Magic is quite often defined as "the art of changing consciousness in accordance with one's will" (e.g. Aleister Crowley defined it as this).
Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic." So magnetism was magic until we understood it. When we understand telepathy (if it exists), that will cease to be magic and become psychology.
I guess magic could also be defined as "the manipulation of external symbols in order to affect internal states of mind". As Ross Nichols once said, "Ritual is poetry in the world of acts."
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Now the green blade rises
Music: Noël Nouvelet, 15th Century French melody
Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,
Wheat that in the dark earth many years has lain;
Love lives again, that with the dead has been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
In the grave they laid Him, Love Whom we had slain,
Thinking that He’d never wake to life again,
Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
Up He sprang at Easter, like the risen grain,
He that for three days in the grave had lain;
Up from the dead my risen Lord is seen:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
When our hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again, like wheat that springs up green.
This really is a beautiful Easter hymn, with echoes of John Barleycorn and other Pagan fertility deities.
Sunday, 8 March 2009
What is a Messiah?
The Jewish view of the Messiah (as explained in Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish), was that he was to be an earthly king who would usher in a golden age of justice and peace.
But the followers of Jesus were sorely disappointed to hear that his kingdom was not of this earth. And yet he had said earlier, “The Kingdom of Heaven is all around you but you do not see it.” These two texts seem to me to contradict each other; either this is one of those mystical things beyond my ken, or someone has been tampering with the text – someone who did not want a thousand-year reign of justice and peace on earth. Someone like an emperor, who needed armies to fight for him – and it just so happens that such a person – the emperor Constantine – presided over the Council of Niceaea, where the canonical gospels were decided upon, and from which we get the Nicene Creed (the foundational text of Christianity).
A few weeks ago we heard the story of the fire-maker, who was killed for having the impertinence to make fire, and then people erected houses where they would sing of the miraculous gift of fire-making, and commemorate the miracles of the fire-maker, but never actually made fire themselves. Earlier we heard the story of the little creatures who spent their whole lives on the river-bed and never let go; and when one of them did they hailed him as a messiah, but did not copy him (from Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach). It seems to me that Christianity is like the creatures on the river bed and the people who lost their fire-maker; they make legends of the fire-maker, but do not dare to kindle a blaze themselves. When Jesus said that his holy spirit (his Ruach) would be with the disciples after his death, I believe that he meant he would pass on the mantle of fire-making to them. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the story of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples – they too became messiahs, the anointed of God.
St Teresa of Avila, a 16th century Catholic nun and mystic, echoes this thought in her poem, You are Christ’s hands:
If we delve into the gospels and epistles, these radical ideas are never far below the surface. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” writes St Paul in his letter to the Galatians.
But the Church has always been more interested in the miracles of Jesus than in the actual values he embraced. It took an Indian, none other than Rammohun Roy, to point out to the West that they had completely ignored the original message of Jesus (which he helpfully summarised in his book, The Precepts of Jesus: The Guide to Peace and Happiness). When it was published in 1825, it caused an outcry, even though it was simply a series of excerpts from the Gospels of what Jesus actually said, together with introductory remarks – but its message has still not been heard by many people. Those who have heard the message have changed the world, though. Mahatma Gandhi read The Precepts of Jesus, and applied the ideas in it to his movement of non-violent resistance that eventually resulted in freedom for India. Martin Luther King learnt from Gandhi’s example, and used these ideas to help the Civil Rights movement achieve its aims. While at seminary, King became acquainted with Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent social protest. On a trip to India in 1959, King met with followers of Gandhi. During these discussions he became more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. So the values of Jesus – freedom, justice, peace, and love – triumphed again.
In his novel, The Anointed One, Z’ev Ben Shimon Halevi (a Jewish mystic) explores the Jewish idea that there is a Messiah in every generation – a holy one who is working for freedom, justice, peace, and love. The hero of the novel is a holy man who seeks to unite Jews, Muslims and Christians in their quest for the Divine; the setting is the Catholic reconquest of Spain from the Muslims. Muslim Spain was known for its tolerance, intellectual freedom, and interplay of mystical and magical ideas from the three Abrahamic faiths. All this was brutally crushed by the Catholic Church, who forced the conversion of Muslims and Jews, and then persecuted any who sought to practice their original faith in secret. The hero is killed by the Inquisition, and the mantle of the Anointed One passes to one of his followers, a Muslim.
