Day Nine: Deity and Gender

Okay. OKAY. It is a little bit ridiculous that I have let this blog project languish so much and it is maybe a LOT ridiculous that the post that’s been tripping me up is the one about gender. GOSH.
The plus side of writing and hating it and re-writing and hating that too and letting it sit for months while I observe and engage in tumblr-based outrage about the kyriarchy is that I think I’ve finally got some of my thoughts about gender figured out, and I can therefore articulate how those thoughts intersect with my thoughts about Deity.


So:
I have had a lot of problems with goddesses in the past, or, rather, the idea of THE Goddess. To be honest that was probably the chief theological reason I drifted from Wiccish to Something Else, I just could not get behind the oft-touted great Divine Feminine. (The chief actual reason was that I grew out of being an arrogant smartass with a persecution complex)
Here’s the thing. I LOVE Femme. There are days when nothing will make me feel comfortable except my pink skirt with flower print and lace on the edges, when I want to channel Joan from Mad Men, when I need to wear red lipstick and have my hair fall in waves over one side of my face like a film noir starlet. (also there are days when I feel nothing like that at all and I feel deeply uncomfortable in my body but that is a tangent I’m not gonna go down today.)
But it’s only recently that I came to terms with those feelings, and I never found, in my spiritual wanderings, that the Divine Feminine resonated with those feelings at all. Or maybe that just never resonated with me. And part of the problem is I think when people talk about the Divine Feminine or the Great Goddess they are talking about a female deity whose domain lies in traditionally-constructed ideas of What Being Female Entails. Which is most of the time reproduction. And I just don’t connect with that at all.



All this time I’ve been sort of arguing with myself in increasingly anxious mental circles about whether it’s “wrong” somehow to be a (cis)woman and not feel any connection to a Goddess of Womanhood, whether I should feel guilty for connecting to two deities who are male, whether I should make room for a Divine Mother figure in there even though I never got much of a response, whether this makes me less of a woman, etc.
I could go on for a bit.


Long story short, I think I need to re-frame my views of goddesses, which have been up to this point really quite narrow. Female deities aren’t necessarily ABOUT Being Female. There are a bunch of them, and they are about a bunch of different things. And some of those things are, I think, things that I am also about, and I’m reasonably certain that in the future I might be able to build a spiritual relationship with one (or more) of them.
But right now I probably need to focus with the two dieties who have pesternudged their way into my life, as opposed to tacking on more Others like I’m some sort of deity pokemon collector.


They have domains, things that they’re about, and they happen to be male in...presentation. I say that with a sort of dubious trailing off ellipsis because B is not anthopomorphic to me most of the time anyway, and I get the sense that Liminal God does not give a shit about gender and finds all my anxious hand-wringing just hilarious.


And this brings up something that has always, ALWAYS bugged me about gender inequity in, say, the arts: the old “if a man paints a flower it’s a flower, if a woman paints a flower it’s a vagina” thing. The way society is structured, men can be about Stuff and women can be about Being Women. It is so, so easy to slip into analysis where a female creator’s work just automatically represents The State Of All Women, and LO AND BEHOLD I have been unwittingly been applying that flawed framework to my view of the gods.


That is some bullshit, right there. And it is going to stop. 

waking myself up again

So lately I've been feeling spiritually dead inside, which is not a good feeling to have, and it tends to contribute to a general feeling of mild depression. which I'm already prone to. So.

These periods of disconnect are surprisingly common among those of a Pagan persuasion, so much so that a term has been coined: Fallow Times. On some level just knowing that I'm not alone in going through this helps the climb out of the hole become a little easier.

This was a time of letting the stagnant, devouring pattern of everyday life just sap my interest in things. I know it wasn't a complete disconnect from the gods because I kept getting little nudges in really indirect ways, even as I was wailing and gnashing teeth about not getting any responses to the rote prayers and halfhearted offerings. I heard about mindfulness meditation for the first time ever, and got interested to the point of buying a really nice book that I'm not finished with yet, and it reminded me of the joyful way I used to look at the world.

Everywhere I went on the internet I seemed to keep running into articles and quotes about self-care and personal sovereignty, and how these things are often just at odds with the western ideal of productivity. This type of productivity eats up my energy and good feelings like nothing else. :c

I also haven't been cooking much, lately, and the things I have been making are not inventive, engaging things but basic quick things. One of the funny things about being unemployed was that (thankfully) I had enough resources to cook, and I really deeply enjoyed doing that, as a way of managing my environment and taking care of myself and those around me. It was a job, and I enjoyed it. But now that I'm employed cooking has become just another damn thing I have to do if I want to eat, and I'm already tired from standing on my feet all day or evening. It does not contribute to fun and engaging cookery. I think what I'm going to have to do is just plan my weeks out more thoroughly, and save big cooking projects for my days off. That's what it's going to have to be.

