Get out of the comfort zone of laissez-faire Paganism

I’m of the opinion these days, a controversial one I bet, that all peoples of Pagan persuasion should be expressing their spirituality in direct action—protests against runways, against nuclear power expansion in preference to wind and solar power—and in joining political parties either to change them from the inside, or because they tally entirely or mostly with our own views.

Pagans should not litter, they should not buy into fast food by frequenting chains such as Burger King, KFC and McDonald’s, they shouldn’t be shopping at Primark or buying knock-offs from market stalls knowing the cheap clothes might well have been made by little kids in other countries who were forced into what is basically slave labour.

Capitalism as a system is the complete antithesis of Pagan living and beliefs, yet how many Pagans just love to shop to cheer themselves up, or vote Republican or Tory? Can you be a Pagan and not recycle, reuse, repurpose, instead throwing mountains of crap in the bin so it ends up in landfill?

Can you be a Pagan and not, when push comes to shove, give a toss about social inequality and injustice? Can you refuse to engage with politics? I don’t believe so.

But these are my opinions only. To try to set them in stone you’d be heading into Ten Commandments territory, and I for one wouldn’t want to do that. I think it’s better to cultivate one’s own convictions, to self-assess, to allow yourself to be led by your gods and by your conscience into doing the right things, rather than being told exactly what to do by books or glorious self-ordained leaders who are suddenly as likely to announce Mr Blobby has come to them in a dream and told them to get 50 wives as they are to tell one or more individuals to do wacky, dangerous, even violent things.

We Pagans must take our orders from our own selves, never from others who set themselves up as mouthpieces of the Divine. The holy and sacred never works like that, which is precisely why, when we see cult behaviours they invariably lead to horror, frustration, entrapment and downright abuse. But we can be told to do something. It’s up to the individual to listen, and to work out what, and to recognise when they’re being given honest opinion as opposed to an invitation to join a cult.

I’m no cultist, I don’t profess to be given directives from the Gods Almighty, I have no desire to force my own ways on anybody. But I do have opinions and I’m not afraid to voice them. It galls me like you wouldn’t believe when I see Pagans exercising gluttony and growing obese on fast food, chips and chocolate without ever going near a fresh green salad. It upsets me when, at Pagan festivals, I see mothers walking round with children who drop litter—the garishly-coloured wrappings of stuff that has no business being called food—and mum (or dad, or guardian) doesn’t tell those little boys and girls not to litter, to instead show respect for the earth.

And frankly that they shouldn’t be eating crap containing chemicals not found in the natural world let alone the food chain.

“I don’t want to judge”–that’s a standard statement many Pagans make, but for some it provides an easy mechanism by which they can indulge a selfishness and a laziness. You do your thing, I won’t comment, I’ll just do mine. In our quest to avoid dominator power games and hierarchies, which we should wherever possible, we still find Pagan groupings that bitch, bully and scheme—and yet the three things they don’t do are to provide leadership, inspiration, or action. It’s scandalous to my mind. Public perception of us is either as Satanic loons (hey, we don’t even believe in the red guy, let alone sacrifice young virgins to him!) or as flower-power gentle hippies who look down all the time to avoid stepping on bugs. We are dangerous or we are harmless. We are not seen as radical.

This must change. In a dying world—for make no mistake, our world as we know it is dying—dominated by apathetic godlessness and fundamentalist hate-mongers, it is a duty upon all Pagans to talk the talk as well as walk the path. We either strive to be as consistent as possible or we hide away pretending we aren’t the hypocrites we are. Being a Pagan is hard work, challenging, upsetting to ourselves and others, isolating even—but, if we’re honouring our gods, it is always educational, revelatory and, let’s be open, a lot of fun. Fun is important, and good.

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Cultivate the right attitude and rejecting cheap chicken and avoiding high-sugar, high-salt non-foods isn’t about sacrifice: it makes sense and leads us to learn about growing food, perhaps, or to think before we shop for dinner as to how far the food has travelled, whether we can buy local or not, how the animals were treated before slaughter. Yes, not everyone has space for a garden and perhaps you live in a high-rise apartment with no sills on which to grow even so much as a few herbs; but the point is, wherever you are, whoever you are, there is more to being a Pagan than having an altar set up burning petroleum-based candles next to the pretty statue you bought when you travelled to the other side of the world by plane for a holiday.

I’m increasingly aware that we have committed Pagans who have the passion and conviction and urge to direct action of fundamentalist Islamists and Christians without the hate, without the enforcement of views, without any urge to terrorise or commit atrocities—but willing to break the law and protest when we know something is very wrong and needs to be put right. And then there are the party Pagans who love a good bonfire, a jolly dance, a bit of dressing-up, who get lonely when not in the company of other witches and the like. These people may or may not get over their psychological issues and simple addiction to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, the first of which I must say I am a fan of myself, but until they do sort out their path they should expect to be challenged, sometimes gently, sometimes more robustly, when they drop litter or grow fat on living grossly unhealthy lives while lining the bank balances of huge agri-corps, supermarkets, and fast food chains. Learn to cook, you lazy buggers. And eat proportions that are fit for one person, not ten. The majority of human beings on Earth don’t even get one square meal a day. A day. So what the fuck are you doing? How do you honour the Lord and Lady with your excesses?