In the 12th century, St Francis was seen as so holy that he was often referred to as “another Christ” (alter Christus). He preached poverty and equality, and is considered the patron saint of animals and the environment. Curiously, the story of his early life is very similar to that of the Buddha. Francis was a rich young merchant’s son who gave all his money to a beggar; the Buddha was a prince whose parents sought to shelter him from the suffering of the world, but when he saw a sick man laid at his gate, he vowed to work to end that suffering.
The problem with the Christian idea of Christ as the only means of accessing the Divine is, how can people who have never heard or understood the message be “saved”? The claim of a unique revelation of the Trinity as the true nature of God means that Christianity necessarily rejects all other faiths, because they do not have the same view of the Divine.
According to the Unitarian booklet, A Faith Worth Thinking About, we are called Unitarians because of our traditional insistence on divine unity, the oneness of God, and because we affirm the essential unity of humankind and all creation.
The idea that the Divine is one implies that all religions can contact the Divine by their own names for it, and it will respond to them – so Unitarianism is inherently based on the acceptance of other faiths; and this is why the Unitarian idea of the unity of God is so important.
So if the Messiah – the Christos – is not part of the Godhead, what is it? Again, St Paul gives us the clue. He writes, “so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” (Romans 12:5) The faithful become the anointed ones – indeed in Orthodoxy, there is the rite of chrismation (anointing), more commonly known in the West as confirmation.
As the lovely meditation by Victoria Weinstein that we heard earlier says, there is no point waiting for the Messiah to return; in fact the Messiah has always been with us, waiting for our hands to do the healing, spread the compassion, share the feast.
As John Andrew Storey wrote in his lovely carol, The Universal Incarnation:
So the answer to the question, what is a messiah, is: You are! You are the anointed ones of God.
(address given at Frenchay Chapel, Bristol, this morning - the reception this received reminded me why I love Unitarians so much - it was greatly appreciated)
A few weeks ago we heard the story of the fire-maker, who was killed for having the impertinence to make fire, and then people erected houses where they would sing of the miraculous gift of fire-making, and commemorate the miracles of the fire-maker, but never actually made fire themselves. Earlier we heard the story of the little creatures who spent their whole lives on the river-bed and never let go; and when one of them did they hailed him as a messiah, but did not copy him (from Illusions: the Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach). It seems to me that Christianity is like the creatures on the river bed and the people who lost their fire-maker; they make legends of the fire-maker, but do not dare to kindle a blaze themselves. When Jesus said that his holy spirit (his Ruach) would be with the disciples after his death, I believe that he meant he would pass on the mantle of fire-making to them. Perhaps this is the true meaning of the story of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples – they too became messiahs, the anointed of God.
St Teresa of Avila, a 16th century Catholic nun and mystic, echoes this thought in her poem, You are Christ’s hands:
Christ has no body now on earth but yours,According to the Buddhist tradition, we are all future Buddhas and contain essential Buddha-nature. As the seed of our consciousness journeys from life to life, our Buddha-nature emerges. As everything in the universe expresses the Buddha-nature, so we are all connected. It is possible that some such idea was originally part of Christianity, until it got entangled with the Roman and Byzantine Empires, after which it would have been seen as dangerously radical and subversive, because it made all beings equal – whereas under the imperial Church, Christ became an emperor ruling over heaven and earth, far too distant for ordinary people to approach or pray to.
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.
If we delve into the gospels and epistles, these radical ideas are never far below the surface. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus,” writes St Paul in his letter to the Galatians.
But the Church has always been more interested in the miracles of Jesus than in the actual values he embraced. It took an Indian, none other than Rammohun Roy, to point out to the West that they had completely ignored the original message of Jesus (which he helpfully summarised in his book, The Precepts of Jesus: The Guide to Peace and Happiness). When it was published in 1825, it caused an outcry, even though it was simply a series of excerpts from the Gospels of what Jesus actually said, together with introductory remarks – but its message has still not been heard by many people. Those who have heard the message have changed the world, though. Mahatma Gandhi read The Precepts of Jesus, and applied the ideas in it to his movement of non-violent resistance that eventually resulted in freedom for India. Martin Luther King learnt from Gandhi’s example, and used these ideas to help the Civil Rights movement achieve its aims. While at seminary, King became acquainted with Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent social protest. On a trip to India in 1959, King met with followers of Gandhi. During these discussions he became more convinced than ever that nonviolent resistance was the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. So the values of Jesus – freedom, justice, peace, and love – triumphed again.
