Distance

How very far I have come in my spirituality, and how very far I have distanced myself, all at the same time.

Last night I was taking a bath with Morgan, and I was thinking about the songs I used to sing with my son (and a few which I didn't, for reasons I'll go into later). I started to sing one that I used to know very well, and then realized - I don't know it at all.

And it broke my heart for the moment. It's not like I am a Catholic who forgot the Hail Mary; it's not like I forgot some bit of canon - it's just that I have not only forgotten songs that were once so important to me, but, ultimately, I have forgotten a great deal of the actual concrete details in ritual as well. I have forgotten a great deal of what it is to be Wiccan.

In my time spent exploring the mundane in my life, and gathering my sense of my body and the world around me closer to me (and failing sometimes), I have lost so much of what started me out in this spirituality, and so much of what set me on this path, and, now that I think about it, I don't know how to grieve hard enough, because, however much I've been through since I last set foot in a circle (and it has been over two years), this is still who I am. Maybe I needed the distance to realize that, and I think a good chunk of it is that I needed to be a feminist to actually understand how and why this is so important to me.

I don't think I've done anything wrong, to clarify that. I think I simply had to clean-slate it again. I had so very much going on in my life when I started my training that, while the training was good, it was all going into such a deeply wounded receptacle that I don't know how much good it could have done to complete it. I could have finished, and been initiated, and probably passed as someone who rated the rank of priestess, but I was not, at that time, ready to be any sort of priestess.

Wicca started my healing, I think. Allowing for the thought of a Goddess, the thought that there is no Hell, and the thought that perhaps God isn't a domineering asshole who doesn't want His children to stay children, but, rather, wants adults who function and think critically and make decisions, was an unbelievably liberating thought.

And, despite my problems with my ex, I credit him partially with giving me the freedom to do so. My fear of Hell held us back for the first year or so of our relationship from actually exploring these possibilities. We met and found common ground in our interest in the occult, and were both nominally Christian, and I tried far harder to stick with this label - and it already ill befitted me at the time. It probably never fit in my life - when I was four I asked my mom why Catholics go to Hell (and I have NO idea where I heard that; probably in church). She had no answer. I never could find an answer to Hell that made sense, never could find a balance between Calvinist and Arminian doctrines (although I didn't have words for the latter until after leaving), never could find the way to make it make sense. Some people would say that's because my intelligence deceives me and blah blah blah. If they don't want to think critically about their religion that's their problem, not mine. And, for people who can reconcile all of the different qualities of Christianity, or who can see it as an evolving belief system, or who see the Bible as a book of mysteries rather than the infallible word of God set to paper in God's own English, I respect that. It simply never fit me, and my ex had that bead on me from the very beginning. That is one change I made, not for him, but because it fit, and the bonus was that he encouraged it.

Soon after my son was born I came to the realization that I could not teach him something in good conscience that I did not personally absolutely believe. I then asked myself, well, what DO I believe in?

I believe in the warm breezes of spring, the icy gales of winter, the arid blasts of summer, and the cooling fall wind. I believe in the equality of women, and always did - I just didn't always have words for it, or understanding of how this worked. I believe in learning, and I believe in life after death, and I believe that life is not linear, but cyclical. I believe in logic and intellect and in the need to reconcile this with that which is felt but not seen; I do not believe in the automatic infallibility of the empirical. I believe that what's right isn't always easy or obvious, and that sometimes there is not an absolute right. I believe in social justice.

I believe in music.

Wicca fit, and yes, my ex-husband had been right the whole time, but I had to get there on my terms, and he let me. Ultimately, I decided that, if I am wrong, and the price is Hell, I would rather be wrong and go to Hell than worship a tyrant God in whom I do not believe, and there I still stand. If that's an alarming statement to some then so be it, but it's baldly how I feel about the fundamentalist brand of Christianity - I would rather go to Hell than do that. Others are meaningful but not appealing to me personally.

So we were lucky enough to find one of very few training covens in the area, and one that wasn't exploitative (there are groups who use the sexual symbolism of Wicca to exploit students). It was very good, and I made friends there with whom I still communicate. It just didn't work out, because of the divorce, and I let my ex continue the classes while I stayed at home. And it worked out okay for me, even though I think that the decision for him to continue and for me to stop was arbitrary.

