failed to give hospitality in that stressful moment. I have given it at many other times, but it is the time I didn’t that I remember.

Being a harried mother, I have also kept food for my children’s dinner hidden so that I wouldn’t have to make a whole new meal when guests showed up and I served only drinks and snacks. But these were not hungry guests, just people who didn’t have young kids or an understanding of mother’s work and exhaustion. I am not an extreme or perfect follower of the law of hospitality.

Still the law of hospitality extends far beyond this personal level. Countries where hospitality is expressed as a national value take in far more refugees than others. It is a common myth in North America and Western Europe that these wealthy nations take in more refugees than other countries, but it is far from true. Under the current definition, the top ten nations in terms of numbers of refugees accepted all happen to be countries with a majority Muslim population.

A refugee is defined as a person who has been forced to flee their home due to violence or persecution. Under current definitions utter lawlessness and systemic poverty left in the wake of colonial resource stripping doesn’t even count, though the closed attitude of wealthy nations would be even more apparent if it did.

Hospitality is an often cited tenant of Muslim culture and I have seen it in action in Kazakhstan and Bangladesh. As a young traveler without a clue, I showed up unannounced in out of the way places in both countries and was initially greeted with suspicion bordering on hostility.

But as soon as locals determined that I was a lost and nearly penniless kid rather than a threat, I was swept up in the culture of hospitality, treated as an honored guest, given a seat beside the head of household and provided with everything I might need.

It is apparently need that the law of hospitality responds to, not merely the state of being an outsider. The Muslim, refugee-accepting countries are not notoriously welcoming to everyone, just to those in dire straits.

I wonder how our Pagan ancestors might have seen modern politics and how they might view something like a refugee crisis. There is a strong current of isolationism among modern Pagans, even among those who claim to honor the law of hospitality. They tell me that hospitality means we should give food to a person who is right in front of us, that we shouldn’t fight with a guest and other things that are reminiscent of romanticized historical movies.

They say our ancestors never intended it to mean taking in hungry and desperate strangers. But that isn’t actually how the law of hospitality works in places where it is still a living tradition.

Looking at the evidence, I must say that hospitality should be a broad Pagan value. And hospitality means accepting and helping refugees and thus being Pagan should necessitate that we are in favor of policies that help refugees, whether they are fleeing violence, persecution or starvation.

Conversely, it does not mean that we have to be in favor of accepting every immigrant or that we are supposed to play doormat or not defend our homes, tribe or nation from a threat. While indigenous communities I visited seemed to be less suspicious than Muslim communities, this may well have to do with politics more than with the underlying cultures.

Certainly, it is not always easy to determine whether a person is a traveler minding their own business, a desperate refugee or someone bent on exploitation, distraction or even violence. Our Pagan ancestors had the same problem. This did not mean they didn’t consider hospitality to be a requirement of an honorable person. It just meant and still means that we have to use our intuition and consider it to bring dishonor if we guess wrong and refuse hospitality to a friend or to someone in need.

Increase and decrease - the mystery of circles

I read a blog post some months back, which belittled the concepts of deosil (sunwise) and widdershins (the opposite of sunwise) in a Pagan forum because the author argued that they are arbitrary and contingent on one’s perspective.

The principle of doing creative and manifesting work deosil and diminishing or banishing work widdershins is one of the the classic Wiccan things that immediately appealed to me when I first encountered it. I adopted it many years ago and it is now deeply encoded in my practice.

So what did this author mean? Of course, deosil and widdershins are solid concepts, like right and left or up and down, are they not?

And yet… in the mirror, right is left. And in Australia, down is my up.

My brain does this, even when I would rather it didn’t. When it hears an opposing view, instead of comfortably engaging confirmation bias and just dismissing things I don’t want to hear about, my mind starts fiddling with them like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to decode every last scrap of real testable data. The result has been several significant changes in belief during my lifetime, but now I am reasonably confident that most of what I believe is well founded, because my monkey mind doesn’t find as many holes as it used to.

Creative Commons image by Eyenumo of Flickr.com.

But in this case, it did find a hole.

Walk a deosil circle. Then lie down on the floor in the middle of your circle. Now point to where you walked the deosil circle and trace the circle with your finger, while lying on your back on the floor. Raise your finger and keep drawing the circle above you. And suddenly you realize, you are drawing a widdershins circle. How did that happen?