In his novel, The Anointed One, Z’ev Ben Shimon Halevi (a Jewish mystic) explores the Jewish idea that there is a Messiah in every generation – a holy one who is working for freedom, justice, peace, and love. The hero of the novel is a holy man who seeks to unite Jews, Muslims and Christians in their quest for the Divine; the setting is the Catholic reconquest of Spain from the Muslims. Muslim Spain was known for its tolerance, intellectual freedom, and interplay of mystical and magical ideas from the three Abrahamic faiths. All this was brutally crushed by the Catholic Church, who forced the conversion of Muslims and Jews, and then persecuted any who sought to practice their original faith in secret. The hero is killed by the Inquisition, and the mantle of the Anointed One passes to one of his followers, a Muslim.
In the 12th century, St Francis was seen as so holy that he was often referred to as “another Christ” (alter Christus). He preached poverty and equality, and is considered the patron saint of animals and the environment. Curiously, the story of his early life is very similar to that of the Buddha. Francis was a rich young merchant’s son who gave all his money to a beggar; the Buddha was a prince whose parents sought to shelter him from the suffering of the world, but when he saw a sick man laid at his gate, he vowed to work to end that suffering.
The problem with the Christian idea of Christ as the only means of accessing the Divine is, how can people who have never heard or understood the message be “saved”? The claim of a unique revelation of the Trinity as the true nature of God means that Christianity necessarily rejects all other faiths, because they do not have the same view of the Divine.
According to the Unitarian booklet, A Faith Worth Thinking About, we are called Unitarians because of our traditional insistence on divine unity, the oneness of God, and because we affirm the essential unity of humankind and all creation.
The idea that the Divine is one implies that all religions can contact the Divine by their own names for it, and it will respond to them – so Unitarianism is inherently based on the acceptance of other faiths; and this is why the Unitarian idea of the unity of God is so important.
So if the Messiah – the Christos – is not part of the Godhead, what is it? Again, St Paul gives us the clue. He writes, “so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” (Romans 12:5) The faithful become the anointed ones – indeed in Orthodoxy, there is the rite of chrismation (anointing), more commonly known in the West as confirmation.
As the lovely meditation by Victoria Weinstein that we heard earlier says, there is no point waiting for the Messiah to return; in fact the Messiah has always been with us, waiting for our hands to do the healing, spread the compassion, share the feast.
As John Andrew Storey wrote in his lovely carol, The Universal Incarnation:
Each time a girl or boy is born,Or as Roger Taylor Walke wrote in Children of a Bright Tomorrow:
Incarnate deity we find.
May we know our timeless mission –Universal avatars – an avatar is a deity incarnate as a human being – so we are manifestations of the divine universe.
Universal avatars.
So the answer to the question, what is a messiah, is: You are! You are the anointed ones of God.
(address given at Frenchay Chapel, Bristol, this morning - the reception this received reminded me why I love Unitarians so much - it was greatly appreciated)
Monday, 2 February 2009
Wiccan and Unitarian
But how can you be Wiccan and Unitarian?
It all depends whether you think religion is about beliefs, practices, or values. It is often stated that Wicca is an orthopraxy, not an orthodoxy. Nevertheless, if you think it is about beliefs, I still believe the same as many (if not most) Wiccans. I believe that the Divine has one substance (the mind of the Universe) and many forms (individual deities). I believe that the Divine is immanent in the Universe, and includes feminine forms, masculine forms, and forms without gender.
If you think it's about practice, I am still practising Wicca, and haven't modified that practice.
If you think it's about values, I still share the values of Wiccans (though it's less clear to me that Wiccans actually do have a set of unanimously shared values - some covens are hierarchical, others more democratic, some are consensus-based). But my values are pretty much the same as they always have been.
Then there's the shared history of Pagans and Unitarians. One early Unitarian was Iolo Morganwg, who is better known in the Pagan community for being one of the founders of the Druid revival. He was also one of the founders of the South Wales Unitarian Association, and wrote hundreds of Unitarian hymns in Welsh.