As for crafts stuff: I've had lingering, horrible guilt over the fact that the ram I was knitting for LG's shrine still did not have horns, and that's definitely contributed to a slowing-down of knitting fun. Well. That and the fact that we've had INSANE DEADLY HEAT for like three weeks running now and I haven't really wanted to touch yarn and have anything big and wooly on my lap. (Oddly enough I HAVE gotten the spinning bug during this time, but that involves less actual smothering contact with heat-trapping fiber)

Well that silliness STOPPED TONIGHT. News flash everyone: Reese the Ram has horns, dammit. And they look super cute as he is sitting on my nightstand, all big fat sheep belly and tiny cartoonish legs. This is a good first step, I think, to getting back on track.

Next Steps: doing things on a weekly (or daily, but I don't want to take on more than I can handle while I'm still finding my feet again) basis, and continuing the now laughably extended 30 Days blog posts.

Day Eight: Holidays

Yes, yes, I'm way late with this, but life is busy and leaves me not a lot of time to devote to thoughtful spiritual writing, so I've resigned myself to the fact that this is going to take more than a month. In any case, here's the next entry:

8. Beliefs – Holidays

Holidays are weird for me, for a few reasons.

The first reason is that man it is hard to remember when they happen. It’s an unfortunate side effect of living in a country where the state holidays tend to intermingle with the Christian ones, but I was never, in my Wiccish days, able to remember when Imbolc was, or what the hell it was celebrating, anyway.

Generic Wicca-flavored paganism tends to use the Wheel of the Year, a cycle of 8 holidays divided into the major sabbats (which Gardner, founder of Wicca, ripped off from Celtic traditions) and the minor sabbats (which are the solstices and equinoxes). One of the Major sabbats is Samhain and god help me but I can’t pronounce it like it’s supposed to be pronounced--fuck it it’s Halloween anyway.

(you see how lazy I am?)

(seriously though if someone could actually tell me how that damn word is pronounced I would be in debt to you, because I’ve heard about a billion versions and they all sound equally difficult/ridiculous. I know it’s supposed to be like “sa-wen” but I have so much cognitive dissonance with how the word looks as opposed to this pronunciation that the word just makes me frustrated and angry. Also as a misanthropic solitary pagan I have never actually heard a live human being say “sa-wen” so I’m just going on internet research basically. I’M DUBIOUS.)

Regardless! Where I’m at now in my religious practices, I observe the solar holidays on the solstices and equinoxes. It’s easy to remember, found on every calendar, and I can physically observe the changes in daylight throughout the seasons and these holidays keep me mindful of how much life on earth is dependent on the Sun. A nice bonus to using this simple system is that season affective disorder is a bit more manageable when I can observe and take specific days to reflect on the Sun’s importance to me and to the earth. Granted it’s still winter and I’m still depressed and miserable on all these overcast freezing awful gray days, but I can see the sun moving higher in the sky, and it gives me faith that like most things, my melancholy will pass.

I’ve already mentioned my visits to Cahokia, which are more about observation than celebration, obviously. I like to be able to hold a candlelight vigil on the winter solstice, or at least stay up as late as I can if the solstice is on a work night. I also like to reserve that night for knitting! The summer solstice on the other hand I prefer to spend outside (within reason, because as much as I love the sun I hate skin cancer with a passion) making offerings or just being out and active and enjoying nature.

One very nice spring equinox I made ghee out of some local organic butter, and it was a very rewarding experience, to make it with that kind of mindfulness on that day and then use it, like a little bit of sunlight, throughout the rest of the year. The Autumn equinox is such a harvesty-type day, I use it, generally, to take stock of things, organize yarn, bake bread, and sort of store up projects for the winter to keep myself sane.

Now, that’s been my holiday structure for a few years now, nothing big or flashy, just a few little activities to celebrate the turning of the seasons. And then I went and brought deities into it. And of course research indicates that they were historically worshipped on specific holidays: Shining God-who-is-probably-Belenos is associated with May 1, designated on the Celtic and Wiccish calendars as Beltain(e). So I’m in rather a pickle, since my questings have started to take a Celtic turn, wondering if I should try to go back to the full eight holidays or is that just too much for my poor little brain to remember? Or maybe I should add that one in and have five? And I always liked Halloween even though I don’t care a whit about the whole Horned God death and rebirth myth cycle that’s associated with Samhain, do I do something celebratory on October 31^st? Often I’ll have a vigil on the Day of the Dead despite no Mexican ancestry that I know of, but a lot of my ancestors on my dad’s side were REALLY Catholic so that’s as good a day as any to give them food and such.

Meanwhile, Liminal God is pretty difficult to pin down, I’m tentatively identifying him as Gaulish Mercury (there at least hasn’t been any strong negative feeling towards that identification, but that’s not necessarily a positive) and there’s like...no real evidence for any specific holiday other than the Mercuralia celebrated on May 15 by Roman merchants to ensure good business throughout the year. Not sure about that, as I am not a businessperson.

Then again, that is for springtime, and I have a good while before I have to make any decisions about celebrating.

Is everyone bored of my ramblings yet? Here have a tentative calendar for this year:

Mar 20: Spring Equinox

April 20: My freaking birthday and if I hear any 4-20 jokes I will hit you.

May 1: Beltaine, MAYBE

May 15: Mercuralia?

June 20: Summer Solstice

Sept 22: Autumn Equinox

October 31-Nov 2: candy and also food for dead people.