What is deosil to a person casting a circle is widdershins to the earth or to a person lying on the earth in the circle. Just like left and right or up and down, deosil and widdershins are a matter of perspective.

Does that mean that they are meaningless and useless in energetic practice, as some authors claim?

While I have come to agree with those who say deosil and widdershins are a matter of perspective, I still believe they matter.

Do right and left matter? They certainly do if you’re driving on a highway. Try driving on the right side of the road in the UK or on the left in most other countries, and you would quickly learn that matters of perspective can be matters of life and death.

Deosil and widdershins may well matter in much the same way. I cast a circle deosil to work my will to bring financial increase for my family. But that has got to come from somewhere. While this is magic, it is not a parlor trick. I can’t actually produce a rabbit from thin air and if I did, there would be.the equivalent of a rabbit subtracted somewhere else.

The laws of physics dictate that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. Our magic is not above that. When there is increase, there must also be decrease. When I see increase, it will mean decrease from another perspective. Often it is the earth that gives and from the perspective of the earth, my deosil is widdershins.

When I let some unneeded part of my coping mechanisms die, when I shed something negative, I walk widdershins. And as with most dead things, that which I cast off goes back to the earth. To the earth, my widdershins is deosil. What I cast off is fertilizer for new growth.

There is no deosil without widdershins, no widdershins without deosil.

This does not mean that deosil and widdershins do not matter. They matter as much as right and left on the roadway. Examining the argument has ironically lead me to agree with the critics technically, but confirmed the importance of the concept at the core. Going with the sun to bring things to fruition makes good sense.

Hurricanes also appear to believe in this law. In the northern hemisphere, they destroy as they whirl widdershins or counter-clockwise. But this raises one significant point, that was mentioned in passing by critical authors. In the southern hemisphere the sun’s path appears to be the opposite of that in the north. And from a satellite hurricanes in the southern hemisphere appear to turn clockwise.

Does this completely negate the entire concept of deosil and widdershins? As far as I am concerned it does not. But it does mean something very important for those in the southern hemisphere, whether they are there permanently or as temporary visitors. Deosil means “sunrise,” not clockwise. It doesn’t matter which way the clocks developed in the northern hemisphere go.

The sun in the southern hemisphere curves counter-clockwise. Therefore in the south counter-clockwise is deosil. It is not so much that the concept doesn’t hold, but that we actually need to pay attention to which way the sun appears to move across the sky.

Therefore, I will continue to use the concepts of deosil and widdershins, though perhaps in a more mindful way.. And I would love to dance an infinity symbol or figure 8 someday on the equator.

Reciprocity is the law of life We would do well to remember it. The next time you walk deosil to bring some new abundance into your life, think on the widdershins dance that it creates under you. It may be possible to influence where and how the corresponding decrease happens. But decrease must come hand in hand with increase.

The anatomy of a Tarot reading

Tarot Basics 6: How to lay out a reading beyond what the books tell you

Tarot books usually come with a section on common layouts in the back. Sometimes this is no more than a few pages with diagrams showing card positions. If you’re lucky, there is some description of what order to lay the cards out in and how to interpret a card in a given position. But this is often pretty rudimentary and/or vague and fluffy.

I’ve spent thirty years decoding the advice in the back of Tarot books, so I will share some of my hard-won insights here. I hope it may be helpful to you, though I am not certain every part of it is universal for all readers.

So far in my series on Tarot, I have covered the choosing of a Tarot deck and book, setting up your reading space, cleansing your deck, and shuffling. Along the way I’ve touched on a few deeper topics, such as how Tarot technically works. But now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty—actually doing a reading, possibly your first reading but most likely not.

Most readers will have laid out at least a few sample readings before progressing this far. But it may still feel awkward and you may have some unanswered technical questions, such as “Which card position comes first?” or “How should I draw from the deck, slide it straight out or flip from the back?” or “What is cutting the deck and do I have to do it?”

Image by Arie Farnam - This is a Tarot reading involving a decision ab out how to accomplish some urgently necessary travel during the Covid-19 pandemic. The situation card at the mid-point shows the difficulty of the situation. The known factors at the upper right, shows that the travel is needed for healing. The unknown factors at the upper left is a reassuring presence of strong guidance. The three possible choices identified by the question are all relatively positive but the first one is the one I chose because in this case The Tower was in the position of what action I should take on this road, rather than an Outcome card.