Another Unitarian writer who influenced the Pagan revival was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Although he fell out with the mainstream of nineteenth-century Unitarianism, he had a profound influence on 20th-century Unitarianism. He also wrote about the concept of polarity, an idea which is very important in Wicca.
POLARITY, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light, in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, galvanism, and chemical affinity.Emerson had been influenced by Rammohun Roy, the Indian liberal who campaigned against sati (widow-burning). Emerson in turn influenced Edward Carpenter, one of the founders of the Pagan revival, the poet Walt Whitman and the writer Henry David Thoreau.
Unitarianism has a thriving Pagan element, represented in the UK by the Unitarian Earth Spirit Network (founded in 1990), and in the US by the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (founded in 1987). The first known Pagan UU ritual was in 1980. Unitarian Paganism and Unitarians' positive attitude to the Goddess is also mentioned in Margot Adler's book Drawing Down the Moon. Several Unitarian ministers are also Pagans; and many of the hymns are about nature. I am by no means the only Wiccan to join the Unitarians; I have heard of several others.
Unitarians were also the first denomination to have a woman minister, Gertrude Petzold, and the first to include LGBT people; Dudley Cave, a Unitarian, was a founder of the Lesbian and Gay Switchboard.
Last but not least, Unitarianism includes material from other religions (and has done so since at least 1850). The UUA includes these in its principles and sources.
If after all that, you're still wondering what attracted me to Unitarianism... well, I rather like Yeshua (even if he didn't actually exist), in spite of the terrible things done in his name, and I like the liberal values of the Unitarians.
Compassion is a human virtue
It has sometimes been claimed that faith, hope and charity (and possibly also forgiveness) are specifically Christian virtues. For example, G K Chesterton claimed this. They are certainly held in high esteem by Christians, but that does not mean that Christians invented them.
But ancient pagans certainly included compassion among their values.
The Religio Romana website lists a number of Roman virtues, including:
Ancient heathens also extolled the virtues of generosity to others less fortunate than oneself; the Hávamál contains many stanzas about hospitality (still widely considered a virtue in Germanic culture).
Compassion is also extolled in the Wiccan core text, The Charge of the Goddess; and hospitality is one of the Nine Noble Virtues of modern Heathenry.
And of course there are many compassionate atheists, who give money to secular charities. Compassion is a human virtue; it doesn't belong to any specific religion.
But ancient pagans certainly included compassion among their values.
The Religio Romana website lists a number of Roman virtues, including:
(note that the above list includes faith, hope and charity!)
- Aequitas: Equity; fairness and justice within society and government
- Caritas: Affection; To love, cherish and hold dear, especially within family
- Clementia: Clemency; Mildness, gentleness, mercy, compassion in private and public matters
- Concordia: Concord; Harmony, agreement between peoples and nations
- Fides: Good Faith; Trust, fidelity, fulfilment of promises made
- Humanitas: Humanity; Kindness, being refined, cultured and educated, embracing the best aspects of civilization
- Indulgentia: Indulgence; Permissiveness, leniency, tolerance
- Justitia: Justice; Equitable, fair treatment, guided by principles, also defined by implementation and enforcement of reasonable laws within a sound government
- Liberalitas: Liberality; Generosity; to give abundantly
- Munificentia: Munificence; Benevolent, bountiful service, charitable
- Spes: Hope; A belief in favorable outcome particularly in times of struggle
Ancient heathens also extolled the virtues of generosity to others less fortunate than oneself; the Hávamál contains many stanzas about hospitality (still widely considered a virtue in Germanic culture).
Compassion is also extolled in the Wiccan core text, The Charge of the Goddess; and hospitality is one of the Nine Noble Virtues of modern Heathenry.
And of course there are many compassionate atheists, who give money to secular charities. Compassion is a human virtue; it doesn't belong to any specific religion.
The widow's mite
Pagans who do charitable work and make charitable donations are rather like the poor widow of the parable, making their donations anonymously and quietly; whereas certain other religions with big charities mentioning the name of the religion in their titles are rather like the ostentatious rich men in the story.
Since there are those who claim that Pagans are not charitable, here, just as an example, is a list of all the charities I support.