This is not to order people, or push them around. Pagans need to cultivate sensitivity, sure, but that’s no excuse for holding back on expressing opinions we believe to be right. How else do we convince others to change if we do not change ourselves or prove ourselves to have the courage to speak out—to not be nice for a change? Stop. Being. Nice. All the time. It does nothing to change the world. While you’re busy getting excited on a Pagan camp-site about a drumming workshop, people are dying, animals are suffering, the earth is being poisoned. Do the fun stuff, yes, but make sure you’re doing things that make a difference as well. It’s about balance and my sad verdict after years on the Pagan ‘scene’ is that there are a lot of unbalanced Pagans out there who are hedonists, products of the Reagan-Thatcher-Bush 1, Bush 2-Blair eras (I guess we could throw Clinton in there as well, not nearly so nice as some like to think, and certainly providing continuity of indulgence).

The most powerful Pagans I’ve ever met are now over 50, born before consumer culture and ‘no such thing as society’ right-wing politics took over so completely. Those of us who came after, we are compromised from birth and it is, I will admit, hard to break out of Matrix programming. It is hard to evolve from sheep to free-thinker, not helped by much of modern Paganism being about retreat from the world rather than engagement with it. This is as far removed from the religions of the Ancestors as the BNP is from democracy and diversity.

It was once said fat was a feminist issue. It is most certainly a Pagan one, albeit difficult and daring to raise for discussion for fear of being verbally mauled by the ‘live and let live’ wishy-washy brigade among us, whose neo-liberalism these days offends me to the core. I’m not advocating anything like the nanny state. I am suggesting we must confront ourselves first, indeed at all times, and others with a gentle spirit only when absolutely necessary. And increasingly in this world it is becoming more and more necessary to get out of the comfort zone of laissez faire Paganism and to learn how to be offensive for bloody good reasons. Crack the whip. Defend the trees. Campaign against evil and for political and social changes that are good.

If I offend you with these words, then that’s just fine. I’d rather not but if I’ve struck a nerve then you need to change. We all do. We never stop needing to change until we die, and even that is the (apparent) last transformation of our lives, and it is huge. We can’t avoid that change, and we can and should embrace other changes. It is past time Pagans showed some balls in the real world. I’ve seen Pagans get high from ritual and involvement exclusively in Pagan circles in ways barely indistinguishable from crack addicts smoking their pipes.

Paganism is not about getting high on belonging; it is about living in ways that honour Gaia all the time. Yet how many of us take part in the gang-rape of the earth? How many of us participate because it’s easier than stepping out of the mass of sheep and doing things differently? How many Pagan bloggers write exclusively about Paganism without ever showing their readers that they’re rounded people, caring people, people with other interests that allow non-Pagans to see we aren’t just about bonfires, festivals, funny hair-dos and witchy drag? I hardly ever reference my Pagan beliefs head-on here on my blog these days. This post, being exclusively about Paganism and talking predominantly to other Pagans, is a rarity. It doesn’t mean I’m not a real Pagan. It doesn’t mean I’m not walking the path. I am. Every day. Every time I go clean out the hens, every time I sow seeds, every time I walk past the supermarket I boycotted 18 months ago over its support for animal cruelty in the name of profit disguised as giving consumers a choice, I am living as a Pagan in a world that needs people to do things differently, to show courage, now more than ever before. This is what I mean when I talk of ‘broomstick culture’. Paganism should be holistic, not compartmentalised like Sunday-only Christians.

I loathe Pagans being seen as eccentric. I am not eccentric. Eccentric is harmless and silly. I am far from silly and I am definitely not harmless. I harm none, sure, where people and animals are concerned—but I sure as hell want to harm the bank balances of big business, I want to thwart political ambitions to concrete over greenfield sites for carbon-producing airports, I would ban factory farming right now if I could and certainly do all I can to convince others of the evils in the world that need to be fought. So no. I am a radical. I am not an eccentric.

These are thoughts expressed on a Saturday morning. They are not to be taken as a fully-formed creed or rule-book. I’ve no doubt there are other views, other perspectives that can and should be shared and taken on board. But it’s important to start doing, and that often begins with talking and arguing. Please, don’t think my intention is to chastise to the point of making anyone feel guilty—that’s a Catholic approach, maybe, but it’s certainly not mine. Guilt is the most useless emotion there is. Even anger, even hate, destructive as they can be and often are, can and do drive us forward to new places. But guilt? It just sits and festers and ultimately immobilises us, stops us doing anything. If you feel guilt, acknowledge it, understand the why, and then throw it out and get on with stuff so you don’t need to feel that stupid emotion any more. Take it as a signal, a reminder, a friend who it’s okay to have drop by but mustn’t overstay her welcome.

I’m not saying I’ve got it right 100 per cent, either. No way. I go wrong as much as anyone, I avoid the right decision on many occasions, I fail. But I try. That is all we can and must do. None of us are perfect but it’s whether we do… or we don’t. Do you? Or do you not? Come on, be honest with yourself.

If you’re a Pagan, you have a belief system. Where does that take you? Is it really meant to just take you inside yourself, to be a comfort while you live your life as you please? Or is that instinct you have, that leaning towards the gods, telling you there are things you can do to make a difference? From volunteering to direct action, from joining a political party to being friendly and generous, there are an infinite number of things we can do to promote our beliefs without brutally evangelising. There is no excuse for sitting on your Pagan arse while the world is ruined, while people and animals suffer. No excuse at all.

Be nice to yourself, to your mind and body. Go be nice to a neighbour. This is how we start the revolution. There is no other way. Just don’t stop there.

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