Dec 21: Winter Solstice

That is really spring-heavy! Gosh! We’ll see. We shall SEE.

Day Four: Prayer and Offerings

4. Beliefs – Prayer and Offerings

It’s only been recently, relatively speaking, that I’ve started giving any thought to prayer at all. I’d say within the last year, two years or so. Before that time, so much of my spiritual life was directed towards self-improvement and using tools like journeywork and Tarot to get a better perspective on my life and issue that needed resolving. You know what another great tool is? Therapy.

To be perfectly honest, this is proving a very difficult post to write. I feel like there’s a lot of ingrained embarassment about it, like...I feel like all my athiest friends will judge me for talking about how I pray. Is that weird? I feel it’s a little weird, being self-conscious about admitting this. Yes, when I am troubled, I pray and it makes me feel better. I can’t be sure if anyone’s actually listening, or if this is all in my head, but for the most part my worldview is appreciation and honoring above absolute understanding. I can take it on faith that my prayers help me, and that they give some pleasure to those I’m honoring.

Of course sometimes it’s not about supplication, like “help me get through this troubling time.” Sometimes prayer is all about the spontaneous creation of words, put together and sent out into the world to be enjoyed. So in that sense I view it as performance art. A very private sort of performance, but the idea is there all the same, and there’s a certain amount of staging that is required. I usually like to accompany prayer with an offering, just to be polite and reciprocate. If I’m asking a deity for something it’s only logical to offer something in return, to maintain a good relationship.

Making offerings is a bit of a trial and error process, but it’s highly interesting. It’s hard to describe how the process feels, but it’s like a change in air pressure, or a tingling on the back of my neck like the kind that happens when you catch someone watching you. Deciding what kind of offerings to make is a sort of intuitive process. Sometimes water is sufficient, particularly if I’m outside. It’s easy to libate, isn’t doing any harm to the environment, and I can partake of it without getting loopy, as opposed to say, a nice merlot. Other types of offerings I’ve branched out into. In my initial “hey anyone wanting to work with me, here’s some gifts for you” offering I used ghee that I’d made myself out of organic butter, and that got a pretty strong response. The amount of work I’ve put into an offering increases the likelihood that it’ll be well-received, I think.

I wasn’t expecting milk to go over as well as it did with Shining God. By the time I started offering it I’d done enough research and meditation to narrow down a bit which solar deity I was working with, but the huge favorable response to milk was a great help—I had the strongest impulse to pour it out on a rock as opposed to just a bowl or on the grass and I couldn’t quite figure out why until I did it, and it was such a strong visual key that things immediately clicked. It was very emotional, in a weird way.

I feel like at this point I could start to completely ramble and I have to go to work soon, so I’m going to wrap this up with a brief non-inclusive list of things I’ve used as offerings:

Artwork, small bits of sculpture, words, sex, mentrual blood, water, milk, tea (green, oolong, black, pu-erh), alcohol (beer, vodka), incense (loose and sticks), ghee, bread, honey, strawberries, knitting

And surely this will expand as time goes on.

Day Three: Deities

3. Beliefs – Deities

Okay so I really don’t know what to write for this day’s theme, but Girlfriend is insisting I keep up with this post per day for the new year deal, and I’m too tired from work to think up another subject for day three and then sneakily go back and change in the master post so no one is the wiser.

So: Deities! Or my rambly musings on the nature of Deity in general.

One of the most useful things I have come across in my time identifying as Pagan is the God Map, a concept illustrated wonderfully by Joyce and River Higginbotham in their really quite good book entitled Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions. The God Map basically shows, in a nifty and easy to comprehend graph, how various religious throughout the world have different ideas of what Deity is, on a spectrum of abstract to concrete and permeating to transcendent. There’s a great rundown of it on another blog that I found during a frantic search effort while trying to explain my jumble of thoughts to Girlfriend one day. Read it here.

I don’t yet know where I stand on the God Map. Like, okay, some spiritual encounters I’ve had, like Lake Michigan, are very far removed from recognizable communication, and I would hesitate to ascribe anthropomorphized characteristics to spirits that are places. I’m very much in the animist region, in that respect. Permeating but concrete, but not so concrete as this is a guy in the sky who has a beard and wields lightning bolts, or any other sort of defined appearance other than the actual physical appearance of a very old lake that has claimed the lives of a lot of people over the years.

In other more recent Deity interactions, for example with the one I tentatively title Shining God (more about Him on day 12), I get a fairly concrete mental image of a golden, smiling, male solar deity during meditation, as well as UPG associations of sunlight reflecting on water or leaves. He is a solar-associated god but also not the actual Sun, which I do honor in a different way. The Sun itself, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t give a crap whether I worship it or not, it keeps on doing its thing regardless of any human activity. Shining God, however, seems to enjoy or at least look kindly on mindful offerings, and to further muddle things I will sometimes address Him and the Sun interchangeably in prayer.

So you see, it’s already a bit tangled. In addition to this, I’ve only recently begun trying to have good, productive, respectful relationships with more concrete deities and I’ve yet to research/experience enough to say definitively what I believe the nature of these gods are.