Charities and causes to which I contribute money every month:
Since there are those who claim that Pagans are not charitable, here, just as an example, is a list of all the charities I support.
Charities and causes to which I contribute money every month:
- No 2 ID
- LGBT religious archives network
- Survival International - the movement for tribal peoples
- Greenpeace UK
- The National Trust
- The Woodland Trust
- Oxfam
- Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
- Avon Wildlife Trust
- Peace Pledge Union
- Stonewall
- Sight Savers International - International Charity Fighting Blindness
- Chalice Well
- Hurricane Katrina appeal (one-off donation)
- Tsunami appeal (I did a bring-and-buy sale for this, and helped to organise an online auction)
- Shelter, homeless charity (financial contribution)
- Stop Violence Against Women (helped with their website)
- Big Issue (homeless street paper - I frequently buy one)
- Cancer research (several one-off donations)
- Pakistan earthquake appeal (one-off donation)
- Victims of war in Iraq (one-off donation)
- Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (occasional donations)
- Lancaster University Alumni Fund (had a direct debit for ages)
- Soulforce: Freedom for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People (can't remember if this is a monthly payment or a one-off donation)
- University and Colleges Union (Branch Secretary)
- Poppy Appeal
- Online donations for various wars and famines
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Unitarian and Wiccan
But how can you be Unitarian and Wiccan?
It all depends if you think religion is about belief, values, or practice (or all three). Personally I believe in very similar ideas to many Unitarians with whom I have discussed theology (even Unitarian Christians). I believe that Jesus was a very special human being (along with Buddha, Gandhi, St Francis, Symmachus, and many other mystics and social activists). I believe that he carried the Divine spark, as each one of us do; perhaps his flame was a little brighter. I also believe that his values—of inclusivity, care, equality, community, and honouring diversity—were the most important thing about him, and that these values are what will save humanity from war, poverty and famine. So that’s why I am a Unitarian—I had a mystical encounter with him, and felt that his values were my values, and that Unitarianism puts those values into practice more effectively than many other forms of Christianity. At the same time I was reading a lot of liberation theology and queer Christian theology, all of which resonated strongly with me. I also believe (again in common with many Unitarians) that the Divine is in everything: the trees, the flowers, the Earth, you and me.
I am a Wiccan (and have been since 1991) because I believe that the Divine has one substance and many forms and faces, and I choose to honour it through Nature and through pagan mythology and the cycle of seasonal festivals. The values and beliefs of Wicca are also about inclusivity, tolerance, freedom and the wisdom of experience. Wicca honours both male and female forms of the Divine.
Both Unitarianism and Wicca celebrate being alive, present in this world and in this moment. Both agree that other religions are valid paths for those who choose them, and want to celebrate both individuality and community. And Unitarianism has included pagan elements since at least 1850, if not earlier (see The Larger View by Vernon Marshall).
It all depends if you think religion is about belief, values, or practice (or all three). Personally I believe in very similar ideas to many Unitarians with whom I have discussed theology (even Unitarian Christians). I believe that Jesus was a very special human being (along with Buddha, Gandhi, St Francis, Symmachus, and many other mystics and social activists). I believe that he carried the Divine spark, as each one of us do; perhaps his flame was a little brighter. I also believe that his values—of inclusivity, care, equality, community, and honouring diversity—were the most important thing about him, and that these values are what will save humanity from war, poverty and famine. So that’s why I am a Unitarian—I had a mystical encounter with him, and felt that his values were my values, and that Unitarianism puts those values into practice more effectively than many other forms of Christianity. At the same time I was reading a lot of liberation theology and queer Christian theology, all of which resonated strongly with me. I also believe (again in common with many Unitarians) that the Divine is in everything: the trees, the flowers, the Earth, you and me.
I am a Wiccan (and have been since 1991) because I believe that the Divine has one substance and many forms and faces, and I choose to honour it through Nature and through pagan mythology and the cycle of seasonal festivals. The values and beliefs of Wicca are also about inclusivity, tolerance, freedom and the wisdom of experience. Wicca honours both male and female forms of the Divine.
Both Unitarianism and Wicca celebrate being alive, present in this world and in this moment. Both agree that other religions are valid paths for those who choose them, and want to celebrate both individuality and community. And Unitarianism has included pagan elements since at least 1850, if not earlier (see The Larger View by Vernon Marshall).
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