The general advice of most Tarot scholars is that, as much as you can, you should follow the advice given in the book that comes with your deck. The deck itself has a particular spirit—a philosophy and aesthetic. It is likely that the creator of the deck had firm opinions about most of your technical questions and good reasons for prescribing specific techniques. But there are plenty of decks that don’t have a detailed book or you might not have the original book.

In either case, it is good to know some general guidelines and choose your own standard practices. Probably the most important rule of thumb on the technical questions is that you simply need to choose a method and stick to it. The cards get used to you, as much as you get used to them. And that means they get used to your technique as well.

Thus, if you usually cut the deck before you draw, cut the deck. Don’t suddenly switch to picking from a fan of cards, just because someone told you to. And visa versa. Tarot is—at its most basic level—a communications technology. Switching up techniques too suddenly can be like switching your radio frequency without telling your friends.

You can make a change if you decide you have really been doing it wrong and a different way resonates with you as correct or you start working with a deck which comes with very clear instructions on technical matters that you want to follow. But it will take some focused attention to make the switch and you shouldn’t be switching back and forth randomly.

Here are some considerations for each step of a reading:

Preparation

This stage is probably the most dependent on your tradition, circumstances and personal taste, but it shouldn’t be neglected. I wrote a post on making a good space for reading Tarot here, which may be helpful.

Consider whether your tradition or the deck you are using calls for using a specific type of surface or a cloth. Many do. Make sure you have a clean, relatively uncluttered surface to lay your reading out on. Consider the size of the reading you want to do.

For simple questions or a daily advice reading, one to three cards should suffice and you may not need much of a surface. I often use the edge of my altar during morning meditation. However, if the reading concerns major life changes or complicated interpersonal issues, you are likely to need at least a sizable part of a cleared table.

Do whatever helps you to calm and focus your mind. Many traditions suggest lighting a candle and/or incense or an herb bundle. I like to do both. Aroma therapy defusers with herbal oils that enhance intuition and psychic energy are also quite nice, unless you are sensitive to scents. If you are in a place where an open flame won’t work, you can achieve similar results by dimming lights and noise, putting on meditative or peaceful music and using specific types of stones and crystals.

Clear quartz is among the best for both focusing and opening psychic communication. Amethyst, smokey quartz and selenite are also good choices. However, don’t let the exact type of stone you have stop you. If you have a rock that helps you feel calm and grounded, it will work. Using stones can be as simple as placing the stone at the far side of your cloth as you would a candle. I find using crystals and stones to be particularly helpful if I end up reading in a cafe or at a conference or library, where there is a lot of distracted energy and candles may not be allowed.

All these preparations are helpful for focusing and attuning your mind and spirit. The stereotype of the New Age psychic who gets upset when someone walks too near her crystals or someone touches her Tarot bag is a bit overdone, though some readers do behave this way and possibly even feel a real need to be so defensive.

The bottom line is that the focus ultimately comes from you. Candles and crystals are aids, personal space and physical connection to a deck of cards are aids. But the better you get with focus, the more you will be able to get by without these aids in a pinch.

I have yet to hone my own focus to the point where I feel confident using a cell phone app to draw Tarot cards in the middle of a noisy conference hall. But I can pull out my cards and do a reading on my knee with a rock from my pocket as a focus. It isn’t the best way and it doesn’t make meticulous preparation unnecessary in the long run, but it can be done.

Selecting a layout

There are thousands of Tarot layouts published in books and on the internet. Some have grand old traditions behind them, which may provide extra animus. But the important thing about a layout is that it provides the information you need at the moment.

I recommend using standard layouts from books for awhile before making up your own because this is a skill, not just an instinctive art form. It will help to learn what works for you and what doesn’t on layouts provided by others. But when you feel confident, don’t be afraid to design your own layout. Just be sure you choose it before you shuffle the cards and write it down, including the order in which the cards should be laid and what each position signifies.

When you look at the layouts in the back of most Tarot books, you will usually see card-shaped rectangles with a number in the middle of each card and a word or phrase below it. The numbers tell you which card to layout first. The words tell you what context to interpret the card with.

One of the most classic short-reading layouts is simply three cards laid out from left to right: 1. Situation, 2. Action called for, and 3. Outcome. This is an excellent initial reading for any situation you are uncertain about.

