What Does Pagan Mean?

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Nearly every book on the subject, nearly ever person asked, has a different idea of what defines "Pagan." Of course the word is derivative of "pāgānus," old Latin for "Country Dweller" and Church Latin for non-Christian. We need, though, an agreed upon definition that is suited to the modern nomenclature, to the current cultural phenomenon and to the family of faiths that have been gaining momentum in the Western world for more than a half century.

Through the decades, a number of individuals and organizations have, in mission statements, in charters, in workshops and in craft publications offered a myriad of definitions of the word "Pagan." Though I confess these explanations are so prolific that I cannot have read them all, most that I have read seem inelegant or incomplete. Many are phrased in opaque language, full of empty signifiers. Many are addressed to those already familiar with the Pagan community, family of faiths and way of thinking. Many are lists of grievances against more populous religions. Many are constructed expressly to separate one Pagan sect from another rather than to define the community as a whole.

While I understand that we are a spiritually amorphous lot, often seeming to defy definition entirely, and that not every single practitioner's beliefs will fall perfectly within, I propose the following.


A Pagan faith will generally have four characteristics:

1. Polytheism.

There must be a plurality of deity or spirit. This can take many forms, as a literal cadre of Gods, as multiple but distinct aspects to a single being, as an ephemeral essence that manifests in many ways.


2. Pantheism &/or Animism

Those plural deities must be deities of something. Again, this can take many forms, literal Gods of fire, war and harvest, in deification of the life cycle, spirits that dwell within object and creatures.


3. Attention to the Earth or to a natural cycle.

We are embedded in the world, part of it, made of it, rather than masters of it. Again, this belief has many incarnations but the moral and philosophical ramifications of this truth are never far from mind.


4. Self-Identification

I understand that this final tenet is debatable, but it seems important that a faith define itself as Pagan in order to be thus. This is first because we cherish self-determination and second because it delineates us from some other world faiths that would generally not be regarded as Pagan in this sense, Hinduism and Shinto as examples.



I confess that I have some issues with the language. Abrahamian monotheism is so ingrained in Western culture that it can be difficult to talk about modern Paganism without resorting to oppositional terminology, without explaining ourselves based on what we are not rather than what we are. I ask my fellow Pagans to help me make the verbiage more precise.

While I would never suggest any sort of canonicity, the above is, to my mind, the simplest definition that addresses the largest segment of the community while being easily explainable to non-Pagans.

I invite criticism, suggestion and discussion.

A Bit of Brilliance for a Saturday Afternoon

I've been told that I don't update the blog often enough and I can't argue with that. In a vain and probably foolish attempt to keep my handful of readers happy by offering some meager pitch at content, I'm now going to fall back on some of my least favorite blogger tropes, just to keep the posts coming despite my seventy-hour work weeks. I'm posting a link.



It's content and it's good.

What else do you want.

I Went to School with 27 Jennifers

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Dear Everybody,


Years ago, my sister had a friend named "Thunder." I was in a theatre troupe for some time with a guy named "Sundance," and I had a friend in college named "Seven." These were not nicknames; these were the words on their birth certificates. Of course, we all know of someone who has christened their child with some invented combination of phonemes that isn't a recognized word at all. Such cases not withstanding, almost all common names have some legacy meaning that is no longer in popular use.

For instance, my name, Thomas, is derivative of the Aramaic word for "Twin," and it is from this that the Biblical character gets his name. It's foreshortening "Tom" means "honest" in old Hebrew. I'm also told that, in the Latin of the early Catholic Church, "Toma" was occasionally a synonym for "Infidel."

My recent breakup from a five year relationship and subsequent re-admission to the dating world has made me realize how difficult it is to really get to know a stranger. (This connects, I promise). One can simply not trust their first-blush assumptions about another person. We are such protean creatures, easily tailoring our behavior and choosing or words to create the desired impression in eager and unsuspecting strangers. Who hasn't met someone in a bar or at a party, someone full of charm and disarm who, down the line turns out to be a complete jack hole. Who hasn't had a devoted friend who, even after years, exposes a personality defect so egregious that, long after abandoning the friendship, leaves us wondering how we ever missed it in them. Wouldn't have been great if we could have known these things all along?

Psychologists tell us that we make assumptions based on others' names but I consistently find that the nominative stereotype is rarely correct. Ryan is probably not rugged or daring. Pheobe is probably not bookish. Gabriel is probably not sensitive or artistic. Jackie is probably not carefree and Edgar is probably not keeping a gimp-slave in his basement.

I think we need a new system both for getting to know people and for identifying them.

