Alone With The Gods

In the mornings I walk in the woods when it’s quiet and still and the sound of birds and other creatures stirring offers a rhythm and texture to my slow, contemplative pace.

With my dog at my side, I take time to notice the leaves, the reflection of the sun as it catches remnants of spider webs draped across bushes and trees. I feel the coolness of morning and smell the freshness of the air.

Is anything more sacred than this?

This is my church. Here, I commune with Goddess and God and the spirits that live in the woods. This is sacred to me. This is where the gods live.

My strolls through the woods are quiet and phone free. There is no wi-fi and no computer. Only my thoughts and prayers and offerings.

This is were true poetry is born. This is where gnosis is born. This is my church. And when I listen, I hear. When I look, I see.

I am reminded of this from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman:

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the begin-
ning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

- Rumi

I came across this great quote about imagination near the end of the Promethea Series by Alan Moore. It’s from the end of book five:

“Consciousness, unprovable by scientific standards, is forever, then, the impossible phantom in the predictable biologic machine, and your every thought a genuine supernatural event. Your every thought is a ghost, dancing.”

As I read Michael Talbot’s The Holographic Universe, I find this notion even more striking. If reality is but a mere holograph then we certainly may be Spiritual Beings having a human experience as Chardin has suggested.

All of us are just ghosts, carelessly dancing, much like the Fool of the Tarot as we float off that ledge.

As the Slow Movement almost oxymoronically picks up steam, I wanted to throw Paganism into the mix as being a relatively unacknowledged, but important tributary in the growing river of this vitally important cultural movement.

For those who don’t know, the Slow Movement got it’s start in Italy when Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food to protest the opening of a McDonald’s near the famed Piazza di Spagna in Rome.

This simple step planted the seeds of what has become a cultural revolution against the cult of speed and the acceleration of just about everything. Recently, journalist Carl Honoré wrote In Praise of Slowness, an acclaimed book about the Slow culture movement and it’s many offshoots.

But where does Paganism fit into this you ask? Right smack dab in the middle I say. The Slow culture movement is about living with meaning. It’s not simply a refutation of speed but a mindfulness of enjoying each moment. This notion may manifest in cooking a meal using local ingredients, or reading a book, exercising with greater care or simply turning off the television.

Regardless of the activity, the idea is to live more fully or, as I have alluded to before, to become more human by taking each moment for what it is instead of simply rushing through life desperate to fit more stuff into less time.

I’d argue that this is part of why Paganism, and more specifically Wicca, has seen the explosion in popularity that it has. As people grow more and more aware that something is missing from their lives, Wicca and other esoteric spiritual paths fill a giant void as we try and unplug from the matrix of technoculture.

As more and more people refute speed and embrace slow (mindfulness), paths like Wicca, other forms of Witchcraft, Buddhism and even New Age approaches are offering a bit of a spiritual oasis in the desert of Big-Screen-Mega-Church Christianity which offers little more than a fast-food approach to spirituality: fill up quick and get a stomach ache later.

By taking the road less traveled, Paganism and Witchcraft offer something far more holistic: a religious framework that requires participation, time, effort, intention and a healthy dose of time spent engaged in their spiritual practice.

Spending the time purifying a space, casting a circle or sphere, reciting words of power or spells and then performing each subsequent ritual with care and attention is as slow as it gets. There’s no hurrying in Witchcraft. And if there is then you’re not doing it right.

So why is this important? It’s important because the tide is changing for many people. And as strange as it may sound at first listen, being a Pagan or Witch or Hermeticist or even an esoteric Christian is at the foundation of a new way of thinking and living. They all succeed where Christianity continues to fail by giving people a means to an end and a way to engage directly in their spirituality instead of simply being a passive spectator in a crowd of people looking at their watches.

And while no one is clamoring for mass conversions to Paganism, what I am arguing here is that perhaps maybe, just maybe, esoteric spirituality can influence how we all practice our faith and in turn how we can live with more meaning and purpose.

I think this is something we can all get behind.