Still, this is a fairly basic reading and it often simply confirms things we already know. Even the general outcome of a situation is usually pretty predictable and that card will either confirm what you already suspected, at least subconsciously, or it will simply be a prediction you can’t do much about.

There are times when you need a significantly more involved reading. A common layout in Tarot books, which has a long tradition, is the Celtic cross spread. This spread includes cards for the person asking the question, the atmosphere around the issue, the obstacle, the root of the problem, the recent past, the recent future, what can be gained through undergoing this challenge, the querent’s self-concept, hopes versus fears, the physical and emotional environment around the querent, and one to three cards on the outcome.

For some complex questions, particularly those involving both an outward struggle and personal development, this is an excellent layout. However, it’s drawbacks are also in its complexity. It can tend to muddy questions that are too simple for it.

On other questions, the card positions in these readings may not give the information most needed. That is why there are readings relating to specific issues. There are relationship readings, which include card positions for two parties in a relationship. There are layouts suited to business or creative endeavors that show steps over a longer process. And if you search, you can likely find a layout that suits your particular question well.

There are also layouts with specific themes for inner exploration, such as chakra layouts, tree of life lay outs, ancestral layouts and astrological layouts. These are mainly helpful if you have a solid understanding of the field the layout is based on and you are fully focused on the inner work they entail.

If you can’t find a layout exactly suited to what you need in the time you have available, there is nothing wrong with simply writing specific sub-questions down in positions that make sense to you and drawing the cards while focusing on those aspects of your issue. Thus the question, “Should I take this job offer?” may be turned into a layout with the question as the overall heading and card positions called, “How would it affect my family?” “What would the job environment be like?” “What would the first days on the job be like?” “What would it be like long term?” “How will it affect my personal and professional development?” and “How will it work out financially?”

In the end the answer to the overall question depends mainly on how you feel about the answers to all those sub-questions. The answer to the job question may well be “Yes” even though the first couple of days are going to be rough and it won’t be great on finances, if the other aspects are more important to you.

Record your intention or question

This goes along with the previous heading. Marking down your layout on a piece of paper should also mean you write your intention or question down as well. Eventually you will know some layouts well enough not to require writing down the layout and that is fine, but don’t neglect to record your question or intention beforehand.

The human mind has a tricksy habit of trying to bargain whenever it doesn’t like something exactly and it is pretty much guaranteed that if you don’t mark down your question or intention for the reading, it will migrate slightly in your memory to make the reading fit more what your ego wants it to be, whether that is positive or negative habits of thinking.

You can observe this happening simply by writing down your intention or question and then trying to interpret a reading without looking at it and then looking at the question or intention once you have a notion of what you think the reading means. You will often find that the question was slightly different or it had a negative where you thought it had a straightforward question or visa versa.

Be as direct and concise as possible with your question or intention. This is simply good communication practice and will help with clarity in the long run. Note that you don’t have to ask a question. You can come to the Tarot with an intention as much as a question, but remember that the Tarot is primarily a communications device between your conscious mind and whatever spiritual or subconscious entities you direct it toward. That is why questions are most common.

A note about Significators

Many layouts will call for something called a Significator. This is an initial card which represents the querent in the reading. I am not sure why this card isn’t simply called “the Querent,” which is why I don’t use the termn. It probably meant something at one time, but it no longer has a coherent meaning in modern English.

In any event, the Significator (or Querent card can either be the first card in the layout, and thus the first card under the cut. Or it can be chosen consciously by the querent before the cards are shuffled. There are several ways to designate your significator card:

1. Just use the Fool card, number 0 of the Higher Arcana.

2. Count up all the digits in your birthday, including the number of the month. For instance March is the third month, so a birthday of March 17, 2001 would be calculated as 3 + 1 + 7 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 1. = 14. As long as the card is less than 22, you can stop. If it is 22 or more, add those digits together as well. Then find the corresponding Higher Arcana Card. Temperance is number 14, so that would be the significator in this example.

3. Go through the court cards and choose a card matching the description of the querent. If you don’t know much about their personality, use their astrological sign to designate the suit. Fire signs will be Wands. Earth signs will be Disks or Pentacles. Air signs will be Swords. Water signs will be Cups. So, if the person in my previous example is a man and he was born in the water sign of Pisces, his significator is the Prince of Cups, because he is young at this writing. If he were older or a father, he might be the King of cups. Gender shouldn’t be strictly followed when assigning court cards. The meanings are more important and a woman may be best interpreted as a King or a Knight, if she fits those attributes. A man may well be a Princess or a Page, if his personality fits the attributes.