As such, I suggest doing away with names altogether. At least, I suggest doing away with the Biblically or historically inspired words that we tend to use simply to identify individuals and not for any other purpose, words like William, Olivia, Sara, Michael, Ben, Miriam and, yes, Thomas. I think we should return to descriptive, tribal-style names that identify us by some meaningful aspect of ourselves.

I don't mean that we should go back to having names like "Little Tiger," "Fleet as the Wind," or "Sits in Silence." And, I don't mean that we should somehow update such a system for a modern and industrialized world. We could hardly take each other seriously with names like, "Drives Real Fast" or "Immaculate Hairdo."

I think that one's name should be one's single worst quality. That thing, that one overriding personality trait that invariably leads a person to be palatable to certain folks but not to most others, that should be the way we identify ourselves to one another. That way, when you meet someone for the first time, you already know the worst and, if you can accept that, everything else about them is, by contrast, a pleasant surprise. Contrawise, you know from the first introduction whether this person has some deal-breaking part of themself that you would otherwise discovered only after devoting emotional energy in the befriending.

This cold be tremendously illuminating:

"Hey, do you know what Can't Keep it in His Pants and Never Shuts Up are doing tonight?"

"Yeah, those two, Thinks He's Elvis, Mild Bigot and Drowns Kittens for Fun are all going to a Fellated a Record Executive concert."


It would make the interactions between persons that are somehow so opaque much easier to understand:

"Did you hear that Always Compensating, Condescendingly Erudite and Never Been Wrong got in a big fight at the bar last night?"

Or perhaps:

"Smells Funny, and Always Flirting broke up because he caught her talking to Date Rapist. On the other hand, I think Beats His Kids is going to pop the question to Daddy Issues."

This system is not perfect, of course. One can always just lie about their name. I suspect we would all learn to be suspicious of those strangers with innocuous-sounding signifiers like, "Doesn't Use His Blinker," "Coffee Snob" or "Hugs too Hard." There are also some insidious and life-destroying character faults that large numbers of people have so there would be a lot of people named "Alcoholic," "Compulsive Materialist" and "Desperate to be Loved." We'd also have to get pretty creative or a third of everyone would be named "Ugly," "Asshole," "Dickhead" or "Bitch." Finally, it's likely that individuals' names would changes several times through their lives so I'm not sure what this would to do to tax collection but none of these things are insurmountable in the face of the benefits to our psychic wellbeing.

All that said, I've got to go. Speaks in Movie Quotes, Always Asks if She's Fat and No Tact at All asked me to go to see Can't Keep a Job's band. Be good to yourselves.



Love,

Legend in His Own Mind

Things I Hate - Redundancy

Repetition. Repetitiveness. Duplication. Reiteration. Tautology.

Hate it. Despise it. Disgusted by it.

The Wallflower at the Orgy

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There is no such thing as objectivity in news, especially not in televised news.

I don't say this because I am a cynic or because I have some bone to pick with journalists but because I recognize that the very nature of news is anti-objective. By simply pointing a camera at something or committing words to paper, objectivity has been discarded and significance conferred. This is not to say that fairness in reporting should not be the greatest goal of the profession; it should be. Objectivity, like any other form of perfection, is impossible but nonetheless worthy of being pursued, no matter how asymptotic the path. Because this latent bias is often so subtle that even the journalists, themselves are not fully conscious of it, the public must be attuned to the many ways that media, through design or accident, subtly alters the perception of its subjects.

This whole tirade was inspired as I watched a rerun of Christiane Amanpour's recent documentary series God's Warriors, a trio of works that I found both inspiring and terrifying and that I highly recommend. It is also a terrific example of what I'm trying to explain.

Amanpour interviews a number of Iranians in the course of the series and she states openly at one point that she is originally Iranian. According to her Wikipedia Profile she lived in Iran until her adolescence. The reasonable assumption is that she speaks Farsi and can probably communicate clearly with the people she is interviewing. Despite this, she is never seen or heard speaking Farsi. All of her questions to interviewees are delivered in English and responses are delivered in the speaker's own language, which we presume to be Farsi. The answer is then translated in voiceover by someone other than Amanpour.

This raises some obvious questions about how the interviews are framed. Since the interviewees begin responding immediately after the question is asked in English without waiting for a translation, they have obviously been primed on the question in advance. With whom did they speak? Did Amanpour ask the questions herself? Did a translator? Was there even a translator present? If there was, why? Is Amanpour idiomatically fluent in Farsi or did her day to day use of the language end when she left Iran as a child? Did CNN or any of the interviewees request an additional translator to be double sure of correct communication?