Where this all loops around is the fact that I was teaching my son simple things before he left for Montana. I was teaching him little bits of what I thought he could handle - color to element correspondences, simple songs and chants, what element corresponds to what point on the pentagram, and the like. It is very, very important to me that I pass on what I know to my children, because, whatever they decide to believe in later, I want them to have this knowledge of what I believe. (I used to listen to his grandmother tell me on the phone about how he sang songs but she couldn't understand the words, and I knew it was probably either the god or goddess chant. I did not enlighten her.)

I haven't done the same with my daughter. I don't know why. Part of it is that, I think, she latches onto information more slowly than my son. He's a voracious learner where she, more like myself, tends to not latch onto something until she damn well pleases. I don't think it's a matter of intelligence so much as a matter of selective learning, and I understand that the more I pressure her to learn things she has no interest in, the longer it will take her to be interested and the longer it will take her to retain it. So I've been lax with it.

However, it's also partially because it's painful to do this. It hurts so very much to remember doing that with my son, and to do it again.

But, then, it's been so long that I don't even remember the parts that are important to me, rather than just the ones that are easily taught. I remember the most simple lessons that I learned, and the most simple chants and the basic stuff, as well as a good chunk of the history of witchcraft. However, the songs that I remember, that made it fun, the more complex concepts, and the mechanics of a lot of it escape me - it's been too long since I've gone through the motions.

The song that brought this to mind was The Burning Times by Charlie Murphy (I cannot find the original online, and it's very rare, so this will have to do, but it is not the one I would choose). Now, this is not a song that I want my children to learn until the are quite a bit older than they are now, because this song is clearly about subject material they are not going to be able to understand, and I do not want to foster hostility towards Christianity in them. There are a fair bit of pagans who do this because they have had such negative experiences, but I have not, and, although I have unlimited amounts of hostility towards anyone who tries to limit human rights, regardless of reasons, and although a good chunk of Christians fall into this category, I know many Christians who are not like that, and my children have Christians who are not like that in their lives, so they do not need to learn this lesson until they are old enough to differentiate between different kinds of people who claim the same title.

This song is, obviously, about the Burning Times. It's a very popular song in the greater pagan community, although it has problems with some of the information presented as factual - an example being the number of women who died in the Inquisition (nine million is the number presented when historians agree it was no less than twenty thousand and no more than one hundred thousand). What jumps out to me about it right now is that the song focuses on the feminine - both in the victims of the atrocities and in the deities invoked in the song (which includes one of the more well-known goddess chants). Before I was wont to replace with more gender-neutral terms in regards to the rest ("European people," and the like), but now I very strongly feel the need to connect with that feminine in the song, because, let's face it, a shitload more women than men died in the Burning Times. If you were too pretty they would burn you for witchcraft because you excited men and they would think of you. If you were too ugly they would burn you because you did not excite men and that meant you bewitched their mighty mancocks. If you were a midwife or a healer they would burn you because healing arts were of the devil if women practiced them. If you were an old woman they would burn you because of the connotations with crones and witches. If you had too many children survive while other people's children died they would burn you because you clearly practiced witchcraft to keep your children alive. If you got in someone's way of acquiring something they would burn you because half of the property would go to the church and half would go to the person who reported it.

It was brutal and, while men suffered, women were not safe. Anywhere. There was no right way to look, no right way to act. I am not angry at men for this. I simply have no problem at the moment with the pointing out of the fact that it was predominantly women who suffered through this time period. And most of them Christian women, to boot.

So it feels a bit like touting the MRA line, "But men are victims of domestic violence, too!" while ignoring the fact that it is extremely disproportionately women who suffer from this. I like this song because it's a man who does not feel the need to say, "Don't forget the men, too!"

I also agree with the vast majority of the sentiment - the sentiment is more one of defiance, and one of carrying the torch of the undying Goddess.

There is a recording of several songs I like off of "Best of Pagan Song" on this page; I can't get the songs to load, but maybe one of y'all can, and get to listen to the awesomeness.

Anyhow, this is where my healing started. I would like to continue there, now, and start by just reclaiming the little things that used to be so important to me. That would help with promoting the mindset that leads to action on my part - as a rule, my natural state is inaction, so this is a necessity.

I think I've worn myself out on this post, so I'm done for right now, but it's quite long, so sorry.