4. Let the querent choose from among the court cards using intuition, while looking at the cards face up.

5. Choose a card that seems to typify what you know of the querent’s situation. If the person is overworked it might be the ten of Wands. If the querent is undergoing grief it might be the three of swords. If the question is mostly about the querent’s children and the querent is a woman, it might be The Empress or the Queen of Disks, which symbolize motherhood.

Choosing the Significator at random is also a completely valid option, but many books will direct you to one of the methods above.

Shuffling and cutting

I covered shuffling in more detail in this post. The important points are that you want your cards well mixed but undamaged over the years. It is easiest to achieve this either with gentle hand shuffling in which you don’t bend the cards or swirling the cards around on a flat surface while face down.

It is a good idea to focus on your question or intention while you shuffle.

When your cards are sufficiently mixed, you should stack them and hold them for a moment, focusing your full attention on your question. Cutting the deck is one point in which I have never met a Tarot system that didn’t do it in some form. After shuffling, you place the deck on your reading surface and use your fingers to choose a place in the deck at random to lift the top portion of the cards away.

Some systems do this just once. Often the card on the bottom of the stack you cut away has a special significance. It is called “the cut-away card,” and is supposed to be something that is passing away from the life of the querent or the issue at hand. It isn’t a formal part of the layout but is often recorded along with the reading none-the-less.

Other systems, particularly DruidCraft with a Celtic bent, suggest that you cut the deck twice. First you grasp about two thirds of the deck, then you place that smaller stack to the left of the original deck. Then you grasp about half of the second stack and place it yet further to the left. The number three is very important in Celtic cosmology and mythology, and this creates three stacks. Going to the left implies going inward for introspection. If you are reading for someone else and they sit across from you, you may consider going to the right, so that the movement will be to their left. The same applies to long-distance readings.

In either case you, gather your deck by stacking the cards from right to left again. Whether you divide the cards once or twice, the top card, should be the top of the first cut you made.

Drawing

Most readers and systems I have worked with draw from the top of the shuffled and cut deck and lay out the cards in the order indicated in their layout. However, there are several possible variations. Some readers prefer to spread the shuffled cards into a fan and choose cards face down from the fan.

Furthermore, some readers prefer to shuffle the deck a little between each card drawn—just a quick movement, slipping a few cards back in and out of the deck or cutting the deck again.

From the perspective of Tarot functionality, there shouldn’t be a major difference. I was taught and grew up with the first approach, which is the most common I find in books. So, that is what I use. But I can see advantages to the other two techniques in terms of reducing physical interference in the communication of the cards.

There is also the question of whether you simply slip the card off of the deck and turn it over horizontally or whether you flip the card off of the deck vertically, essentially reversing the card from the way you are holding the deck. As a teenager I did the latter. I thought it looked cool that I flipped the card over. I had a terrible time reading reversed cards though and tended to get the vast majority of my cards reversed (not a statistically likely fifty percent) and eventually I decided that this did not make sense. I’m holding the deck the way that the cards are meant to be, so I now simply turn the card over horizontally. I find readings to be clearer and I no longer have trouble reading reversals.

The important thing here—and it is important—is that you choose a technique and stick to it. This is the basic mechanism by which Tarot communicates and when I have simply experimented with a different technique, I have inevitably ended up with a vague and unclear reading.

How to lay out cards and which to read first

Many readers insist that you should lay out the cards face down at first and then reveal only one at a time in the order of the layout. I was taught to lay them all out face up and then choose where to start based on either a logical beginning point or cards that have intense energy. I often end up reading any Higher Arcana cards first, regardless of what position they fall in. Higher Arcana cards will always have.much broader effect than just the position they are in.

Bottom line: Whether you place the cards initially face down or not is up to you and your tradition. When in doubt start reading the cards in the order you laid them out.

Layouts and positions

Now we have space for a brief rundown on what the common positions in readings are and what they mean beyond the key words:

Significator/Querent: As discussed before, this card indicates the state of being or state of mind of the querent at this moment with respect to the issue involved. If you draw this card with the rest of the layout, consider it to be an indication of where you are now.

Situation: Just as it appears, in readings that use this position, the Situation card indicates the overall situation the querent is in with regard to the question or issue at hand.