I'm not suggesting any malfeasance on CNN or Christiane Amanpour's part. In fact I hold Ms. Amanpour in the highest of respect. This could have been a basic production decision made based on the fact that the primary audience for this program is American. It could be a time issue. CNN might simply have wanted viewers to identify with the reporter. It is also possible that Amanpour is not comfortable enough in her Farsi to conduct such interviews. In the minds of the production team, this was probably an innocuous decision. For the most part it was and likely, few other people even noticed. This does not change the fact that what we saw on the show cannot simply be taken at face value.

The television programs we see on the twenty four hour cable cycle or on our local affiliates are the result of some very complex interplay between public welfare, professional ambition, cultural relevance, pleasing sponsors, attracting viewers and trying to get a hold on that ever elusive beast, the truth. But we, the viewing public, must be careful to watch closely the subtleties of reporting and of television production and always wonder if they conceal some deception. Television is the greatest tool of public opinion and the greatest weapon of ideology ever created. We must be skeptical lest that weapon be turned on us.

Play Jesus to the Lepers in Your Head

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What do we do when our own values fail to match up with one another, when one holds two sets of prescriptive ideas that collide?

São Paulo, Brazil, recently banned all outdoor advertising: billboards, placards on buses, corporate murals, neon beer signs and sponsorship-fetishist artwork, all gone. The UK, where I spent much of my childhood, has never allowed highway billboards. I approve of these measures. Advertising has crept into every crevice of our lives such that we cannot consume media of any kind or move about public space without drowning in a putrid bog of Madison Avenue barking.

There are a number of people in the US who want to criminalize the burning of the national flag. There is another group, though containing many of the same people, who want to mandate English-only signage in public places and declare English the official language of the US. While I understand the desire to preserve an established cultural identity, I disagree with such measures.

There is a cadre of information anarchists who, because of the changes that the last twenty years of digital technology have wrought on the media landscape, basically want to do away with intellectual property. On the other hand, there is another cadre of entrenched content producers who, because of that same technology, want to enact laws that will further tighten copyright controls and even introduce intellectual property law into niches where it previously did not apply. I agree with both camps on certain aspects of that debate while simultaneously disagreeing with both camps on other aspects.

The issue in question in all of these cases, is Freedom of Speech and herein lies my conundrum; I believe in Freedom of Speech. Enshrined in the Constitution, it is arguably the most precious and sacred freedom my country offers. Any attempt to curtail it, any move to abbreviate it, I find viscerally offensive from both a considered, intellectual angle and from a raw, emotional perspective. I want, very much, to believe that Freedom of Speech should be simple and absolute.

Though, like all profound freedoms, like all actions of first-principle, it is not nearly as simple as it would seem. Speech can cause real harm to individuals and to the world at large. The actions people take in response to speech can do likewise. Now, in the age of ambient computing, information, in the form of programming code, can be action. The Supreme Court has held, rightly so, that there are certain limitations on expression. Though I abhor even the suggestion that speech should be regulated, I am forced to concede that many such restrictions are just and necessary.

I'm not intending to start, or even further the centuries-old debate about the nature of the First Amendment. I am simply pointing out that one can hold to contradictory ideas and be correct about any and all of them at once. It is in realizing the contradictory nature of the principles to which we all keep, it is in finding the ways that our principles work for or against one another for the good of the world at large, it is discovering those times when principle should give way to practicality that should form the backbone of our discourse.

Virtually no concept governing human endeavor is as simple as we would like it to be.

Half Thoughts

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It was there, just now. I had it. It was mine and I lost it.

The other night I began a new section of a large writing project at which I've been picking for a long time. It had been vexing me for a while. Starting as a bursting, eager, aggressive idea more than a year ago, the first forty pages fell out of my head and onto the page practically unbidden.

Since then, I've had to work at it. Not forcing it, per se, but making a conscious effort to put each new addendum and amendment down on paper. I have to coax it forward from the back of my mind rather than feeling it rush to the front as if it were running from obscurity.

This morning it flashed in my head again, like a crack of gas escaping from a burning log or a slow-fused firecracker finally meeting it's ember. I shot out of bed like I'd been bitten and ran to the bag where I keep my computer and my notebooks. Furiously, I plugged up, turned on and went digging for pens.*

Perhaps ninety seconds had gone by before I planted my ass in my desk chair, and it was gone, just gone. Had I not found myself in my chair, still in my pajamas, with pen in hand, it might never have been there at all. It evaporated like a fart in a high wind.

I'm sure it was a brilliant idea that was powerful, evocative, that flowed from behind my eyes. I'm sure it would have been a revelation. I'm sure it was the best thing I've ever thought of and I cannot even begin to remember what it was.

Couldn't have been that good, could it?


*You can never find one when you need one, a fact complicated by my habit of color-coding my writing.