Atmosphere: This card tells you about what is going on around the querent. It can be influenced by the querent but often indicates factors beyond the querent’s direct control. As with many other positions, this card may seem confusing if the situation seems pretty negative but you get a very positive card here. Remember that every card has a shadow side. It may also indicate that the situation isn’t as bleak as it looks or that things are about to improve.

When the reverse happens, a mainly negative card appears in a situation that seems fairly positive, it is worth looking at the uses of whatever adversity is indicated. Perhaps the difficulty underlies the situation, even though the result is positive. Just as every card has a shadow, every card has a bright spot.

This is not to say that you should just read into the cards whatever you want to. There are only 78 cards in the deck. If the meaning needed is very specific, it is sometimes necessary for the Tarot to use a secondary meaning of a card to get it across. It is our job to figure out the clues and understand the meaning. The general rule of thumb is that there is a reason for whichever card falls, even if it isn’t immediately obvious.

Crossing card/Obstacle: You will often see a position marked “Crossing Card.” This means the same thing as an obstacle card. Here too, you will sometimes find a positive card in the position of an obstacle. However, this is usually easily understood and logical. If the Obstacle is the Six of Wands (Celebration), it may be that a celebration, party or promotion is interfering with other plans or that it has unforeseen consequences. This is one of my favorite card positions to read, because it is usually very specific and clear.

Root: Some spreads will show a card marked as Root or Roots. This is often conceived of as the “root of the problem.” But it can also mean events in the distant past, childhood or ancestral events that effect the situation or the question now.

Aspiration: This is one of the most difficult positions to read. It is sometimes described as the higher self or higher mind. The best way I have found to interpret it is what soul-level benefit or lesson you can get from this situation or difficulty. All too often, what we want right now and what our long-term development needs may be at odds. This card often gives clues in this area.

Past: Most spreads define this specifically as “recent past.” Depending on the type of question this may be a matter of hours, days or weeks, rarely longer. The past card does not usually tell you about all of your past or the entire development of the situation. There are readings with multiple Past cards and these may do a more thorough job.

Future: The same applies to the future card. It is generally mean to imply the near future in terms of days or a few weeks. It rarely indicates the final outcome, but rather the next step in a situation or process. Most layouts have a card or cards to indicate outcome. It is important to remember that in the philosophical understanding of Tarot, the future card indicates the likely future based on the querent’s current trajectory.

I have never personally met a Tarot system that supported a belief in predetermination. Life is not all written down in a great Tarot book in the sky. We have free will and we can avert disasters, if we can see clearly. Still, the Future card in a reading is often quite difficult to interpret. Because it is still outside our experience, we have fewer clues to rely on.

There are times when the Future Card is utterly clear. A woman struggling with infertility who gets “The Empress” in the Future position may well go out and celebrate… without alcohol. But most Future cards are less clear cut.

Relationship: Many relationship layouts have a Significator card for each person in the relationship or cards for Mind, Heart and Body or other types of comparison cards for each person. But they will generally also have a Relationship card. This card gives the general atmosphere of the relationship, the chemistry or bond between the two, which is not entirely the doing of either one alone.

House/Environment: Many readings will have a position called House or Environment. This is usually either very easy or very hard to read, rarely in the middle. It means the people and physical or emotional environment around the querent. It would be more reasonable to name it the Household than the House, but such is age-old tradition. And it often refers more to a work or social group rather than a household anyway. The type of question should make that clear.

Outcome: Most readings have some form of Outcome card or cards. We often read Tarot in hopes of finding out things we don’t yet know. We want to know how a relationship will turn out or what the prospects are for a new business venture. The Outcome cards do tend to provide an overall, long-term assessment of outcome.

I was troubled and confused for years that the Outcome cards on my readings about adopting my two children were less than joyful. The process was going pretty well. The Near Future cards were all positive too.

Life ended up confirming the difficult Outcome cards though. The long-term Outcome has been very rough, given the neurological problems that my adopted children developed. The fact that you get a warning in an Outcome position doesn’t always spell doom. As with the Future cards, it is possible to change Outcomes but it is often quite difficult. A lot of factors may be pushing things toward a certain outcome and we may not always be able to see which route will lead to a certain Outcome.

When doubts and problems like this creep in, it is often time for a follow up reading with more specific questions about what outcome can be expected if the querent pursues a specific course of action.